Thank you for your continued…

Thank you for your continued service to our community. I am extremely concerned by the proposed changes that Bill 23 will bring to conservation and development in Ontario. I hope that you will consider my concerns, and the concerns of many others, seriously and stop this bill from going through. I understand there is a huge need for housing in Ontario. However, this should not be at the expense of ecosystems vital to our environmental, physical, emotional, cultural, and mental health. To have a bill that would allow developers to bypass approval processes that were designed to protect significant environments and ecosystems would defeat the purpose of having those processes in the first place.

I believe that we as a province have more creativity and ingenuity to address the housing crisis and need for economic development, one that does not come at the terrible cost of our environment. We can look to (re)developing areas within cities (brownfield development), renovating and redesigning existing structures to be more accessible, more affordable, and have greater capacity. We have so many options for sustainable development and countless people being trained in universities, colleges, workplaces across the province on how to do exactly that. For example, Sustainable Planning and Development at Seneca College or Sustainability Studies at Trent University or the School of Environmental Studies at Queen's University It would be amazing if the Ontario government could instead partner with these institutions and programs to implement solutions. Let's use this incredible people power to serve our communities and protect our environment.