The Greenbelt Paradox: Did Saving Nature Break the Housing Market?
And how, 20 years ago, the development industry predicted the housing crisis.
Ontario’s Greenbelt was meant to protect farmland and the environment, but it was also sold as part of a broader social contract. Governments would restrict outward growth and allow enough family-friendly housing to be built inside existing communities. That second part of the deal was never kept.
In this episode of The Missing Middle, we explore how the failure to deliver missing middle housing has pushed families out of cities and inner suburbs, driven prices higher, and may have actually made sprawl worse through leapfrogging beyond the Greenbelt. Instead of diverse, family-sized homes, Ontario has doubled down on high-rise, small-unit housing that doesn’t meet the needs of people raising children.
We walk through four realistic options for resolving the growing tension between housing affordability and land protection — from maintaining the status quo, to serious infill reform, to population cuts, to selectively opening parts of the Greenbelt. None are politically easy. But avoiding the trade-offs is no longer cost-free.
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Below is an AI-generated transcript of the Missing Middle podcast, which has been lightly edited.
Mike Moffatt: So we get a lot of questions here at The Missing Middle. We value all of them, and we encourage you to send more in. Of all the questions I personally received in 2025, Sabrina, what do you think was the most common one? What do you think people wanted to know about the most?
Sabrina Maddeaux: A lot of the questions we get here are housing-oriented. We often hear about development charges, various forms of taxes, and, of course, building the missing middle housing, which aligns with our podcast name. But one thing we do hear about a lot is the Greenbelt.
Mike Moffatt: Yeah, absolutely. You guessed it.
Our viewers really want to know about the Greenbelt. In particular, they want to know if it’s even possible for the GTA to build enough homes without opening the greenbelt up to development. Some are somewhat accusatory at times, saying, “Hey, you guys are afraid to talk about the Greenbelt?” Well, we don’t want those accusations anymore. You asked for it, and we’re going to deliver.
Now, I want to be clear about this: I don’t see the greenbelt opening up anytime soon. Particularly under the Ford government with the Greenbelt scandal. I feel it’s just become politically too toxic. And I think the last thing the Ford government wants to do is remind anybody of the Greenbelt scandal. So I can only imagine even mentioning the greenbelt is off limits to them.
But I’m also not a resident expert in conservative politics. And you are. So, a two-part question for you. The first is: am I right in my assessment that the greenbelt is permanently off limits to the Ford government? And two: do you think that had the Ford government instituted a transparent process that was untainted by scandal, they could have opened up the greenbelt to development without too much political blowback?
Sabrina Maddeaux: To me, this is one of the more frustrating things to have happened in provincial politics in Ontario in the last few years is that the greenbelt was the third rail for a very, very long time, and then we finally had a chance to open it up, have some development and, work towards building more of that housing we need. And because of the scandal that surrounded it, it just completely went to dust.
I can’t see the Ford government reopening this discussion anytime soon. It’s gone back to being that third rail. No other party wants to touch it either for different reasons that are more ideologically driven. And I think they’re stuck in ways of thinking about sprawl and housing that are, quite frankly, decades in the past.
Politically, are we going to see movement on this anytime in the near future? I would be incredibly shocked. They had the political cover to do it and were starting to move. And the reality is, they screwed it up badly.
Mike Moffatt: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And it’s funny, back in 2018 or so, when we were at the Smart Prosperity Institute, I was trying to convince my bosses and our advisory board at SPI that we should be getting into the housing game. We should be doing more housing work. The pushback I got was, We don’t see what that has to do with clean growth or clean economy. And I said, Well, look, if we don’t solve the housing crisis, governments are going to come along and say, hey, we’ve got all this land over here in the greenbelt, why don’t we start putting homes there?
The pushback I got at the time was, Oh, no, that’s unrealistic, that it’s a political third rail. Nobody would ever consider that. And sure enough, a couple of years later, that’s exactly what the Ford government tried to do. So I tend to agree that if the Ford government put in a more transparent process, had they really done their due diligence on this, I think they would have been successful.
I think they would have had a lot of pushback from environmental groups and maybe about 15 to 20% of the population. (All of them don’t vote conservative anyway.) But I think they would have been successful. I think the only reason we still have the greenbelt with the current boundaries that exist is because of political malpractice, more so than any kind of real policy logic.
Sabrina Maddeaux: Absolutely. I agree. The support is there even online. You’re seeing more and more demands for the greenbelt to be addressed. But it will, I think, turn into one of those housing demands that is so often ignored by politicians for their own political reasons.
Late last year, you tweeted out the following:
Now, can you walk us through what you meant by all that?
Mike Moffatt: Yeah, absolutely. So if you go back to 2004, 2005, the early parts of the McGuinty government, they had a couple of big reforms. One was a green belt, and one was the growth plan for the GTA, in the greater Golden Horseshoe area.
Now, technically, those are two distinct things, but the government of the day kind of bundled them and packaged them together. And it was all based on this idea that we need to protect farmland, we need to protect environmentally sensitive areas and so on.
And I agree with all of that. I think that’s incredibly important. But there was a second part of the deal, because naturally, builders and developers pushed back and said: Hey, if you do this, we’re not going to be able to build enough homes for everyone. Land prices are going to go through the roof, and home prices are going to go through the roof. And families are not going to be able to afford homes.
And what the government of that day said was: Okay, we hear you. I mean, they more said: Hey, you guys are being alarmist, greedy developer types. But, behind closed doors, it was more like: Okay, yeah, we hear you. That could be an issue. So we’re going to allow for more kinds of family friendly forms of infill multiplexes, that kind of thing.
And they never really did the second part.
And we’ve had so many episodes where even small reforms have gotten pushback from municipal governments or municipal planners. And, say what you will about the builders and developers, and obviously, we work with many of them here at Missing Middle, so if you want to say that we’re overly sympathetic to builders and developers, fine. You can make that argument. But at the end of the day, they were absolutely right.
Everything that the development industry said 20 years ago would happen with the Greenbelt and the growth plan, every single prediction they made was absolutely right. And every prediction that the McGuinty government made was 100% wrong.
So at the end of the day, the only thing that got developed as infill were these huge towers of one-bedroom apartments and studio apartments, condos and purpose-built rentals. Which are helpful, and there is obviously a use case for that, but they don’t really meet the needs of families with kids.
So that’s how I see it. And keep in mind, I think I’m more sympathetic to the Liberals in the government than you probably are. Love to hear your take on it.
Sabrina Maddeaux: Yeah, absolutely. I agree. It seems like there was this contract…It all went down a little bit before my time. But that’s why I really appreciated hearing your take on it, because it feels like we keep being told: Oh, more housing will be built. Well, it doesn’t feel like it. The reality is that we keep being told: We will allow more housing, we will allow more housing. That single detached for families, that missing middle that we so desperately need, and it’s not happening. And it hasn’t been happening for decades. And the reality is, if you’re not going to allow it to be built in existing communities, in the city and suburbs, then you need to open up more land, which is the Greenbelt. So that’s obviously where people are going to want to go.
Mike Moffatt: Yeah, absolutely. And, if we go back to 2003, 2004, 2005, in the GTA, they were building a diverse set of homes, right? There were single-detached, there were semi-detached, there were townhomes, not so much multiplexes, but again, those were hard to build, for regulatory reasons. And you get some apartments, not enough apartments, but you got some.
And, fast forward 20 years, and now there’s no real diversity. You’re not seeing semi-detached, you’re not seeing a whole lot of townhomes. It’s all high-rise. That’s the only thing that we’ve really built over the last decade. And the vast majority of those units, you can’t realistically raise a small child in them, even if you could afford to buy one. In many cases, you can’t because they’re so expensive.
So I’m loving the two-part questions today. So I’m going to ask you another one. Suppose you were looking for a home where you and your partner could raise a child. What would you be looking for in a home? And, where do you think you would have to move to to realistically be able to obtain one of those homes?
Sabrina Maddeaux: The biggest thing is space.
You can’t realistically raise a child in a small, 750 square foot or even a 1000-square-foot condo. So, a place that actually has three bedrooms or four bedrooms, that is an appropriate size where everyone can have a reasonable amount of space.
It doesn’t need to be a McMansion, but everyone should want your child to have their own bedroom. And if you have someone who works from home, a space to set up [an office.] Ideally, there is some outdoor space, even a small backyard. And then you think about community factors. Do you want to be near a good school? You don’t want to live on a busy intersection with a lot of noise and pollution and cars going back and forth. You’d like to be in a community where there are other young families, and that doesn’t exist in any sort of affordable way in the city right now, or even in the suburbs very close to the city. To do that, you’d have to move quite a bit outside of it.
So, you’re probably looking past the Greenbelt because they’ve effectively created this barrier where everything inside the Greenbelt is unaffordable. So you’d have to be going somewhere, maybe Peterborough, Lindsay, Coburg, or somewhere like Brantford, Woodstock to the west.
Mike Moffatt: Yeah, absolutely.
What you’ve described there, when you say you would move outside of the Greenbelt, whether it’s to Cobourg or Woodstock or what have you, it’s known as a leapfrog effect. The Greenbelt was supposed to contain growth. The growth was supposed to happen within the belt, but instead it kind of overflows or leapfrogs over the Greenbelt, which actually makes sprawl worse.
It creates sprawl on steroids, right? Instead of building at the edge of the city, which people say, oh, that’s that bad sprawl, you shouldn’t do that. Instead, you’re moving like three towns over and then having to drive in every day. So it’s absolutely made sprawl worse. So it’s not just the greenbelt. We see this in urban growth boundaries and so on.
My favourite example is if you drive in the city of Ottawa. Let’s say you’re leaving the city of Ottawa, there’s a greenbelt, there are no homes. And then you go past that, there’s an urban growth boundary. And then you keep driving and driving and driving. And then once you leave the city limits of Ottawa, you get to Carleton Place and then, boom! All of these neighbourhoods.
Ottawa’s urban growth boundary didn’t contain sprawl. It actually moved all those homes, 20 minutes down the road to Carleton Place.
And then you have all of these public servants who drive into the office every day. So, it shows that we have to judge public policies by what they actually accomplish, not what they purport to do.
I do a lot of work on our urban growth boundaries. And I say: We got to stretch this out. And people go: Well, Moffatt, what are you advocating for? Sprawl? I’m like: No, actually, I’m advocating for the opposite. I want to avoid sprawl. And just because you drew some imaginary line on a map that doesn’t contain sprawl, unless you have all of these other supporting policies, in fact, you may be making it worse through the leapfrogging effect.
Sabrina Maddeaux: There’s a lot of wishful thinking in our housing policy.
Just because you can say that young people won’t want single-detached homes and will be happy living in one-bedroom condos with their families, doesn’t mean it will happen. Or just because you say seniors will downsize to those small condos and everything will just work out demographically, doesn’t mean it will happen.
Now you say the Greenbelt has made sprawl worse, but has anyone actually ever studied whether or not the Greenbelt is making sprawl worse?
Mike Moffatt: So not in the Ontario context. There are some studies out of the UK, and we have to keep in mind that this Greenbelt idea, these urban growth boundary ideas, are not isolated to Ontario or Canada. We see them pop up in other countries in the Anglosphere.
There has been a study or two, and we will post them in the show notes, that show in the UK that this is going on. This is the type of research that I think the CMHC should be doing a lot more of, or funding a lot more. But we don’t see it. And you start to wonder, is nobody doing these studies because they’re a little bit worried about what they might show?
Sabrina Maddeaux: They don’t want to know. The answer might be politically inconvenient.
Mike Moffatt: Well, exactly. Exactly right. Because we’re supposed to take these policies again based on what they are supposed to accomplish.
Now, keep in mind, if we look policy-wise, I think there’s going to be this ongoing tension between housing and the Greenbelt. I don’t think this is going to go away. It might not manifest itself under the Ford government, but eventually we’ll have a new government - either a new conservative government or a new premier - one day. Or, maybe one of the opposition parties gets its act together and fights a competitive campaign. So, I don’t think that this issue isn’t going away.
So, in my mind, Ontario really only has four options to this tension between housing and the Greenbelt. I’m going to present them to you one at a time. And I’d love to get your personal opinion about each option as well, whether or not you think it’s politically viable in the long run. So does that work for you? Are you willing to play this game?
Sabrina Maddeaux: I’m very willing. Let’s do it.
Mike Moffatt: Okay. So option one is the most Canadian of options. It’s that we do absolutely nothing. The status quo. We don’t touch the Greenbelt. We don’t make any other radical changes to housing policy. The price of family-friendly homes continues to be well above what middle-class families can afford. And families keep moving further and further away. Do you think that’s politically realistic?
Sabrina Maddeaux: And unfortunately seems like a very likely option, at least in the near to medium term. But long-term, it’s not politically realistic at all. Young people and even not-so-young people, we’re talking about millennials who are in their late 30s, early 40s already, either trying to raise families or raising young families, who are so frustrated and angry and disillusioned with the system because they still can’t afford affordable homes. That’s leading to some disastrous places, whether we’re talking about opting out of institutions and systems and the social contract or whether it’s increasing radicalism.
Whether it’s economic implications like brain drain, leaving Ontario completely, or Canada completely. This is going to lead to more problems socially, politically, and economically. Not just for people who are shut out of housing, but for all of Ontarians and all of Canadians in general. This touches everyone. So this isn’t a viable long-term solution.
It’s just pushing that ball down the road, and it’s going to break really badly somewhere at some point.
Mike Moffatt: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I worry about the political consequences, the social consequences. As you mentioned, people migrating out and the economic consequences, and I worry about the environmental consequences. Right?
I think people having to move, it’s like, okay, now, Branford’s filled up. So they’re driving to Thorold, or they’re driving to Tillsonburg or wherever and then going back into the GTA every day. I think this also has massive environmental consequences.
Sabrina Maddeaux: That’s true. It’s not like we have the transit systems to be able to accommodate this type of living - 2 or 3 hours outside of the core. Our transit systems are so inadequate and broken at this point that people understandably choose to drive.
Mike Moffatt: Well, I’m sure that high-speed rail that’s coming any day now, I’m sure they’ll have a stop in Tillsonburg.
So yeah, I agree. I think that’s the other thing that people have to recognize. If we’re forcing people to move into smaller communities, those smaller communities are never getting that level of [necessary] transit. And all of those folks are going to have to drive in
Number two is the option that we’re really trying to advocate for, and it’s a massive increase in family-friendly homebuilding in the GTA through policy reform that leaves the green belt untouched.
So the scenario here is that all three levels of government enact substantial reforms to allow for family-friendly homes that middle-class families can actually afford.
So this is zoning reform, allowing for multiplexes and taller buildings. It’s buildin code reform to allow for European-style low-rise apartments and courtyard blocks. Really nice, family-friendly apartments that they have in Europe that are illegal to build here. It’s development charge and tax reform to drive down these costs.
I call it Goldilocks housing, three bedrooms somewhere in the 1300 to 1700 square foot area. You’re not talking McMansions, but you’re not talking shoe box condos. And being realistic around urban growth boundaries. Recognizing that there is going to have to be some expansion to get land prices back to a reasonable level. I would love to get your thoughts on that.
Sabrina Maddeaux: This sounds like a very ideal scenario, but one that I don’t think is likely to happen. Parts of it might happen. Whether it’s allowing that type of added missing middle supply, or whether it’s reducing development charges, or other types of taxes.
Politicians and policymakers have known about these solutions for a long time now, and we keep hearing there will be change, and then there’s not, because we allow a small but powerful cohort of our population to have control over what’s built. And existing homeowners also don’t want to pay more property taxes. So then we end up with development charges.
It’s the whole growth pays for growth math. But it’s really young people subsidizing older homeowners. So you would have to have either have radical change where mostly older homeowners suddenly realize that this is not only in society’s interest, but their children and grandchildren’s interest to allow these changes and advocate and vote for these changes. Or some government is really going to have to make bold choices that they will suffer some blowback for, but do it because it’s the right thing to do going forward.
Am I optimistic that’s going to happen, especially with the governments that are currently in power and their track records on these policy issues? Unfortunately not. So this is an ideal scenario, but one that I would be very surprised to see actually take place anytime soon.
Mike Moffatt: And it’s unfortunate because this is clearly what we’re advocating for the missing middle and working towards every day at the Missing Middle.
But we’re also recognizing how challenging it is now. I personally view that as a form of job security, because this isn’t going to happen anytime soon. Our team can keep pushing for these reforms, but I think it’s important for us to recognize and for other advocates to recognize how difficult it’s going to be to achieve them.
But at the same time, I do think we have to look at the victories that we’ve achieved. A few years ago, nobody would even talk about development charges. And the idea that development charges are causing any kind of issue, no politician would admit that. Now we’ve seen municipalities reduce it.
So we’re going to keep pushing for the missing middle. So if you are supportive of this option, please do what you can to advocate and continue supporting us.
Sabrina Maddeaux: For me, one of the keys you said in the scenario is that all three levels of government have to come together and work on all these changes.
I think one of the problems is that all three levels of government continually pass responsibility to the other levels of government. And when you’re dealing with so many municipalities and municipal politics, by its very nature, it’s always going to be very beholden to established older homeowners. That’s just how the system works. I think seeing some of that municipal responsibility lifted up to the provincial level, and then the province making across-the-board decisions that stop some of those roadblocks that happen at the community consultation level, would be really helpful.
And if that happens, maybe we see some big changes that actually move things in this direction.
Mike Moffatt: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more that I think it’s politically easier for the province to do it. And, we have this coordination problem. Even if you had a community, let’s say Brantford, that does all the right things, if Toronto and Mississauga and Brampton and whoever else aren’t doing it, Brantford’s never going to be able to solve their housing issue, right? Because they’re just going to get more and more families moving in from the GTA. So I think that’s why we need the province to be doing more - to be setting those rules across the board - rather than having Ontario’s 444 different municipalities all making individual changes.
So totally with you there. Now, option three. I’m going to give you further immigration restrictions. We have too few homes relative to the population. And really, there are two ways to solve that. You either increase the number of homes or decrease the number of people. So one thing that Canada could do and has been doing is impose restrictions on immigration and non-permanent residents.
So the federal government could go further on this. It could make further reductions to Canada’s immigration levels. They’re currently at 380,000 people a year. There were 250,000 in the early 2010s; you could even go down to the 150,000 level in the early 1980s. You could put further restrictions on the number of temporary foreign workers and international students.
If you do that. If you start turning that dial enough, eventually you get to a point where population growth is completely flat or in fact, going into decline. Your thoughts on that?
Sabrina Maddeaux: I’ve always said housing is a supply and demand problem. We address both on the show, although I think supply often gets a little bit more attention.
And immigration is something that, finally, politicians are acknowledging and actually moving on. As you’ve said, the current government has cut back on different immigration programs and lowered the targets that were so unsustainable during the Trudeau era, but I would argue they haven’t gone far enough, especially considering what we were just talking about - that supply isn’t likely to ramp up to the levels we need it to within the next five, let alone ten years.
Yeah, I would love to see more immigration cuts. The levels have come down, but they were so high over the last five years. You have to take into account that we’ve way overshot. And now we, in my opinion, need to really dial back to bring the housing system back into equilibrium. But also things like health care as well. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Mike Moffatt: So I think this is actually one more where you and I differ a little bit. And to be clear, I actually think that this is probably the most likely option that the governments will choose. I do think that having more robust immigration, particularly skilled immigration, would help, but that does require governments to make tough decisions around health care, taxation, infrastructure and housing that they seem unwilling to make.
This is something I talked to developers a lot about, that a number of developers are making big bets that immigration and nonresidents are going to go in the other direction. They say: Canada’s population is aging. Our labour force would be shrinking otherwise. So, obviously, we’ll be increasing immigration because not doing so would be economic suicide. And I point out to them: Okay, even if you believe that that’s true about economic suicide, countries can and do commit economic suicide. Just because you think something is dumb does not mean that it is not going to happen. So I fear that governments will do this because it’s the path of least resistance. Not because it’s necessarily the most economically sensible thing to do.
And finally, we have our last option, option four, which is opening up the green belt for development. We decide, as a province, as a society, that we don’t like any of those options, that we don’t want our cities to densify, we don’t want population growth to go down. We don’t want to make these other decisions. So we’ll say: You know what? We’ll open up the Greenbelt. Not entirely, but just kind of piece by piece by piece, while continuing to protect the most environmentally sensitive areas. So it’s not, we’ll blow this thing up entirely, but we just ratchet down the boundaries, take the least environmentally sensitive areas out first, and just kind of continue to expand it out.
Sabrina Maddeaux: I would like to see this in conjunction with some of the other options, where we address some of the policies we’ve talked about. But I do think also the Greenbelt also needs to open up. Not fully, but at least partially. And immigration needs to continue to decline. Do I think the Greenbelt is going to be opened up in any aspect as long as the Ford government is still in power? No.
And I don’t think that’s a conversation the Liberals or the NDP are willing to have. So, the prospects of this happening, while I think it would be beneficial, not too great in the near term or the medium term.
Mike Moffatt: Yeah. And that’s always kind of what I wondered as well. If it’s not going to be the Conservatives, do the Liberals consider doing this? Kind of like a Nixon to China kind of way, where if the Liberals do it, maybe it would be hard for people to say: Oh, well, they’re only doing this because they’re a bunch of far right, environmental hating, ideologues.
Maybe they can get away with it because people say: Okay, well, if they’re doing it, it must absolutely be necessary. I think the same way that the Carney government can rollback carbon policy in a way that you might not have been able to, or would have gotten a lot more blowback politically.
Sabrina Maddeaux: I think so much depends on who their leader is, right? And who they build the next coalition out of.
There is a scenario where they end up with a leader who’s very focused on housing and is open to economic populism. And they build a coalition of young people who want affordable housing. Young people, even those on the left, are willing to talk about the Greenbelt.
Mike Moffatt: Well, I thank you for that endorsement, but I’m going to keep my day job and I’m announcing it here: I’m not running for OLP leader.
Yeah, that could happen. You could have somebody who is pro housing and a little bit more on the populist side of those four options. What do you think is the most realistic over the next decade?
Sabrina Maddeaux: Unfortunately, the status quo. I do think we will still see more policy reforms on housing, because it’s obviously an issue that’s not going away.
There is political liability in not addressing affordability and housing. And, people like us are really advocating and putting forward solutions. And policymakers are listening - to an extent. I think that change will be incremental and probably much too slow and not bold enough. So we will continue to see this situation where everything inside the Greenbelt is relatively unaffordable, and then people need to leapfrog and move further and further away, and that will have consequences.
Mike Moffatt: Yeah, I fear that you’re right.
These are not mutually exclusive options. We could have a little bit of each. I’m hoping that we have some reforms from option two, which was our family-friendly infill. And we’re going to fight like heck to make that happen. But again, we also recognize how difficult that fight is going to be.
But it’s one worth having. I do think that we’re probably going to have more restrictions on immigration than people think. I don’t know if there is some kind of betting market or something on what the immigration target is in 2030? I would probably be betting on the low side. I think a lot of people are assuming that, oh, this is going to revert back to the mean after a while, and I just don’t think that that’s the case.
Sabrina Maddeaux: I agree with you.
Mike Moffatt: Other than the business lobby, I just don’t see the constituency there to increase it. And I think it’s going to become politically difficult to do that if youth unemployment continues to be high, if health care waiting times continue to be high.
And, I’m also betting that health care waiting times are not going to get better. And I just don’t see a scenario where governments increase immigration. If there’s already concern about health care waiting times, I think it’s become a political third rail. But I also think that I’m not expecting, in the next five to 10 years, any opening up of the Greenbelt. I think it would probably happen by 2050, but I’m not seeing it in the next five to 10 years.
Sabrina Maddeaux: Yeah, and on the immigration front, I do agree that’s the most likely. Beyond my personal opinion that immigration should decline further, if you look at public opinion polling and where sentiment is on this issue, people do still cite immigration as being too high and wanting to see it come down further. And politicians will respond to that.
The fact that the Liberal government is responding to that is huge. Let alone if we do see a Conservative government federally, we will see, I think, even further restrictions.
Thank you so much for watching and listening. And to our amazing producer, Meredith Martin and our editor, Sean Foreman.
Mike Moffatt: And thank you to our viewers and listeners. If you have any thoughts or questions about bringing High Speed Rail to Tillsonburg, please send us an email to the [email protected]
Sabrina Maddeaux: And we’ll see you next time.
Additional Reading/Listening that Helped Inform the Episode:
The Welfare Effects of Greenbelt Policy: Evidence from England
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/134/657/363/7276598
Green Belts: Past, present, future?
This podcast is funded by the Neptis Foundation
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