Ontario Premier Doug Ford justified his proposal to remove land from the environmentally protected Greenbelt for housing construction by saying that the housing crisis has worsened and will become more serious due to increased immigration. Ford also said he welcomed the federal government's recent announcement of its plan to increase immigration levels, bringing in 500,000 people in 2025. However, as he said, if hundreds of thousands of new arrivals begin coming to Ontario annually, there will be no place to house them.

Similarly, the province announced on Friday that it proposes to remove land from the Greenbelt, which was created to protect environmentally sensitive areas from development, to build at least 50,000 new homes, with new land being added elsewhere.

This is a step the government pledged last year not to take. The province launched a 30-day consultation on removing about 7,400 acres in 15 different areas of the Greenbelt and adding 9,400 acres elsewhere.