Doug Ford’s government is considering handing over parts of the Greenbelt Conservation Area to developers after repeatedly promising not to. Steve Clark, Ontario’s minister of municipal affairs and housing, announced Friday a 30-day consultation on the idea, which would see development in some Greenbelt areas in exchange for conservation zone development elsewhere. He said this could lead to 50,000 new homes. The Greenbelt is approximately 2 million acres of protected land, established in 2005, in the Greater Toronto and Niagara Regions. It was designed to protect farmland and environmental habitat while encouraging denser growth by limiting sprawl. Mr Clarke said his government wanted to release up to 7,400 acres of Green Belt in areas close to existing communities and ready to be built on quickly. In return, 9,400 acres of land elsewhere will be added to the Greenbelt. “It’s like trying to compensate for ripping out someone’s neck by grafting an extra leg onto it,” countered Phil Pothen, Ontario program director at the advocacy group Environmental Defence. He said the purpose of the Green Belt was not to protect random pieces of land but to protect specific places facing the threat of development. “By opening up these 7,400 acres, the government has painted a target on every piece [Greenbelt] land that some developer is interested in accessing,” Mr Pothen warned. Mr Clark suggested the change to the Green Belt as a way to build more homes. His government recently launched sweeping changes to zoning and development approvals, and the minister on Friday called the Greenbelt plan another step toward 1.5 million new homes over the next decade in the Greater Toronto Area. “We must, in the midst of a housing crisis, act decisively,” he said. “We know the pace of housing has not kept pace with demand and we have to make some tough decisions.” The move to open up the Greenbelt flies in the face of promises the Prime Minister has made not to interfere with these lands. In the 2018 campaign, after being caught on film talking about land swaps affecting the conservation zone, Mr Ford promised to “preserve the Greenbelt as a whole”. And in 2020 he told the legislature: “I haven’t touched the Green Belt, we won’t touch the Green Belt, we won’t build on the Green Belt.” Mr Clark argued on Friday that the situation had changed and, with housing pressure mounting, more needed to be done to open up land. Housing advocates say there is plenty of undeveloped land outside the Greenbelt conservation areas on which many more homes could be built. Interim NDP Leader Peter Tabuns says this Green Belt proposal is rooted in “making the rich richer,” not providing housing. “He is on an anti-environmental crusade on behalf of his billionaire developer friends,” Mr. Tabuns said in a statement. “Ford’s moves to destroy farmland and destroy wetlands were never about housing.” In his statement, Green Party leader Mike Schreiner decried “the false choice” between housing and environmental protection. “It’s time to end costly sprawl and permanently protect our remaining farmland, watersheds and green spaces for current and future generations,” he said. “This is essential for our resilience in a changing climate and economic prosperity.” Edward McDonnell, the CEO of the Greenbelt Foundation, a charity dedicated to promoting and preserving these protected lands, warned that the land swap could undermine the integrity of the Greenbelt. “You know, the idea of creating land just doesn’t work,” he said. “But more than that, there is a risk with land swaps in terms of dismantling systems that are critical to the success of the Greenbelt. You know, water resource systems, natural systems, agricultural systems. And what has made the Greenbelt really important to Ontario for a long time is the fact that it protects these integrated systems.”
