Bill 5 is not what we need

Editor:

Bill 5 is a huge overreach by the provincial government.

In the committee hearings, which I attended, only a few presenters were given a chance to be heard. The committee flatly refused to extend the deadline to include meetings in the Far North. It appears that the decision to pass Bill 5 had already been made, and with the Conservative government majority they only went through the motions of public hearings. The entire procedure was a farce. This is not how a democratic society should operate.

Those in favour of Bill 5 (and by extension, Highway 413) invariably had a personal interest in the bill – usually financial. They wanted to see more and faster building with little or no consideration for those in the affected communities. Bill 5 creates Special Economic Zones where, with government approval, “trusted proponents” i.e. developers have few restrictions within that zone. Special Economic Zones and MZOs are used as tools to exchange votes and donations to the party (though no one would ever admit it) in exchange for rights to build wherever. With no proper oversight, our province will be paved over and built upon with little thought to best practices.

Those against Bill 5 were environmentalists, community leaders, and Indigenous leaders. They all know how the land that we grow our food on and the wetlands that absorb our floodwaters can be permanently damaged by such activities.

The government wants us to believe that Bill 5 is to consolidate regulations (reduce red tape). Reducing red tape is necessary, but running roughshod over our land with no assurance that the land and the people of Ontario are not harmed is not acceptable. By ramming the bill through, the government wants to save time, but that is a falsehood. The bill, as it sits now, is open to court challenges which will be lengthy and costly to the taxpayer.

As a province, we need to think smarter, using our resources efficiently. We need to recycle concrete, not dump used concrete into landfill sites and then dig up more aggregate. We need to have a battery recycling program to make use of the rare earth and other metals in existing batteries. We need to redefine what housing is. It is not just a single-family building on a plot of land, or a mammoth condo building. There are many in-between choices to explore and adopt.

We need a government that can think outside the box, not one who lives in the 1960s when the doors seemed wide open to expansion without any regard for the repercussions.

Barbara Bailie,

Mulmur