Category: Smart Growth Waterloo Region

Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative Government…



Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative Government calls this draft legislation “Bill 66, Restoring Ontario’s Competitiveness Act, 2018″.

“If developers can bypass agricultural protections, as Bill 66 would allow, it threatens our economy and our food supply.”

”If Bill 66 becomes law, the only notice residents would receive of an impending development is when the first bulldozer arrives.”

— Hold The Line, Waterloo Federation of Agriculture, & Smart Growth Waterloo Region

[Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator Dec. 11, 2018]

“Restoring Ontario’s Competitiveness Act.”

Among its targets is the Greenbelt Act. Bill 66 would allow municipalities to circumvent Greenbelt protections by enacting “Open for Business” bylaws under which they could approve factories and business parks within the Greenbelt.

Smaller municipalities (under 250,000) would simply need to show the Ford government that their Greenbelt development would create 50 jobs. For larger cities the requirement would be 100 jobs.

Related measures in Bill 66 would empower municipalities to exempt developers rules designed to protect wildlife and municipal water supplies, including the Clean Water Act, which was enacted following the Walkerton water tragedy in 2000 when seven people died after drinking the town’s contaminated water.

–Geoffrey Stevens, The Record
Dec 10/18: Doug Ford’s hypocrisy on the Greenbelt

Other Acts targeted by the Ford government in the astonishing broad scope of ”Bill 66, Restoring Ontario’s Competitiveness Act, 2018″ include:

Whenever a Government creates “omnibus” laws to make sweeping changes to a wide swathe of legislation, it is never good news for citizens.  When Governments make laws they know we will like, they make a big deal about it, they don’t bury it in reams of paper no one is expected to read because they don’t mind us knowing what’s what.  

Government protections wrapped in red tape that protect citizens are spelled out in law.  Thousands were made ill and people died when the Mike Harris Sr PC Government cut the red tape protecting our municipal water supply.  I can tell you were are not adequately protected from toxins even before they cut red tape on the “Toxins Reduction Act.”  What protections are they stripping away from vulnerable senior citizens in the “Long Term Care Homes Act”?  And at the other end of the vulnerable citizens spectrum what protections are being removed from laws protecting children in Daycare and public schools?  

Although I have not yet had a chance to read my way through this draft legislation, much less all the referenced laws in which they plan to cut “red tape,” it makes me very nervous indeed.

When I speak to my Member of Provincial Parliament I will ask him to explain precisely what each change— both additions and subtractions— to each of these laws will do.  Because it is his job to know.

I’m not expert but the main reason for this law seems to be to open up “The Greenbelt” so developers can do what they like with land they bought cheaply precisely because it was protected.  In spite of what developers (or Mr Ford’s MPPs) may tell you, there is no shortage of Ontario land that could be developed.  We are not running out of places where factories can be built.

The reason the Greenbelt was protected in the first place is because most of Ontario drinking water is ground water, and much of the aquifers holding it is protected by the Greenbelt.

Hold The Line has put together a handy tool that will allow us to easily let our elected representatives hear from us; we can choose to send our messages to some or every sitting provincial and municipal politician in Waterloo Region.  

(If you’re not in Waterloo Region, feel free to borrow anything you may find helpful in your own letter to your MPP & municipal politicians.)