NewmarketToday welcomes your letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication).
Re: York Region slams new provincial housing bill, Nov. 10, 2022
Premier Doug Ford,
Bill 23 is a disaster waiting to happen. Contrary to what you seem to believe, Ontario does not belong to you and this Conservative party. Ontario belongs to us, the people of Ontario. The taxes we must pay through our hard-earned money is not yours to use as you wish.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe in taxes — we need them for the life of our province. But you and this Ontario government are using our money to destroy Ontario’s environment and raise greenhouse gases to unacceptable levels under the guise of building more houses.
A number of years ago, former MPP John Snobelen said a crisis had to be created and reading the ads of developers, the much needed housing development is the created crisis. We all know that our green spaces are not needed for housing!
Just as you attempted to take CUPE’s right to a fair wage, the right to strike, now you are taking away the people of Ontario’s right to a safe and healthy environment. In this proposed bill, you are
- Removing our right to appeal on planning matters that affect our community;
- Limiting the power of conservation authorities to regulate or prohibit development;
- Removing the role of seven regional municipalities (Simcoe, Durham, Halton, Peel, Niagara, Waterloo and York) in planning matters, thereby eliminating coordinated efforts to protect farmland and natural areas, determine optimal locations for development and infrastructure, and efficiently deliver municipal services;
- Proposing drastic amendments to the Ontario Wetland Evaluation System;
- Replacing the Provincial Policy Statement with a new policy instrument geared to facilitating unchecked development.
Herman Daly, renowned former World Bank economist and visionary thinker, said, “There is something fundamentally wrong with treating the Earth as if it were a business in liquidation. The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the reverse.
"We’re part of nature and everything in nature, including us, is interconnected. What we do to it, we do to ourselves. Accelerating fossil fuel exploitation, deforestation, mining, wetland destruction and consumerism has far-reaching, interrelated consequences, from climate chaos to biodiversity decline to water shortages.”
You, Premier Ford, cannot allow developers to destroy Ontario. You cannot take away our right to a safe and healthy environment for our children and grandchildren. That is NOT the role of government.
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 speech focused on humanity’s “four essential human freedoms” — freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. How are you, Premier Ford, embracing these? We need a visionary leader, not one who caves in to developers and ruins our future.
Sharon Willan, Aurora
