Critics slam Ontario for proposal to create zones where projects are exempt from laws
First Nations, civil liberty groups and environmentalists are slamming Ontario for a proposed bill that would give cabinet the power to create 'special economic zones' and allow the government to exempt itself from following laws on certain projects.
Critics say it's a power grab designed to ensure projects like Premier Doug Ford's proposed tunnel under Highway 401 and mining critical minerals in northern Ontario get done with little resistance.
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Several First Nation leaders from the Ring of Fire region visited Queen's Park Monday and said they have yet to be consulted on the bill, despite pledges from the province it would fulfil its duty to consult.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association says the bill is alarming and such power should only be used in emergency situations such as a pandemic, not on mining and construction projects.
Energy and Mines Minister Stephen Lecce says the province has broad support to move forward quickly on its plans to become an energy superpower by mining northern Ontario.
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The bill passed second reading Tuesday and was sent to committee to be studied further.
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Israel retrieves body of Thai hostage as 95 people are reported killed in Gaza
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Why Toronto's streets keep ending up as a battleground — and what the fight should really be about
The big number 25 % the percentage of customers that business owners believed drove to access their stores along Bloor Street, according to a 2017 study. The actual number was less than 10 per cent. Hey, did you hear the story about the group fighting a proposed change to a Toronto street? They're really worked up about it, claiming that the proposal from Toronto city hall will devastate small businesses, bring traffic to a standstill, and maybe even usher in a 'Mad Max'-style apocalypse. 'Wait, which street?' you might be wondering. And the answer is, well, a whole lot of them. I've seen so darn many of these street fights in my decade-plus covering Toronto city hall, with the civic equivalent of knock-down drag-out brawls occurring again and again. And the street fighters just keep coming. Last week, an advocacy group dubbed the Downtown Concerned Citizens Association held a press conference to state its opposition to a bike lane extension planned for the Esplanade, between Yonge and Market Streets. 'Bike lanes restrict road space,' the group declared, according to a report by the CBC. 'Bike lanes have turned streets into parking lots, with residents unable to shop, get their kids to events, and seriously impact emergency services and Wheel-Trans.' Their opposition follows a similar — and at least partly AI-aided — uproar over city hall's plans to install transit-priority lanes on Bathurst Street and Dufferin Street. And a local tiff over a bit of bike infrastructure on North York's Marlee Avenue. And the ongoing fight over keeping bike lanes on Bloor Street, Yonge Street and University Avenue, where even Premier Doug Ford got involved. Go back further and there are more examples. Remember the street fighters who claimed prioritizing the King streetcar would mark the end of King West? Or the 'citizen's revolt' over bike lanes on Woodbine Avenue? Or the ' Save Our St. Clair' group that sued to try to stop the construction of the streetcar right-of-way on St. Clair? Heck, you can even go back to the '90s, when opposition groups along Spadina Avenue warned that removing the angled on-street parking to make way for dedicated streetcar lanes would somehow destroy the vibrancy of the street. They really loved those angled parking spaces. The frustrating thing isn't just the sheer repetition of the street fight stories, but also that the pile of accumulated data from these same fights never seems to change anything. Because when you do look at the record, the record is clear: where these kinds of projects have been allowed to go forward, and where traffic has been given enough time to adjust to the new street layouts, the result has been basically fine. The uproar and opposition inevitably fade away. People get used to the new bike lanes or the new transit lanes. The apocalyptic warnings are forgotten about. The apocalypse never arrives. At this point, with so many fights waged — not just in Toronto, but in other cities, too — you'd think there'd be at least a handful of examples where the dire warnings proved prophetic. Where bike lanes, bus lanes and the removal of some on-street parking led directly to boarded-up storefronts and permanently gridlocked traffic. But I've struggled to find real case studies that document that kind of catastrophic failure in any city anywhere in the world. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW The repeated claim that transit lanes and bus lanes will destroy businesses deserves a special call-out because it seems to be based on a perception problem. The Centre for Active Transportation, for example, found via a 2017 study that Bloor Street retailers believed that about 25 per cent of their customers arrived via car. The actual percentage? Less than 10 per cent. Part of the issue might be that merchants were about five times more likely to drive to work than their customers. They drive, so they assume their customers do too. Meanwhile, data suggests the transit priority project on King Street and the bike lanes on Bloor Street actually led to increased retail spending. Go figure. None of this should be read as a suggestion that Toronto city hall and its plans are always perfectly on point. The transportation department tends to make change harder than it has to be. On Bloor West, for example, opposition to the bike lanes was likely made more intense by the baffling decision to install the lanes without making adjustments to signal timing at intersections. And the department is generally still not fast enough at addressing clear bottlenecks that could be eased with minor tweaks. Toronto's street fighters would be better served by focusing their energy on getting city hall to address those kinds of specific issues more quickly and efficiently, rather than always trying to land a knockout blow against any kind of change. When your punches are this weak, it's probably time to stop throwing hands.
