Ontario Premier Doug Ford takes questions from the media during a press conference at the Ontario Legislature on Sept 5, 2023.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced a review of the province’s Greenbelt on Tuesday, as he continued to battle a political firestorm over his government’s decision to open up parts of the environmentally protected area to housing development. But he vowed that homes would still be built there, and that hundreds more carveouts for developers would be considered.
Mr. Ford, addressing reporters at Queen’s Park just a day after the resignation of his housing minister, Steve Clark, said the “top-to-bottom” review would re-evaluate 14 of the 15 plots of land his government removed from the Greenbelt last year. But he also said the review would consider up to 800 requests from municipalities and developers to remove even more chunks from the 800,000-hectare protected zone, which arcs around the Greater Toronto Area.
The Premier said his review would not mean any pause on work under way to turn those 14 already-removed plots into housing. Talks continue between developers and municipal and provincial officials on how to pay for the needed infrastructure on those lands, which make up about 3,000 hectares. The government has said shovels must be in the ground by 2025 at the latest.
“A year down the road, folks, you’re going to see homes being built at an unprecedented rate,” Mr. Ford said.
Explainer: The Ontario Greenbelt controversy, Doug Ford’s role and what has happened so far
The 15th property removed from the Greenbelt last year, located in Ajax, Ont., is in the process of having its protections restored after its owner put it up for sale, raising the ire of the Premier.
Mr. Ford’s opposition critics have demanded a restoration of all the lands to the Greenbelt, and their calls have been bolstered in recent weeks by reports from the province’s Auditor-General and Integrity Commissioner.
Bonnie Lysyk, whose term as auditor-general ended Sunday, concluded that the government’s process of selecting the land for removal from the Greenbelt was rushed, seriously flawed and “favoured certain developers.” She found that the changes had resulted in an $8.3-billion windfall for developers, in the form of increased land values.
The province’s Integrity Commissioner, J. David Wake, ruled that Mr. Clark had violated the legislature’s ethics rules by failing to properly oversee Ryan Amato, Mr. Clark’s former chief of staff, who drove the selection of Greenbelt lands to be removed. Mr. Clark resigned Monday, prompting a Labour Day cabinet shuffle. He had previously vowed to stay on despite the commissioner’s report.
Mr. Amato resigned on Aug. 22. The following day, the Ontario Provincial Police announced they were referring the Greenbelt matter to the RCMP for review.
On Tuesday, Mr. Ford compared the Greenbelt, created in 2005 by a previous Liberal government to preserve farmland and contain urban sprawl, to something out of a dictatorship, though such zones are common in other jurisdictions. The Premier also falsely stated that the Greenbelt’s creation had been done without consultation. And he erroneously suggested it had involved the government taking possession of land.
“Folks, there’s nowhere in the entire world outside of, I don’t know, communist China and North Korea, that a government comes in with no consultation and takes two million acres of privately held property off people. We’re going to review it,” he said.
Paul Calandra, who was appointed Housing Minister on Monday, replacing Mr. Clark, will oversee the Greenbelt review, Mr. Ford said. The Premier said the process will involve consultations with members of the public and Indigenous groups, as well as analysis by civil servants. It will be up to the new minister to decide if any more land should be removed, Mr. Ford said.
The 14 plots his government has already taken out of the Greenbelt will have to stand on their “own merits,” Mr. Ford said, but he did not elaborate on what criteria would be used.
He compared the process to the 10-year review mandated in Greenbelt legislation, which the previous Liberal government completed in 2017. That process rejected most of the hundreds of long-standing carveout requests that existed at the time, but made some small boundary changes. Mr. Ford inaccurately said that no consultations were done as part of that review.
The Premier has acknowledged that his government’s process for selecting the Greenbelt land to be removed “could have been better,” and he has said he will implement most of the recommendations from Ms. Lysyk’s report, which he said will inform the review.
Mr. Ford has repeatedly said the Greenbelt land is needed to address a housing crisis that has driven real estate values out of reach for many Ontario residents, and is set to worsen with increasing levels of immigration.
But experts, including Ms. Lysyk and the government’s own housing industry task force, have said Ontario has already earmarked more than enough land to meet its target of building 1.5 million homes by 2031. The Premier has dismissed those conclusions as out of date.
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles called Mr. Ford’s review “a colossal waste of time” and “a complete sham.”
“The Premier knows perfectly well what needs to happen here,” she told reporters at Queen’s Park. “These were dirty deals. The Greenbelt should never have been carved up in the first place. That land was protected for a reason.”
Interim Ontario Liberal leader John Fraser suggested Mr. Ford is prepared to open up even more of the Greenbelt to benefit wealthy developers. He pointed to Ms. Lysyk’s conclusion that the extra land is not needed.
“It’s not about the housing crisis we have right now,” Mr. Fraser told reporters. “This has all been about money. And quite frankly, it’s greed.”
Ontario Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner said the Premier had “declared open season on the Greenbelt.”
Phil Pothen, of the advocacy group Environmental Defence, said it is “shocking” that the government would consider taking even more land out of the Greenbelt. He added that the existing removals should instead be immediately reversed.