Last week, at the stroke of midnight on Halloween Eve, the 10-year review of the Greenbelt came to a close.

Now, we wait for the Provincial Government to review all the comments they received from the public  since May 2016 and to make final decisions about how to change the Greenbelt laws.

TEA supporters submitted thousands of comments since May (we’re still counting up the final numbers). Thank you to each of you for taking action with us to protect and expand Ontario’s Greenbelt!

We also know that tens of thousands of Ontarians submitted comments, thanks to the efforts of other groups who we worked with as part of the Ontario Greenbelt Alliance.

Now is the time to reflect on what we’ve accomplished:

• We succeeded in getting the Province to consider growing the Greenbelt into Toronto’s urban river valley systems. This will help better protect our important watersheds, from the headwaters to the north of Toronto, down to Lake Ontario.

• We sent a loud and clear message to Premier Wynne and her Ministers that the Greenbelt needs to be protected from urban sprawl. We hope this will drown out the request from some developers to allow urban sprawl into the Greenbelt.

• We sent a loud and clear message that the Greenbelt needs to grow into watersheds that we rely on for our drinking water and vital ecological services. We hope this will lead to new lands being put under Greenbelt protection within a short number of years.

We expect the Province to announce their final recommendations some time in the early 2017. While we cannot predict what the recommendations will be, we can say with certainty the Premier knows what Torontonians want her to do.

And to that we say, “Thank you.”