Issue for the voters

Re Why we must plan our landscape Opinion, Nov. 4.

Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller’s observations and concerns are a wake- up call to us all. We have a shortage of farmland, doctors, hospitals, electricity, all kinds of infrastructure and possibly oil and gas in the years to come. If there ever was a time for sustainable development, it is now.

I am hoping this is an issue that will resonate with the Ontario electorate. If we can’t find a place to put our garbage, grow our food and locate our power plants with a population of 4 million people in the GTA, how are we possibly to cope with 8 million people?

Limiting population growth is not without political risk. A prudent political party in Ontario might reasonably ask if it could be sold to a province where growth has been the watchword for the last 50 years.

Nevertheless, I hold that this is an opportunity for Conservative leader John Tory. He is an undoubted moderate and is likely to remain in opposition unless he conjures up a vision to distinguish himself from the Dalton McGuinty government. If this policy were articulated as a demand for Ottawa to relinquish control over immigration to Ontario ( much as Quebec has control of its immigrants), to permit the province to deal with this issue on its own terms, then he might, just might, be the next premier of Ontario.