[All] BREAKING NEWS! Bill 66, Section 10 Revoked

[Gregory C. Michalenko]

This is wonderful news.  We can be proud of the outcome of our united hard work. It has been so good to  be with such a diverse and committed group of of people and organizations.


Unfortunately, it's  a significant small light in a morass of dreadful actions.  My wife has been helping out a Syrian refugee family.  They are grateful to be here, where it is safe, and are hard at work learning English and preparing for a new life ahead, and live with great frugality. Meanwhile, they are on social assistance.  Today they learned that the "Government for the People" has chopped their assistance by $200 a month.  I guess they, and so many of the poor, just don't count as "people".  Cutting the scheduled increase of the minimum wage to $15 is taking  $2000 out of the pockets of over 750,000 minimum wage earners.  Thats a billion and a half dollars.


This is a government of hypocrisy and mendacity. They are beyond contempt.


Let's make sure to build on this momentum and ensure that we can claim more victories for the good people of Ontario, our environment, and common human decency.


- Greg


________________________________
From: All <all-bounces at gren.ca> on behalf of Kevin Thomason <kevinthomason at mac.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2019 5:45 PM
To: Susan Koswan
Cc: GREN
Subject: Re: [All] BREAKING NEWS! Bill 66, Section 10 Revoked

I would agree Susan.  There are still concerning aspects of Bill 66 remaining and still many other concerning actions underway by the provincial government be it the Growth Plan changes, the Regional Review, the cormorant cull, opening the Endangered Species Act to business, etc.

Many are wondering if Ford will simply accomplish what he was trying under Section 10 of Bill 66 instead by undermining the Growth Plan and avoiding all the recent opposition.

We will need to ensure that our momentum here carries into future activities in the weeks and months ahead.

I am attaching the official release from the Minister below announcing the revocation of Section 10.

Congratulations again everyone!
Kevin.


-------------------------------------

On Jan 23, 2019, at 5:27 PM, Susan Koswan <susankoswan at execulink.com<mailto:susankoswan at execulink.com>> wrote:


Great news, Kevin Thanks! But somehow I don't trust Ford. And we still need to be concerned about the cancellation of the Toxics Reduction Act.

Susan K

On 1/23/2019 5:13 PM, Kevin Thomason wrote:
Good afternoon,

Amazing news just breaking from Queen’s Park where Minister Steve Clark has announced that the government has heard the concerns about Schedule 10 of Bill 66 and that they will be revoking that section as we have been requesting!!!

Congratulations to everyone who spoke up, wrote letters, sent e-mails and ensured that our serious concerns about Bill 66 were heard!

We still don’t know much of the details aside from the tweets on Twitter (copy below) but there have been thousands of retweets within minutes.  We are in the process of preparing a press release for our local media and we’ll keep you posted as we learn more.

There are still many concerning things happening be it changes to the Growth Plan, Climate Change, the Endangered Species Act, Regional Review/amalgamation, etc. so we will still need to remain vigilant and active working to ensure our strong local protections, water, farmland, natural areas and natural resources aren’t threatened.

We still encourage people to keep meetings with MPP’s and other officials.  We will still be proceeding with the Our Water, Our Future event on February 7th too.

Thank you to everyone for so much hard work.  Our local and regional councils with their strong Staff Reports and Resolutions against Bill 66 helped to lead things and set the tone provincially.  We’ve achieved what many said was impossible and got the Ford government to backtrack again from their awful plan to override and imperil so much.

Congratulations!
Kevin.

--------------------------

<Screen Shot 2019-01-23 at 4.21.29 PM.png>

-------------------------------------

Kevin Thomason
Vice-Chair, Grand River Environmental Network

Phone: (519) 888-0519
Mobile Phone/WhatsApp: (519) 240-1648
Twitter: @kthomason
E-mail: kevinthomason at mac.com<mailto:kevinthomason at mac.com>

-----------------------------------------

All mailing list
All at gren.ca<mailto:All at gren.ca>
http://gren.ca/mailman/listinfo/all_gren.ca

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gren.ca/pipermail/all_gren.ca/attachments/20190124/9663c792/attachment.html>