I am vehemently and morally…

I am vehemently and morally opposed to the proposed amendments to the greenbelt.

I am a millennial. The story of my generation is one of increasing environmental disasters, a crushing cost-of-living, and the failure of public policy to protect what we hold dear. I will frame my opposition using these first two points, and in doing so hopefully address the third point by convincing someone, somewhere, that this sort of development is a bad idea.

Opposition on Environmental Grounds
I am not worried about the specific land being taken out of the greenbelt per se. The total land area of the Greenbelt is two million acres, and in comparison to this the roughly seven thousand acres that the Ford government is considering removing seems like a drop in the bucket: a mere 0.37% of the total area of the greenbelt. This proposed amendment is even less abrasive when considering that they are planning to add some nine thousand acres of new land to the Greenbelt.

What I am worried about is how easy this easement has been rationalized. Developing on protected land is unequivocally bad for the environment, barring any offsets from clever carbon accounting. We are more aware now than we have ever been of the environmental consequences of land development, and with every year that passes without significant improvements to Ontario’s environmental situation, those consequences become increasingly severe. How is it that the government can develop on protected land with seemingly minimal environmental consultation? If you want to develop protected land, you should be able to defend that you have made the most environmental decision available to you. The Ford government has not indicated that they have done any analysis of this sort.

I also challenge the idea that it is acceptable to sacrifice some protected land as long as we increase protection in another area. People have been fighting for years to protect the Paris Galt Moraine, and the area that is going to be added due to this amendment is relatively far from development (for now). Additionally, Urban River Valleys are already protected in some form. This isn’t to say that there is no value in protecting them, but rather to pose the question: given the accelerating timescale of the environmental problem we are facing, should it not be significantly more important to protect land that is in imminent danger of development?

Any environmental assessment of this proposal must also acknowledge the fact that the development on this land will be largely single-family homes. Single family homes are known to be detrimental to the environment in several ways: they are more energy intensive (on average), they consume more resources per person, and they contribute to urban sprawl. This latter point is particularly insidious because sprawl is at the nexus of a host of detrimental environment effects. By meeting our housing demands through the development of single-family homes far away from city centers (i.e. on the edge of the greenbelt) we cement ourselves into a future reliant on cars, roads, and long commutes. A future that nobody wants.

Opposition on The Grounds of Housing Prices
Similar to the lack of an environmental assessment on the impacts of the Greenbelt changes, the Ford government has also failed to provide any sort of information on exactly how this development will ease housing prices. Sure, the fundamental economic principles of supply and demand apply here, but nowhere has it been justified that the development of single-family homes on previously protected land will somehow reduce housing prices more than say: increasing intensity in urban centers, or developing on the massive amounts of land already owned by developers.

It feels a little absurd that I have to make an argument against this proposal. Why hasn’t the Ford government followed the advice outline in its own 2022 Report of the Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force. This report clearly states “a shortage of land isn’t the cause of the [housing price] problem”, and indisputably recommends increasing density in existing urban areas and focusing on using existing infrastructure to it’s maximum extent. The Ford government has released no evidence to support their decision to ignore the recommendations of this report.

Conclusion
The Ford government has not released any evidence to indicate that this plan for the greenbelt has appropriately considered the environmental costs but, more damningly, they have failed to show that this solution is even the best response to the housing crisis. Indeed evidence is increasingly mounting that the move to develop these areas of the greenbelt is nothing but a nepotistic move to massively increase the wealth of prominent developers/donors like the de Gasperis family and Michael Rice. If we start justifying handing out southern portions to developers by protecting rural norther portions, all we will end up with is millions of acres of suburban sprawl in southern Ontario capped by an inaccessible belt of green area in northern Simcoe County. The greenbelt was carefully planned to prevent exactly this situation, let it do what it was meant to do.