I live in rural Eastern…

I live in rural Eastern Ontario. I am deeply, deeply concerned about the proposals to loosen environmental permissions for stormwater management.

This proposal is entirely undemocratic as it does not take in the citizens and our concerns about what is happening to the land around us. It is essential that public consultation be formally included in the application process. Otherwise what is the point of any regulation at all?

Conservation Authorities MUST be involved in planning and oversight of stormwater management on the aggregate mining sites. The Conservation Authority is supposed to be stewarding the land, and looking after our resources. By removing the Authority's role, we are allowing an industry to entirely self-regulate.

The Aggregate Extraction industry is a mining industry, yet it is not subject to the same rules. It should
be considered an ineligible industry for EASR permitting, as mining is. Those of us who live in areas where aggregates area being extracted know that this is akin to open strip mining in it's harmful destruction of the environment. The idea that there would be LESS regulation of this industry is unfathomable.

"Streamlining" seems to be a code word for selling off, for giving way to an industry that basically wants to "take resources." Those of us who live on the land think of the land as our home, and an environment that needs to be protected, not as a resource to strip and then move on. These are old, colonialist attitudes.

As far as I know, we still live in a democracy (although one does have to question that notion under the current government's actions. Witness the Greenbelt fiasco.) Citizens MUST be given an opportunity to review changes. The aggregate industry must not be allowed to self-regulate aggregate extraction and water management, take unlimited amounts of water, hire their own inspectors, rush the process without public consultation, sideline the Conservation Authority, and run rough-shod over the citizens who live rurally. By considering these changes to the process, the current government that is showing itself to have no respect for people, but allows itself to be bought by corporations.