Ontario Premier Doug Ford's government has been bombarded for months with questions about its plans to open up the Greenbelt. Ford last year took 7400 acres of land out of the Greenbelt and replaced it with 9400 acres elsewhere. He said Ontario needs the land to create more housing as the population, especially from immigration, balloons. But the land he took in southern Ontario is made up of wetlands, farmland, forests, and watersheds. That has environmental activists angry.
In addition, the auditor general Bonnie Lysyk said she was asked by opposition parties to audit and assess the impacts of the government’s decision.
“Our review of the procedures used to amend the greenbelt boundaries in 2022 raise serious concerns about the exercise used, the way in which standard information gathering and decision making protocols were sidelined or were abandoned, and how changes to the greenbelt boundaries were unnecessarily rushed through. In essence, rather than allow the housing ministry’s non-political public service staff to conduct a comprehensive process with expert review to identify and select lands for possible removal from the greenbelt, the government assigned responsibility for this important assignment to political staff.”
Lysyk says that excluded input from the housing ministry, other ministries, and municipalities as well as first nations leaders and the public. She says there was another, more troubling, development.
“The process was biased in favor of certain developers and land owners who had timely access to the housing minister's chief of staff. Owners of the 15 land sites removed from the greenbelt could ultimately see more than a collective $8.3 billion increase to the value of their properties.”
The bombshell report led to calls for an inquiry from opposition politicians, activists, and members of the public.
And Premier Ford was hit with questions from reporters about wealthy developers being given preferential treatment, questions that he didn’t answer and instead deflected with his justification for taking the land.
“First of all, I disagree with preferential treatment. No one had preferential treatment. What we're doing is trying to build the fifty thousand homes for people that need it. And the number one issue out there is affordability, followed by the economy and jobs and health care.”
Ford then used his housing minister, Steve Clark, as a shield when the suggestion was made that the integrity commissioner was investigating.
“My chief and I continue to work with and collaborate with the integrity commissioner on the investigation.”
The auditor general made 15 recommendations in the wake of her report. Ford says his government will work to implement 14 of them, but will not review the decision to open the greenbelt for housing. Lysyk also found that the land removal process was done far too quickly and was controlled by the housing minister’s chief of staff, Ryan Amato.
Meanwhile, opposition parties are calling for the resignation of the housing minister adding that the government’s action on the Greenbelt is indefensible.
Here’s Marit Styles the leader of the New Democratic party.
“If the premier and the minister want to come out and say we were just wildly incompetent, willfully blind, fine," said Marit Styles, leader of the New Democratic party. "Otherwise, I think it’s pretty clear that these decisions served the interests of conservative party donors and friends."
Margaret Prophet is the executive director of the Simcoe Country Greenbelt Coalition.
“To be very honest, we were right the entire time. We knew that this was a stinky deal to begin with. We knew that developers were getting preferential treatment. We knew that there were no science or housing facts that were buried in this decision.”
Ford and his minister Clark have acknowledged that the process for choosing developers was flawed. Clark said he accepts the responsibility to create a better plan. Both Ford and Clark have denied claims that the provincial government tipped off developers about plans to build housing on the Greenbelt.
The New Democratic Party is now demanding a halt to the Greenbelt plan.