TORONTO — Ontario will review land swaps in the Green Belt that two provincial watchdogs have rushed and flawed, Premier Doug Ford said Tuesday, but said progression will continue in the meantime.
The assessment of 14 sites the government has removed from the Green Belt for housing development will be part of a wider review of all parcels of land in the Green Belt, Ford said. Opposition leaders expressed fear that the review would prompt the Prime Minister to take further action. Open the green belt.
New Minister for Municipal Affairs and Housing Paul Calandra, who will take over after Steve Clark resigned from the cabinet on Monday, will publish the review, Ford said. It will be a 10-year review mandated through the Greenbelt Act, introduced a few years earlier, and will come with land swap sites, he said.
“These sites, these proposals, will have to do it on their own merits,” the prime minister said.
In the meantime, the provincial land and progression facilitator will continue to work with the 14 parcels of land and developers to “move forward,” Ford said.
“Just a message to the 14 owners of this property: if I don’t see movement, move back to the Green Belt,” he said.
Ford has said in the past that it expects construction of the planned 50,000 sets on those lands to begin no later than 2025 and for “significant progress” on approvals to be made through the end of this year.
The prime minister gave no data on the expected duration of the recently announced review, although the last one lasted two years.
NDP leader Marit Stiles said declaring any other review was not a smart resolution and called for the 14 parcels of land to be returned to the Green Belt without delay.
“It’s going to be a huge waste of time and money in the province of Ontario, when we already know very well what happened,” he said.
“Actually, what worries me is that what I’ve heard the Prime Minister say is that he’s going to take a look at the plans of other promoters and reopen other opportunities in the Green Belt, which is precisely the direction to go. “
Asked Tuesday whether Ford would open up more ground for progress from the review, Ford said: “We’ll see what the review says. . . It will be up to the minister to make that decision. “
Green Party leader Mike Schreiner said he too is keen that the review will lead to further progress on the Green Belt.
“I, the Prime Minister, have today declared open the crusade for the Green Belt,” he said.
“He obviously doesn’t realize how important it is for farmland to feed us. Especially at a time when other people are struggling to pay their grocery bills, we want our local food supply chains. “
Last year, the province got rid of 7,400 acres of land in 15 sections of the Green Belt to build 50,000 homes and replaced them with around 9,400 acres elsewhere; the Auditor General found that 2,400 acres of land added to the Green Belt were already protected by existing measures. . Strategies.
Ford announced last week that it was contemplating returning one of those 15 parcels of land to the Greenbelt after saying a company had tried to sell two homes in Ajax, Ontario.
Tuesday’s announcement follows the final month of two scathing reports through the Auditor General and the Integrity Commissioner.
Both found that Clark’s leader favored some developers over others by settling on land to leave the Green Belt.
Integrity Commissioner J. David Wake criticized Clark for supervising his crew chief, Ryan Amato.
Wake said Amato was the driving force that settled on the lands that would come out of the Green Belt.
He asked the legislature to admonish Clark, but it’s unclear exactly what that would look like.
Ford asked Clark in a mandate letter shortly after the 2022 election to propose a process to open the Green Belt through fall 2022.
Although the ministry has won about 630 requests to remove Green Belt sites since 2005, a team of officials visited by Amato was limited to reviewing 22 sites, the auditor general found. All but one of those sites were known and provided through Amato herself.
Of the 15 plots finally eliminated, 14 were incorporated into the order through Amato, according to the auditor. More than 90% of the land on five plots of land was ceded to him through two developers he met at a commercial event, he discovered.
Amato said in his resignation letter that he was sure he acted appropriately, but that he didn’t need to be distracted from the government’s work on housing construction.
The RCMP is reviewing the data lately to see if it merits investigating the land change in the Green Belt. Ford said he was convinced there was nothing criminal.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on September 5, 2023.
Doug Ford, what a snake oil salesman he is, corrupt to the bone.