Doug Ford now says the Greenbelt is a ‘scam.’ Was he ever serious about protecting this natural space?

Thestar.com
May 17, 2023

To his critics, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has always been a one-man carnival of hokum, bunkum and embellishment. In other words, an inveterate salesman willing to tell listeners whatever it is he thinks they want to hear.

Even his supporters, however, on the issue of the Greenbelt, must be feeling at least faint misgivings these days about the premier’s apparent capacity for out and out deceit.

For five years, after having been caught before winning office promising developers to “open a big chunk” of the Greenbelt for development, Ford has assured Ontarians that his comment was but a momentary lapse.

In immediately recommitting to preservation of the 800,000 hectares of protected farmland, forests and wetlands in the Greater Toronto Area, he could hardly have been clearer.

“Unequivocally, we won’t touch the Greenbelt,” he said. “I’ve heard it loud and clear; people don’t want me touching the Greenbelt. We won’t touch the Greenbelt.”

The Progressive Conservatives put out a news release declaring that the natural space would be protected “in its entirety.”

There wasn’t enough wiggle room in his words for a flea to scratch an itch.

But just in case, Ford took pains to reiterate his commitment to environmental protection.

“I have committed not to be paving anywhere in the Greenbelt.”

“I have not touched the Greenbelt. We won’t touch the Greenbelt. We won’t build on the Greenbelt.”

In fact, he said his government intended to expand the Greenbelt, created in 2005 by the Liberal government under Premier Dalton McGuinty to protect natural spaces, such as wet lands, while providing a buffer against urban sprawl.

“It is absolutely imperative if we want to do anything about sprawl, gridlock, if we want to do anything about improving the quality of life for people, particularly in the GTA,” then Municipal Affairs Minister John Gerretsen told the Star in 2003.

“It is about the environment and the quality of life that people want to enjoy in this area ... we cannot allow the sprawl (of) the last 15 to 20 years to continue,” he added.

For a time, that’s a vision that Ford appears to have supported.

Then, in 2022, Ford’s party won a second majority government. Soon after came the surprise news that his government intended to backtrack on repeated pledges to safeguard the Greenbelt. He cut a deal for development. He said a devilish housing crisis made him do it.

Some 7,400 acres would be opened up for 50,000 homes while 9,400 acres would be added to the Greenbelt elsewhere.

In short order, he seems to have become entirely comfortable with a reversal so startling it would give most people whiplash.

He has abandoned his former pieties about the Greenbelt. To hear him tell it now, its lands are an over-rated patch of scruff, with a misleading name concocted by the former Liberal government.

“Let’s just be honest, the Greenbelt was a failed policy, a flawed policy from the Liberal government,” he declared last week.

“It was just a big scam as far as I’m concerned.” Such language suggests that Ford has moved beyond opening up parcels of the Greenbelt for development to now doubting whether the entire Greenbelt has merit.

How does one get from “unequivocally, we won’t touch the Greenbelt” to “it was just a big scam”?

Perhaps it really wasn’t such a long journey.

Perhaps the veil has slipped and Ontario is now seeing what Ford truly thinks of this protected natural space.

Perhaps the premier actually spoke his truth five years ago, before he was elected, when he promised its development.

Perhaps he was being duplicitous with Ontarians -- over and over again -- ever since.

If so, the premier has more on his hands than just a fight over the Greenbelt. He has muddied himself in far more existential ways.

By playing fast and loose with Ontarians, the premier has damaged no one so much as himself.