Mike Schreiner of Guelph, the lone Green Party member iin the Ontario legislature, is blasting Premier Doug Ford for using environmentally-protected land for housing.
Ford wants to use 7,400 acres of Greenbelt land near Toronto for housing, but said he will replace it with more land somewhere else.
“Ford’s legacy of environmental destruction gets worse every day. And once these critical environmentally sensitive lands are gone, they are gone forever,” said Schreiner.
“We cannot allow this government to force the false choice between protecting the environment and building the housing we desperately need,” he said.
“It’s time to end expensive sprawl and to permanently protect our remaining farmland, watersheds, and green space for present and future generations.”
Environmental defence also spoke out against Ford’s proposaals, citing the traditional territories of the Huron-Wendat, the Anishnaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Chippewas and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.
“This afternoon the Ontario government announced that it intends to break its loudest, clearest election promise, by inflicting a fatal 7,400 acre wound on the vital and wildly popular Greenbelt,” environmental defence said.
It is clear that this attack would end the critical role the Greenbelt plays to stop sprawl and protect farmland, forests, and the source of our drinking water, as well address climate change. The government should be ashamed and the people of Ontario should be outraged, it said.
Promises by the government to “swap” in 9,400 acres of land in other locations will do nothing to mitigate the damage to the Greenbelt system. That is in part because at least some areas being floated as replacements for bulldozed segments of the Greenbelt were already off limits for development – meaning those
additions would not mitigate the net loss of protected lands, it said.
“The government's plans would utterly destroy the certainty of permanent protection that is vital to the functioning of the Greenbelt as a whole,” it said.
"Stripping these 7,400 acres of protection at the request of land speculators would unleash a firestorm of land speculation across the entire Greenbelt – denying farmers the certainty they need to continue stewarding theforests, wetlands and soils on their land, and pushing ownership forever out of reach.”
