I am concerned about the…

I am concerned about the changes to the municipal environmental assessment process. The Ontario government says an example of a municipal project that would be able to go through a proposed process that is limited to six months is the building of a new large wastewater treatment plant. I think setting an arbitrary short time limit may rush a decision without consideration of complex issues. I don’t believe a large wastewater treatment facility should be considered “low-risk infrastructure”. A failure resulting in dumping of large volumes of sewage into our rivers and lakes won’t be a minor inconvenience. Furthermore, it would expose the municipality to liability.

I am also concerned about the expropriation timing change. Why would a municipality want to expropriate property before an Environmental Assessment is completed? If the results of the assessment prove that the property should not be used for the target project, then the municipality is stuck with an unusable property.