In 2018, the Premier said …

In 2018, the Premier said “We won’t touch the Greenbelt. We’ll figure out how to clean up this housing mess, the housing crisis we’re facing, in a different fashion.”

That is the right approach and objective: we need to solve the housing crisis, but in a "different fashion."

We can’t afford to keep chipping away at the Greenbelt to build houses and roads. The climate crisis and biodiversity crisis are upon us—and they are by no means good for the economy, our health, and our well-being. They are proving extremely costly (windstorms, heat, drought, fires, floods, loss of species) in Ontario, across the country, and around the globe.

We have to do everything we can as Ontarians to ‘hold the line’ when it comes to conserving wetlands, farmlands, forests—natural habitat.

We need to figure out how to renovate and innovate within the spaces we have already taken up for residential, industrial, commercial and transportation purposes.

This initiative to slice away multiple pieces of the Greenbelt, even if it comes with a swap for land for farther out, sets a bad precedent. Future governments will just keep slicing away.

I would urge the Premier to turn this around—to come to the public with a robust re-assertion of our collective commitment as Ontarians to preserve the Greenbelt in perpetuity and as a significant part of our fight to deal with the climate and biodiversity crises.