Rivers defines corruption - Auditor General points a finger

By Ray Rivers

August 11th, 2023

BURLINGTON, ON

Premier Doug was right about one thing. Ontario’s housing crisis is a matter of demand and supply. And though he didn’t actually point fingers, we all know that Justin Trudeau’s ambitious immigration policy is mostly why there are all these new Canadian residents looking for homes which don’t yet exist. Still, of the federal leaders only Maxime Bernier would restrict the flow of immigration. Even Pierre Poilievre, who likes to complain about housing and inflation problems related to the surge of newcomers, has yet to offer alternate immigration targets.

Premier and Minister of Housing take their case to the public – the try to keep a straight face.

In any case, housing demand is not why Doug Ford carved up the Greenbelt. One only has to read the well researched and damning report by Ontario’s Auditor General (AG) to see that his justification for gifting Greenbelt lands to his friends was just not true. Every person who voted in the last election and cares about preservation of our democracy and the environment should make her report mandatory reading.

It is a very sad story; a story of betrayal of public trust and one that we would have expected somewhere else, like Russia, rather than Ontario. But Ontario has its own oligarchs, a handful of wealthy developers receiving privileged treatment by the government in power just as they would in Mr. Putin’s world.

Breaking up the Greenbelt was never really about providing new homes for the masses. The AG’s says it well in her report…

The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing (Housing Ministry) had already allocated the entirety of the 1.5-million-unit housing target to municipalities in October 2022—one month before the government’s proposal to remove land from the Greenbelt.

The government and the Housing Ministry did not have evidence that removing land from the Greenbelt was needed to meet the government’s housing goals.

Ontario’s Housing Affordability Task Force determined that a shortage of land was not the cause of the province’s housing challenges and that the Greenbelt and other environmentally sensitive areas must be protected.

Chief Planners in the regions of Durham, Hamilton and York—which are home to all 15 sites removed from the Greenbelt—told us that Greenbelt land was not needed to meet the housing targets assigned to them by the Housing Ministry and that there is sufficient land outside the Greenbelt in their regions that is already or easily serviced.

The Regional Planning Commissioners of Ontario, a group of senior municipal planning leaders from across Ontario, stated it does not support the removal of lands from the Greenbelt as a necessary step to address Ontario’s housing needs.

Ford has attempted to justify this gift to developers by claiming he is, in turn, adding even more land to the Greenbelt. Couldn’t he have designated those those additional lands for housing instead of robbing the Greenbelt? The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs indicated about 83 per cent of the area being removed is classified as prime agricultural land having the highest quality and capability for agriculture. And then there are the vital wetlands, 117 alone in the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve.

Perhaps just as disturbing is how all of this was done. Again, the AG report says it well…..

The way the government assessed and selected lands for removal from, and addition to, the Greenbelt was not publicly transparent, objective or fully informed, and was inconsistent with the vision, goals and processes of the Greenbelt Plan, as well as previous amendments to the Greenbelt boundary.

Opening the Greenbelt for development was not needed to meet the government’s goal of building 1.5 million housing units over the next 10 years.
About 92% of the acreage removed from the Greenbelt was from five land sites passed on to the Housing Minister’s Chief of Staff from two developers, including a land site associated with a third developer.

Assessment criteria provided by the Housing Minister’s Chief of Staff were altered and facilitated the removal of land sites from the Greenbelt.

The proposal prepared by the Housing Ministry—signed and approved by the Deputy Minister of Housing and the Housing Minister, and provided to Cabinet (including the Premier) to inform the decision to change the Greenbelt’s boundary—did not clearly and correctly explain how the proposed land sites had been identified, assessed and selected for removal.

Based on our interviews, other political public service staff in the Minister’s Office, the Premier’s Office and non-political public service staff in Cabinet Office, indicated that they were similarly unaware of how specific properties were identified.

The government did not assess financial impacts such as serviceability costs, taxation impacts and land value impacts of Greenbelt boundary changes.

The 2022 Greenbelt amendments were made without regard for environmental and agricultural risks, were contrary to the Greenbelt Plan’s vision and goals of providing permanent protection to key agricultural lands and natural features, and may lead to adverse environmental and agricultural impacts.

The Province did not make sufficient efforts to consult the public in a meaningful way or to analyze all of the comments received from the public consultation process required by the Environmental Bill of Rights,

Finally, the AG suggested that the windfall profit to the developers was something like $8.3 Billion. What would you call that?

Ray Rivers, a Gazette Contributing Editor, writes regularly applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking.  Rivers was once a candidate for provincial office in Burlington.  He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject.   Ray has a post graduate degree in economics that he earned at the University of Ottawa.  Tweet @rayzrivers

Background links:

AG Report    AG News Release    Oligarchy