How to you feel about Urban Sprawl? Strong enough to affect your vote?
This article from today’s Toronto Star poses a very important question to people who will vote in the upcoming municipal elections.
In favouring sprawl over green space, [Durham] councillors reveal themselves as being hopelessly out of step with the values of a majority in the GTA — a majority, we suspect, that includes most people in Durham.
The region’s residents should ask themselves whose interests are being served by politicians so dedicated to urban sprawl.
It is a particularly relevant question this year, with many of these same politicians running for re-election on Nov. 13.
I might take this as a sign that the Star is turning over a new leaf it its coverage of environmental issues, but I remain skeptical. After all, despite environmental issues being in the top four concerns of Canadians in most polling for many years, it is still close to impossible to make environmental policy an election issue.
One wonders why that’s the case. It could be that since all political parties pay lip service to a clean environment, the news media cannot find the sound byte generating wedge issues they like to report on, and the staff assigned to cover elections are better at finding embarrassing gaffs rather then evaluating differences in policy.
I remain hopeful though, and will be searching the Star in the runup to November 13.
