Stop The Stink

December 21, 2005 Regional Chairman, Roger Anderson, Durham Region, Ontario Dear Roger, Please find enclosed another copy of my book, LAND GRAB IN NORTH PICKERING along with copies of covering letters sent to other involved political participants in the on-going drama that is unfolding in Durham Region. I am not sure you made the copy of the book I gave you available to other members of council, but in order to make up for that possible short fall, I am forwarding copies to all members including a couple of copies to be made available to regional staff. Since they will most likely be implicated in future legal proceedings should development of Seaton and indeed Durham Region from June 14th 2005 onwards, it seems only fair they should be informed. There are several more reasons why you are receiving this information: 1. Durham Region’s Official Plan was advanced by subterfuge, the political equivalent of a quarterback sneak that precluded a meaningful public voice to oppose the plan or even understand the implications. At present, the vast majority of the residents of Durham Region have never heard of Durham’s Official Plan and have no idea of what the implications are or how seriously they will be negatively impacted. I recognize that the Region has fulfilled its legal obligations to the public by placing public notices in local newspapers. However, in view of the magnitude of the project and its ramifications, legal obligations are well short of the moral obligation to honestly communicate the import of the Official Plan. In short, morally, the Region has deceived its electorate in grand style. When the Official Plan finally hits the public radar, the plan may be a fait accompli in all but the details. 2. My aim is to educate politicians and the public on the implications of land development – a tall order since I am operating on almost no income but plenty of people have achieved seemingly impossible results with less. So far, I’ve seen no evidence that any member of Durham Regional Council save you, Mayor Parish, has the least notion of said implications and that is bad news when you consider the state of the environment locally, regionally, provincially, nationally and globally. Durham Region can’t afford to have environmental illiterates in positions where they can make policy and policy decisions that are environmentally destructive. 3. Smart Growth is the concept that politicians around the world are hoping holds the answer for “sustainable development”. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Smart Growth is merely the same old high-density housing, in whatever form that will revisit the Jane-Finch corridor outcome in a massive way. Paris, France is the icon that is most often touted as the model for the development of Smart Growth communities by the experts. If you have been following what has been happening in Paris over the last few months with the fires, riots and crimes, you have an inkling of what is in store for Durham in the long run. Smart Growth advocates have been remarkably silent just lately. The Jane-Finch corridor didn’t start off as a crime wave, but when you create the environment, you induce predictable behaviour. That concept is known as evolution in the biological world. But just as live beings evolve in form and motor ability in their response to environmental constraints, so do behaviour patterns. Regent Park, Jamestown and innumerable others scattered all over the GTA in pockets are testament to that fact – certain types of environments are prone to and do generate high crime rates. The equation is high density + low income = high crime potential. In effect you have criminal enclaves with a consumer base built in right next-door. However no one has ever contemplated building such a monument to future crime, as I believe Durham Region is planning. That is not to say that all low-income families are or could be criminals. Far from it. However history has shown repeatedly that my claim is correct in every respect. 4. The Federal Immigration Department needs to be held accountable by the province and the region and made to do its own full, transparent environmental and economic impact study. The ministry needs to ensure and demonstrate to populations already living in the areas where the government plans to dump the 3.7 million people that there will be no negative environmental impact on this or any other region. I don’t believe it can be done because Canadian natural ecosystems are already stressed beyond sustainability, our governments are offering Canada as an international garbage dump with surplus people as the landfill, on world-class farmland. Since the new people cannot possibly hope to offset their destructive, though possibly unintentional, impact on our environment our governments ought not to not be dabbling in strategies that will have predictably tragic results for large numbers of Canadians. In effect, industrial strength, high volume population injection will create a whole new hierarchy of unsustainable garbage generation in an environmentally sensitive area. In today’s world, people have to be viewed as an important dimension of the garbage problem and a component that can be dealt with by not allowing it in the first place. 5. No one has considered the Global Warming implications of bringing so many people, mostly from warmer climates where they don’t burn fossil fuels to keep warm, to Canada where they will have to. In effect, we will be aggressively expanding our toxic footprint by an unnecessary 371 million tons of poisons per year injected into our atmosphere, further contaminating our local air supply (not counting industrial, agricultural or air travel sources). Durham will selfishly increase global warming in magnificent style by encouraging migration in the wrong direction for no good reason. The planet needs a reduction of furnace emissions in the north, not an increase. The planet, and therefore we, can no longer afford human migration in a northerly direction. Another aspect of the downside of immigration is that when existing residents die from the chemical attack of additional airborne corrosives and solvents, all four levels of governments are in effect saying that our neighbours were not only expendable, but also worse than useless to the government they elected. To the Minister and Deputy Minister of Immigration, we who oppose this travesty are in the way of “progress”. For these reasons, the Ministry of Immigration will own a share in the criminal aspect of development. 6. By the time I’m done, my plan is to make the public and politicians alike aware that the time for environmental sustainability is long gone. We need to go into full environmental restoration mode if we are to save this planet and our local ecosystems. We are in a position to take a leading role in this in many ways that don’t require rocket scientists to figure out. Most are simply common sense and are relatively easy to implement with a little political will be back up wise environmental management decisions. Green research and product development is ramping up to become a booming business and the wave of the future. It is also something that China has little interest in (at the moment). We have a window of opportunity develop that technology here that will soon close. 7. The garbage problem is not going to go away, especially if we add 3.7 million consumers. We can’t service the existing population and there is no sign that Durham Region has any plans to deal with the problem at the source of manufacture – the only way to solve the problem. 8. The China Price is the biggest economic consideration facing the world today. Canada is losing jobs at a fearful rate. Our governments are trying to take up the slack by turning housing and immigration into replacements for the industries that have migrated to Asia. Ultimately, we have to realize that there has to be some core, native industries that hold our economy together. Gobbling up and paving finite tracts of valuable farmland is a temporary and ultimately weak-minded strategy. Our greatest strength has always been natural resources. Of those, the only ones that will count will be those that are renewable. In this province that means trees. We are a generation away from reinstituting a viable softwood lumber industry in Ontario and double that at least to restore the hardwood lumber industry. That has been our strength and we need to provide that option for the next generation. We have to take responsibility for past mistakes to combat Global Warming and our economic disadvantage at the same time. But we can’t re-develop this multi billion-dollar mega-resource if we use short-sighted planning and build houses on the land. 9. My intent from the outset has been to link the development of Durham Region with planned criminal activity. The reasons for that are explained in detail in the covering letters enclosed. My position is based on the language of the Criminal Code of Canada and I have taken some effort to ensure that if the land is developed, criminal charges of murder and genocide against the supporters of developing that land will be inevitable. No one and no government can legally cause the predictable deaths of thousands and potentially millions of people with impunity in this country and parts of the northeast USA for any reason including land development. That’s what will happen to downwind populations including all of Ajax due to the millions of tons of lethal poisons that will be pumped into our atmosphere. 10. Lastly, I am hoping that some members of Regional Council will finally be able to grasp the simple concept that land with no houses on it or people making an income from it is not “vacant”. Wildlife has a claim that must be honoured. The words of the famous Grey Owl, a Briton who became to all intents and purposes a “native” North American when he said back in 1934, “These beasts had feelings and could express them very well; they could talk, they had affection, they knew what it was to be happy, to be lonely – why, they were little people! And they must all be like that.” Science has since borne out the truth of that statement. All animals right down to the insect level have thoughts, language, feelings, motives, reason and a sense of self – a soul in other words, just like we do. This aspect of land development presents a moral dimension that few people are aware of but that the law certainly encompasses and with good reason. Without the active participation of wildlife, our water and our soil dies and becomes sterile. Sterile water and soil do not sustain life – any life. We need those creatures alive and healthy for our own good in every which way imaginable. Personally, I feel that any development of Durham Regional lands is a crime against the planet for the reasons stated among others. I am well aware that Durham Regional Council does not share my views and that is simply a reflection of how divorced from the land the members are and a stark signal to those of the community who understand what a peril this mindset represents to life as we know it. I believe that ultimately the environmentally insensitive will usher in a far uglier world than the one we now live in if they are allowed to prevail. Yours truly, John Newell, President Cc: Durham Directive