I am firmly opposed to the…

I am firmly opposed to the proposed amendments to the Greenbelt Act of 2005. Not only does this proposal constitute a complete break of the Ford government's promise in 2018 never to develop any part of the existing Greenbelt, but it is also a denial of the basic democratic rights of all residents of the GTA, of GTA municipalities, and of future generations of Ontarians to a healthy, sustainable life based on a healthy, sustainable environment.

A healthy environment is impossible without the existing Greenbelt, which provides the GTA countless and increasingly precious ecosystem services. To chip away at the Greenbelt is to deny that we are all living in an age of twin global crises: climate change and biodiversity extinction.

As if this were not enough, the Ford government is clearly favouring land developers over the rights of average Ontarians. As has been shown in a joint Toronto Star-The Narwhal investigation, many prominent land developers bought what was then undevelopable Geennbelt land shortly before the Ford government, to whom they had donated significant funds during the last election campaign, broke its own promise not to touch the Greenbelt and announced this developement proposal. This proposal to destroy 7,400 acres protected of Greenbelt including prime agricultural land and environentally senstivie lands ostensibly to solve our affordable housing crisis is, therefore, a smokescreen designed to enrich already rich and overly influential landowner-developers.

Not content with this, the Ford government also wants to waive, reduce or completely eliminate developpers' fees for this Greenbelt grab, knowing that its proposal would deprive GTA municipalities of some $5 billion in revenue, which would direfctly translate to major cuts in the core municipal services which we all rely on. Simply put, this proposal would plunge us all back into a Dickensian 19th century Toronto.

Besides the alarming implications of this misguided proposal for the health of our democracy and our environment, the very justification on which the policy rests -- the idea that it will solve our affordable housing crisis -- is deeply flawed.

If the Ford government were serious about solving the housing crisis, it would listen to its own housing advisory bodies, which have published sound recommendations including capping rents, banning renovictions and other landlord tactics to raise rents, massively investing in new affordable rentals within cities including the languishing cooperative housing system, and beginning a long-overdue policy shift to treating housing as a human right, NOT as a commodity.

The current and unsustainable definition of "affordable housing" is 80% of the market rate. Absurdly, this means that a new $1 million house such as those which the Ford government proposes to build on stolen Greenbelt land and earmarked as "affordable" would still cost an obviously unaffordable $800,000. This is more than just absurd, it is insulting to the millions of Ontarians who can barely afford to pay their rent and who now eat at food banks in unprecendented numbers.

On all levels - social, environmental, fiscal, democratical - this proposal is the very opposite of an enlightened, sustainable 21st century approach to housing and prosperity.

I am astounded that, in 2022, any government in our supposedly advanced democracy should be allowed to act so irresponsibly, so selfishly and so brazenly. Like millions of Ontarians who never voted for this Ford government and its 18% electoral mandate, I am also very angry.