This bill will not help with…

This bill will not help with affordable housing. This bill will hurt municipalities. This bill will do nothing to help the people who live precariously.

The passage of this bill will lead to renewed scrutiny of Premier Ford's relationship with developers, as well as his relationship with the truth. He promised "We will not touch the Greenbelt". We remember.

I live in rural Hamilton, surrounded by Greenbelt. No home out here, including my own, is "affordable". Doing designation wizardry to call homes that cost a million dollars "affordable" does not make them so. Affordable homes are ones built within existing neighbourhoods and laneways, already serviced by roads and sidewalks, waterlines and sewers. Affordable homes are third floor and basement apartments, such as the ones I lived in 40 years ago. Affordable homes are stacked townhouses built on former parking lots, which were themselves built on demolition sites. Affordable homes are laneway houses, garage flats, and small homes like the wartime houses our parents raised their families in.

Please don't move forward with this bill. Please work with -- not against -- municipalities and the federal government to fix the deeply entrenched problem of homelessness.