By Pepper Parr
September 5th, 2023
BURLINGTON, ON
It was another one of those hour long media events where the Premier stuck to his guns and stayed with the issue that he believes will keep him in office.
Home, home, homes. The Premier even made mention of $500,000 houses with a back yard.
This is what people want to hear.
Premier Doug Ford during a one hour media event this morning.
The Greenbelt is a nice idea – but homes is what people really care about.
Is he right?
Only time will tell. If he is – he will get himself and his government re-elected in 2026 – unless the RCMP find there are “irregularities” and start laying charges. If there are criminal charges – all bets are then off.
The Queen’s Park media never really laid a glove on the Premier. No matter what the question – basically every time the Premier responded to a question he was polite, used the reporter’s first name and before he had said more than 25 words he was back at “homes”.
It will take a bit of time to listen to the hour long event again and report on that. For the moment the Premier walked away from the podium after an hour knowing that they didn’t have him yet.
Premier Ford consistently maintains that he doesn’t micro-manage; if what he managed to pull off this morning isn’t micro-managing – I don’t know what is.
Dougy has his head back in the trough again if it’s going to help him he’s all for it.
Dougy first Ontario residents and taxpayers somewhere down the line
Yes, we need more homes. I don’t think anyone can disagree with this point. BUT, we do not need to build these homes on The Greenbelt. The Greenbelt Lands should be preserved for both future generations, wildlife and farming.
As noted in the article here on the Burlington Gazette from Environmental Defence dated September 4, 2023, I quote, “There are 59,000 hectares of land designated for development in the GTHA alone, without including the 3,000 hectares removed from the Greenbelt.”
Why is Premiere Ford not pushing developers to build on the the 59,000 heactares of land already designated in the GTHA for development? Very fishy!
Once the Greenbelt Lands are gone, they are gone forever!