“We have a housing crisis that we didn’t have four years ago,” Ford said at a news conference Monday. “We will make sure to build housing.” The proposal, released on Friday, aims to build at least 50,000 new homes on more than a dozen parcels of land now in the Greenbelt, while adding about 2,000 acres of conservation land elsewhere. It’s an idea that has drawn criticism from opposition politicians and affordable housing advocates after the Ford government pledged last year not to cut the Greenbelt or do a land swap. “I want to be clear: we will not in any way support proposals that would transfer land to the Greenbelt or open up Greenbelt land to any kind of development,” Housing Minister Steve Clark said in February 2021 when confirming plans for the expansion. the protected area by adding a moraine south of Toronto and a series of urban rivers. But the province now says it is launching a 30-day consultation on removing about 7,400 acres on 15 different sites and adding 9,400 acres to other areas as part of its plan to build 1.5 million homes over the next decade to ease a severe shortage housing in Ontario. You can read the government’s full proposal below. But More Neighbors Toronto, an advocacy group that aims to address the long-term political, social and economic consequences of unaffordable housing, says the move to cut Greenbelt land is not justified. “I think we’d probably get a different tune if the province said, ‘Hey, we’re going to open up parts of the Green Belt, but it’s going to be transit-oriented, medium-density,’ the types of communities we want to see,” said Rocky Petkoff, an advocate for group. “Just keep your promise. You promised you wouldn’t touch the Green Belt, but now you’ve broken your promise and that’s not acceptable.” Petkoff said that if the goal is to house people, “ideally we would build on space that we already occupy.”
Protected land a ‘no-go zone’, say Greens
If the proposal is accepted, landowners are expected to quickly develop housing plans with construction starting no later than 2025. After the government’s announcement, Ontario Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner said the conservation land should be a “no-go zone.” “We have a housing crisis, there’s no question about that, but we have land within our municipal boundaries to build homes for people,” Schreiner said in an interview with CBC Toronto on Monday. Mike Schreiner, Leader of the Green Party of Ontario, says Green Belt conservation land should be a “no-go zone.” (Sabah Rahman/CBC) Schreiner said what the province is proposing will make life more expensive for people because they will have to commute farther to get to work. He said it would also be costly for municipalities because it is “much more expensive to roll out services and we will all pay for it with our taxes”. Here are the areas of land the Ford administration wants to open up for development:
King Township: east of Dufferin Street, south of Miller’s Sideroad and west of Bathurst Street. Vaughan: north of Teston Road, east of Pine Valley Drive. Richmond Hill: east of Leslie Street, north of Elgin Mills Road East and west of Highway 404. Whitchurch-Stouffville: 11861 and 12045 McCowan Road. Markham: 5474 19th Avenue. 10325, 10378 and 10541 Highway 48. 10379 Kennedy Road. Pickering: West of West Duffins Creek, between Highway 407 and the CP Belleville Railroad. Ajax: 765 and 775 Kingston Road East. Clarington: Northwest corner of Nash Road and Hancock Road. Hamilton: South of Garner Road West, between Fiddlers Green Road and Shaver Road. Hamilton: Between White Church Road East and Chippewa Road East, from Miles Road to Upper James Street. Grimsby: Between the GO rail line and Main Street West, from Oakes Road North to Kelson Avenue North. 502 Winston Road. Hamilton: 331 and 339 Fifty Road.
Here’s the Ontario government’s full proposal to cut Greenbelt land and open it up for development:
