Ontario Premier Doug Ford is refusing to budge on plans to build on the protected Greenbelt despite a damning auditor general report and experts saying his housing targets can be met by building elsewhere. Ford is introduced during a press conference in Mississauga on Aug. 11.Cole Burston/The Canadian Press
Ontario Premier Doug Ford appeared at a construction site to trumpet his government’s efforts to get new homes built, part of a communications push launched after the Auditor-General concluded his move to open the protected Greenbelt “favoured” a handful of connected developers and gave them an $8.3-billion windfall.
On Friday, Mr. Ford announced $270,000 in additional operating funding for a 40-bed supportive-housing project for the homeless in Mississauga. He used the event to defend his release of 3,000 hectares from the Greenbelt last year, saying it is needed to build 50,000 new homes and help fend off a housing crisis that is due to worsen with increasing immigration.
In the past few days, Mr. Ford’s Progressive Conservative Party has also launched online and radio ads that don’t mention the Greenbelt but say the government is “unlocking more land” for housing in order to accommodate the province’s rapid growth, noting recent numbers that show Ontario’s population shot up by 500,000 in just one year.
At Friday’s event, the Premier appeared alongside Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark despite opposition calls for Mr. Clark to step down in the wake of the report from Ontario’s Auditor-General, Bonnie Lysyk, which declares that the way Greenbelt land was chosen on Mr. Clark’s watch was “seriously flawed.”
In a blistering 93-page report on Wednesday, the auditor said the selection of the Greenbelt tracts removed for housing was driven by Mr. Clark’s chief of staff, Ryan Amato, and subject to a “biased” process that gave certain landowners “preferential treatment.” Mr. Amato, she said, received requests for land removals in envelopes from two prominent developers over dinner at an industry banquet.
Gee: Doug Ford’s Greenbelt mess is just the latest example of his disdain for rules
Answering reporters’ questions on Friday, Mr. Ford dismissed the auditor’s conclusion that certain developers received “preferential treatment” but provided no evidence for his statement. He also appeared to call the entire Greenbelt – which he has previously derided as a “scam” – into question, saying it was unfair to landowners.
“Imagine this, you have land and you’ve had it in your family for generations. And all of a sudden the government comes down and says, they slap something called the Greenbelt, and by the way, you can’t do anything,” the Premier said. “Is that right? No, it’s not right. … That’s not fair.”
Asked later to clarify the remarks, a spokeswoman for the Premier, Caitlin Clark, said Mr. Ford did not mean to suggest any future fate for the rest of the Greenbelt, which she said would continue to exist.
While declining to act on Ms. Lysyk’s centrepiece recommendation to reconsider their Greenbelt removals, Mr. Ford and Mr. Clark committed to implementing her 14 other recommendations, which include giving neutral, professional civil servants a formal avenue to challenge pressure from political staffers. They have also asked the Integrity Commissioner – already investigating the Greenbelt issue – to consider probing whether Mr. Amato broke ethics rules in his dealings with developers.
Mr. Clark said Friday that he and Mr. Amato, who has not responded to requests for comment this week, are co-operating with the Integrity Commissioner, J. David Wake.
Regional planners, environmentalists and the government’s own housing industry task force have said the province had already designated enough land to more than meet the government’s goal of getting 1.5 million new homes built by 2031, without opening any Greenbelt land.
But Mr. Ford and Mr. Clark said Friday that these estimates are out of date, in light of a federal decision last year to further boost immigration. Mr. Clark cited estimates from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. and others suggesting that hundreds of thousands of new homes, beyond the government’s target, are needed.
Ontario’s New Democratic Party released a statement saying that the Greenbelt decision, made in secret and presented to cabinet in October, predates the federal government’s new higher immigration targets, which were unveiled in November and call for about 500,000 newcomers to Canada a year.
Mr. Ford has faced a political furor over his move to break his own repeated promises and remove the 3,000 hectares of the province’s 800,000-hectare Greenbelt, which arcs around the Greater Toronto Area and was created in 2005 to preserve farmland and contain sprawl. His plan also added more land into the Greenbelt to compensate. But much of it, the Auditor-General says in her report, was either already protected or undevelopable.
Some of the land freed up for housing had recently changed hands, prompting calls for probes into whether developers had been tipped off, something Mr. Ford and Mr. Clark deny doing. The Ontario Provincial Police have said that they were considering whether to launch an investigation.
The Official Opposition NDP were already using the auditor’s scathing findings in a concerted e-mail fundraising drive, sending out at least three appeals to donors, the latest on Friday accusing the PC government of “shady deals” and warning that the report is a wake-up call.
Environmental activists fighting the Greenbelt move say the auditor’s revelations are galvanizing opponents.
“I have never seen this level of opposition to government policy,” said Gideon Forman, a policy analyst with the David Suzuki Foundation. “I think the government is in for a fight here.”
Jeff Gray