This proposed policy…

This proposed policy reversal is a display of the current Ontario government's cowardly prioritization of short-term profit over the actual tangible investments we need to make in the land we call home. The entire premise of the Greenbelt is that those regions are to be kept green permanently, not hawked to the highest bidder with a nonsensical promise that we'll just designate some other area to be protected "in exchange". This proposal acts as if it's not a betrayal of the Greenbelt's purpose if the protection is broken and shuffled elsewhere, as if the paving over of one plot of land is so easily balanced out by not paving over another (yet), as if we'll think Greenbelt protections actually mean anything at all for the newly designated lands after this.

While I commend some of the government's other recent proposals to boost housing density by increasing the supply of rental units in our cities and suburbs, this runs totally contrary to that spirit. Whatever our political leanings are as individuals, we share this province, its environment, and its future, and we're spitting in the face of that if we crack open the Greenbelt to indulge our addiction to sprawl.