[All] Bill 23, Greenbelt, ROP Update - Sunday

[Kevin Thomason]

Good Evening,

It has been a busy weekend with protests across the province and tons of media coverage against Bill 23, the Greenbelt attacks and the destruction of Regional Planning.

1) Provincial Submission - The submission to the Provincial Government by Kevin Eby, Mark Reusser and myself is online now as well as attached below as a PDF.  Please feel free to share this document or the information it contains really important and helpful data on just how misguided the provincial government's approach is:

	http://www.greenwr.org/wp-content/uploads/Bill-23-Build-Homes-Faster-Act-Submission-to-ERO-by-K-Eby-K-Thomason-M-Reusser.pdf <http://www.greenwr.org/wp-content/uploads/Bill-23-Build-Homes-Faster-Act-Submission-to-ERO-by-K-Eby-K-Thomason-M-Reusser.pdf>


2) Great Media Coverage - there has been lots of excellent media coverage about Bill 23 and all the protests over the weekend.  This has included an excellent extensive (3+ pages) feature in the Toronto Star:

	https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/2022/11/17/they-recently-bought-greenbelt-land-that-was-undevelopable-now-the-ford-government-is-poised-to-remove-protections-and-these-developers-stand-to-profit.html?

And a fantastic story in Guelph Today that really calls out the government:

	https://www.guelphtoday.com/columns/market-squared-by-adam-a-donaldson/open-for-business-but-closed-to-oversight-or-actual-solutions-6123571 <https://www.guelphtoday.com/columns/market-squared-by-adam-a-donaldson/open-for-business-but-closed-to-oversight-or-actual-solutions-6123571>
 
There has also been a great couple minute video about Bill 23 and the Greenbelt by Environmental Defence which has been created that I recommend that everyone shares:

	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPg_5JcEBic <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPg_5JcEBic>


3) Lawn Signs - the uptake on the lawn signs has been fantastic and there are more signs along with the No Bill 23 stickers coming this Wednesday.  Mike Marcolongo will work with the people who have volunteered as sign captains to get them out and into our communities this week.


4) Radio Ads - The GTA Greenbelt Radio ads are starting to air on Monday and will include several Guelph radio stations.  Our fundraising for radio ads and lawn signs it at an astounding $4,870 which when matched by the Small Change Fund will give us almost $10,000 to work with.  Lets see if we can surpass the 10k amount and have a really strong fund to work with for getting word out about Bill 23, the Greenbelt and Regional attacks.  Thank you to everyone who has donated so far:

	https://smallchangefund.ca/project/protect-the-greenbelt-and-visionary-regional-planning-in-the-grand-river-watershed/


5) Virtual Rally Wed Nov 23rd and Thurs Nov 24th - This coming Wednesday and Thursday at 7:15pm the Water Watchers is organizing a virtual rally online with Mike Schreiner of the Green Party, Sandy Shaw from the NDP and others as well.  Hundreds of participants have already registered:

	https://www.wellingtonwaterwatchers.ca/rally_for_the_greenbelt

There are still at least a dozen ralliy's happening across the province in the days ahead, learn more and join what you can:
	
	https://environmentaldefence.ca/handsoffthegreenbelt/


6) Awareness - keep raising awareness about Bill 23 and the harm it stands to do to our communities by e-mailing others, and posting on social media.  Also, please use the easy online tools to create customized e-mails to the Premier, Cabinet, local MPPs and Regional Officials.  
	- For Region of Waterloo Residents concerned about Regional Planning changes and the destruction of our Regional Official Plan please visit www.holdthelinewr.org <http://www.holdthelinewr.org/>.
	- For residents in Guelph, Brantford and other parts of the Grand River Watershed more focussed on the Bill 23 and the Greenbelt please visit - https://www.wellingtonwaterwatchers.ca/take_action_on_bill_23? <https://www.wellingtonwaterwatchers.ca/take_action_on_bill_23?>


Please share any questions or ideas and lets keep up the great work!

Cheers,
Kevin.

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1) Build Homes Faster Act Submission by Kevin Eby, Mark Reusser and Kevin Thomason



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Dates to Remember:

Friday, November 25th - 5:30pm - Next group Zoom Update/Planning Meeting - https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82644695701?pwd=bnRsUGtWSUcrRnFWR21uYVBISG9jZz09 <https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82644695701?pwd=bnRsUGtWSUcrRnFWR21uYVBISG9jZz09>

Tuesday, November 22nd - 10:30am - Delegations to City of Guelph Council on getting a motion against Bill 23 approved.

Thursday, November 24th - Deadline for submissions to the Environmental Registry of Ontario - https://ero.ontario.ca/notice/019-6216 <https://ero.ontario.ca/notice/019-6216>

Sunday, December 4th - Deadline for submissions to the Environmental Registry of Ontario - https://ero.ontario.ca/notice/019-6216 <https://ero.ontario.ca/notice/019-6216>


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Speak Up and Ensure Your Voice is Heard:

Premier Doug Ford - doug.fordco at pc.ola.org <mailto:doug.fordco at pc.ola.org> or 416-325-1941
Steve Clark - Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing - steve.clark at pc.ola.org <mailto:steve.clark at pc.ola.org> or 416-585-7214
David Piccini - Minster of Environment, Conservation and Parks - david.piccini at pc.ola.org <mailto:david.paccini at pc.ola.org> or 905-372-4000
Todd Smith - Minister of Energy - todd.smith at pc.ola.org <mailto:todd.smith at pc.ola.org> or 613-962-1144
Michael Parsa - Associate Minister of Housing - michael.parsaco at pc.ola.org <mailto:michael.parsaco at pc.ola.org>

Local Conservative MPPs:
Mike Harris Jr - MPP Kitchener-Conestoga - mike.harris at pc.ola.org <mailto:mike.harris at pc.ola.org> or 519-669-2090
Brian Riddell - MPP Cambridge - brian.riddell at pc.ola.org <mailto:brian.riddell at pc.ola.org> or 519-650-2770
Jess Dixon - MPP Kitchener South - jess.dixon at pc.ola.org <mailto:jess.dixon at pc.ola.org> or 519-650-9413

Local NDP MPPs:
Catherine Fife - MPP Waterloo - cfife-qp at ndp.on.ca <mailto:cfife-qp at ndp.on.ca> or 519-725-3477
Laura Mae Lindo - MPP Kitchener Centre - llindo-qp at ndp.on.ca <mailto:llindo-qp at ndp.on.ca> or 519-579-5460

Or use the Hold The Line Waterloo Region engagement engine to automatically address and send an e-mail you help to draft: www.holdthelinewr.org <http://www.holdthelinewr.org/>

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Resources:

	-  50x30WR Website Listing Resources - https://www.50by30wr.ca/events <https://www.50by30wr.ca/events>

	- Olde Berlin Town Website Listing Resources - https://oldeberlintown.ca/information-about-proposed-bill-23/ <https://oldeberlintown.ca/information-about-proposed-bill-23/>
	- Yours to Protect Resources - https://yourstoprotect.ca/hands-off-the-greenbelt-digital-materials/ <https://yourstoprotect.ca/hands-off-the-greenbelt-digital-materials/>

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From Guelph Today this weekend:
 
Open for business, but closed to oversight or actual solutions.
The week's Market Squared talks about how the provincial government is offering us paper moons while attacking municipal governance
 <https://www.guelphtoday.com/writers/adamadonaldson>
Adam A. Donaldson <https://www.guelphtoday.com/writers/adamadonaldson> 
about 9 hours ago
 
 	 	 	 	 
Doug Coxson/CambridgeToday file photo
 <https://www.vmcdn.ca/files/texttospeech/6123571-280274f8-7886-4a3c-80c0-ad00118c8d50.mp3>
Listen to this article <https://www.vmcdn.ca/files/texttospeech/6123571-280274f8-7886-4a3c-80c0-ad00118c8d50.mp3>
00:05:38 <https://www.vmcdn.ca/files/texttospeech/6123571-280274f8-7886-4a3c-80c0-ad00118c8d50.mp3>
 
On Tuesday in Guelph, the new city council, including five people who are councillors for the first time, took their oath of office and sat in their chairs around the horseshoe.
On Wednesday, the provincial government announced that from this point on, they will be appointing the regional chairs of Niagara, Peel and York, and assessing the regional governments in Durham, Halton, and Waterloo as well. They’ll also be accelerating the Strong Mayor powers to allow mayors in Ottawa and Toronto to pass resolutions with only one-third of council members.
You may not have heard about this because on Wednesday morning, CUPE members sent their five-day strike notice to the Ministry of Education. Schools might be closed again this coming week, and that’s a more immediate concern to most people than who names the chair of some regional government.
This has been a trend lately. On Nov. 3, when thousands of Ontario’s workers were picketing in support of CUPE, the provincial government announced a reassessment of the Greenbelt wherein 7,400 acres would be shaved from the protected land around the GTHA, while adding 9,400 new acres along the northern edge. So hey, it’s bigger.
Interestingly, this “pro-environmental” announcement from a government that’s frequently seen as anything but, was dropped at 3 p.m. on Friday. It went out with the trash, so to speak, released late on a Friday afternoon when most people’s eyes and ears where on labour issues.
And then there’s the coup de grâce, the announcement of the More Homes Built Faster Act, which takes much of the legislation governing planning in this province and turns it into papier-mâché. That news was dropped less than 24 hours after the completion of 444 municipal elections in Ontario.
In other words, as candidates woke up, weary and bleary-eyed after months of campaigning, the province re-wrote the rules and the expectations they ran on.
All this is intentional because these moves are grossly unpopular, and in the case of the Greenbelt, a flip-flop on promises made about leaving that land alone. If the government does end up getting away with this, it’s because too many people will have drank the proverbial Kool-aid and accepted that the biggest impediment to housing development is the rules we put in place to govern it.
Now let’s be fair because sometimes bureaucracy is an impediment to getting things done, and there is value looking within to see if maybe you’re part of the problem, but there are some things to consider before you get out the scissors and paste and take them to the big book of planning legislation.
First, is the problem the rate at which were approving new developments? Guelph has approved around 1,000 units this year alone, which is not the 1,800 the province is asking us to do every year for the next 10 years, but its not nothing either.
Second, if Guelph is like other communities, then there could be hundreds of thousands of units around Ontario that are waiting for shovels to be put in the ground. Why is that? Sure, it could be issues around site planning, but is that because city staff are being overly prescriptive, or is it because city staff are overwhelmed with work?
Third, how much consultation was done with municipalities on some/any of these changes? My suspicion is that there was none. If the problem is government, which this legislation seems to indicate, then why not engage them to find solutions instead of dropping an omnibus A-bomb on them the day after election day?
And it’s not like this government isn’t aware of other issues in the effort to build more homes, things like the supply chain, things like vacancy in skilled labour and trades. The Ontario government has worked diligently to try and fill those vacancies, but you can’t just download the knowledge and experience of a carpenter or an electrician into the heads of young people Matrix-style.
On top of all these considerations, none of these proposed changes tackle affordable housing, which is to say that they don’t address how we build houses that more people can actually buy or rent.
If you’re able to play in the market, as an owner or a buyer, you’re probably going to have your pick, but are any of the developers who will take advantage of these changes make the active decision to not make a profit? Does building 1.5 million homes in the next 10 years mean that the average housing price will magically fall by hundreds of thousands of dollars?
Of course it won’t.
The Ontario Living Wage Network raised the living wage in Guelph and area this week to nearly $20 an hour, and much of that nearly $2 increase from last year is driven by the cost of shelter. Minimum wage is now $15.50, which means that the minimum cost of work is no where near the actual cost of living in Guelph and there’s nothing in these changes that will close that distance.
What’s been proposed from the Ontario government are solutions that undermine municipal governance in the name of simplicity, which shouldn’t be a surprise because Doug Ford, as a politician, has no real ideology.
Ford’s worldview is indicitive of a man who’s suffered no real hardship in his life and has enjoyed incredible privilege. That’s why he thinks the solution to homelessness is more housing. It’s why he thinks roads are only for cars. It’s why he says asinine things like “We believe kids should be in school,” as if there’s a large constituency that’s saying, “No, keep kids at home!”
These plans from the province do not address that unaffordable housing has been a problem longer than the recent crisis. It does not address the fact that upper levels of government abandoned social housing decades ago. It’s also doesn’t address the fact that we don’t value all work equally, or that social assistance rates are essentially legislated poverty.
Welcome to Ontario. Open for business, but closed to oversight or actual solutions.


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Kevin Thomason
Vice-Chair, Grand River Environmental Network

1115 Cedar Grove Road
Waterloo, Ontario Canada  N2J 3Z4

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

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