Politician says tackling housing crisis and farmland protection can happen simultaneously

Housing affordability in the region has been an ever increasing issue – but as more housing developments get started to meet the demand, more farmland is used up in the process.

Appearing on the Kitchener Today with Brian Bourke, Ontario Green Party Leader and Guelph MPP Mike Schreiner said we can solve both issues at the same time.

“Some of the ways we can do that is one, by insuring that we utilize our existing built environment more efficiently which will actually make things in our community more affordable…we also have opportunities to do things like reinstate the provincial brown filled remediation fund to help remediate soil particularly on old industrial land that can be converted into a house if the government supports communities in doing that, so there are ways in which we can develop with our existing boundaries, increase housing affordability and protect farmland at the same time.” 

Schreiner said it's not only farmland but rural communities as well that are going to be affected if we don't plan development in smarter ways.

“It's clear to me we have a housing affordability crisis, it's not only effecting urban communities but it's also effecting rural communities and we have about 88 thousand acre's across southern Ontario within existing urban boundaries that have been approved for development that if we develop it in a smart way with using gentle density, mid rise development and in-fill development we can significantly increase housing supply to meet demand and address the supply and affordability issue while at the same time protecting the farmland that feeds up the wetlands that cleans our drinking water and protect us from flooding,” 

Schreiner added, “The bottom line is rural communities in particular, they rely on farmland for economic prosperity, the food and farming sector creates over 870 thousand jobs in the province of Ontario contributing over 50 billion dollars to our GDP, why would we want to pave over the farmland that generates all that prosperity not to mention our food security.” 

Schreiner made a call to action to making development changes to using up farmland now before it's to late, “Organizations like Ontario Farmland Trust based at the University of Guelph have really pointed out that this is completely unstainable especially when you recognize that only 5 per cent of Ontario's land mass is suitable for growing food, I mean think about how much of our land mass is Canadian shield, it's rock you can't farm on it and even more importantly less than half a per cent of that is prime farmland, if we don't protect it we undermine our food security, we undermine rural communities and we undermine the jobs and prosperity that comes from the food and farming sector because we have that good farmland that we need to protect.”