Thank you for the comments on both sides of this room.

First of all, our objections are not about building homes or not building homes; they’re about responsible development and observing democracy.

During your last term, you undermined the ability of regional conservation authorities to manage the lands under their trusteeship and that are part of their mandate responsibility, and because of that, developers are able to go in and build where it is not necessarily wise to build. In other words, they can ignore the local knowledge, which is the best knowledge of every place, and build regardless.

So what we are looking for is responsible development. When the members talk about red tape, they forget that environmental protections are often brushed off as a form of red tape.

The question is, will this government guarantee that environmental protections will be observed when local people with local knowledge will be silenced by not consulting fully with municipal councils?