Watch: how to save Ontario’s ‘precarious’ Greenbelt from development pressure
An all-star panel of experts offers insights about sustainable growth and how to keep Southern Ontario’s protected gem safe, even as proposals to build highways and kickstart development threaten to chip it away
The Ford government is proposing two highway projects that would cut through the Greenbelt.
Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal
This article is more than 3 years old
Ontario’s Greenbelt is facing an uncertain moment.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis have made the protection of natural places more important than ever, especially in sprawl-intensive southern Ontario. At the same time, the forests and farmland of the Greenbelt may be chipped away by plans to build highways and open up pockets for development.
“The Greenbelt cannot just be lines on a map,” Conservation Halton CEO Hassaan Basit said at a Thursday panel discussion hosted by The Narwhal about the future of the protected space.
“It cannot continue to be something that’s precarious… that’s chipped away.”
So how can the Greater Toronto Area grow sustainably, and how should governments be stewarding the Greenbelt to keep it safe — or even make it bigger?
Basit and two other expert panellists, former provincial planner Victor Doyle and Wildlife Conservation Society Canada president and senior scientist Justina Ray, came together with The Narwhal’s Ontario bureau for a webinar to help us find answers. Watch it below or read a Twitter play-by-play of the discussion.
Another year of keeping a close watch
Here at The Narwhal, we don’t use profit, awards or pageviews to measure success. The thing that matters most is real-world impact — evidence that our reporting influenced citizens to hold power to account and pushed policymakers to do better.
And in 2024, our stories were raised in parliaments across the country and cited by citizens in their petitions and letters to politicians.
In Alberta, our reporting revealed Premier Danielle Smith made false statements about the controversial renewables pause. In Manitoba, we proved that officials failed to formally inspect a leaky pipeline for years. And our investigations on a leaked recording of TC Energy executives were called “the most important Canadian political story of the year.”
Here at The Narwhal, we don’t use profit, awards or pageviews to measure success. The thing that matters most is real-world impact — evidence that our reporting influenced citizens to hold power to account and pushed policymakers to do better.
And in 2024, our stories were raised in parliaments across the country and cited by citizens in their petitions and letters to politicians.
In Alberta, our reporting revealed Premier Danielle Smith made false statements about the controversial renewables pause. In Manitoba, we proved that officials failed to formally inspect a leaky pipeline for years. And our investigations on a leaked recording of TC Energy executives were called “the most important Canadian political story of the year.”
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