Rural areas are vital to the economic success of the Province and the quality of life
of its residents. Rural areas include, rural settlement areas, rural lands, prime
agriculture areas, natural heritage features and area and other resources areas.
See the discussion paper Rural Areas to learn about Provincial and current township policies. After reading, answer the discussion promoting questions below to express what you would like to see in the upcoming Official Plan.
1. What does rural character mean to you?
2. Do you think that the current Official Plan policies supporting rural character are working?
3. What changes might be required to the policies continue to support rural character?
4. Please provide any other comments you may have for consideration in the development of new
policies.
I do not agree. People live in Seguin to avoid living near or in subdivisions. People live here because of the rural nature of our Township and because we have privacy and space from our neighbours. By making it easier to subdivide rural lands, and making our required lot sizes smaller, we will see our beautiful area turn into cookie-cutter subdivisions that the average person still cannot afford. I do not think this will actually help towards building the affordable housing we so badly need.
We have also seen from this current council that they are willing to infill wetlands and destroy natural heritage features when pressured by developers, and we can expect this to get worse if we make it easier to subdivide land. Economic growth should not occur at the expense of our wetlands, lakes, rivers, and other natural heritage features.
Aggregate extraction is also an essential activity that supports building our roads, houses, giant boathouses, etc. To say that we will not allow for any new extraction in Seguin is illogical and means the costs of aggregates will increase as we will need to ship our aggregates in from further away. I do not agree with this "NIMBY" ("Not in my backyard") attitude; we all use aggregates in our day to day life, and there are processes in place to allow for this activity to continue with minor disruption to neighbours and businesses.