Connecting Past and Present
March 16, 2023 By: Keith Gracey
“Guilbeault Could Intervene on Ontario Greenbelt Development”
This article discusses the urbanization of an area set aside specifically to prevent urban sprawl from the densely populated GTA into farming and largely natural areas beyond it and protect against some climate factors. Ontario’s Greenbelt was officially created in 2005 and has been used as a barrier to urbanization since its inception. The current provincial government had promised not to “touch” the Greenbelt because it’s what the people of Ontario want; however, this Conservative government quickly backtracked on this promise to free up land for their political donors two develop. This article also mentions that the federal environment minister would use federal legislation to stop development if the development affected species at risk.
“Enbridge plans multibillion-dollar gas expansion in Ontario — and wants customers to pay for it” (Woodside, 2023)
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/02/14/news/enbridge-ontario-gas-expansion
In this article, we see an illustration of how our current capitalist ideology will never be able to fix the issues that it has caused, such as anthropogenic climate change. As we see, Enbridge, the profitable company which paid dividends of 7 billion in 2022 and performed 1.5 billion in stock buybacks the same year, is asking the Ontario government for permission to price gouge their users up to nearly $200 each annually to finance pipeline expansions that are unnecessary at this time and will be completely useless in less than 30 years.