Dear Editor:
RE: County councillors concerned about impacts of province’s Bill 23, Dec. 8.
Thank you to our municipal politicians and county staff for pointing out many of the shortcomings of Bill 23. This draconian “Trojan horse” bill was rammed through the legislature and ultimately will undermine our local governance, environmental protection, land use planning and municipal tax system to pay for the so-called “housing crisis,” more or less centred in Toronto.
Our planning system is being portrayed as the fall guy in all of this as “red tape” getting in the way of development; editorial note here – this system is what has given us the many things in our communities that we hold dear – summed up as our quality of life. Bill 23 adds substantial costs to the overall environment (undermining watershed planning, protection of natural features like wetlands, increased flooding), our agricultural land base (through more rural sprawl development) and increases in municipal property taxes (to subsidize developers in DCs/parkland dedication offsets that will not guarantee new affordable housing).
I’m very disappointed that our local MPPs have all sided with the dictates of Premier Doug Ford in this fiasco. They have not spoken up when people were prevented from speaking to the government in the bill’s review, e.g., AMO, indigenous peoples.
Where is Wellington-Halton Hills MPP Ted Arnott in all this? Why has he not spoken up when the government has been systematically cutting protections of our environmental system over the past four years, i.e., elimination of the provincial Environmental Commissioner’s office, cutting of provincial tree planting initiatives, reducing the good regulatory roles of our conservation authorities, lessening protections for endangered species, removing Greenbelt lands, etc.?
It is a very sad state of affairs here in Ontario!
Paul Kraehling,
Guelph