Decrease the Conserved Land – Grade 9, Angela

Decrease the Conserved Land – Grade 9, Angela

This rant is written by one of my grade 9 students. The rant is very emotionally loaded. It provides very specific details and so is very persuasive. It is conversational in style, yet it is very accurate in its organization and choice of supporting details. However, remember that the script is only half the job; the other half is how it is presented. Rants should be emotional, powerful, as well as logical.

 

Decrease the Conserved Land

As the population is growing and the need for land is increasing, we need more land to meet demand, and so the government should change its policy to decrease the amount of conserved land.

Canada is the second-largest country in the world and only has 38 million people, and we’re already concerned about the lack of land?! What would we do if we had China’s population? We’re bigger than China, but our population is only 1/40 of China’s population. We have many potentials.

To have a sustainable economy, we need a growing population. We’re already faced with an ageing population. We need more kids, and kids need houses to grow in. We can’t expect families to have 3 or 4 kids in a condo apartment. If the population doesn’t grow, we’ll face a crisis in the near future. Sustainable growth needs not only a clean environment but also a thriving population.

The irony is we give child benefits to encourage people to have kids, but we aren’t willing to spare them the place where they can raise their kids. I live in a condo; my next-door neighbour has 3 kids, and he is unhappy, and so are all the other neighbours. His kids can’t play as the neighbours always complain about the noise. They need a place, a house! So, why should the government keep that much-conserved land, let alone increase its size?!

Apart from this, the province is pausing an environmental assessment of a controversial proposed GTA highway that would have connected Vaughan and Milton, likely by cutting through parts of the greenbelt. Transport Minister Steven Del Duca says he wants to make sure the province has the “right transportation network in place.” The highway will help cut down on commuter time and provide another link to rapidly growing cities like Brampton. Conserving land at the expense of transportation will greatly impact our economic growth.

Finally, farmers in Meaford are concerned they’ll soon have a little less control over what happens with their land as the Niagara Escarpment Commission wants to add another 100,000 acres to the area they protect. Come on! This will only make our nation more dependent on imported produce.

There are many ways to protect the environment, and conserving land is just the easy way out, which unfortunately we are so obsessed with. We need to decrease the conserved land in order not to keep our country from thriving.