Doug Ford has lied over and…

Doug Ford has lied over and over saying that he will protect the greenbelt because that’s what the public wanted. Yet he’s paving over it for condos & McMansions for his rich developer buddies. Buddies who some how knew that Doug was moving forward with developing the greenbelt at the perfect time to buy land at a steal.

The government when questioned about this continues to lie and withhold the truth from Canadians.

The province has gone against community wishes on this bill. Hamilton, asked its citizens what they wanted to do and they overwhelming voted to stop sprawl & protect the greenbelt. Halton chose the same route. They both came up with ways to meet growth targets without sprawling outward and cutting into the greenbelt. You overrode them with special powers given in Bill 109 to your minister of municipal affairs. Including the requirement to clean toxic land before developing on it, which is shortsighted, dangerous and a lawsuit waiting to happen. Now mayors & councils can only comment on poor planning & reckless development of the greenbelt because you’ve taken away their right to appeal.

Bill 23’s cutting of developer fees is another win for Doug’s developer buddies because they will line their pockets with that extra cash because there is nothing in this bill forcing them to pass those savings on to the tax payer. Homeowners won’t see that money so their homes will not be more affordable than homes currently on the market. Not having developer fees to pay for infrastructure like sewers, roads and parks but forcing municipalities to create them anyway to new developments will create a catastrophic funding shortfall that will raise property taxes & cut city services.

Markham has said it will have to raise property tax 80% to cover the loss of developer fees. Who would stay in a city knowing their property taxes are going up that much? The other way cities can pay is by cutting services. How is either option helpful to Canadians? Increased property taxes does nothing to make homes more affordable. It makes current homes more expensive. Less city services means more out of pocket costs for residents.

Mississauga’s shortfall will be $885 million over 10 years, Waterloo’s will be $540 million and Torontos is $2.3 billion over the same period.

What happens to small towns when they don’t have enough of a tax base to increase to cover the infrastructure costs that developer fees used to cover? Georgetown has to grow 3x larger than its 42,000 residents currently live on. Halton Hills (Georgetown & Acton) yearly budget is $59 million. That’s less than $30 million year for Georgetown, which is suppose to be enough to handle a dramatic increase in infrastructure costs, which average to $116,000 per home. That budget covers the cost of 258 new homes infrastructure fees a year…if the entire city budget was used for it. How are they going to cover the thousands of new homes demanded by this government? The answer is, they won’t. The town will go bankrupt, like Acton, Aurora and other small towns in Ontario. No city services will be funded and everyone will leave for greener pastures, or the property taxes will become so unaffordable and people will leave. Then you have a ghost town, more demand for housing in regions that already have high demand, and shinny new homes that no one will buy because there is no working infrastructure around it.

New caps on municipal inclusionary zoning rules will mean developers will build fewer lower-rent units and the bill’s elimination of rent replacement rules will see the already short supply of affordable apartments reduced further. Renters will be more likely to be evicted and face higher rents. This is a homeless crisis waiting to happen.

Bill 23 is ridiculously short sighted, it goes against the publics wishes and will not solve the housing affordability crisis in our province. It is a cash grab to Doug Ford’s buddies & donors that will destroy Ontario’s precious environmental resources and make life more costly for Ontarians. The only people to benefit from this bill are the ultra rich.

If you need yet another example of the horrific dictatorship this government has become, the feedback period for the proposed changes to the greenbelt ends on December 4th. Greenbelt land has already started being developed on and we lose thousands of acres per day. You didn’t even receive all the feedback, let alone consider it, before you bulldozed your way thru. Ontario may not ever recover from the damage Doug Ford done to it.