Environmental activists, among them the founder of Turtles Kingston, Mabyn Armstrong, gathered Sunday morning in Confederation Park, along with local politicians and citizens, to voice their displeasure with Bill 23.
Armstrong calls the legislation “Devastating.”
“We’re going to lose something that we can’t get back,” Armstrong says.
The “something” is the wetlands that she says the province won’t have anymore as a result of Bill 23.
“It takes 1,000 to 10,000 years for that wetland to be re-established to what it is today,” Armstrong says.
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Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act, introduced on Oct. 25 by Premier Doug Ford’s government, would curtail the fees municipalities can charge developers for the cost of building city infrastructure to support a new community. Some critics say the act will also have environmental impacts.
A point of contention for many present at the Confederation Park event, like Mary Anne Schoenhardt, was the declaration by the Ontario housing affordability task force that land isn’t the issue.
“We have enough land within city limits to create housing,” Schoenhardt says. “We just need that housing to be denser and we need more affordable housing.”
She also encouraged citizens to let officials know exactly how they feel.
“Something that we can all do is write letters to our MPPs or to ministers within the provincial government and let them know that this is something we oppose and specifically say why we oppose it.”
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