I am not in favour of…

I am not in favour of passing this amendment to the Greenbelt plan. The current Greenbelt plan provides significant tangible and intangible benefits to the citizenry of Ontario and the environment in which we all live - clean water, fertile soil, and whatever small portion of the night sky remains unpolluted by human generated light to name a few. As far as I can see, this amendment serves only to enrich private land developers at the expense of the commons.

What benefit does Ontario receive by building another 1.5 million unwalkable, car-centric, astroturfed single family homes? A small reprieve while the can is kicked down the road until the next housing crisis, and the government is "forced" to come back and whittle away a few thousand more acres of the limited ecological protections we've managed to hold on to.

If the population of Ontario is going to keep increasing (as it always seems to do), this continuation of modern suburban sprawl is not the answer. Dense cities, multi-unit dwellings and reasonable expectations of our standards of living will eventually be forced onto anyone who wants to live in an urban area - rezone, rebuild and revitalize our current urban centres early, because once the Greenbelt land is lost, it's never coming back.