The Green Party has unveiled its platform for Ontario’s snap election, including a plan to protect farmland in Ontario using a mechanism similar to the Greenbelt.
On Wednesday, party leader Mike Schreiner stood with two of his star candidates at an event in Toronto where he announced his full slate of promises and ambitions for the election.
“As the only party that’s doubled our caucus since the last election, we’re pretty excited,” Schreiner said.
The Greens appear to be targeting rural ridings in Ontario, telling voters the Progressive Conservatives and other parties have been too focused on big cities like Toronto.
Schreiner has already spent significant time campaigning in Parry Sound—Muskoka, where the party came within a couple of thousand votes of victory in 2022, and Wellington-Halton Hills, a rural riding without an incumbent.
The party’s offering for voters in this election is varied — and dubbed by the Greens “our plan for fairness.”
Among the promises are several policy strands focused on the environment and natural spaces.
One of those policies is the creation of an area the party is calling the Foodbelt. The policy would be similar to Ontario’s existing Greenbelt and add protected status to some farmland in the province, stopping it from being developed into housing or highways or used to mine gravel.
“We have to restore fairness for rural communities and farmers — and we will do that by introducing our Grow Ontario plan,” Schreiner said Wednesday. “A key component of that: creating a foodbelt that will permanently protect prime farmland in the province of Ontario.”
The Greens are also promising to cancel Highway 413 — a planned expressway between Milton and Vaughan that would pass through the Greenbelt. Similarly, the party said it would cancel the Bradford Bypass, a route that is set to traverse the Holland Marsh.
“We will reverse Doug Ford’s systematic cancelling of the environmental protections in this province — the (environmental assessments), the conservation authorities, all the rules and regulations designed to protect us from unsafe weather events fuelled by the climate crisis,” Schreiner said.
Elsewhere, the party said it would provide free heat pumps to households earning under $100,000 and zero-interest loans for those with larger incomes to get their own.
Trending Now
Trudeau says Canada as 51st state is a ‘non-starter,’ vows tariff response
New Brunswick border town reacts to Trump’s 51st state comments
The Greens are pushing ambitious housing promises to remove the land transfer tax for first-time buyers and drop development charges on new homes under 2,000 square feet if they’re built within existing urban boundaries.
The party’s platform targets two million new homes.
Households earning less than $100,000 would also see a tax cut under the Green Party’s plans, while rural hospitals would receive a funding bump.
The Greens’ costed platform suggests that cancelling highways would save $12 billion to help pay for their plan, while increasing the top rate of tax by three per cent would also raise $10 billion.
The Greens are the first provincial party to release their election platform.
The Ontario NDP is not holding any events on Wednesday, while Progressive Conservative Party Leader Doug Ford is in Washington, D.C.
The Liberals announced a plan to end hallway health care at an event in Toronto, in part by increasing wages for personal support workers and nurses.
The election will be held on Feb. 27.
You can read all four parties’ promises on the Global News promises tracker, which is updated daily.
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
