Yes, developers potentially made money the day the Ontario government re-designated Greenbelt lands. They do every time new development land is approved
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, right, followed by Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Steve Clark, leave a press conference following the release of the Auditor General’s Special Report on Changes to the Greenbelt, at Queens Park, in Toronto, August 9, 2023.Photo by Arlyn McAdorey/The Canadian Press
Is Ontario’s plan to redevelop a tiny portion of the Toronto-area Greenbelt a political scandal or not?
Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk’s eagerly-awaited report Wednesday failed to conclusively resolve that question. Lysyk did find a smoking gun, but she found no conclusive evidence on it of the fingerprints of Premier Doug Ford or his housing minister, Steve Clark. Instead, Lysyk discovered that Clark’s chief of staff hastily put together the Greenbelt development plan and changed some criteria in a way that favoured particular developers.
Both Clark and Ford say they weren’t aware of the selection process details and there is no evidence to the contrary. Nor did Lysyk uncover any evidence that anyone in the government benefited from the redevelopment plan. Suspicious minds will form their own conclusions, of course.
The AG spent most of her report on an auditor’s favourite subject: process deficiencies. Had the government consulted the usual experts, it would have found that there were many reasons not to develop the 7,400 acres of Greenbelt land, which constitutes about 0.3 per cent of the two-million-acre protected area. That’s hardly surprising. Since the land was in a Greenbelt, one might have presumed there were reasons not to develop it, including reserving it for farm use, wetlands and forests.
Lysyk further argues that the province had already assigned housing targets to all Ontario municipalities, targets that would enable it to meet the Ford government’s goal of building 1.5 million houses in a decade. The AG failed to distinguish between targets and having the land to meet them, but concluded that the Greenbelt land wasn’t needed. That point of view was supported by planning directors in the municipalities affected by the redevelopment. The auditor did not address what optimistic intensification assumptions might underlie that conclusion.
In their response to Lysyk’s report, Ford and Clark were quite happy to focus on the process criticisms. The government has accepted all but one of Lysyk’s recommendations and will make sure things are more transparent in the future, they said. The main point, they argued, is that the province is in desperate need of housing, with 500,000 people arriving in the last 12 months. The government considers itself guilty of nothing more than going in the right direction too quickly.
The Greenbelt affair is shocking to some for what it tells us about how development works in Ontario. For those familiar with the industry, it wasn’t surprising to learn that developers were speculating on land in the sacrosanct Greenbelt. Many Ontario developers are as much land speculators as home builders.
It’s a long play. At least one of the parcels in the new development area was acquired suspiciously close to the government announcement, but others had been owned by developers for years, some before the creation of the Greenbelt in 2005.
Developers can make serious money by buying land that they reasonably assume will eventually be approved for development. In the case of the Greenbelt lands, developers got a big heads-up when Ford said in 2018 that he intended to open up big chunks of the Greenbelt if elected premier. That was publicly reported, although Ford later changed his mind, then changed it again.
The idea that developers would reach out to Clark’s chief of staff to suggest that their properties be re-designated isn’t surprising, either. Lysyk’s report might create the impression that the normal state of affairs is for development decisions to follow from the impartial work of professional public servants. In fact, politicians can do whatever they like. Ottawans saw that in 2021, when the city council approved a remote suburban development fronted by an Algonquin group, calling it an act of reconciliation. That wasn’t the recommendation of city staff.
Yes, developers potentially made money the day the provincial government re-designated Greenbelt lands, but they made money when it recently expanded development lands in Ottawa and Hamilton, too. In fact, developers make money every time new development land is approved.
The Ford government is aggressively trying to change Ontario housing development from a process-driven approach designed to limit housing land to one that strongly encourages housing. That’s what Ontario needs as it tries to grapple with the effects of surging immigration. The former Greenbelt lands could yield 50,000 homes.
If Ontario is to have any hope at all of meeting housing demand, the government needs to focus on results, not process. The location of new housing development is always a political decision and it’s invariably preceded by vigorous lobbying. Some don’t like that, but it’s business as usual, not a scandal.
Randall Denley is an Ottawa journalist, author and former Ontario PC candidate. Contact him at randalldenley1@gmail.com
OTTAWA – Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet and MPs from several other parties were on Parliament Hill Thursday to call for the Senate to pass a Bloc bill on supply management.
The private member’s bill seeks to protect Canada’s supply management system during international trade negotiations.
The dairy, egg and poultry sectors are all supply managed, a system that regulates production levels, wholesale prices and trade.
Flanked by a large group of people representing supply-managed sectors, Blanchet commended the cross-party support at a time when he said federal institutions are at their most divided.
The Bloc has given the Liberals until Oct. 29 to pass two of its bills — the supply management bill and one that would boost old age security — or it will begin talks with other opposition parties to bring down the minority government.
The Liberals have already signalled they don’t plan to support the Bloc pension legislation, but Liberal ministers have spoken in support of supply management.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 10, 2024.
OTTAWA – Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says he’s in favour of mandatory, involuntary drug and psychiatric treatment for kids and prisoners who are found to be incapable of making decisions for themselves.
He said earlier this summer he was open to the idea, but needed to study the issue more closely.
His new position on the issue comes after the parents of a 13-year-old girl from B.C. testified at a parliamentary committee about her mental health struggles before her overdose death in an encampment of homeless people in Abbotsford, B.C.
They said their daughter was discharged from care despite their repeated attempts to keep her in treatment.
Poilievre says he’s still researching how mandatory treatment would work in the case of adults.
Compulsory mental health and addictions care is being contemplated or expanded in several provinces as communities struggle to cope with a countrywide overdose crisis.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 10, 2024.
