In what way is a “new luxury townhome” built in the greenbelt probably starting at $800, 000 going to solve the housing issue? In addition to that, the dependency all those new home owners will have on a car to do anything due to the lack of infrastructure and access, is clearly being overlooked for some reason

Props to CBC for keeping the comments open. Eventually, Ontario will recognize that this OG fiasco was a crime beyond all imagination. Doug Frod won’t care: the only Ontarians who are helped by this are donors and developers. I hope y’all remember this next election

For decades government environmental agencies would pick and choose parcels of land owned by private citizens and they would classify it environmentally protected. Once this was done a once valuable piece of property became virtually worthless. Now all the sudden because developers scooped up tens of thousands of acres of once environmentally protected land enough money has slipped across the premiers desk to suddenly remove the environmentally protected designation and reclassification as residential development.

Why is this even a discussion, OF COURSE THEY SHOULDNT!! Build up, not out. The amount of single family homes being built instead of multi resident condos/apartment buildings is ridiculous. Can’t farm the land if everyone is taking it all up for there homes

CHANGE ZONING TO MIXED USE in SINGLE FAMILY ZONING areas. this is the what holds multiple level housings in most communities. Residential areas need mixed use to be a truly functional community. Politicians play with numbers exchange Mother nature needs her watershed expanses to feed us clean water. Condense currently developed areas, raise up and mix uses. save our green. the infrastructure is already established

Or scrapping some rules regulating land density use like Montreal. Existing rules force people to go car.

Plain and simple, NO

No

I’m gonna say no. Should really focus on infill and transitioning a lot of workers to work from home. Converting part of the office buildings into affordable housing

The core problem is that Ontario and its municipalities believe they have the right to develop Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee land without their consent. Ontario knew that First Nations would not take well to Bill 23, and lo and behold the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council, Mississaugas of the Credit, and Mississaugas of Scugog Island have all voiced their disapproval.

9:20 start here, this is why Canada has housing crisis. not because there are no more lands to build

Those developers got some kind of tip. Nobody is spending $50 to $80million on greenbelt land just before the provincial government opened them up for development.

Ontario should build multi storied affordable houses instead of million dollar detached homes.

I've lived in Stouffville, Ontario for 11 years and builders haven't stopped building here yet!

“nobody wants to see their neighborhood of single family homes transformed into a jungle of dense megastructures” first of all having higher density in a neighborhood doesn’t necessarily mean constructing skyscrapers. developing 2-5 story residential/ mixed use neighborhoods can double or triple the density while staying calm and quiet, especially if you implement measures like traffic calming. also, if you genuinely think preserving soulless, isolating, backwards, environmentally horrendous car-dependant suburbia is a good idea, look at yourself.

No building on the greenbelt, and investigate the sale of land prior to announcement of zone change. Impeachment of premier, no dictatorship. Hamilton Ontario Canada 16/1/23

As the Ford govt's own housing task force noted there is no need to build housing in the Greenbelt. Towns and cities have planned for growth to 2051 without touching the Greenbelt. Why is there a housing shortfall right now? Ask your municipality how many houses are approved waiting to be built- in York Region its 50,000- Waterloo 30,000. Is the development community holding back supply to keep prices high?

Lol how does a few $800,000 homes solve anything?? Suburban sparwl will only make traffic even worse.

Build mixed-use, high-density. Build 5-6 stories, lowest two floors for commercial and offices, 3-4 floors of residential. Replace single-family detached. Higher density means walkability, less need for cars. Less parking, less road… still more land for building. Any scheme to address affordability that doesn’t include building more stock is nonsense. Banning foreign buyers. Banning speculation. Money will find a way if stock fails to meet demand. Build enough to sink housing costs then speculator money will trip over itself to exit the market for other speculative markets. Or that money will have to do actual work like funding innovation.

Hello Good afternoon No I do not agree with building on green belt .shamfull

NO

great reporting BTW. Keep up the good work to keep our leaders accountable.

I wonder just how many homes could be built in the area designated for the casino? Casino vs greenbelt? Time to reevaluated priorities, like "build up, not out." And as for the "insider information," if it walks like a duck, sounds like a duck.....

The thing is the downtown core of Toronto is not fully developed yet. But those land are not crown owned so government cannot sell them for money.

Affordable homes, I doubt that very much .

Hell no!! Protect the damn Greenbelt! This shouldn't even be discussed right now.

the new developments will all be car dependent which means the province, city and federal government will all lose money yearly paying for the maintenance costs and replacement costs of the road. single family homes simply don’t bring in enough tax revenue to pay for the road in front of the home

The TACC Group speculated when purchasing the farmland in the early 2000's in hopes of developing it. They lost when the 2005 greenbelt act foiled their plans and have since been litigating/lobbying government to allow them to develop on the land. They find success in Ford, who carefully spins it as if it's a matter of adding supply to address the housing crisis, which he claims will get only worse throughout this decade as we get an influx of immigrants (a clever little double-entendre for him as he also gets to take a shot at federal liberal immigration policies). Issue is...the land they're opening up for development will not add density - which is what we need in the GTA and throughout towns in Ontario - as the TACC Developments focuses on luxury single family town houses (which will result in sprawl as these communities need local infrastructure). Also - if we're expecting a population increase....we need food/agriculture right? We should be increasing local agricultural capacity if anything, especially after recent experiences (closing of borders during the pandemic, supply chain issues, and inflation). This issue has added unnecessary stress to the conscience of Ontarians over the last few months so i thank you for making such an excellent video to raise awareness on the topic. It's a clear-cut case of corruption and sets a dangerous precedent for future encroachment on the greenbelt. I hope for the sake of our democracy that these plans are stopped and all involved face the appropriate consequences.

It is hard to take development proposals seriously sometimes. Next block over from my 15 storey apartment in Brampton there are two 48 storey building proposed. I'm sure they won't end up anywhere near as tall, since the last development finished last fall ended up at 26 storeys.

Densify the suburbs instead. Do away with US-style carcentric developments, then proceed to build and connect all new developments around the new GO Transit stations.

Hell no….? Fkd …D.F

Thank you for bring this to our attention

Talking taxing and taxing and taxing us to save the climate and environment, and you want to destroy a great green belt. Stupidity to even think of it.

IF THE DEVELOPMENT continues in the OG, I would love to see modern agriculture farming technology within the concept to revive and support local investment, local consumption, and protection of the ecological areas that the OG was intended to protect .

FK NO

No! Absolutely not. There are other solutions to housing other than destroying what little greenery there is in large cities.

Maybe your best segment yet!

Respect: This is Native American land!

It's sad to see that the government that so many of us voted for decided to do the easy thing that won't fix our housing shortage, rather than implement some slightly more complex reforms that would actually make an impact. It's a sad betrayal.

If they wanna make housing affordable, just following the recommendations from the housing task force. But the Ford government isn't doing that

If only CBC would have 'comments' open on all stories given we pay the 1.4 Billion $ annual budget.

I live in a city with 30million people and we don’t have a housing crisis. So maybe the problem is not about land?

It’s interesting that the same people who yak on about planting a trillion trees, banning forestry, keeping oil in the ground, reducing carbon footprints and all that other eco-propaganda have nothing to say about increasing urbanization, building in the green belt, and using limited arable land for housing. Could it be that people who believe a city is preferred human habitat would rather impose their environmental standards anywhere but where they live?

Leave greenbelt green.

Why they do not build proper infrastructure in this country is beyond me...Canada is the only G7 nation without high speed rail (trains running at 250km/h or faster)...there are NO plans to build high speed rail anywhere in the country...in comparison Japan is building a 600km/h Maglev line between Osaka and Tokyo (just under 400 km in distance). There are 18 nations in the world with high speed rail including the United States, Uzbekistan, and the United Kingdom. Especially with all the carbon taxes and gas taxes Canada has collected over the years, we should already be planning to build a high speed rail line as that is what those gas and carbon taxes should be used for. Toronto to Sudbury is 400km in distance...building a Maglev line between them means it would take around 40 minutes to travel between the two cities...the average price of homes sold in Sudbury in November 2022 was $439,158 according to google. Affordable housing PLUS saving the greenbelt could BOTH happen if high speed rail was built in this country, so again, it frustrates me that we are not building high speed rail here as there is NO EXCUSE to not doing this (especially with the feds planning to build a new airport in Pickering (instead of doing the sensible thing and building a high speed rail link between Pearson and Munro (in Hamilton) along the highways 407/5/52ish/65ish corridor...which would cost $10s of billions LESS than a new airport))...high density residential (what the government is planning) along our roadways is a recipe for increased gridlock...

Absolutely not. Where do you think some of your food comes from?... we need farmers, we need clean drinking water.. its a no brainer.

Ok but theres a bunch of unnoccupied housing because people are holding onto them like poker chips. So building more seems irrelevant. Also I am glad canada is a place where the people who live in a location get a say in what happens to that location. Especially since most people can be bought out. If I moved somewhere to live without extreme population density, that density moving in without without me having any control would defeat my reason for moving there. I would thefor move somewhere I DID get a say. The housing crisis isnt happening because of a lack of housing. It happening because we are lowkey suffering from what happened to Australia, where housing was viewed as a "safe investment". The houses on the greenbelt are for a few specific extremely rich people, who could afford to live anywhere anyway. Also, this was great reporting. Ty for bringing us around and familiarizing us with whats going on.

Andrew--I like the way you told this story. Easy to understand. ty

No. No No. Doug Ford should go!!!

And you wonder why the cost of housing is so expensive. Completely self inflicted.

Yes with certain conditions: 1) only high rise apartment buildings 2) the roof of these buildings need to house grass, plants, even trees....mostly taking care of what's being lost and 3) parking is only underground to limit the amount of natural landscape lost

Our Canadian politics also day by day become like other currupt countries. Every one make free easy money. Canadian government always talk about environment and so on.when time to action they try to gives so many excuses. Province government follow same foot step.

This is an important issue, but why did you only interview people on one side of it?

What else is new? They've been building on the best farm land in Southern Ontario since the 50's...gone are all the apple/pear orchards....Build on everything Toronto -GTA turn everything into an urban concrete jungle.

NOOOOOO

Thank you so very much for this reporting!

Eye opening. Thank you!

Some things don’t make sense to me in Toronto. Why don’t we build or expand near existing transit? Warden Station has been around for like forever but there have been no TOC or development proposals to develop the surroundings yet. Baffles me quite frankly. Every station along the TTC subway lines should be a high density/high rise development location. Beats me why that’s not being done.

No! Keep the Greenbelt green

The clue is in the name.

Just subscribed to The Narwhal

No. If the pandemic has taught us anything, that food security should be a national issue period. No matter whose land it is, the lack of emphasis on a 100km sourced food supply is insane. If you build more calorie towers, expect to intensify food production accordingly. Duh.

I disagree with the conclusion at the end of the video. This is not complicated at all. Tell Ford's corrupt government to get their hands off the greenbelt. Find another plan. Stop the urban sprawl, there is plenty of development land left in Ontario.

No no no no! But of course Ford will just go ahead with it!

100% no we definitely need that keep more green places instead of less there's so many other parts of Canada or people can build houses. Like 98% of Canada.

Because there is a CLIMATE CRISIS - Ummm hummm! Contradictions abound! I agree 100% with the solid logic presented by McIntosh and Syed.

The real estate speculators seem to have better access to the Ford government than the general public. It may not be Ford specifically who has been compromised, but he should be careful to ensure that the government is being corrupted. Ontario has plenty of non-green space to build upon. Streamlining administration would be a good place to start

No absolutely not. There should be no building on the green belt.

Nice to see narwhal continue to gain a platform! I miss having Fatima host CANADALAND'S backbench podcast

At the present time, Canada gets most fruit and vegetables from California and Florida. However, California is flooded in many areas currently producing nothing and Florida is said to be sinking into the ocean and in the near future no longer will grow anything except seaweed and fish. The green belt will become extremely important to Canadians as fruit, vegetable and grain producing area. It has the best soil for growing crops according to farmers. Building houses can be done on almost any land.

Hell no!!

It’s ridiculous that houses cost like they can last 100 years, but last more like 50 years

It's protected for a reason. Build elsewhere.

@18:44 Doug Ford seems to not bat an eye on Greenbelt use. His focus is full force, Build more homes.

amazing job girls! don't stop! 🙌

the answer is almost always MIXED USED ZONING!!!!!

When can animals go to court with their layers!!! Never!! Shame on greedy people’s, thank you Ford and friends!!!

The Greenbelt should never be developed for residential etc.

Informative and thanks for navigating and explaining the issues facing our communities and their members. 🤔 something to seriously think about in making a sound decision when it comes time. 💯✊🏽

There is 10,000 acres in Pickering Air port land un developed

So, what's the point of a greenbelt if it's going to be built on?

Short answer - NO! We need higher density housing in existing municipalities.

NO!!!

@20:29 If Doug Ford REALLY cared about people having their dream home, he would have given people on ODSP more than a 5% increase considering just how exponentially everything else has gone up in price. Sadly the reality is my own personal experience was okay the 5% helped for 2 months and then another part of ODSP was cut, and I am literally making $1 less than I was ... back in 2017!! My doctor today confirmed he has been hearing a LOT of cases like that locally. But that is just an example of why I do not trust what Doug Ford says anymore. We never are told the whole picture but he tells us what he wants us to think and pushes that it is a good idea because he says it is. But for WHO?

Insightful reporting! Would love to see this level of depth and quality on all cbc (and narwhal) stories.

Thank you for this program. We can’t give up the green belt.

If there is enough $$$$$ in it. It will be done.

Do you like to eat, breathe clean air, drink good water? Think about it! I will never support a government that does this deal. I voted for Ford. Not again if this happens!

Leave Green belt alone 😮‍💨

Move people out of the cities to rural towns! There are so many homes and jobs available in smaller towns.

no

Hell NO

Building 800 thousand dollar homes and million dollar condos will not help average Canadians to own a home. So ruining our greenbelt for greed is unexceptable.

No, and Ford should stop trying to cover up and quit lying. He needs to go.

Lack of time? Good parts here that answer a few questions: 7:20 and 8:42

Another way to make people fools

Need mixed use zoning, walkable neighbourhoods, and a variety of housing offers, not just suburban sprawl Meanwhile the world burns

Housing shouldn’t be on the green belt it’s wrong so farm land will be gone then I am right against it I been a Canadian citizen all my life and where do the animals go leave green belt alone.

"Protected": like u.n 30 by 2030?

Yes. Keep Comments OPEN!!