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Ontario Auditor General’s Greenbelt Report

Cover of the Auditor General of Ontario Special Report on Changes to the Greenbelt, August 2023

Ontario’s Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk released a scathing report August 9, 2023 that shines a very bright light on the flawed ‘exercise’ to remove land from the Greenbelt undertaken by the Ontario provincial government under Doug Ford. We are extremely grateful for the excellent work AG Lysyk has done in the investigation and in this report.

Fundamentally, land in the Greenbelt is supposed to be permanently protected. While there is no evidence the Ford govenment’s takeouts from the Greenbelt will have any helpful impact on the need for housing in Ontario, the AG estimates that their deeply flawed actions will benefit the wealthy developers who own the impacted land with profits in excess of $8.3 Billion. The way this government grabbed land from the Greenbelt has also created a lot of uncertainty.

From the report:

“About 92% of the approximately 7,400 acres ultimately removed from the Greenbelt are five land sites put forward by two developers (which included a land site associated with a third developer) who had access to the Chief of Staff in September 2022.”

It is well worth your time to read the full report but even the Table of Contents tells a very concerning story.

MEDIA REACTION

Reaction was swift and harshly critical of the Ford government.

This is a selection of articles from the media (some may be paywalled):

REACTION FROM ADVOCACY GROUPS

The Simcoe County Greenbelt Coalition has issued a statement about the AG’s report calling their local MPPs complicit in the $8.3 billion Greenbelt land deals. https://simcoecountygreenbelt.ca/media-statement-auditor-general-on-greenbelt-take-outs/

There isn’t much that makes Ontarians angrier than elected representatives using government to benefit themselves and enrich their friends. And yet here we are. While people are struggling to make ends meet, an unnecessary, thoroughly biased process aimed at enriching a few was made a top priority. This government promotes itself publicly as “for the people” while behind closed doors it’s only the well connected that get the full benefit of the government’s help and power. We need no further evidence that this government is no longer trustworthy, from the top all the way to our local MPPs.Simcoe County Greenbelt Association

Environmental Defence issued a statement about the AG’s report that demands the land in question be returned to the Greenbelt and the Greenbelt expanded, pro-sprawl agenda be reversed and called for an OPP investigation along with new legislation to prevent future government attacks on the Greenbelt and land speculating by developers. https://environmentaldefence.ca/2023/08/09/statement-on-the-auditor-generals-report-that-the-ontario-government-colluded-with-developers-to-remove-lands-from-the-greenbelt/

GOVERNMENT RESPONSE

Lots of pressure is on Premier Doug Ford to take action, specifically for him to ask Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Steve Clark to resign, some are even calling for Ford to resign. Undeterred, in responses to direct questions from the media both Ford and Clark continue to insist the only problem with their actions is they ‘went too fast’. They both claim they did not know anything about the process or the decisions being made until a week before the announcement to open the Greenbelt was made. There is no evidence Ford or Clark will change anything.

There are calls for them to reverse the takeouts from the Greenbelt, as this is one of the 15 recommendations made by the AG in the report, but Ford and Clark are stubbornly refusing to reconsider their decisions. Given any opportunity whatsoever to comment, they resort to gaslighting with their dishonest, evidence-free claims that opening the Greenbelt for development will improve of the lack of affordable housing in Ontario.

Reminder: In February 2022 the government’s own Housing Affordability Task Force report stated that there is enough land outside the Greenbelt to build the homes required to meet Ontario’s needs for at least the next 20 years. Since then, additional evidence has supported this finding, including this report by the former Planner for Waterloo, Kevin Eby.

The Alliance for a Liveable Ontario (ALO) commissioned Environics Research to gauge public perceptions about the cause of the housing crisis facing Ontario, the preferred solutions, and whose opinion people trust. The results show there is overwhelming public support for governments to be actively involved in getting housing built in existing towns and cities where services already exist. The people of Ontario do not want housing on the Greenbelt and farmland. Read the full report.

On August 11, 2023, the opposition, the Ontario NDP officially requested the Legislature be recalled in order to reinstitute Greenbelt protections for the land which was removed.

TAKE ACTION – Use Your Voice

The deeply problematic actions by the Ford government that AG Lysyk has highlighted were supported by the votes of all PC MPPs, including our local Brantford Brant MPP Will Bouma. The position of the Doug Ford government on the Greenbelt removals simply has no credibility.

Hold all PC MPPs accountable for their actions.

During his time as Premier, Doug Ford has shown that he will respond when he knows the public is upset.

Contact your elected representatives to let them know that you do not support their deeply flawed actions to open the Greenbelt for development, and demand that the takeouts be reversed.

You can phone their office – be prepared to leave a message – and you can write them an email. You can also write a letter and send it by regular mail. To assist you, Ontario Nature has created a very helpful tipsheet for writing effective letters.

Contact Information

(click here for other MPPs)

Premier Doug Ford, Office of the Premier, Legislative Building, Queen’s Park, Toronto ON M7A 1A1

phone: 416-325-1941 (answered 24/7, if line is busy call back!)

email: premier@ontario.ca

Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Steve Clark, 17th Floor, 777 Bay St., Toronto ON M7A 2J3

phone: 416-585-7000

email: minister.mah@ontario.ca

Will Bouma MPP Brantford Brant, Office: Suite 101, 96 Nelson St., Brantford ON N3T 2X1

phone: 519-759-0361

email: will.bouma@pc.ola.org

Please take this opportunity to remind MPP Will Bouma (as well as other PC MPPs) that they have not lived up to the commitment he made before the 2022 provincial election and have broken their promise to protect and grow the Greenbelt. Will Bouma tweeted this commitment August 3, 2021 The tweet includes a video with his explanation of the governments plans to protect and expand the Greenbelt.

Join a Rally

TODAY!! The communities most impacted by the takeouts for development from the Greenbelt – the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve – are holding A Rally to Save The Rouge Sunday, August 13th at 1:00pm to 2:30pm at 1550 Kingston Road, Pickering.  Visit their website to learn more and about other actions you can take: https://www.stopsprawldurham.com/

See also: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/save-the-duffins-rouge-agricultural-preserve-and-protect-rouge-national-urban-park-2/

Additional Information

Premier Ford likes to talk about takeouts from the Greenbelt that took place prior to 2018 (when he was first elected). AG Lysyk has included details about these earlier takeouts in her report. In a nutshell this comparison of Ford’s is seriously flawed. Before 2018 any takeouts that were approved, the provincial government held broad consultations over a period of several months. The takeouts took place as a result of a required 10 year review of the Greenbelt. Hundreds of applications for takeouts were submitted to the government at the time for consideration. And while it is true there were 17 areas that were removed in 2017, the total size of all those previous takeouts together was 371 acres. But it is also important to note the government also added 24,958 acres to the Greenbelt. This resulted in a net increase of ~24, 587 acres of land that was being protected by the Greenbelt.

In the fall of 2022 the Ford government took only 3 weeks to select the lands they removed from the Greenbelt using methods that were not transparent until AG Lysyk’s report was released. This was not part of a required review – in fact it was carefully timed to take place immediately after the October 2022 municipal elections. The Ford government takeouts total over 7,400 acres. There was no consultation with municipalities, they ignored their responsibility to consult with Indigenous leaders and First Nations, and also ignored more than 30,000 ERO submissions by the public that opposed the takeouts. It appears that only a few developers were consulted – developers who just happened to own the land to be removed. Ford added land in an area that is remote and much of it was already protected – also without consultation.

The image below shows the section of the AG report that discusses previous Greenbelt takeouts (pages 22-23).

The AG asked some excellent questions in her report:

Why was such a significant decision made so fast and without obtaining defensible information by following normal land-use planning practices?

How could agricultural and environmental impacts not be considered in decision-making about the Greenbelt?