Dear Editor,
[Re: Painful Truth column 鈥� Are the density wars over?, 91原创 Advance Times, Aug. 7]
I beg to differ in opinion with Matthew Claxton about the fact that we have given up our rights to own single family homes! Canada is a vast country with plenty of open spaces and land and the fact that governments are forcing people to live in a condensed urban area in condos, townhomes and no space to raise a family with a yard, is just criminal.
There is an agenda at play to create these cities, and they use Europe as example of how to do this. We are not Europe, and we are the land of the free! Being free means choice in where you work and live, and the fact that governments are now dictating to the public and local governments is frankly frightening! We are speeding towards a socialist society and worse.
He says we are constrained by water and mountains and that in itself is laughable.... There is a lot of rural land not suitable for farming that sits fallow right now and plenty of it has owners who have tried to subdivide their land into smaller lots suitable for homes and owners to have their single family homes. Government denies these requests and uses the Agricultural Land Commission as the reason for denying further development. Those rules were put in place in 1972 by the NDP government of that time, and they have not done much to release any of this land since.
More land available for homes means lower costs of homes and then less densification necessary. The governments have also put in place so much red tape, regulations, for development they inhibit the actual building of homes necessary to house all these new folks coming to our country.
This densification now being forced on communities takes away their authority to develop their communities to fit the needs of their populations. I also suspect that this amount of densification is also going to make supplying these new units with water, sewer, electricity and gas extremely difficult. The infrastructure in place right now cannot possibly support this!
Will the provincial government come up with the money to increase these necessary infrastructure improvements? If they cannot fix our medical system one has to conclude probably not. Mismanagement of public funds is unfortunately symptomatic of NDP and now Liberal governments in our time.
Let's hope our electorate in this province see the need to change direction and governments this fall election!
W. Goertzen, Willoughby
