ERO number: 019-6216 I work…

ERO number: 019-6216

I work in residential development, specifically in aiding developers and municipal/provincial governments with determining appropriate modifications to the transportation system as required by new development. Therefore, I feel I have a certain amount of credibility when I say that this is not a good idea, for housing, transportation, or the environment.

First, housing: the lands that are proposed to be opened to development are nearly all located on the furthest reaches of the GTA, such as north of the city in York Region or west in Durham. The type of developments that will be built here are low-density (suburbs) similar to the suburbs that already exist in these areas. When the goal is to build a large amount of housing, low density suburbs are not useful. Instead, the provincial government should target existing suburbs and aim to make those areas more dense. This has an added benefit of largely not requiring new services and utilities such as roads, water, electricity, and gas; in other words this type of development will be cheaper for the government than building suburbs. Why is the government trying to spend more money for less result?

Second, transportation: Southern Ontario, especially the GTA, has a major traffic congestion problem. Our traffic is among the worst in North America. While there are many factors in this, the major one is that the province is overly reliant on private automobiles. So adding development that is on the edge of cities and will be low density will guarantee that all those people will be required to drive in order to participate in society, and will add to our traffic problems. If we want to reduce traffic, we need to put people closer to the places they want to go, which again means not building more suburbs in the Greenbelt. And again, this will almost certainly be cheaper for the government. After all, what costs more, kilometers of new roads and highways to support suburbs (high cost per person living in the suburb) or more frequent bus service to support a transition to medium density neighbourhoods (low cost per person, and gets cheaper but not slower as more people use it)?

Lastly, environment: this one isn't complicated. The Greenbelt is meant to protect the land that is part of it, and that isn't happening. Moreover, Ontario has a limited amount of farmland due to much of Northern Ontario being very rocky, giving more reason to protect the farms of Southern Ontario. Every acre of farmland that is lost in Southern Ontario means more food that has to be bought from further away, which brings a higher environmental impact and means that more Canadian money will leave the country as we will need to import more food.