The green belt and oak…

The green belt and oak ridges moraine lands were protected for a reason. If any government can come along and amend the boundaries to build more houses, then what was the point? The infrastructure is already not in place for the existing number of houses. Traffic is insane, pedestrians and cyclists are being hit by cars, etc. we can’t just keep building houses with no thought to road safety, traffic, public transit, etc to accommodate the extra people. We are in an are that used to be a rural area - now we can’t even get out of our driveway because of the traffic. I understand we need to increase our population but urban sprawl is not the answer, which takes away prime agricultural and protected land. Instead you should be looking at higher density housing in existing developed areas and ensuring the infrastructure is in place to support it (roads, hospitals, family doctors, schools). Green space is essential to people’s quality of life (cleaner air, access to walking trails, just being in a space without dense housing) and to our ability to have affordable food. You can’t make people drive farther and farther just to be able to see a field or a farm animal or get to a river where they can walk. By chipping away at the green belt you are turning our world into a concrete jungle and making it increasingly impossible to find any green space. Every field is being turned into a subdivision. With the cost of food at an all time high, how much higher will it go when we need to import even more because we have no local farmers left? We should be investing in agriculture not destroying their land.