These amendments must be…

These amendments must be rejected. The Greenbelt is a form of environmental protection and stewardship that is absolutely critical for sustaining Ontario and current and future Ontario residents for decades to come. It includes sensitive areas that we depend on for managing water, flood risk, and our overall ecosystem. This has become all the more crucial as the impacts of climate change have accelerated in recent years and the stability of our weather and natural environment is rapidly weakening.

Any removal of land from the Greenbelt will serve only to increase unnecessary and greatly harmful urban sprawl. Our cities and towns are not "full"; rather, their housing supply is limited by widespread strict single-family zoning which restricts duplexes, triplexes, 2-4-storey apartment buildings, and other housing forms which can be modest, unobtrusive, and readily blend in with existing neighborhoods. Building more of these forms will provide the housing we need within our existing urban boundaries and enable intensification without suddenly dropping skyscrapers into established residential areas. Urban sprawl, on the other hand perpetuates car dependency and hampers local and inter-city public transit, worsening the already stifling congestion Ontarians face every day and putting them even more at the mercy of rising gas and auto insurance prices. Increasing car use pollutes the air we breathe all around us and increases CO2 emissions, contributing to climate change and thus heat waves, cold snaps, intense storms, and other extreme weather phenomena that are already harming our lives and property.

We have a shortage of housing that we must address, but this amendment is not the way to do it. We must put our developers to work without delay building a range of housing types within the urban land we have, to sustainably grow Ontario for years and decades to come.