https://www.theglobeandmail…

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-ontarios-gre… [of land just waiting to be paved over]

"...The wisdom of opening up a chunk of the Greenbelt to build what amounts to a mere 3 per cent of the government’s goal of 1.5 million homes is highly questionable.

The Greenbelt was created in 2005 to protect the headwaters of the rivers that flow into Lake Ontario, to preserve valuable farmland, and to connect the forest and wetland ecosystems that run in an arc across the top of the GTA and the Niagara region.

Picking away at that for so small a return is short-sighted. It also opens the door to further erosion of the Greenbelt.

Worst of all, it’s unnecessary. The problem in Ontario is not a shortage of land; the problem is that too much urban land, in Toronto and especially in the surrounding 905, is zoned exclusively for low-rise, single-family homes – the least dense form of housing....]
______________________________________________________________

Official Statement from the Bruce Trail Conservancy on the Proposed Bill 23:
"Amidst the climate crisis, and at a time when people and communities need more greenspace, our hope is the Province will pause on Bill 23 and meaningfully engage with conservation authorities and other stakeholders to ensure that environmental protections remain in place, that the conservation authorities’ critical role in protecting watersheds and positive environmental outcomes is retained, and that continuity for the Bruce Trail conservation corridor is preserved..."
https://brucetrail.org/bill-23?fbclid=IwAR27-gEkOY5LKua9pPxC_QltPCvlbTw…

______________________________________________________________
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2022/11/07/greenbelt-housing-environmental-…
Matti Siemiatycki, the Canada Research Chair in Infrastructure Planning and Finance at the University of Toronto, calls it “a bad plan and a worse precedent.”

“[The Greenbelt] protects waterways. It protects woodlands and agricultural lands, which are important to food security, so there’s all sort of aspects of the Greenbelt that are critical to the functioning of this region,”

_____________________________________________________________

I am deeply dismayed by this blow to our communities, environment and democracy.