The Ontario government…

The Ontario government recently announced that it intends to break its loudest, clearest election promise, by inflicting a fatal 7,400 acre wound on the vital and wildly popular Greenbelt.

I OPPOSE BILL 23 AND ASK THAT THIS BILL BE STOPPED IMMEDIATELY

It is clear that this attack would end the critical role the Greenbelt plays to stop sprawl and protect farmland, forests, and the source of our drinking water, as well address climate change. The government should be ashamed and the people of Ontario should be outraged.

Promises by the government to “swap” in 9,400 acres of land in other locations will do nothing to mitigate the damage to the Greenbelt system. That is in part because at least some areas being floated as replacements for bulldozed segments of the Greenbelt were already off limits for development – meaning those additions would not mitigate the net loss of protected lands. Even more importantly, the government’s plans would utterly destroy the certainty of permanent protection that is vital to the functioning of the Greenbelt as a whole.

Stripping these 7,400 acres of protection at the request of land speculators would unleash a firestorm of land speculation across the entire Greenbelt – denying farmers the certainty they need to continue stewarding the forests, wetlands and soils on their land, and pushing ownership forever out of reach.

The government’s attempt to rationalize this attack on the Greenbelt as a measure to deliver “more homes” is disingenuous. There is such a vast supply of unused “greenfield” land already open for development within existing municipal settlement boundaries

Removing land from the Greenbelt, taken together with the Ontario government’s Bill 23 attack on Conservation Authorities, the Growth Plan, the Planning Act, the Endangered Species Act and other important legislation, dismantles decades of slow progress toward protecting Ontario’s environment and creating more sustainable communities.