Irreversible environmental harm, nonsensical urban planning and accusations of corruption
After a mere thirty-day public consultation period, the Ontario government has officially decided to go ahead with its plan to remove 7,400 acres from the protected Greenbelt. This announcement came just last month, ten days after the public consultations on the initial proposal had closed. The government received over 27,000 submissions for its proposed regulatory changes, the majority of which comprised a wholesale rejection of the proposal from citizens, municipalities, and environmental organizations. In a statement released by the Ontario government they said: “Overall, there was strong support for continued Greenbelt protections and broad opposition to any removals or redesignation of lands under the Greenbelt Plan or Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan. Numerous submissions asserted that the proposal is contradictory to the vision and goals of the Greenbelt Plan and requested a full withdrawal of the proposal.” Despite the overwhelmingly negative feedback, the government has decided to charge ahead and not change its plans at all. On 14 December, two regulations were passed which removed land in fifteen different areas from the Greenbelt and the Oak Ridges Moraine, which is a vast 810,000hectare area of farmland, forest, and wetland stretching from Niagara Falls to Peterborough that’s permanently off limits to development. The fact that the government is going through with the original, unamended regulations only ten days after the consultations concluded indicates that they never really had any intention of listening to the public. Some municipalities affected by the regulations, including Clarington, Pickering, and Niagara Region, said that the proposed removals aligned with previous requests they had made, while Wellington, Erin, Puslinch, and Niagara Region requested additional areas be removed. Hamilton, Toronto, Mississauga, Georgina, Halton Region, Oakville, and Brampton are all opposed to the government’s plan.
The supposed justification for needing to withdraw the zoning order—which dates back to 2003 and banned urban development in the Greenbelt—is the necessity to build new homes, 50,000 to be exact. This is all part of the government’s plan to build 1.5 million homes over the next decade. No one is arguing that we do not need more homes built in the province; the issue the public, environmental organizations, and municipalities have raised is with the location of these development plans. Several proponents say that additional land is not required to meet Ontario’s housing needs, as the GTA has Greenfields that are already marked for housing. The government’s own blue-ribbon panel on housing reached a similar conclusion as well. Not only do urban areas already have land earmarked for development, densification in existing urban centers is the preferred approach to increasing housing supply. The Greenbelt is not a serviced area: There are no schools, hospitals, nor easy access to any of those proposed areas. Thus, development projects will involve extensive building and the erecting of infrastructure to support communities.
Consultations raise concerns regarding irreversible environmental damage to wildlife and ecosystems that development of this scale would lead to. Now concerns are being raised around the integrity of the government’s decision to carve out protected land for housing developers. All three of Ontario’s Opposition leaders have called on the province’s auditor-general, Bonnie Lysyk, to investigate the government’s decision, and examine the financial and environmental impact of opening up the Greenbelt. Marit Stiles (the incoming NDP Leader), interim Liberal Leader John Fraser, and Green Leader Mike Schreiner wrote: “We are writing to you together to ask that your office conduct a value-for-money audit and an assessment of the financial and environmental impacts of the government’s decision to remove lands from the Greenbelt and repeal the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve Act. The removal of protections from these lands has instantly shifted wealth to property owners, who have likely benefited substantially from the rezoning of this land from undevelopable agricultural land to developable land.” When the government sold the land at a discounted price because of easements, the leaders added that the easements to protect land as farmland represent a multi-billion-dollar public investment in Ontario’s ecosystem. Now the money will be going to private landowners, they added, “with no compensation to the public.” Stiles has also filed a complaint with the integrity commissioner about the possibility of “insider information and improper lobbying.”
Investigations already done by The Globe and Mail and other media outlets have shown that key parcels of land in the Greenbelt originally prohibited from development, which the regulations have now backtracked, are owned by developers who are large donors to the governing Progressive Conservative Party. Furthermore, investigations show that some of the land changed hands as recently as September. This has led to speculation about developers having been tipped off. Why else would large developers purchase land which was under explicit conditions to remain farmland? Premier Doug Ford has said that the government did not tip off developers. Just last week Environmental Defence, an environmental charity which has been outspoken against these regulations, asked the OPP to investigate the province’s decision to change the zoning of the Greenbelt. The OPP has yet to determine whether it will investigate.
This is not the only concrete action Environmental Defense is taking to oppose the development in the Greenbelt. Ecojustice, on behalf of Environmental Defence, filed a notice of application for a judicial review of the province’s decision to impose changes on Hamilton’s official plan by expanding the boundary by 2,200 hectares into the Greenbelt. They claim that the government broke the law by forcing Hamilton to expand its boundary into the Greenbelt to build homes. The City of Hamilton’s council has stated previously that it is not interested in expanding its boundary. In a 2021 survey conducted by the city encompassing nearly 20,000 residents about whether to expand its urban boundary, more than ninety percent of respondents said they did not favour the expansion, preferring instead urban intensification to handle its population growth. As public opposition grows from mere complaints, into requests for investigation of corruption, and now to concrete legal action, the current question is of how far the provincial government is willing to go for their Greenbelt plan.