Greenbelt protections are…

Greenbelt protections are required to preserve natural heritage
I sat on a municipal committee for 4 years that reviewed Environmental Impact Assessments that are required before development applications are approved within or near natural heritage features. The threshold for what is considered a natural heritage feature within the Provincial Planning Act and provincial planning statement is already very high. Development is still the goal on these lands and even if a developer was unfortunate enough to have a natural heritage feature on their property, with only minor mitigation efforts, the application proceeded. ‘Mitigation measures’ would be something like a developer required to include a buffer strip of 20 metres around a significant woodland. Our current natural heritage ‘protection’ approach outside of the Greenbelt is resulting in death by a thousand to woodlands, wetlands, and areas supporting species at risk. The weakening of the definitions of significant wetlands in the government’s other recent bills means there will be even less protection for natural features. Far fewer wetlands will meet the threshold requirements of a ‘significant wetland’ and they will be bulldozed over. Curtailing Conservation Authorities’ role will mean even less assessment of natural features on the land and oversight of development proposals. Only Greenbelt designation keeps land out of the development funnel in the first place and gives natural heritage a fighting chance.

Despite repeated promises that there would be no removal of lands from the Greenbelt,
the Government of Ontario is proposing to do just that: carve 7,400 acres out of the Greenbelt for development (ERO #019-6216 and #019-6217).

Their excuse – that these lands are needed for housing – is unfounded and untrue. The amount of greenfield land already designated for development, and added to municipal settlement boundaries, but still sitting unbuilt far exceeds what is needed to meet long range housing targets. That includes 88,000 acres within the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area alone.

According to Ontario’s Housing Affordability Task Force, “a shortage of land isn’t the cause of the problem … land is available.” The Task Force further advised that “Greenbelts and other environmentally sensitive areas must be protected, and farms provide food and food security. Relying too heavily on undeveloped land would whittle away too much of the already small share of land devoted to agriculture.” (p. 10)

Harmful precedent and loss of permanent protection
The proposed removal of Greenbelt lands sets an alarming precedent, opening the Greenbelt to development at the request of those who stand to reap immense profits – and at the expense of the rest of us. Stripping these 7,400 acres of protection would unleash a firestorm of land speculation and development pressures across the entire Greenbelt.

Harm to the Greenbelt’s Natural Heritage System
Most of the lands to be removed from the Greenbelt (10 of the 14 areas shown on the maps) overlap with the Natural Heritage System, which supports “the highest concentration of the most sensitive and/or significant natural features and functions” and is meant to be managed “as a connected and integrated natural heritage system, given the functional inter-relationships between them.” (Greenbelt Plan, sec. 3.2.1)

Land swaps put the entire Greenbelt at risk
Don’t be fooled by the government’s proposal to sugar-coat the bitter pill of removing land from the Greenbelt by adding 9,400 acres. Some of the proposed replacement lands are already off limits for development (e.g., publicly owned lands designated as municipal parks and open space). Further, these lands were already part of the government’s previous Greenbelt expansion proposals – the Paris-Galt Moraine in 2021 and the Urban River Valleys in 2022. Those proposals went nowhere, despite great fanfare at the time. And now, the government is dusting them off to soften the blow of removing lands from the Greenbelt.

Sincerely, Concerned in Hamilton