The greatest fallout yet from Ontario’s Greenbelt controversy occurred this week as the province’s housing minister resigned and the premier announced he will do a “complete review” of the Greenbelt lands.
Premier Doug Ford and former housing minister Steve Clark had previously held out against opposition pressure on both points. This buckling shows the weight of that pressure, as does a
new poll that suggests support has dropped for Mr. Ford’s Progressive Conservatives since the end of July.
But the Abacus Data poll released Sept. 5 shows Mr. Ford’s party still ahead, with 34 percent of the current vote share compared to the Liberals’ 28 percent.
On Aug. 9, Ontario’s auditor general Bonnie Lysyk
criticized the Ford government’s process of selecting land to remove from Greenbelt protection in December 2022 as “biased” toward certain developers. The land
—7,400 acres (about 3,000 hectares) across 15 sites
—is now open to housing development, making it much more valuable.
The auditor general’s
report placed much of the blame on Mr. Clark’s then-chief of staff, Ryan Amato, who Ms. Lysyk said was involved in selecting 14 of the 15 sites ultimately approved for removal from the Greenbelt. Mr. Amato resigned on Aug. 22.
But an Aug. 30
report by Ontario’s integrity commissioner said Mr. Clark was to blame for failing to oversee Mr. Amato’s work, especially as Mr. Amato was new to the role and inexperienced.
The Ontario NDP called for Mr. Clark’s resignation, but he
initially said he would continue in his role in the interest of quickly getting housing built amid a housing crisis. Mr. Ford said he stood behind his minister.
Both Mr. Clark and Mr. Ford had said they would implement 14 of the auditor general’s 15 recommendations to prevent bias and impropriety in their decision-making—but would not follow the recommendation that they review the decision to open up the specified 3,000 hectares of Greenbelt for housing development. They said the urgency of the housing crisis demanded they move forward with the building plan.
However, Mr. Clark
resigned on Sept. 4, saying the controversy distracted from work on the housing crisis.
New Review
Mr. Ford reshuffled his cabinet the same day, with former long-term care minister Paul Calandra stepping into the role of housing minister, and the premier
announced on Sept. 5 that his government would do a “complete review” of all Greenbelt lands.
This review is similar to what the auditor general recommended, but Mr. Ford said it falls under a pre-existing mandate to review the Greenbelt in its entirety every 10 years.
He said the land parcels selected last year will be re-evaluated alongside hundreds of other parcels, and will only be removed from the Greenbelt if they remain on merit as the best lands for development.
The December 2022 decision, which saw the approximately
3,000 hectares removed from the Greenbelt to build 50,000 homes, replaced that land with about 3,800 hectares elsewhere.
Mr. Calandra
told reporters on Sept. 6 that the upcoming review may consider removing more lands from the protected area, though he won’t “presuppose” at this point the parameters for the review process. He announced other changes in housing policy, including a policy that will override local zoning bylaws to allow for quicker housing development.
When Mr. Ford shuffled his cabinet, Stan Cho took the helm of long-term care to replace Mr. Calandra, Caroline Mulroney became president of the Treasury Board, and Prabmeet Sarkaria took on the role of transportation minister.
Mr. Ford said he has a “renewed team” in place.
Official Opposition NDP Leader Marit Stiles
called the new cabinet a “slapdash team.”
“Mr. Ford can rearrange the deck chairs all he likes but it’s not going to change the fact that Ontarians are fed up with a corrupt government rigging the system to help select a few of their insiders [to] get even richer—at everyone else’s expense,” Ms. Stiles
said in a press release.
The NDP is
pushing for a probe beyond the Greenbelt issue, levelling widespread corruption allegations, including questions related to Ontario Place development deals.
While the Progressive Conservatives have slipped seven points since the end of July, according to the Abacus poll, the Ford government still has three years until an election. Most of the poll respondents were questioned before Mr. Clark announced his resignation.
