The government prevents our private sector from growing. That is it. In many areas, those limits are bundled in rules known as "green standards" or "sustainable design requirements," yet all of this adds up to more bureaucracy, higher expenses, and fewer housing units created.It is not that we should ignore the environmental consequences of our policy actions. We should. However, we should view urbanisation as a powerful tool in our struggle for a cleaner environment. It is rarely acknowledged, but one of the most essential things we can do as a country to ensure a clean environment is to drastically increase density in our major cities. When compared to rising density in city cores, urban sprawl (also known as suburbs) is tremendously inefficient and harmful to the environment.That is to say, this is not a national housing crisis. This is a major city housing challenge that medium and small cities are expected to address. The issue with this strategy is that we are compounding difficulties. Housing is being built further and further away from economic centers (developing Milton vs. old Toronto); infrastructure has not been planned for this sprawl; and as a result, more people are driving, requiring longer and less used power transmission lines, as well as less used water utilities, garbage services, and so on.If we wish to reach the order of magnitude of housing completions that this country requires in the coming decades while not causing significant environmental damage, the solutions all point to doubling or tripling the density of our largest cities.A federal administration that acknowledges this would be a solid start to make headway on housing in this country.The deadlock over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's judicial reforms is, like much of Israeli public life, existential. Bibi's new law, whose first pillar prevents the Israeli Supreme Court from assessing whether elected officials' policies are "reasonable," has prompted opposition in nearly every major institution in Israeli society, including the media, judiciary, government, civil service, and military. And Netanyahu isn't finished yet.
He has pledged several other reformsincluding modifications.
to the judicial recruitment process and the implementation of a notwithstanding clause modeled after Canada's section 33.Opponents argue that Netanyahu's proposals will weaken a court that has functioned as a crucial moderating force. They believe that the reforms will result in more government subsidies and exemptions from military service for Israel's ultra-Orthodox. They are also concerned about the legal annexation of the West Bank and its Palestinian population. Many Israelis believe that Israel can only be two things: Jewish, democratic, or a territory. Opponents argue that weakening the court will undermine Israel's democratic natureTo their supporters, however, the reforms are an important corrective to a court that has arrogantly overturned laws and vitiated government appointments with broad support, and which has recently allotted itself a toolbox of powers that would make most other Western democracies blush—including the reasonableness doctrine, which Netanyahu's government repealedAdding to the general turmoil is the fact that Israel lacks a single written constitution, which was proposed and rejected by the country's founders due to the fractious nature of the population and the pressing need to establish a state in the first place. It instead has the so-called Basic Laws, which are quasi-constitutional statutes passed by a simple majority of Israel's Knesset. The priority of Basic Laws over Ordinary Statutes is hotly challenged.This does not, however, imply that Israel lacks founding texts outlining fundamental rights and demonstrating a consensus political culture. Israel has a Declaration of Independence.
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