The Ford government has…

The Ford government has removed lands from the Greenbelt to allow for more needed housing to be built. Unfortunately, this opens rural lands to development when these areas should be left for agriculture and resilience from climate change. While housing is an issue for possible new residents to Canada, there are already ample lands designated for development within urban areas of the province. Opening Greenbelt lands to development does not address affordability of housing and the changes in Bill 23 diminish Municipalities' abilities to fund local planning. Municipalities need to be able to recover costs for development which can be extremely expensive; by removing their ability to recover costs, property taxes for rural properties will increase dramatically and will be at the expense of residents already living in their municipality. Allowing more single family units in rural areas is not the answer to housing issues and shows the government is blind to the true challenge of our time, climate change. Forests, wetlands, and meadows need to be left in their natural state to provide resilience for the coming changes to our climate. Without these natural areas, housing will be at risk following catastrophes. Sprawl into these areas that should be protected will result in higher insurance rates as more and more homes are placed in areas they should not have been built. Additionally, removing land from the greenbelt also affects agriculture. Farmland is declining in Ontario at a high rate and this will impact the ability to feed residents and our food sovereignty.
Additionally, these changes to the Greenbelt areas make it seem like the Ford government is playing favourites and removing land from the Greenbelt that will benefit a few land speculators. Without allowing municipalities, conservation authorities, planners, and residents to have a say in the individual properties being removed, conclusions are drawn that these speculators must be friends of the current government.
Without focusing climate change in legislative changes, the government will place more and more detrimental impacts on future Ontarians and fail their ability to respond and survive the future changes to the climate. Unfortunately for future residents, it is apparent that Bill 23 will create more problems just to make things easier for already well-off developers.