I understand and support the…

I understand and support the need to build more housing in Ontario in a mix that will be accessible to, and meet the needs of, all Ontarians. However, the value of housing to Ontarians is more than just a place to sleep; it is a place to live, work, and grow supported by the amenities of a healthy community, including the critical essentials of access to clean water, local food supply, transportation, sewage and flood control, and natural spaces for recreation and leisure, the ongoing cost of which is inseparable from purchase price when determining housing affordability. Bill 23 and the proposed amendments to the Greenbelt Plan contain alarming regulatory changes and rollbacks that will further the destruction of critical natural areas in a time of climate crisis, while also failing to deliver the urban transformation – or the affordable housing – that Ontario needs.

The proposal to remove approximately 7,400 acres (3,000 hectares) of land from the Greenbelt in order to achieve the construction of approximately 50,000 new homes in the Greater Golden Horseshoe equates to a unit density of approximately 16.7 units per hectare. This is very low density housing, suggesting that use of these lands will be restricted almost entirely to builds of single-family detached units, exacerbating existing issues with sprawl and housing affordability considering detached housing is almost uniformly less affordable and located further from stores, hospitals, and other essential services than attached homes. There appears to be no valid argument that would demonstrate a net benefit to Ontario residents and communities resulting from this conversion of some 3,000 hectares of the most ecologically and hydrologically significant lands in Southern Ontario to sprawling, low-density housing. 

Moreover, this breach of Greenbelt protections is proposed to extend to some of Canada’s most important and productive farmland. Considering that the maximum carrying capacity of a given land area is reached when the amount of public land required to serve the population begins to compete with the land required to house it, sacrificing scarce lands that have the capacity for high intensity food production and diverse flora and fauna habitats that provide clean air, drinking water, pollinators for crops, and opportunities for recreational activities that benefit public health and overall quality of life, merely in order to accommodate the brick and mortar housing needed for population growth is a short-sighted recipe for disaster where increasing housing is only achieved at the expense of the services and quality of life provided to residents. Significantly, the government’s own Ontario Affordable Housing Task Force has noted that there is plenty of land within urban areas ready for development and advised the government to focus efforts on developing affordable housing on lands that have already been designated for development and have the necessary infrastructure in place, confirming there is no actual, much less urgent, need to strip protections from Greenbelt lands.

I urge the Premier to demonstrate his integrity in stewardship of our province’s irreplaceable land resources and uphold his repeated promises by withdrawing all plans to remove or swap lands from the Greenbelt. Instead, urgent action is needed to make it easier to build medium and high density housing on the 88,000 acres across the GTHA that are already designated and ready for development in communities close to existing transit and services. It is unconscionable and indefensible to remove 7,400 acres of farmland and greenspace from Greenbelt protection when over 10 times as much land is ready for development of mixed housing in communities where people already live.  Doing so will harm climate resilience by undermining the ecological integrity of the watersheds and natural systems that are in and around the Greenbelt, set a destructive precedent that Greenbelt protected lands will be sacrificed when land speculators want to develop them, allow land speculators to put pressure on farmers within the Greenbelt to sell their valuable farmland thereby reducing vital local food production, and divert limited construction resources away from building homes where they are needed to build expensive and damaging sprawl homes that do nothing for those who need affordable housing now. The proposed amendments to the Greenbelt Plan represent, at the least, a highly irresponsible and incautiously injurious attempt to speed housing development and, at the worst, deliberate negligence of the role of steward of Ontario's natural resources, to the short-term profit of developers at the long-term expense of the public. The proposal should be rejected.