This new $10-billion 400-series freeway will upend 55 km of prime farmland & conservation land across the Toronto region. This superhighway is intended to unleash another generation of sprawl. Its proponents are land speculators. Our GreenBelt is at risk. https://www.thestar.com/business/2021/02/13/doug-fords-planned-gta-west-superhighway-is-a-slam-dunk-for-developers-but-some-say-it-could-also-be-an-economic-disaster.html?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=SocialMedia&utm_campaign=Business&utm_content=superhighwaydougford

‘According to real estate & construction experts, the plan is more than a highway proposal. It’s a bonanza for land speculators & builders.’ The table was recently set for this with the removal of protections on environmental wetlands, by stealth (in a Covid recovery bill.)

It is being pitched as an economic generator. But destroying long-term food production jobs for short-term construction jobs makes no sense. Farming and food processing employ almost a million people in the province and generate at least $35 billion in annual revenues.

Always follow the money: the Mayor of Caledon is a former farmer who supports the superhighway, while agreeing it will result in a large proportion of Caledon’s farmland being sold off to developers. The Mayor himself recently sold farmland to a developer for $10 million.

This plan will ‘erase’ much of the farmlands within easy reach of Toronto. Funny thing about paving over the land that provides our food supply….’you can’t eat real estate.’ The good news: farmers are organizing. Will we support them? #FarmersFeedCities

It is also based on faulty economic analysis: a former advisor to the government “this economic strategy in pushing ahead with the superhighway is based on faulty economic research that ignores every alternative to paving over the GTA’s last remaining major green spaces.”

We know that raising our voices has shifted the trajectory of problematic government decision-making in the past. Hopefully it will again. #SaveTheGreenBelt #StopThe413