As someone who lives in…

As someone who lives in Southern Ontario, I find both the ideas of "quickly" building houses and the "redesignation" of the greenbelt to be of great concern. The greenbelt has been an integral part of the fabric of Ontario for nearly two decades, and realistically is the only real nature that exists in the southernmost part of the province - where most of the population resides. So little green exists in the city, why would you remove the little slice we can enjoy being nearby? Replacing it with land in more rural areas doesn't benefit the people living in the city, not only is removing it environmentally concerning but socially as well. Humans need nature, we need clean air, clean water, and the ability to enjoy the world we were given, so I am all for creating new, or restoring our nature - but not at the price of tearing down that in which we already have.

The loss of species due to disrupted ecosystems, the loss of softscape where there is already a troubling amount of impermeable hard surfaces, and the loss of useful, fertile land for the purpose of housing is generally unacceptable and harmful to us as a species. Why are we willing to let ourselves drown and starve so the wealthy can build single-family homes? Those are two of our realities with the annexation of farmland and wetland. Canada is already so far north, the southern part is the only hope for growing our own food, then when you add in the flooding component, because our water would have no where to run to or absorb, we would be signing off on our own demise. You cannot simply move a forest, or a wetland, or any area of environmental importance, they are not toys you can "put" in a different place and expect no repercussions from that action. There simply seems to be very little foresight in this proposal.

In terms of "More Homes Built Faster", that title in itself is a major red flag. The only way to build faster is to drop standards, important standards. Anyone worth their salt knows that quick and cheap means low quality, and as someone in the building industry I am more qualified than some to say that quick and cheap, or simply quick, is dangerous. It is dangerous for immediate human safety and comfort, and the environment, not to mention; is that the kind of thing we want in our province? Do we want to be known for our unsustainable, haphazard housing that will inevitably create more problems than it solves? The homes that would be built on this rich, premium land would serve the wealthy and only the wealthy. Do not act as though this plan serves those the housing crisis is about. We do not need more single-family homes, we already have far too many bedroom communities. Expanding upwards rather than out is the direction we need to be going in, this would also help in terms of public transportation and other services. Instead of focusing on a lackadaisical plan of sprawling outwards - worsening issues of land use and services - our energy should be spent planning how to better use the sites we already have, how to densify responsibly, reuse our brown and gray sites, and not disrupt undisrupted land. This "plan" will not solve our housing crisis nor our affordability issue, it will only hurt the people in Southern Ontario and cost us our precious greenbelt.