A neighbourhood sits next to the protected Oak Ridges Moraine as part of the Greenbelt in Maple, Ont., on April 12.CARLOS OSORIO/Reuters
Ontario Auditor-General Bonnie Lysyk is poised to release the results of her investigation into the province’s decision to open 3,000 hectares of its protected Greenbelt area to development, a report eagerly awaited by critics who have said the change is nothing more than a windfall for big landowners linked to Premier Doug Ford.
Ms. Lysyk is set to unveil her findings on Wednesday morning, less than a month before her term as Auditor-General is to end. In January, she agreed to a request from all three Ontario opposition leaders that she perform a “value-for-money” audit of the “financial and environmental impact” of the Greenbelt decision. Her report has been delivered to the government in advance of its public release, which is the usual practice of the Auditor-General’s office.
The Premier, who says the land is needed to build homes and address the province’s housing crisis, last month dismissed the probe as beyond Ms. Lysyk’s scope. But critics say they hope the audit reveals how the government chose the 15 properties it removed from the Greenbelt last fall, a decision that broke repeated promises by Mr. Ford not to touch the 800,000-hectare protected area.
The decision has dogged Mr. Ford’s government like few other issues. Opposition politicians have alleged that developers who stood to benefit could have known about the changes in advance.
The legislature’s Integrity Commissioner has also launched a probe. And the Ontario Provincial Police have said they were looking into whether an investigation was warranted. The OPP did not respond to a request for comment last week.
The Premier and his Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister, Steve Clark, have told the Integrity Commissioner the Greenbelt removal plans were drawn up by ministry bureaucrats, not politicians. They say they accepted the proposal “only a few days” before it went to cabinet and was made public. They both deny tipping off any developers about the move.
Some of the plots removed from the Greenbelt are owned by prominent developers who are donors to Mr. Ford’s governing Progressive Conservatives. One of them, Shakir Rehmatullah of Markham, Ont.-based Flato Developments, was invited to the wedding of one of the Premier’s daughters last year.
The Globe and Mail and other news outlets have also reported that many of the properties have changed hands in recent years, including one in King Township, north of Toronto, which was purchased by the Rice Group, a company controlled by developer Michael Rice. That deal closed this past September, just weeks before the land was earmarked for removal from the Greenbelt.
The protected zone, which arcs around the Greater Toronto Area, was created by a previous Liberal government in 2005 to preserve farmland and block urban sprawl. The land that has now been removed from the Greenbelt and opened up for housing development stands to skyrocket in value.
Ford says Ontario Auditor-General’s Greenbelt probe not within her scope
“I think there’s a really huge opportunity to shine a light on how the decision to break a key election promise to protect the Greenbelt was made,” said Tim Gray, executive director of the advocacy group Environmental Defence. He called the spike in property values enjoyed by Greenbelt landowners a “massive gift.”
Mr. Ford, who has in recent months dismissed the entire Greenbelt as a “scam,” says his changes – which would also add 3,800 hectares elsewhere back into the protected area – will create 50,000 homes. But various experts, including the government’s own housing panel, have said the province already has enough land designated for housing to meet its goal of building 1.5 million new homes by 2030.
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles wouldn’t speculate on the audit’s findings, but suggested it would be damaging to the government.
“I think we all have a sense that the walls are closing in on the Ford Conservatives and their insider friends,” she told a call with reporters last week.
Victor Doyle, a former senior Ontario planner who oversaw the creation of the Greenbelt, said in an e-mail that he hopes the Auditor-General’s report “will establish that the removals were not identified or recommended by the civil service and recommend that an in depth, all-party public inquiry into this matter be launched.”
Ms. Lysyk’s investigation was hampered after two prominent developers who benefited from the Greenbelt removals, Silvio De Gasperis and Mr. Rice, went to court in an attempt to quash summonses she had issued demanding they submit to interviews under oath and provide documents and information. They argued her probe exceeded the bounds of her mandate to scrutinize the province’s finances.
Neil Wilson, a lawyer for Mr. De Gasperis’s TACC Group Inc., said Friday his client had sought “further clarification” from the Auditor-General about what she was requesting, but had not heard back. He said the company had no further comment. Neither Mr. Rice nor his lawyers responded to a request for comment.
The government’s Greenbelt move was a sudden reversal of Mr. Ford’s repeated promises not to allow housing development in the protected zone. Those promises were themselves a reversal. During the 2018 provincial election campaign, the Ontario Liberals released a video of Mr. Ford speaking at an event. It showed him promising developers a “big chunk” of the Greenbelt.
The largest single chunk of Greenbelt the government has opened up is the 1,900-hectare former Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve, east of Toronto. Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault has warned he could block development there that harms endangered species or puts the neighbouring Rouge National Urban Park at risk.
Much of the former preserve is owned by companies linked to Mr. De Gasperis. Many of his holdings there were purchased 20 years ago, before the creation of the Greenbelt but after the land had been designated agricultural “in perpetuity.”
A recent Globe and Mail analysis of property records and land sales concluded that most of his long-held real estate in the area had cost him a total of $21.5-million, but could now be worth more than $725-million after being removed from the Greenbelt. Companies linked to Mr. De Gasperis, along with other developers, recently purchased even more land in the area.
With a report from Laura Stone