I am concerned about Bill…

I am concerned about Bill 162, Get It Done Act, 2024 and the implications on the environment from changes for project Environmental Assessment requirements.

This includes transportation (highways and rail) and electricity transmission projects being moved from comprehensive to streamlined Environmental Assessments, more lenient provisions for waterfront projects, and expropriation of land without proper Environmental Assessment.

Removing or streamlining Environmental Assessments has implications including water quality and management (impact on wetland ecosystems and flood plains), local food security (agricultural land use), and biodiversity (affecting continuous habitat for Species at Risk).

As Mark Winfield, a professor of Environmental and Urban Change at York University comments, “Independent assessment processes are essential to making sure the choices made today don’t turn out to be ones Ontario residents regret for generations” (https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/march-2024/ford-get-it-done/).

Commenting on Why Environmental Assessments Are Important in a 2016 audit, the Auditor General noted, “Certain types of projects undertaken by both the private and the public sector have the potential to harm the environment, wildlife, and human populations if carried out without regard to their impact. They can result, for example, in contamination of the soil, pollution of the air and water, destruction of habitats and damage to places of economic and cultural significance. The effects can be extensive, and may last for many years” (p.4, https://www.auditor.on.ca/en/content/annualreports/arreports/en16/v1_30… ).

When the government proposed the Environmental Assessment Act in 1976 it stated that without strong provincial involvement in the early stages of the project, “society could often be in a situation of reacting to environmental problems that could have been avoided (p.4).”

These same principles hold true today.

Please keep the Environmental Assessment requirements for transportation (highways and rail), electricity transmission projects, waterfront projects, and expropriation of land as we don’t want Ontario to only “get it done” but to get it done right.