I rise today to pay tribute to the thousands of acres of protected land that will be lost to the government’s plan to pave over the greenbelt, and to give voice to the millions of people in this province who love the greenbelt. They want the Premier to keep his promise. Over and over again, inside and outside this House, the Premier explicitly promised to protect the greenbelt from development. There’s a reason these lands are protected. It’s the land that protects us from expensive floods and that cleans our drinking water. It’s home to so many places where people love to spend time with their family. It’s home to the farmland that feeds us and supports our economy. All of this is under threat so that a handful of land speculators can turn millions into billions, and the rest of us will pay the price in longer commutes, higher flood costs, increased property taxes and reduced food security.

Speaker, there are 88,000 acres of land already approved for development within existing urban boundaries, where we can build affordable homes in communities where people want to live.

We simply cannot afford to continue to lose 319 acres of farmland each and every day.

So, on behalf of my constituents and millions of Ontarians, we say, Premier, keep your promise. Keep your hands off the greenbelt.

My question is to the Minister of Agriculture.

Every day in Ontario, we lose 320 acres of farmland—farmland that is paved over and will never again grow food.

In 2020, the government was actually looking at things to perhaps stem this flow. They were talking about agricultural impact assessments. But now they’re even talking about paving over farmland that was formerly protected in the greenbelt. Speaker, the nine billion people soon in the world are going to need that farmland, and so are Ontarians.

Do you think housing is expensive? Do you think food is expensive now? Just wait.

Why is the Minister of Agriculture so silent on the preservation of our precious farmland?

I thank the honourable member for the question.

The consultation that the government has engaged in is for a very important purpose: We have a crisis in housing in our province.

We are proposing to remove 15 areas from the greenbelt, and in exchange, we’re going to be adding over 2,000 acres. Many of those thousands of acres will be prime agricultural land that we’ll add in as part of the Paris Galt moraine and the urban river valleys. The government is taking a balanced approach.

Again, when you look at the fact that last year was our best year in over 30 years—we only had 100,000 starts. The proposal that we put forward to Ontarians to consider will allow, as a minimum, 50,000 homes to be built. In addition, we will add significant opportunities for protected land that will go back into the greenbelt. The net gain is thousands of acres.