Premier Ford and others in…

Premier Ford and others in his cabinet promised not to alter the Greenbelt, to keep the land protected. They have broken that promise and are now carving up the Greenbelt and sectioning off pieces of it to wealthy developers, who are also donors to their party. This type of action is the peak of hypocrisy, nepotism, corruption, and irresponsible leadership. We should be protecting the Greenbelt as a crucial environmental legacy for this province, not allowing a corrupt premier to lie to Ontarians, and section it off to his wealthy developer friends. Premier Ford is attempting to mask this hypocritical and irresponsible move under the guise of a housing strategy. This is disingenuous at the very least.

We need more affordable housing to help battle poverty and homelessness, along with raises in the minimum wage, more union representation for increased standards of living, and a stop to the creeping privatization and underfunding of public health services that continues to slam Ontarians. Premier Ford continues to fail us on all of these fronts.

We don’t need to carve up the Greenbelt and hand it off to Premier Ford’s wealthy donors to build affordable housing. We cam work toward affordable housing solutions that are balanced, in cooperation with Indigenous communities, and that utilize forms of public investment to help support subsidized forms of housing that would help the most economically disadvantaged Ontarians, who have been hit the hardest by the exacerbation inequality that the pandemic has brought. Public Banking initiatives could help provide the foundation for a comprehensive system and public investment in affordable housing, and we have roadmaps for balanced approaches to affordable housing that don’t rely on Premier Ford’s brand of nepotism and enclosure of protected lands. We ought to be exploring how we could work under the leadership of Indigenous peoples to keep protected lands safe from the encroachment of for-profit property development, and we need creative and innovative, public-led approaches to the housing affordability crisis.