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VAUGHAN-WOODBRIDGE: Candidates speak on green space

YorkRegion.com
Oct. 15, 2015

The Vaughan Citizen has posed a set of questions covering a wide range of matters to candidates running in the riding of Vaughan-Woodbridge for the Oct. 19 federal election to help local voters better understand their positions.

Responses received from candidates by The Citizen’s publication deadline are being published in the newspaper and online at yrmg.com. This is the fifth and final set of questions.

NDP candidate Adriana Zichy and Green Party candidate Elise Boulanger did not respond by publication deadline.

Q: Vaughan is a rapidly growing city and, as a result, green space is disappearing. What is your party’s plan to ensure residents have access to green spaces? How much is your party planning to spend on this and where will the funding come from?

Conservative Julian Fantino
As someone who has lived in Vaughan for nearly 40 years, I have seen an incredible transformation of our community. While the federal government has no control over local building permits as it is the jurisdiction of the city and York Region, we do help local efforts to expand green spaces. Indeed, through federal gas tax funding, our Conservative government has supported key improvements to public parks throughout Vaughan like Rainbow Creek Park and Doctor McLean’s Park. We also took a major step with respect to lands under federal jurisdiction in the GTA with the new Rouge National Urban Park. This will be one of the largest urban green spaces in North America, spanning nearly 8,000 hectares - making it over 20 times larger than New York’s Central Park. Additionally, in 2014, we also launched the National Conservation Plan. This national plan will coordinate green space conservation efforts across the country.

Libertarian Anthony Gualtieri
Green space is important, and Canada has a lot of it. This, again, is another issue that is under the responsibility of the municipal government. The federal government has no role to play in this regard and we believe this is a good attribute of our system. Having said that, I believe, it is important that Vaughan city council seriously consider declaring more areas as green space where development would be off limits. I would also like to see mandatory minimums on the size of newly built communities. If minimums were established, it would leave more green space in those communities, thus bringing more green space closer to homes where residents could enjoy them. A better solution instead of having to take a long walk to find them.

Liberal Francesco Sorbara
We will establish the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB) to provide low-cost financing to build new infrastructure projects. This new CIB will work in partnership with other orders of governments and Canada’s financial community, so that the federal government can use its strong credit rating and lending authority to make it easier - and more affordable - for municipalities to finance the broad range of infrastructure projects their communities need.

The new CIB will issue Green Bonds and make green infrastructure projects more attractive to private investors by offering loan guarantees, reducing financing costs and risk, and bundling small projects into attractive offerings for investors. A Liberal government will provide dedicated funding to invest in a broad range of projects. We will boost investment in green infrastructure by nearly $6 billion over the next four years, and almost $20 billion over 10 years.