My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Minister, your own experts have said very clearly time and time again that we don’t need to open up more land to meet our housing targets. While this government has backed down on opening the greenbelt, this government continues to force municipalities to expand their boundaries and pave over 35,000 hectares of farmland, even when municipalities from Hamilton to Waterloo are telling you they can build the homes they need with the land they’ve already got.

Minister, can this government reverse course and stop paving over farmland?

What we’re also seeing now is that housing starts in Ontario are starting to go down; they went down by 20,000 in July, and they went down another 13,600 in August.

To build the homes we need for Ontarians, we have been calling on this government time and time and time again to do more to increase density in towns and cities so we can build homes in neighbourhoods people want to live in. What is your plan to do that?

This petition is “Protect the Greenbelt and Repeal Bill 23.

“Whereas Bill 23 will remove protected land from the greenbelt, allowing wealthy developers to profit by bulldozing over 7,000 acres of farmland;

“Whereas green spaces and farmland are what we rely on to grow our food, support natural habitats, prevent flooding and mitigate future climate disasters;

“Whereas Ontario loses 319.6 acres of farmland daily to development; and

“Whereas the government’s Housing Affordability Task Force found there is plenty of places to build homes without paving over the greenbelt, showcasing that Bill 23 was never about housing;

“Whereas the power of conservation authorities will be taken away, weakening environmental protections from protecting future development;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to immediately repeal Bill 23, stop all plans to further remove protected land from the greenbelt and protect existing farmland in the province by passing the Protecting Agricultural Land Act.”