The Green Belt is the Green…

The Green Belt is the Green Belt for a reason. Building low-density, suburban homes is not the solution to the housing crisis. There is plenty of land within the towns and cities of Ontario to address this problem. Help on re-zoning, help for the underfunded, overworked municipal planning & development offices and help in addressing the NIMBYism that prevents reasonable intensification is what is needed to address the housing crisis, not more sprawl into an environmentally sensitive area in order to line the pockets of developers that build (usually poor quality) homes. This will not address "affordable housing".

I am not wholly against either the Premier or his policies and am not merely arguing against him or the Conservatives for the sake of it. In fact, I would say that I tend to lean to the "right" on many issues and actually voted Conservative in the last election. Furthermore, their leadership in another recent area of development in the province, that of iGaming Ontario, has shown incredible leadership that will lead to more revenue for the province, while offering far more consumer protections, that will save lives. I mention this only to say that I am not merely writing in on the Green Belt as someone that is politically motivated against the Premier and his government outright. I am not.

However, it is clear to me that the Premier is connected to the housing developers and contractors that would push for this sort of development. Taking policy ideas from developers in this manner is a terrible idea. This is not good policy. It cannot go ahead in good conscience. Beyond this, the Conservatives promised in 2021 that this would never happen. Saying now that "things have changed, and now we need to do this" is a lie. The housing crisis is no different now than it was in 2021 and the tools to address affordable housing are out there. Developing the Green Belt should not be a part of that.

This is very, very wrong.

Thank you.