I rise today to honour the thousands of people who rallied at Queen’s Park on Saturday and in communities across the province to tell the Premier to keep his greenbelt promise to keep his hands off the greenbelt. We simply cannot afford to pave over the farmland that feeds us and the wetlands and green space that clean our drinking water and protect us from flooding. People are demanding that the government put the public good ahead of a handful of wealthy, well-connected land speculators.

The greenbelt provides $9.6 billion of economic benefit to our economy each and every year, and its natural infrastructure provides $3.2 billion worth of benefits to the province, especially flood protection. It’s reckless and fiscally irresponsible for the government to put all of that at risk when the government’s own Housing Affordability Task Force explicitly said we do not need to open the greenbelt to address the housing crisis.

On behalf of Ontarians across the province, I want to remind the government that they work for all the people, not a handful of land speculators, and that paving over the greenbelt and unleashing sprawl on rural Ontario is not the future the people of this province want or can afford.