Opinion: Environment assessment of GTA West Corridor shouldn't be weaponized to shut the project down

Nationalpost.com
March 11, 2021
Johanna Downey

Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area communities face critical challenges in the coming decades and despite the divide we currently see on the issue of a proposed new GTA West Corridor, we believe there is something both sides can agree upon: the only way to meet those challenges is through early planning and strategic impact assessment.

Believe it or not, great minds exist on both sides of this issue. Politicians, no matter what side of the aisle they currently occupy, need to recognize this competency and stop polarizing an important issue that needs its discovery process. There are accomplished individuals and organizations who can lead and help communities determine outcomes based on facts instead of rhetoric, hyperbole and emotion. Organizations such as conservation authorities can translate scientific information and put it into action to help build climate resilience through supportive infrastructure.

Our way forward must be predicated on identifying how to protect and improve human health and well-being while supporting particularly vulnerable regions and reducing climate-related hazards and disaster risks. Shutting out and shutting down these extraordinary voices in this process is the last thing municipal councils should be voting for. On the contrary, the provincial government should be encouraged to take advantage of this expertise while developing its strategic and regional assessments.

To the proponents of the GTHA corridor, an environmental assessment is not a regulatory burden and certainly not red tape. An environmental assessment will help assist by providing clear criteria for whatever is built in this important provincial corridor. To the opponents, stop weaponizing a very important tool. Cancelling it before it reveals answers to important questions doesn’t bring communities any closer to identifying and implementing future infrastructure needs. The pendulum cannot swing so far in one direction that it costs communities more than it gains.

Early planning and strategic assessment will help identify a project’s contribution to its surrounding ecosystems. It will help determine communities’ resilience to climate change effects. It will help assess the vulnerability or resilience of surrounding infrastructure in order to better suit and minimize the risk to human life and/or property due to effects associated with the project. But in order to identify a project’s effects on the surrounding ecosystems, one needs to study it first.

We need to seek the engagement and resources an environmental assessment will provide. In a time when we’ve all been told to follow the science, it would seem premature and hypocritical to shut down a process before any of us have those answers. If we want to build resilient communities that can withstand the effects of climate change while preparing for increasing population growth, we need to utilize every tool in the toolbox, not throw those tools away.

Johanna Downey is a Peel Regional councillor, representing the Town of Caledon.