I wish to strenuously object…

I wish to strenuously object to the weakening of protection for water and the restriction of our Conservation Authorities.

The redefining of a watercourse in this proposal would allow many existing watercourses to be removed from the category and lose their protections, while the reduction of the buffer for wetlands from 120 metres to 30 metres will have devastating impacts. We depend on clean fresh water to live, but removing protections for watercourses and wetlands will lead to increased pollution at the same time that pollution is removed as a consideration for development. This de-protection of perhaps the most important resource on Earth will hurt people and the ecosystems we rely on. Wetlands are the natural infrastructure that clean our water, while watercourses move that water across the earth. Overwriting these pieces of our landscape with development will only cause harm.

The net effect of this proposal is a weakening of protection for water, and by extension, people. It cannot proceed as written.