Dear MMHA: Re-designation of…

Dear MMHA:

Re-designation of greenbelt land is perhaps something that needs to happen in Ontario, but the people of this province need to see better value per acre of greenbelt lost. Economically speaking, we don't have much of a choice but to admit hundreds of thousands of new residents every decade indefinitely. We should not be expecting to house all or even most of them in infill suites and single family homes.

In fact, many more single family homes will make life here worse in a very simple and straightforward way: MORE TRAFFIC. How can you get here without admitting that 1. people who live in single family homes tend to drive cars and never take transit, and 2. the new highway proposals do little more than dump more traffic onto already overloaded 400 series highways? It's obvious, it's common sense, and nothing is being done to address that. Toronto traffic will become worse than LA or NYC if we continue on this path. We need medium density, walkable transit oriented development; if we can't get that in each case where greenbelt is being destroyed, it would actually be better to do nothing.

I also note that the geography of the proposed addition to the greenbelt is not equivalent or necessarily even similar to the lands being removed. Of course, it's not possible to have a like-for-like exchange in every case, but environmentally speaking we can't say there's no damage being done. If we're going to commit to that environmental damage, we need a solution that will help the province in the long term. This looks more like a plan to help a few wealthy developers and construction firms and the expense of our natural areas, our time, and our quality of life.

Best regards,

GW, Paris, Ontario