I'm incredibly disappointed…

I'm incredibly disappointed that the Ontario government believes that this is the right solution to the housing crisis. Our solutions to immediate, pressing problems should not require us to endanger ourselves in the long run, especially when many other solutions are viable. We know the effects of climate change and ecological disaster are only just beginning, and the Ontario government knows and understands full well that the Greenbelt's intended purpose was to prevent against urban sprawl and the interference of sprawl with the region's ecology. Why then, "redevelop" the Greenbelt against its intended purpose, when there are far better solutions to the housing crisis? There is already enough sprawl in Ontario as is, and we don't need to continue furthering a strategy that has proven to be ineffective, at the cost of our local ecosystems.
There is plenty of under-utilized land that has already been developed in much of suburban Ontario. Rather than bulldozing precious, ecologically sensitive land, we could be improving the accessibility of land that has already been developed by increasing density and rezoning under-utilized areas to promote density.
The effects of density are well-documented and well-known among anyone who has taken even a cursory glance at anything remotely related to city planning; density is beneficial on many fronts, including making transit more efficient and accessible, reducing commute times, varying the landscape/cityscape with mixed-use properties, and putting people closer to crucial resources and social services. Bulldozing the Greenbelt and further contributing to suburban sprawl only exacerbates many of our municipal-level problems that stem from lack of density.
Furthermore, the effects of ecological interference and climate change are not far-off inevitabilities to be borne by generations that current politicians will never know or have to deal with; we bear many costs of ecosystem change *right now*, when the increase in extreme weather events leads to rising insurance rates on homes, or the shift in animal and insect populations results in costs to both individuals and our healthcare system (due to zoonotic and insect-transmitted viruses cropping up in regions that have historically been colder), to name just a couple examples. Simply put, we pay, with our money and our health and our resources, for ecological change, both now and in the future, and it is a terrible strategy to combat a housing affordability crisis with measures that will only make life more unaffordable for the most vulnerable. If the government wants to even pretend to protect the vulnerable by solving affordability crises, they need to at least be measurably making life more affordable, and they are not.
Many solutions exist to this housing affordability crisis, and indeed, a good approach would be one that is multi-pronged, addressing the many different options for making housing more accessible, including rezoning under-utilized land and promoting urban and suburban density--and this doesn't even begin to cover the vast array of economic strategies available, such as giving priority to those who are using a property as their primary residence (rather than an investment property), prioritizing rental units for low-income families, and disincentivizing foreign buyers from holding empty local homes as investments. These are just a few simple examples of strategies to address the affordability crisis, and crucially, none of them require unnecessarily killing off protection of our local ecological systems. That the current government is not considering any of these and instead opting to shoot the province in the foot by pursuing an ecologically, economically, and socially costly project with no clear benefit, is short-sighted, illogical, and frankly, foolish. I can only hope that more well-reasoned, prudent, and sensible minds will prevail and that this "strategy" of removing land from the Greenbelt will be reconsidered.