A review of Ontario’s Greenbelt could recommend more land be added to the protected area, but it could also see more lands removed, the province’s new housing minister said Wednesday.
A day after Premier Doug Ford announced a review of all parcels of protected Greenbelt land, as well as the sites the government removed for housing development late last year, Paul Calandra said he has asked the ministry to come up with parameters for the review to start “very soon.”
“I’m not going to presuppose what the work of the review is,” he said.
“It will be a full, open and accountable process. It will look at the entirety of the Greenbelt. There might be lands that need to be added to the Greenbelt. There may be some lands that are removed, but it will be a fair and open process that will live up to the spirit of the original intent of the Greenbelt.”
Ontario created the Greenbelt in 2005 to protect agricultural and environmentally sensitive lands in the Greater Golden Horseshoe area from development.
The review announced this week comes after two scathing reports were released last month from the auditor general and the integrity commissioner saying that the housing minister’s chief of staff favoured certain developers over others when selecting which lands would come out of the Greenbelt.
Ford has admitted the process was flawed, and has accepted the auditor’s recommendations on procedural changes, but Calandra said Wednesday he stands behind the intent of what the government was trying to do.
“To be completely clear, I was very supportive of removing lands for the purposes of meeting our goal of building 1.5 million homes,” he said.
“I think we can accomplish the goal of building 1.5 million homes while respecting our natural heritage.”
Assessing 14 sites the government removed from the Greenbelt will be part of a larger review of all parcels of protected Greenbelt land - mandated every 10 years - and the review of those sites should be done by the end of the year, Calandra said.
Calandra has held the housing portfolio just since Monday, after Steve Clark resigned.
Calandra also said he will be making a number of other changes in housing policy, including revising the use of Ministerial Zoning Orders, which override local zoning bylaws, implementing a “use it or lose it” policy so developers can’t sit on permits without building, and potentially increasing the non-resident speculation tax from its current 25 percent.
