There was a lot to complain about when it comes to the Ontario provincial government in 2023, but complaints were always the loudest when it came to the decision to open the Greenbelt to development. Thousands and thousands of Ontarians were unified in their desire to make the Greenbelt whole again, and then the strangest thing of all happened, they won.

It’s almost exactly one year ago that the first protests began in response to the Ontario government’s plan to remove parcels of the Greenbelt and allow for new housing development despite Doug Ford’s promise that his government would not touch the Greenbelt. Here in Guelph, hundreds and hundreds of people came out on a cold Sunday morning to express their outrage and it wasn’t for the last time as protests continued all over Ontario for much of the last year.

Then things started changing this past summer. Ontario’s auditor general released a scathing report into how the Greenbelt land swap came about, and that started a chain of events ending with Ford putting all that land back. This was a few weeks after a massive protest outside Fordfest at Bingemans in Kitchener, which was organized in part by the Grand River Environmental Network. They pushed hard to save the Greenbelt, but they’re still pointing out that there’s a lot of work left to do.

This week we’re joined by Kevin Thomason, who is the vice-chair of the Grand River Environmental Network. He’s going to talk about how GREN worked hard organizing people, why so many people took the encroachment on the Greenbelt so personally, and why Fordfest in Kitchener was Doug Ford’s Waterloo, so to speak. We will also talk about why climate change isn’t a bigger issue after the wildfire season we just experienced, and whether the provincial government has learned any lessons in the last year.

So let’s take a victory lap for the Greenbelt on this week’s Guelph Politicast!

You can learn more about the Grand River Environmental Network at their website.

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