Dear MPP Smith,
Thank you for the newsletter you sent out regarding provincial funding for our riding’s organizations. Positive news is good news! I especially appreciate the funding for Georgian Bay Biosphere and local Wetlands.
I am curious about the lack of any mention of funding for mitigation, and adaptation to what will be this century’s largest impact on people, infrastructure, wildlife, forests and lakes…that is the Climate Crisis.
For me the most obvious example within your portfolio as Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry is last June’s wildfire crisis in our province. With choking smoke curling around my house, a very uncomfortable reminder was delivered; Climate Change is real, it’s here now, and it’s going to affect All of us!
Please share with us what your Ministry is doing to improve the carbon footprint of the forestry industry. Are you considering changing logging practices like stopping clearcutting, spraying Roundup, and moving away from monoculture forestry practices? These changes could help protect us from wildfires and species loss like Woodland Caribou!
Please share with us what your government is doing to help the municipalities in our riding reduce carbon footprint and adapt infrastructure to climate change.
Please tell us why you, and Premier Ford agreed to keep funding Enbridge and its installation of more gas line infrastructure thereby increasing our carbon output?
Minister Smith, everybody knows business as usual is not going to solve our problems around Climate Change.
Sincerely, Kim deLagran
Utterson, Ontario
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Paul Johnston says
I am a PC voter but I do not share your support. This provincial government, in Graydon Smith, are governing irradicaly. From the Green belt, Service Ontario, Highway 413 they are not showwing fisicala nd operational leadership or management, They do not consult with the constituients, Graydon is the worst, to understand what needsd to happen. With a disasterous Fed government, a misguided provincial government and a hapless muncipal councilwe are in real trouble.
John Rivière-Anderson says
Kim, your letter is constructive and balanced, and it requests 21st-century climate adaptation and mitigation forethought, biocentric research, and appropriate funding. It is completely reasonable to expect this work of Minister Smith and his staff. Looking beyond his tenure in government, he owes it to our children’s children and to the myriad species that sustain them.
Brian Tapley says
I’m with Kim here. some plan that has been thought out and follows the already known science so that it might have a chance of succeeding in the attempt to mitigate climate change would be nice.
I think we might all be a bit surprised at how much support and effort we are collectively willing and able to apply to this problem but we need better clarity from out leaders Clarity and Leaders in the same sentence might prove to by a bit of an oxymoron but we need to try so we can all work toward the same goal.
John Beckman says
Actually the Forestry “Industry” is the reason you have fire supression, if it wasn’t for silviculture, Ontario would be a barren moonscape. Sad how absolutely disconnected from the reality of modern forestry people are.
Bloviating socialists and career activists like Rivière-Anderson can sew their hyper partisn, politically motivated hysterical alarmism all they want, but reality and the malthusian narrative are two very different things.
If anyone was actually even half way serious about climate change or more importantly simple pollution and destruction of habitat they would start with China India and the military industrial complex and the yawning financial black hole known as the UN before worrying about trifling issues at home in Canada. They also wouldn’t be falling for “solutions” with 10 times the impact upstream.
Allen Markle says
In the past elections I don’t think either our MPP or Premier outlined any sort of plan to deal with the global warming problem. It didn’t seem necessary for some reason. We, the constituents never requested or demanded it. So the PCs harvested a landside without any sort of plan.
The performance of our PC government is best described as a party running around in ever diminishing circles ’til it will eventually bump into it’s own ass. Although the Greenbelt saga gathered a lot of the media attention, Service Ontario being farmed out to Walmart and Staples is a bit of a head shaker. More American enterprises. Apparently locals can’t be trusted to operate anything.
And now locally we will be having meetings to explain and inform us as to the thinking of MAHC. Our last election was almost exclusively won with the local PC assertion that there would be “two full service hospitals”; one in Huntsville and the other in Bracebridge. I never could see the rational of sites just 25 minutes apart.
Now there are rumors. Possibly just rumors and not to be heeded. Maybe these meetings will sort it all out for us. But how are we feeling here now Huntsville? Are we about to get kissed?
Bill Spring says
Hey Kim
A well written letter. What I found most refreshing was the way you presented your views to Mr Smith, without ripping him in an insulting manner.
Paul Kuebler says
To John Beckman,
Constructive discussion does not include insulting each other. Insults are childish, and reserved for the playground and unfortunately in politics.
I suggest our world is in trouble in many ways, and throwing insults is not productive in solving these problems.
It is TIME to engage constructively and focus on the problems. I too need to control my anger and respectfully engage with those I do not agree.
Best wishes,
Paul Kuebler