I am a business owner,…

I am a business owner, employer of 80 Ontarioans, a home owner, and owner of commercial real estate, and I strongly disagree with eliminating the greenbelt in any way.

As do our environmental agencies, natural resource ministries and 3rd party consultants.

The idea that we must expand single family home stock instead of densify existing lands, at the expense of critical farmland, transit funding, and lands that recharge our aquifers is nothing short of corrupted thinking. It is obvious patronage as a politician-driven initiative which clearly seeks to benefit a small cabal of powerful land owner/developers.

It will worsen traffic, pave countless hectares of lands, unnecessarily burden the climate, reduce aquifer recharge, damage our sensitive rivers, and our environment and reduce Ontarios agricultural and water independence which has shown to be critical during the current war in Europe and the pandemic and international droughts.

This legislation is blatantly political patronage and frankly has no place in a developed democracy.

It reeks of the same sewage of the 413 highway, the Hearn power generation sale, the Toronto railway air rights sale, and countless other affronts to the public made by aged-out politicians seeking to funnel public good in the form of cash to their benefactors.

If the backroom meetings had ever been recorded, the evidence would no doubt point to criminality.

For what reason was the greenbelt made if in an economy of rapidly declining real estate prices we destroy the protections of the greenbelt in favour of further price reductions via supply ?