Do you really think the…

Do you really think the solution to an AFFORDABILITY crisis is to spend more money on housing construction in a protected land area? What is the point of the Greenbelt's conservation boundaries if they are subject to change as soon as it is inconvenient for developers? In Canada, the unoccupied rate is above 8%; we do not need more houses, especially in place of a protected area that is a major source of drinking water and biodiversity. If boundaries are adjusted, it is likely that residential areas will end up on the edge of the Greenbelt, leeching chemical pollutants like road salts from paved surfaces directly into the watershed.

Southern Ontario is being increasingly industrialized with every passing year. Woodlands becoming neighborhoods, fields becoming grocery stores, and hundreds of agricultural plots being rolled over with asphalt for roads and highways. The Greenbelt was established with this crisis in mind; a boundary to preserve at least some of the natural biodiversity this region has to offer. But now that we are running out of space, our environment is being deemed less important than the housing crisis caused by price inflation.

Breaking the barriers of the Greenbelt opens the floodgates between a natural ecosystem, and the hazardous imbalance of nutrients and trophic dynamics caused by human development.

I, along with countless others, believe that this may spark the beginning of the loss of our Greenbelt. The barriers have been set for the purpose of protection, and the only group with the authority to disobey these boundaries is the Ontarian government. Do not tarnish what remains of a struggling natural environment.