I am extremely concerned…

I am extremely concerned about the cost of housing and applaud the provincial government's efforts to address this with the housing bill. Changing zoning and removing red tape on increasing density within the city limits, including allowing laneway housing, removing the fee for dividing a single-family house, adding a fee for collapsing a multi-unit house into a single-family house, and severely curtailing the range of blocks that are zoned only for single-family housing are all great ideas!

However, opening up the Green Belt for development is an incredibly unwise way to solve this problem. We desperately need the ecological services the Green Belt provides to keep the city resilient against climate change. The current Green Belt appropriations amount to using the housing crisis as an excuse for a land grab that will funnel cash into the pockets of developers, and creating yet more of the low-density, carbon-intensive sprawl that got us into this mess. This is particularly the case with the new highway - more vehicular emissions will exacerbate the climate crisis and divert funding from less resource-intensive public transit.

Please reconsider the Green Belt appropriations and the highway. They are blemishes on an otherwise valuable intervention.