There is really no need for…

There is really no need for this. It's needlessly destructive and will cause irreparable damage to Ontario's environment. It's not too late to walk it back and do something else.

Protected land is not fungible. Taking land away from one protected area and adding it somewhere else does not preserve the benefits that were there in the first place. Wildlife doesn't work like that, watersheds and wetlands don't work like that. The "protected" designation doesn't mean anything if you can simply override it whenever you feel like it. The Greenbelt has to mean something, and it provides value to Ontario far in excess of anything you could build on it.

We have know for years that constructing endless car-dependent suburban sprawl is awful for both the environment and the people who end up living in those areas. This is a very backwards-focused policy in an era when Ontario should be focused on the future. We should be densifying our existing communities and preserving what little undisturbed green areas we have left. These new dwellings could easily be added in any of Ontario's cities/towns in a far more thoughtful way. The biggest example would be permitting developers to build townhouses and low-rise apartments in areas zoned for single-family homes in Toronto. This would create far more affordable housing close to transit than anything you could build out in the Greenbelt.