This article was written by Mike Schreiner, the leader of the Ontario Greens and MPP for Guelph, and was published in the Toronto Star on August 22, 2023.

As an MPP, I’ve been sounding the alarm for months as Premier Doug Ford’s lies about needing Greenbelt land for housing have grown more and more brazen.

Finally, after this month’s auditor general’s report, we have proof of the corrupt process we suspected all along. If Ford is going to pave over our farms, forests and wetlands so wealthy elites can make $8.3 billion, what’s next?

Ford’s Greenbelt giveaway has Ontarians picking up on an ugly pattern: the funnelling of public goods into private hands, at the expense of the rest of us.

An obvious example is Ontario Place, a huge chunk of which Ford recently leased out to Therme Canada for 95 years to build a massive, pay-to-play spa complex on public land along Toronto’s waterfront.

From Ford’s negotiations behind closed doors, to his total dismissal of public outrage coming at him from all sides, to the blatant transfer of public land into private hands, the Ontario Place sell-off is poised to become the next Greenbelt.

Instead of transforming Ontario Place into an affordable, family friendly gateway to green space and the waterfront in a rapidly growing part of Toronto, the premier’s priorities lie with billion-dollar corporations at our expense.

We see the same pattern in Ford’s move to sell off our public healthcare system — prioritizing privately owned, profit-driven clinics over patient care.

Once again, Ford is singing the same song, claiming it’s the only way to clear the surgical backlog even though it’s been well documented that a shortage of space is not the cause of the health-care crisis.

It’s the exact same approach he attempted to con Ontarians into thinking that paving over the Greenbelt would solve the housing crisis (spoiler alert: it won’t).

But if you’re Doug Ford, none of that matters.

This is a classic move out of the PC playbook — but never before has it been so blatant. Starve public systems to the point of collapse, then pretend privatization is the only solution. Hand over public assets to wealthy insiders and claim it had to be done to solve the very crises Ford made worse.

As Ontarians, we deserve better. I understand why, in the face of Ford’s selling out of everyday people for wealthy insiders, it’s easy to become totally disillusioned with the political process. But, if there’s one thing we can take from this, it’s an opportunity for people from all walks of life to come together and demand an end to this government’s wilful disregard for the public good.

Earlier this year, I tabled three bills designed to keep Conservative hands off of the Greenbelt by protecting it from land swaps, highways and gravel pits in perpetuity.

They’re designed to protect the Greenbelt, yes. But this fight is bigger than the Greenbelt. It’s about putting public benefits before the interests of wealthy, well-connected elites.

It’s about showing this government that it can’t sell this province out from under us — that we won’t stand by while they sell off Ontario Place, our public health-care system, or the land that feeds us and protects us from climate-fuelled disasters.

If the Greenbelt scandal has taught us anything, it’s that it’s time to take back this province for the public good. I hope you’ll join the many citizen-led organizations and me in fighting back.