Against ‘urban sprawl’

Dear Editor:

An open letter to Premier Doug Ford.

I am adamantly opposed to your government’s proposed Bill 23, ‘Building more homes faster act.’

It will likely gut green energy standards, meaning that new homes in Ontario municipalities like Erin where I live, which is slated to have major new housing developments once our wastewater treatment facility is completed, will not be energy efficient and will spew out tons more greenhouse gases and cost homeowners more to heat and cool their homes. 

What we need are new homes featuring heat pumps and solar energy with triple glazed windows and superior insulation built to net-zero emission standards.

Bill 23 will invite development in conservation areas, including the Greenbelt, destroying our parks and natural habitat for birds and other wildlife.

It will also increase urban sprawl and critically reduce farmland which is needed to produce local food.

It will also greatly diminish the vital role of Ontario’s conservation authorities and give more power to developers.

Building more inefficient homes faster will increase the drastic effects of climate change, which will in turn increase climate-driven extreme weather like the windstorm that struck much of southern Ontario and Quebec on May 4, 2018, killing my son, an arborist, and his co-worker after they rescued a child stranded on a school bus by a fallen tree.

Another more recent example of how climate change makes severe weather even more extreme was the “derecho” windstorm on May 21 this year in Ontario and Quebec which killed 11 people and caused more than $1 billion in property and infrastructure damages.

What we need is affordable, energy efficient housing that is carefully planned in self-contained walkable communities where people can live and work and enjoy natural green spaces – not urban sprawl that destroys the beauty and livability of Ontario’s small rural towns and communities!

Debbie Wickham,
Erin