Not the Greenbelt!!!!!!! Why…

Not the Greenbelt!!!!!!! Why????????

“30 days to consult” on these “proposed changes” is laughable. I have to give my landlord more notice if I’m moving out of my residence. 30 days is an insult to our protected lands and the legislation that enabled them.

Look, my friends, I am not an expert and I will not pretend to be. But, even this dummy knows this is a TERRIBLE IDEA.

Ontario is a big province, according to maps. There is also still a massive amount of infill development land available for high density building within many urban boundaries (ahem Hamilton), if the transit systems could only modernize to make it liveable.

Is this what Ford wants his legacy as a 2-term Premier to be? Snuffing out our beautiful, delicately balanced ecosystems and prime agriculture lands? I intentionally pay more for Ontario garlic instead of the cheap made-in-China stuff (Why our province pays to import from foreign places things that can be produced right here, I will never understand. But again, not an expert so maybe there is some valid reason…) Ontario has the capacity to feed its own residents and export out to other provinces and nations with its existing farmlands. But take away fruitful, perfectly conditioned soil to park a concrete tower on to accommodate layers upon layers of overpaying, underpaid, miserable clock punchers (who will also need to eat, I presume), and you take away what is truly of value to Ontarians: Grade A food and revenue. You could plant a vegetable garden on every gritty rooftop of every hastily built, poorly planned residential eyesore, and you will never replace the true value of the land it sits on.

Look, I get it - we “need” (want) more people to move to Ontario to increase tax revenue, thereby increasing funding for our public and social services (salaries for a select group of conservatives but no one else) and infrastructure. I guess we need some people to fill some job vacancies, too. What are the other reasons I am not aware of for so many people to make Ontario (GTA) their home? I still don’t get the appeal. I was born here and still live here, but this is not the province I would choose to move to if I had a choice.

I will set aside the fact that the major highways are parking lots on a good day, public transit is ancient and poorly coordinated, making it inconvenient or impossible to get from one major city to another (ie Hamilton to Toronto…is the LRT the fix-all for this?) I live in Burlington, a farm-turned-city designed as a suburban refuge for commuters - now unable to accommodate our traffic within city bounds, let alone travel through on the QEW. I miss driving by farms and orchards along highway 5, which was never an actual highway. Dundas street, I guess. Now it’s new developments crammed with shoddy workmanship townhomes on teeny tiny lots with zero parking. If the aim is to stuff as many people into a limited space and have no where for those people to park, play, breathe, get from point A to point B in anywhere near the amount of time that Google maps calculates, then mission accomplished. And Burlington is apparently supposed to build x number more residential units in order to make the province happy.

And who wants the Greenbelt developed, anyway? 1. You, 2. developers…anyone else? I know they’re your besties, and they are certainly a profitable sector of the economy, provide work for many construction and trades people and financial planners, etc. I will not discount the value of building more housing to accommodate Ontario’s current population, let alone the millions more we are “expecting” to migrate here (heavens knows why, with the state of our housing, beyond capacity health services, overcrowded schools, trashy long term care asylums, backed up highways, complete disregard for the Indigenous communities that were here first and still don’t all have easily accessible clean water, embarrassingly awful capital city hockey team…)

BUT our GREENBELT is IRREPLACEABLE.
IF YOU DESTROY IT, IT IS GONE FOREVER. FOREVER! You would literally be doing the opposite of what our species should be doing to this planet: You are paving paradise to put up a parking lot (aka another highway for people to sit on and stare at the bumper in front of them). You say this is to address the housing crisis. That is baloney and you know it. Joni Mitchell knows it. I know it.

You say you will make up for it by expanding the Greenbelt by x amount of acres over there, somewhere. You cannot “add” acres to a bio preserve from other farmlands, or try to recreate it somewhere else more “convenient”. You can, however, build a high rise pretty much anywhere. A townhome development (single homes don’t exist unless you’re a rich custom-made buyer) takes more space and planning, but still, there are plenty more spaces that are underused and wasted that already have available infrastructure to support new communities. Example: A PRIME land for development is down the street from me that has remained vacant for at minimum the 10 years I have lived where I am. At one point I saw a notice of a future townhouse development…yet, it remains a field of weeds taller than me bookended by middle class (if there can be such a thing anymore) houses ($1.3-$1.9 million range listings, forget about what people actually end up paying after bidding wars) in a quiet, safe, mature neighbourhood, and literally bordering on 2 school yards. A stone’s throw from any amenity one could want. As much as the neighbourhood vermin probably love this undisturbed space for nesting and multiplying, they don’t pay taxes last time I checked. Why are we leaving prime buildable land to the rats and taking away the pre-human dated territory of salamanders? I think, or whatever thousands (millions?) of species of animals call the “protected” Greenbelt their home. *I really SHOULD do more research before commenting, but just started writing this and I only have until 11:59pm tonight. So, I am winging it. And I hear that salamanders are very important.*

All I know is that the Greenbelt is the Greenbelt for a reason, and you can’t pick up and move a natural preserve. That’s why they are PRESERVED, and supposedly “protected”. The Greenbelt should be protected from your foolish open invitation for urban sprawl, and now that everyone knows it’s not, I am not sure what to believe in anymore. Definitely don’t believe in our provincial government making good choices for the future of Ontario. Short-sighted and serving only a small portion of the population’s interests, that I believe. Newfoundland is looking more attractive these days (they pay you to have babies! You can breathe fresh air literally everywhere! They have puffins! Jiggs dinner and toutons for crying out loud! No traffic - just watch out for the moose!)

In conclusion: Greenbelt protection=more important than housing developments. If it comes down to destroying protected lands to make room for more people, why are we even inviting more people? Maybe we should get rid of some.

I remember when the slogan was “Good things grow in Ontario” instead of “Open for Business”. And now I don’t know if I’m more ashamed of the Leafs or the Ford government (dictatorship).

Instead of proofreading and trying to come off as an informed concerned citizen, I am going to spend these remaining minutes sulking and dreaming of a provincial government that at least pretends to care about the large majority of the population that are NOT donors to the Conservative party. I think I need to start job and house hunting in Newfoundland.