I am old enough to remember…

I am old enough to remember the years before the Green Belt legislation. Huge swaths of farmland were accumulated and turned into single family housing developments. This kind of development is hugely inefficient and means that everyone who lives in these areas becomes car dependent because effective public transit in these low density developments makes no economic sense.

There is no limit to the desires of developers to make money. That is why there is a role for government. Good governments use more than money to make responsible decisions. Good governments don't let drivers drive as fast as they want to. For the same reason good governments do not let developers make as much money as they want to.

Good decisions in life are made with more than a profit motive in mind. A farm, a watershed, forests have a value for our society which exceeds their real estate dollar figure. In Southern Ontario we have proved that we can pave paradise but turning our Green Belt into a parking lot makes us all poorer - not richer. That is why a responsible Government in Ontario must make decisions to preserve our Green Belt even if it means that developers will need to make their money in areas where intensification makes sense.