Ontario Green Party leader Mike Schreiner demonstrates in Owen Sound this past January.

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Ontario Greens leader and MPP for Guelph Mike Schreiner announced he is tabling three proposed private member’s bills to protect Ontario’s Greenbelt for generations to come.

The bills are:

• No More Highways in the Greenbelt Act, 2023
  – to prohibit the construction of any new highways in the Greenbelt area
  
  
• No More Pits or Quarries in the Greenbelt Act, 2023
  – to prohibit the construction and expansion of any new or existing pits or quarries in the Greenbelt area
  
  
• Hands Off the Greenbelt Act, 2023
  – to restrict the government from removing land from the Greenbelt, in the future and retroactively to the date that the Ford government filed a regulation removing protected lands in December 2022
  
  

“Ontarians are smart – they know that the only Greenbelt ‘scam’ is this government’s claim that paving over it will solve the housing crisis,” said Schreiner. “They know that we don’t have to choose between protecting the places we love and building the homes we need.”

“In fact, Ford’s Greenbelt schemes will only add fuel to the fire because sprawl is so expensive for people, municipalities and property taxpayers.”

Schreiner was joined by Victor Doyle, former provincial manager of planning for Central Ontario and lead planner of the Greenbelt Plan, who outlined the scientific expertise that went into designing the Greenbelt and stressed the importance of thinking hundreds of years into the future to protect this finite, fragile resource.

“When we developed the Greenbelt, it was informed by the best science and data available,” said Doyle. “There is no justification whatsoever for removing even one acre of the Greenbelt for development.”

“We’re here today to put an end to Ford’s attack on the Greenbelt and to stand up for what we know is worth protecting,” said Schreiner.

“Ontario Greens will keep standing up for homes, people and the planet by keeping Conservative hands off of the Greenbelt.”

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source: media release, Green Party of Ontario

– Hub file photos
by David Galway