As a youth living in Ontario…

As a youth living in Ontario, I am very concerned about the future of this province. We are currently in climate, housing, and food crises. We need to act now to densify cities to protect farmlands and greenspace so that we can have affordable housing, local food, and natural spaces for generations to come. We are at a pivotal point in history right now - we have the opportunity to solve all three of these problems and launch Ontario into a healthy, livable future. Or we can do nothing and create a future of food insecurity, climate disasters, and unaffordable housing.

The choice seems obvious. Yet the Ontario government's recent Bills 23 and 97 and the PPS changes, which claim to be helping the housing crisis, are just sending us in the opposite direction. They are encouraging urban sprawl to occur on a large scale all across Ontario, which will destroy farmland and green spaces only to build unaffordable housing with unaffordable (and emission-heavy) commutes.

The Region of Waterloo’s Official Plan plans to accommodate 125,000 homes by 2031, in comparison to the 70,000 homes that the suggested provincial changes would build in that time, and it does all this while respecting the Countryside Line and building forward into a greener future. It focuses on intensifying city cores rather than building suburbs out into farmland. This plan supports the community by:
Protecting the farmlands that feed us and the wetlands that keep us safe from environmental disasters
Supporting low-income housing.
Building 15-minute walkable communities that allow citizens to use active and public transport to get to jobs and amenities, instead of driving and paying the high gas prices.
Saving tax money.
This plan thinks far into the future and works to solve several important issues, including the housing, climate, gas/transportation, and food crises.

Furthermore, there is no need to cut into the Greenbelt for new development because there is land available that has already been zoned for development.
In Waterloo Region, developers are sitting on land for 19,000 homes that have been fully approved and are ready for housing, but no construction has begun.
In the GTA and Hamilton area, there are 86,500 acres currently zoned for development and available for use.
Instead of forcing municipalities like the Region of Waterloo to give away precious farmland for new development, we encourage you to mandate developers to use up land that they already have.

There is no need to cut farmland lots into three pieces - Ontario clearly has enough development space already. It is time we focus instead on intensifying cities rather than sprawling out unnecessarily into farmland.

So please, for the sake of my future and the future of all young Ontarians, consider focusing on housing solutions that will actually fix the problem instead of exacerbating several issues. Otherwise, the future of Ontario is looking very scary indeed.