I am writing to express my…

I am writing to express my deep concern over the proposal to open up the greenbelt to development, under the auspice of increasing housing affordability.

The greenbelt was set up to protect essential ecosystem services around densely populated areas and until now has been functioned as such.

By swapping out land from densely populated areas to less populated areas you are effectively compromising the intent of the greenbelt in the first place. You propose to remove essential ecosystem services from where they are needed most and implement them where their use will be much less pronounced.

Furthermore, the idea that building housing on the greenbelt will somehow increase housing affordability is a lie. Private companies will determine when and how they will launch housing developments, and if demand or prices are low, they will delay or cancel, as is happing right now within the GTA. To suggest that you can force them to develop these lands by a certain time is a fallacy. They will delay and there will be no recourse from the Ontario government. Of this I am certain.

This government has already betrayed Ontarians by attempting to take away their ability to fair collective bargaining, and now you are trying to take away it's right to a clean and healthy environment.

This will just be the first of many land swaps if this is passed, and the greenbelt will be sold off to developers, creating a sprawling, uninhabitable wasteland of unaffordable housing. Is this really what our government is striving for?