Here’s when Doug Ford’s $8.28B Greenbelt land swap will be formally reversed

A bill returning 7,400 acres of land to the Greenbelt will be tabled at Queen’s Park later this month, says Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Paul Calandra.

Thestar.com
Oct. 6, 2023
Robert Benzie, Rob Ferguson

Legislation to enshrine in law Premier Doug Ford’s Greenbelt flip-flop -- and protect the environmentally sensitive land -- is coming Oct. 16.

That’s when a bill returning 7,400 acres of land to the Greenbelt will be tabled at Queen’s Park, says Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Paul Calandra.
“We have to return all of the land obviously and ensure that the additional lands (9,400 acres) that we promised to put back into the Greenbelt (are in the new law) and we’re restoring the easements that were brought with respect to the agricultural preserve,” he said Thursday.

Calandra said the bill is being translated into French and should be ready when MPPs return from next week’s Thanksgiving recess.

NDP Leader Marit Stiles said she wants to pore over the Progressive Conservative legislation before deciding if New Democrats will support it.

“I’m going to wait and see what they present. I don’t know what’s taking so long. I gave them a bill,” said Stiles, referring to one she introduced Sept. 25 that the majority Tories rejected.

“I don’t trust this government for one second. They’ve been making so many deals all across this province,” she said.

“We see over and over again this government in their dirty deals and their preferential treatment. People in Ontario have lost trust in this government.”

Interim Liberal leader John Fraser said the legislation should go further by bringing more transparency to forced municipal boundary changes imposed at the same time as the Greenbelt land swap because it appears some of those revised boundaries have also helped some developers.

“There’s a whole issue around who gets access to this government, who gets favours, who gets the inside information, who gets to influence government.”

If the government truly wanted to protect the Greenbelt, it would scrap plans for Highway 413 linking Highways 401 and 407, the Bradford Bypass from

Highway 400 to Highway 404 and ban more gravel pits, said Green Leader Mike Schreiner.

The Tories hope the bill can put the $8.28-billion Greenbelt land swap scandal behind them.

On Sept. 21, Ford announced housing development would be prohibited on the 7,400 acres of Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area land that he had removed from the two-million-acre Greenbelt.

The controversy has cost the premier two cabinet ministers and two senior aides, all of whom resigned under a cloud.

But with public-opinion polls suggesting the debacle was hurting the Progressive Conservatives and Tory MPPs worried about their seats in the 2026 election, Ford backtracked and apologized for breaking his promise to protect the Greenbelt, admitting “it was a mistake” to open up the lands.

The premier had previously insisted the land was needed to help meet a goal of building 1.5 million homes by 2031 to ease a shortage that has sent house prices skyrocketing.

Steve Clark quit as housing minister after an integrity commissioner’s report found he had his “head in the sand” by allowing his chief of staff, Ryan Amato, who has also since quit, to personally select 14 of the 15 parcels of land that were removed from the Greenbelt.

Then, Kaleed Rasheed resigned as minister of public and business service delivery after giving misleading information to the integrity commissioner about a trip to Las Vegas with Ford aides and a developer whose lands were removed from the Greenbelt. Rasheed now sits as an Independent MPP.

One of those staffers, the premier’s housing policy adviser Jae Truesdell, also resigned.