The Toronto Star's Catherine Porter has written a lovely catalogue of the global warming horrors that await Toronto and the GTA in the coming decades: drought, flash floods, algal blooms, power shortages, water shortages, mosquito-borne disease… you get the idea. My only quibble is that nowhere does Porter acknowledge that all of these problems will be exacerbated by population growth and development. Prosperity in Ontario is fueled by population growth and that population is rapidly pushing east, west and north around the Golden Horseshoe. The Ontario government has decreed that four million additional souls will feed off this land over the next 25 years. God knows how many of us will be sustained in 2050.
This growth will come largely because of federal immigration policy which is slated to admit some 300,000 immigrants per year. As a Queen's University study notes "Immigration has become the central dynamic in both population and labour force growth in Canada." The authors of this study explain that in the late 1980's Canadian immigration policy moved away from setting immigration levels to match short-run economic conditions. Instead, our government now takes an optimistically long view of things and ignores current unemployment and economic performance when setting immigration targets. I would add that the feds also ignore environmental factors and the carrying capacity of the land when setting these levels.
Instead, the problem of where to house those extra four million bodies has been downloaded to Ontario. And Ontario, with dubious wisdom, has cranked out the "Places to Grow" plan. This "plan" is really more like a menu that details how the southern half of this province will be carved up and served to developers. I ranted over the folly of this plan a while back, and groups such as the Neptis Foundation have found their own faults with it. They point out that Ontario's Places to Grow plan:
- Does not contain measures that would result in the better, more productive development of currently unbuilt areas within urban boundaries, nor in significantly increased re-urbanization of the built-up areas of the region.
- Does not provide strong protection for environmentally sensitive lands not associated with the Greenbelt. Much stronger policies are needed in a growth management plan.
- Does not protect agricultural land across the whole region. The proposed policies retain the standards currently in force, which have failed to protect farmland.
- May not decrease automobile use and associated greenhouse gas emissions. Despite the plan’s support for transit, complementary measures to reduce automobile dependence are not included.
- Contains few specifics on how success will be tracked and measured.
Even the Neptis critique, while it makes valid points, never questions the fundamental assumption that Ontario's population needs to grow significantly beyond current levels. Of course, the issue of immigration — since the majority of Canadians are immigrants or the children of immigrants — is a touchy one. But it is an issue that must be addressed if we are to make real progress in reducing our environmental footprint in order to ensure long-term survival and a decent life for our children.