UPDATED: The Greenbelt Fight Is Far From Over

 

If we can place any credibility in the utterances of federal politicians, the fight to save Ontario's Greenbelt from the depredations of Doug Ford's developer cronies is far from over.

According to The Narwhal, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeaut has serious concerns, given the climate change crisis we are all confronting.

... he said Ontario’s push to develop Greenbelt land “flies in the face of everything we’re trying to do in terms of being better prepared for the impacts of climate change,” and Ottawa “will be looking at the potential use of federal tools to stop some of these projects.”

 “I think we’re being told that in order to provide housing to Canadians, we need to destroy nature. I profoundly reject that premise. I think this is a way of thinking from 50 or 60 years ago.”

It appears there are two ways whereby the federal government could impede Doug Ford's greed-driven legislation. One could stop the desecration of 

the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve east of Toronto, which is directly adjacent to Rouge Urban National Park. In December, Parks Canada warned Ontario that development on the agricultural preserve would violate an agreement between the two levels of government and likely cause “irreversible harm” to the park’s wildlife and ecosystems. 

Though it will likely be some time until developers firm up plans for construction on former Greenbelt land, one possible tool Guilbeault mentioned is species at risk legislation, which he can use to issue emergency orders to stop developments that would harm federally-protected species. Guilbeault did just that in Nov. 2021 when he halted work on a residential development in Longueuil, a Montreal suburb, due to threats to the habitat of the western chorus frog.

The other 

is the federal Impact Assessment Act, which the Justin Trudeau Liberals have already used to intervene on Highway 413, a controversial highway project planned to cut through the Greenbelt. The act doesn’t allow Guilbeault to unilaterally step in and halt a development — instead, citizens would need to make a request about a specific project, the Impact Assessment Agency would do an initial review and Guilbeault would decide if the federal government should give it another layer of oversight.

Guilbeaut also deplored 

that the province moved last fall to disempower conservation authorities, which oversee key watersheds, as part of Bill 23.

“I’m really saddened and shocked by what the Ontario government is doing to [the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority] and the people who invested years and years and years of efforts, time and money to advance conservation,” he said. “They can continue to be an incredible partner and we will continue to work to work with them.”

Will the growing scrutiny of the Ford government's machinations have positive results? Time will only tell, but the fact that both Ontario's auditor general and ethics commissioner  are conducting probes, and the OPP has started a preliminary investigation into the obvious criminality at work here suggests that public scrutiny, outrage and protest will not be going away anytime soon.

Something for the Ford cabal to ponder.

UPDATE: Apparently, Doug Ford is really disappointed that the feds are intruding on his 'jurisdiction'.

 

 

 

Promises Made, Promises Broken

It is no secret that post-election, Doug Ford has behaved like a thug high on amphetamines. Suddenly gone (or brutally betrayed) are the promises of new amity with unions, pending solutions to our health-care crises, and professed reverence for the sanctity of the Greenbelt. 

Might makes right seems to be the philosophy undergirding Doug and The Thugs.

In its Sunday editorial, The Toronto Star examines an administration devoid of integrity, suggesting the new year is the right time to correct the ship of state, a forlorn hope, in my view.

Having won the trust of Ontario voters on June 2, it seems the government set about on a deliberate campaign to abuse it.

Where to begin? Well, the Ford’s government attempts to bulldoze education workers is as good a place as any. It well captures the philosophy of the re-elected government.

Recall that the Ford government introduced back-to-work legislation to preempt job action by the workers, among the lowest paid employees in the school system. It then invoked the notwithstanding clause to bar any legal challenge.

That was provocative in the extreme, an irresponsible use of the notwithstanding clause to sweep away employment rights. The government did back down and withdraw the legislation. But it had shown its stripes.

Then came the housing debacle.

The plan to open up 7,400 acres of natural Greenbelt lands to build up to 50,000 homes has sparked widespread condemnation. The public anger came through loud and clear in the more than 29,000 comments filed during the consultation period. A summary underscores the strong support for continued protection of the Greenbelt and “broad opposition” to any changes.

But post-election, the voice of the people means nothing to this regime.

Such a chorus of objections would have given a more responsible government pause. But not this one, which bulled ahead with no change to its plan.

That opposition doesn’t take into account the other troublesome elements of the housing strategy, like undermining conservation authorities and eliminating development charges for some types of housing. Cities rely on these charges, paid by developers, to build infrastructure. While the province has promised that municipalities won’t suffer financially, that promise remains a work in progress.

All of which has served to distract us from another pressing issue.

It’s telling that the province’s zeal to build more housing has overshadowed what most Ontarians would rightly say is the real crisis in the province — health care. Children’s hospitals in particular have seen unprecedented crowding and postponed surgeries. 

Finally, there is the gifting of taxpayer money to build, of all things, a luxury spa at Ontario Place.

The proposal to give over waterfront land for a privately run spa — using public lands and public money — is a disgrace and should be stopped. As we have written, this waterfront space should remain entirely accessible for the public.

The editorial ends with a plea for the Ford Follies to end, to be replaced by responsible, mature leadership and governance. A tall order, one that I very much doubt this government is capable of, at least with its current lineup of arrogant incompetents.

And the next election is too far away to prevent the massive damage already well in progress.

 

 

 

The High Cost Of Serving Developers

Doug Ford has a lot to be happy about these days. His debt to developers is being rapidly repaid via his Bill 23, which will not only remove key parts of the Greenbelt for development but also relieve many of his friends' financial burdens paying development charges. 

The only problem is the largesse bestowed on them by Premier Doug means high costs for the rest of us, as Kofi Hope writes:

Currently, municipalities put a charge on most new developments (with some exceptions) to help fund the cost of infrastructure needed to serve those developments, such as roads, sewers and transit. The charges apply to each new unit built, and in Toronto an increase passed in 2022 raises them up to $137,000 for a new detached home.

The development industry has argued that these charges are a barrier to building new homes and to making housing more affordable. And some advocates have called for reducing these charges on specific types of housing that help with affordability.

Professor Matti Semiatyki of the Infrastructure Institute says that reducing or eliminating the charges developers pay will have real consequences.

 “Cities are expensive,” Siematyiki says. “All the things the city is raising money for with development charges are things they have to pay for… if developers or new owners don’t pay, someone else will pay, whether through property taxes or other ways.”

And this is the part of Bill 23 that has Ontario municipalities up in arms. It’s estimated that our already cash-strapped cities will lose $5 billion in revenue, and Mayor John Tory says the city could lose $230 million annually. 

The ramifications of waived developments fees are extensive.

 If municipalities lose the revenue of development charges, they’ll raise property taxes or user fees for things like garbage collection. These carrying costs all make it less affordable to own a home, and it doesn’t just affect homeowners. If owners of rental properties find their monthly costs going up, they will raise the rent for tenants. So even if the cost to buy a property in a city is, say, 15 per cent less, if you are paying thousands more each year to keep that property, has housing really become more affordable?

As well,

If municipalities believe they can’t recover the costs that are required for new developments, that could push them to resist new development proposals, meaning Bill 23 may add more conflict and delays to a process everyone agrees needs to move quicker.

And we have to remember, as they say, there is ultimately only one taxpayer.

 Whether government is providing grants to developers to build the type of housing we need, or waiving fees to incentivize housing builds, it means new costs (and costs for the state not private developers).

So in the end, no matter how one parses this, serving the interests of developers is working against the interests of municipalities and ultimately, of course, the taxpayer. 

The last time I checked, developers hardly needed state welfare. 

 

The Fox In The Henhouse

My apologies for titling this post with a cliché, but it seems particularly apt given who is really behind the plan to degrade our greenspace and wetlands, also known as The Greenbelt Grab. 

No surprise: it is the developers and homebuilders.

In a rather telling article, David Wilkes ( President and CEO of the Building Industry and Land Development Association) lays bare, perhaps inadvertently, the influence he and his ilk have over the Ford government's decision-making process.

He begins by trying to provoke a sense of outrage in readers, especially the ones hoping to buy a new home. 

When a family buys a new home in the GTA, as much as a quarter of the price consists of fees, taxes and charges imposed by the three levels of government.

More than half of that amount is levied by the municipality in the form of charges intended to pay for growth-related infrastructure, additional local services and new parks.

What does that mean in dollars and cents?

Across the GTA, municipalities collect $116,000 per new housing unit, on average, in growth funding charges. These include development charges, community benefits charges and parkland cash-in-lieu. The rates for the most significant of these charges — development charges — are based on background studies that municipalities are required to produce every few years.

His dishonesty begins by implying that any savings made through his plan, which I will get to in a moment, will be passed on to the homebuyer. Apparently, the market forces we have been taught to believe in will be magically suspended, so great is the builders' desire to bring affordable housing to all.

His plan, which is also an admission of the great sway builders and developers have upon Doug Ford, is this:

Ensuring that residents get the infrastructure and services they need is important. Unfortunately, for more than a decade, GTA municipalities have been collecting far more in growth funding charges than they have been spending, accumulating an estimated $6 billion in reserves. This estimate is based on the financial information returns that municipalities file each year with the provincial Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

When challenged about the intended use of these large reserves, municipalities state that the funds are allocated. However, in most cases it is not clear whether the funds have been allocated for the new infrastructure and services for which they were ostensibly collected. Transparency and accountability are missing here. (Emphasis mine.)

The last sentence is especially rich, given that, in concert with the government, developers have operated in an atmosphere that can only be politely described as opaque. But the extent of their  influence is apparent in the following:

Given the accumulation of large reserves of growth funding charges by municipalities and the housing affordability crisis we are facing in the GTA, it makes sense that our industry — and the public — wants transparency and accountability around how these charges are collected and spent.

This is why the Ontario Home Builders’ Association (OHBA) last month called on the province to audit major municipalities’ collection and use of growth funding charges. (Emphasis mine.)

Like the obedient soldiers they are, the Ford government intends to do precisely that, at least in cities like Toronto and Mississauga. Recently, the Housing Minister, Steven Clark, promised to make Toronto whole if reduced or eliminated development fees compromise their finances.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Thursday that he does not believe that the loss of development charges entailed in a housing bill his government passed this week will hurt municipalities and said they can likely make up some of the shortfall by cutting waste.

While Clark promised to make the city whole, he also said Wednesday that the province would be launching a third-party audit of municipal reserve funds.

Ford evinced little but contempt for other municipalities objecting to the loss of development fees, including Mississauga's Mayor Crombie.

Ford said Mississauga has increased its fees on new homebuyers by nearly 30 per cent in the last two years and that makes it difficult for people to buy a home. He also accused Mississauga of not fully spending the development charge revenues it gets now, saying the city is sitting on millions of dollars in development charge reserves.

“I see that Mayor Crombie’s out there handing out flyers and doing this – all I say is get on board, stop being disingenuous, you know, with the people of Mississauga,” Ford said. “It’s just absolutely wrong.”

Crombie said development charges do go into reserves, but municipalities are not simply sitting on the money, rather they are treated like savings going toward future long-term projects, akin to a homeowner saving up for a new roof.

“We do not collect money we do not need, and we do not have unlimited chequing accounts,” Crombie wrote.

“In fact, the funds we collect are often not enough to support new growth – we are often short and have to use tax dollars to cover the gaps.”

The Ford government is wholly incapable of any kind of nuanced thinking; that is the limitation resulting from both inveterate, extreme Conservatives and Doug Ford's cognitive and educational shortcomings. 

And all Ontarians will bear the high cost of those failings.

 

 

 

More Of The Same

 

H/t Moudakis

For those hoping my monomania would end after my hiatus, please stop reading now. The depredations of the corrupt Ford government are too much with me.

And apparently also with others, as these letters suggest.

That’s rich: Ford accusing Tory of mismanaging the revenue (he) already collects. What a laugh! Of course, Bill 23 hurts cities’ finances. Why should I pay for some urban sprawl somewhere that needs roads, hydro, water, and so on?

What I would really like to know is what do Ford and his developer cronies consider “affordable, attainable homes”?

Dollars to doughnuts, it will not be affordable housing except for those than can afford over $1 million for a home.

Developers are out to make money, bottom line, and they don’t make it with “affordable” housing, and that’s the problem.

You can bet that monster homes will be built with four garages, because the only way to get into the city will be by highway.

Georgia Volker, Toronto 

We all know the government of Ontario is not being run the way it was originally designed. All the ministries are made up of professional experts in their fields, so why doesn’t the Ford government use them more?

Would the Deputy Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs want to build houses on Ontario’s No. 1 farmland, which Bill 23 calls for?

Part of the ministry’s mandate is land-use planning. I would imagine that housing would be encouraged on the less fertile lands. Again, the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks, not to mention the conservation authorities, should be very upset with development plans for the Greenbelt.

It seems to me that the proper way to approach Bill 23 would be for Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Steve Clark to bring in all the views from affected ministries, such as agriculture and environment, if they haven’t already done so.

I would expect the ministries to work together to find common ground as Minister Clark is dramatically affecting the land-use decisions (that affect) the other ministers.

Greg Prince, Toronto 

Former Ajax mayor Steve Parish is right on, (in saying) development charges are not used as a slush fund by our municipalities; they are used to fund the growth-related component of new infrastructure, such as water and wastewater treatment plants, roads and firehalls.

Without development charges, local property taxes are expected to rise significantly in Ontario.

Ratepayers should not be expected to pay for growth-related infrastructure.

Surely there is a better way to build homes faster than to eliminate development charges and destroy municipal planning departments and our conservation authorities, which are essential.

Telling our municipalities that they need to find new efficiencies to make up for lost development charges is a huge pill to swallow, especially for our smaller cities and towns, not to mention that the math does not equate.

As an alternative to Bill 23, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing should be consulting with Ontario’s municipalities to see where proposed housing densities can be increased under local Official Plans.

Jim McEwen, Bowmanville, Ont. 

Besides threatening clean water, biodiversity, wildlife and Grade 1 farmland crucial to food security, Bill 23 will gut protection for renters because it will no longer require developers to replace affordable units.

By taking away development charges, it puts money in the pockets of developers at the expense of municipalities which will be forced to drastically cut services or hike property taxes.

The argument that the Greenbelt needs to be encroached upon to build much needed housing is bogus; there is enough land within urban boundaries to build housing and create sustainable communities and many municipalities have already created and put forward excellent development plans ready to implement.

Esther Cieri, Toronto 

 

Please Pardon My Cliche

But there is only one taxpayer, something Ontario municipalities may need to be reminded of.

 

I say this because I am discerning a possible divide-and-conquer ploy at work by the Doug Ford government. As I have posted extensively over the past several days, that government is doing its damndest to enrich developers by obviously leaking information to them as to what lands would be removed from the Greenbelt. 

However, there is much more to their largesse, a largesse that will cost all of us dearly.

That involves the freezing, reduction and removal of the development charges they pay as they build new houses, that money used mainly to fund the infrastructure to service new surveys as well as build truly affordable abodes. This gift to well-connected developers is being justified with the risible lie that the crisis in affordable housing will be thus mitigated by another fiction, that homebuilders will pass on these savings to those purchasing a new home

It is a measure that will require that municipal taxpayers assume those costs. One estimate places those costs at $5.1 billion over nine years.

And this is where we come to the divide-and-conquer strategy. Because public outrage is growing, not over those costs but the noisome stench of corruption emanating from Bill 23, Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steven Clark has extended an 'olive branch' to Ontario's capital, Toronto.

On Wednesday, Ontario Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark sent a letter to Tory saying the province would commission a third-party audit of Toronto’s finances to help determine the effect of the legislation, and is committed to ensuring the city is “made whole” if “there is any impact” on its “ability to fund housing-related infrastructure and services because of Bill 23.”

While I suspect the 'audit' will find that there is no need for provincial aid, others want to get in on the 'offer'. Mississauga's mayor, Bonnie Crosby, estimates the shortfall to her city at up to $885 million over 10 years with costs to taxpayers of $300 to $600–a year over the next decade, and that, of course, is on top of whatever other things are budgeted for, like libraries, community centres, etc.

Said Crombie,

... cities need to be compensated for the significant losses they’re set to accrue and said she would welcome an audit of Mississauga’s finances to show that the municipality only collects what it needs to function. 

“I would welcome the opportunity to correct the record and run the province through our numbers. We are fiscally responsible in Mississauga,” Crombie told reporters. 

“I would also welcome a similar commitment [that Toronto received] that Mississauga be compensated for any losses from Bill 23. 

Which brings me back to the beginning of the post. There is only one taxpayer, and while provincial funds would reduce the impact on local ratepayers, they would do nothing to address the inherent obscenity of wasting taxpayers' dollars to subsidize wealthy developers. And all of this ado could have been so easily avoided, given the absolutely unnecessary opening up of the Greenbelt.

The government equally insists that the betrayal of its promise not to develop the Greenbelt was forced on it by the province’s housing crisis. But that is contradicted by a report from the Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force, an expert government panel that concluded in February that “a shortage of land isn’t the cause of the problem.”

It is further troubling that, according to the government, the Greenbelt carve-outs will produce only 50,000 new homes. The Ford government’s overall goal is to build 1.5 million homes over 10 years; in other words, it can presumably build 1.45 million homes – well within an acceptable margin of error – without rewarding speculation in the Greenbelt. 

Doug Ford has long proclaimed that Ontario is open for business. What he failed to add was that in many instances, the business he is promoting is shady and reeks of corruption and disdain for the citizens of this province.

The Stench That Cannot Be Ignored

 

H/t Moudakis

A Star letter-writer observes that Doug Ford must think Ontarians are stupid. In that I hope he is wrong, At least, as seen in the report that follows this letter, his political opposition is not letting his depredations of the Greenbelt go unchallenged.

Changes to the way Ontarians live are coming thick and fast from Premier Doug Ford.

From rearranging regional and city governments to take away oversight and responsible decision-making, to cutting health care costs at a time of unprecedented demand, to destroying the Greenbelt he seems to have gone mad with power.

Which begs the question: Is there no way to check this man? Has Ontario become an autocracy complete with its own dictator?

Our premier must think Ontarians are stupid as he works to restrict health care wages, safety protocols and access to medicine to try to drive our health care system to the breaking point so he can tout privatization as the only solution. Of course, he will never admit privatization — with a built-in profit factor — will cost more. So he lies about his motivations and goals to make his strategy more acceptable.

Turning to the Greenbelt, prior to the election he was caught discussing plans to open it to development. He then publicly stated he would never do that. Once he was re-elected, he did just that.

It is said people get the government they deserve.

But does Ontario really deserve Doug Ford?

J. Richard Wright, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.

Meanwhile, as Richard Benzie reports, Municipal Affairs Minister Richard Clark brazenly tries to deflect attention from the apparent corruption in his government's relationship with well-heeled developers, a corruption the Opposition demand be investigated.

Asked by reporters Monday if “cronyism” was at play, Clark said, “No, it’s a bold action by the government to ensure that we meet our housing target at the end of the day.”

The Tories are facing criticism after revelations party donors stand to benefit from the opening up of 7,400 acres of protected Greenbelt land to housing construction.

 But an investigation by the Toronto Star and the Narwhal found that of the 15 areas where development will soon be allowed, eight included properties purchased since Premier Doug Ford’s election in 2018.

NDP MPP Marit Stiles (Davenport) has asked the auditor general to probe the land deals. She said the Tories are making changes to “benefit powerful landowners” with ties to the governing party.

“Given how suspicious this looks, the least the government can do is be transparent about what has been happening behind closed doors,” said Stiles. “How did the government choose which lands were going to be removed from the Greenbelt?”

Despite his blithe dismissal of accusations of cronyism (I prefer another word: corruption), it is clear something is rotten in the state of Ontario, a fact not missed by Green Party leader Mike Schreiner, who said the Tories are

“absolutely rewarding literally a handful of wealthy land speculators who are going to turn a million into billions.

“This is a huge land play for a handful of people to cash in and the people of Ontario are going to pay the price for it,” said Schreiner, warning of other consequences for agriculture and the food supply.

“People don’t realize that once you start saying protected land can be developed, you can engage in speculation on protected land,” he said.

“So it’s going to make that land unaffordable for farming because farmers are never going to be able to purchase land that is being valued for (potential) development.”

As Rob Ferguson writes, Schreiner has filed a complaint

with the provincial integrity commissioner seeking an investigation into the property deals.

“Over half the parcels of land being opened for development in the Greenbelt were purchased after Premier Ford was elected and some of those parcels of land were purchased as recently as September of this year,” Schreiner said.

“This doesn’t pass the smell test … we need to clear the air.”

Schreiner is right. Ignoring a stench this fetid does no one other than the Ford government and its developer supporters any good.

Ontarians, public morality and justice demand much, much more.

 

 

UPDATED: The Smell Of Urban Doom

It is expected that the Ontario government will today pass Bill 23, a.k.a. The Doug Ford Gift To Developers Act. The consequences of that legislation will be far-reaching, so much so that it warrants a united opposition from all who live in cities and enjoy the amenities that urban living offers.

Mississauga City Councillor Carolyn Parrish stops short of calling it panic. But in her 38-year political career, she says she has never seen the kind of stunned apprehension that Ontario’s More Homes Built Faster Act has evoked among municipal officials.

Known as Bill 23, the sweeping act aimed at building 1.5 million more homes in the next decade will freeze and reduce the development fees cities charge developers for the infrastructure to support the residents their buildings will house.

Across the GTA and beyond, politicians and bureaucrats are reeling at the prospect of what the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) estimates will be a $5.1 billion revenue shortfall over nine years, including $400 million in lost funding for community housing.

Civic officials across the region are using words like “unfathomable” and “devastating” to describe the fallout — tax hikes, service cuts and axed capital projects such as roads, sewers and transit.

The largesse that the Ford cabal is serving up to its developer overlords will come at a heavy cost to municipal taxpayers.

Mississauga says the new development rules will mean an $885 million loss in revenue over the next decade. Filling the gap would require a five per cent property tax increase every year for at least 10 years and/or cuts to city services and capital projects, according to city staff.

The government's propaganda would have the simple believe that the bill will result in more houses built in a cheaper and more timely manner. As well, Housing Minister Steve Clark says it will provide incentive for developers 

to build more affordable and purpose-built rentals thanks to new fee exemptions on those projects. It will also help reduce the cost of housing for those looking to buy.

Critics say 

there is nothing in Bill 23 that compels developers to build the kind of affordable rentals and supportive housing that protects against homelessness.

“If municipalities lose this funding they’re put in an impossible position. They will not have enough money to pay for the infrastructure that we need to continue for current and new Ontarians,” said Toronto NDP MPP Jessica Bell, a member of the legislative committee charged with gathering public feedback on the bill.

She said she was struck by the sheer enormity of the housing bill, which is hitting at the same time as the Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government has allotted strong mayor powers to Toronto and turned over 7,400 acres of the protected Greenbelt to housing development.

Richmond Hill Mayor David West said his city has also asked the province to pause Bill 23 to allow for consultation.

“The costs to municipalities when growth does not pay for growth will be unfathomable,” said West.

“You either have to do without growth infrastructure, or the infrastructure can’t be paid for any other way but through property taxes,” he said. “That tax base was never designed to pay for this kind of growth.”

Clearly, there is method in the Ford madness. As has been observed, Bill 23 comes at a time when many new city councils have yet to be sworn in, and even those that have been have had no time to digest the full implications of this retrograde bill.

I recall not too long ago that Doug Ford was booed publicly. I suspect that experience will ultimately be dwarfed by the massive outrage that will ensue once the effects of this destructive bill are felt: closed libraries, decaying infrastructure, massive tax hikes: these are not the rantings of prophets of doom. Rather, they are the inevitable outcomes of having elected a government whose primary allegiances are hardly with the people they, in theory, serve.

 

 UPDATE: Bill 23, the More Obscene Profits for Developers Act, has passed.

 

 

The Smell Of Protest

Tomorrow marks the day that the Ford Government enacts Bill 23, The Gift To Developers Act. It can also rightfully be designated The Environmental Destruction Act, since it will not only fill the already overloaded bank accounts of Ford's wealthy friends, but also deplete the natural reserves we have to battle the ever-increasing pace of climate change. 

Of course, Conservatives have never been known for their long-range planning capacity.

Nor has this government for the people ever been known for listening to the people. Nonetheless, protests continue, one hopes a cogent reminder that some people have long memories. Here is a clip from one of the protests conducted yesterday:

I suspect the Ford cabal is sadly mistaken that people will return to their usual quiescence once the bill is passed. Too much is at stake environmentally; add to that cost the much higher taxes ratepayers will have to pay since the bill also greatly reduces the fees developers must pay for the infrastructure needed in their sprawling developments. Indeed, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario estimates the bill could leave communities short $5 billion and see taxpayers footing the bill, either in the form of higher property taxes or service cuts.

Like the bully he is, Doug Ford thinks he can imperiously sweep aside opposition by legislative fiat. Yet he is grossly underestimating the popular opposition Bill 23 has provoked. He is also underestimating the power municipalities have in either stopping or greatly slowing down his sprawling vision. As I recently wrote about what some on the newly elected Hamilton city council are contemplating:

Simply deny the budgeting funds needed to pay for the costly infrastructure that new, far-flung development entails. It is difficult to see how the Ford cabal could counteract such a measure, unless the premier invoked another notwithstanding clause threat to overturn local democracy.

May the passions and forces coalescing against Ford's heavy-handed rule ultimately prevail.

The Smell Of Manure

Unless they have spent their entire lives within the confines of a city, I doubt there are many people unacquainted with the smell of manure. This pungent organic waste, while offensive to many, is instrumental in helping to ensure that the land growing our crops is sufficiently fertile to produce good crop yields.

Unfortunately, there is another kind of manure that exhibits a greater stench, that of corruption and the granting of privileged information to select interests. That stench emanates from Queen's Park and the Doug Ford Conservative government.

I recently posted about the Toronto Star-Narwahl joint investigation into that government's decision to open up parts of the Greenbelt to housing developments, a decision that stands to increase the great wealth of several developers with deep ties to the Ford government. 

And therein lies the stench.

A report by CTV News the other day makes clear that insider knowledge has been shared with select developers, one of them being Green Lane Bathurst GP Inc., of which developer Michael Rice is the director. The following report, in my view, definitively illustrates the more-than-cosy relationship Rice and other developers have with our self-proclaimed 'government for the people'. (The video is of subpar quality, as I had to record, compress and then upload the file from my computer: 

Unless one has a naive disposition, one likely will conclude that the evidence of unethical, even illegal, conduct on the part of the Ford cabal is strong. The NDP is calling for the auditor general to investigate this entire imbroglio. I would suggest the Opposition go one step further and request that the Ontario Provincial Police open an investigation and look for the criminal wrongdoing that is strongly suggested by all of this.

The People Speak

 

H/t Moudakis

H/t de Adder

Following up on yesterday's post, here are some of the things people are thinking about when they consider Doug Ford and his unholy relationship with developers:

Doug Ford shows his true colours with attack on the Greenbelt, Cohn, Nov. 11

Premier Doug Ford and his developer cronies want to kill the type of communities federal Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner is talking about and what Jane Jacobs talked about before him.

Building mansions on farmland and conservation areas does not make a community people want to live in. Besides shops and transit, people want well-funded schools in good repair and accessible health care where staff are not devalued in burnout jobs. Cultural amenities are lacking in the suburbs: theatres, galleries, concert halls, museums and parks where people enjoy the benefits of nature.

Doug Ford is not interested in viable communities or nature conservation, and our democracy suffers as a result.

Diane Sullivan, Toronto

The Greenbelt grab, Nov. 19

Kudos to the Star team for looking into what looks like a huge scandal. And I completely agree with the spokesperson for Environmental Defence, who is quoted as saying: “Nobody would pay this amount of money for land if they didn’t think it was going to be open for development.”

The question is, how can this be fully investigated, how can it be stopped and what will happen to those in government who appear to have colluded with those making (at least) the most recent purchases of Greenbelt land now proposed for development?

Truly a very sleazy mess, and one that must be investigated by the police, the Auditor General and appropriate ethics officers.

David S. Crawford, Toronto 

Then there is this letter, from Orillia: 

The Ford government’s recent proposal to open the protected Greenbelt to housing development seems to be, yet again, another financial windfall for his developer friends.

The developer buys the land cheaply because it is protected from development and then reaps gigantic profits when your government changes the rules and allows housing. Some might say that such action may be evidence of shady backroom deals and hidden kickbacks for secret government services rendered. It certainly is not being done for the environment or to the long-term benefit of the citizens of Ontario.

Please protect our watersheds, our conservation areas and our scarce farmland for the next generations. Ontario needs more affordable rental stock and more dense, multi-storey units that are priced according to income. Ontario does not need more urban sprawl and more ‘McMansions’ on our Greenbelt lands.

David Howell
Orillia

And this, from London, Ontario:

You are free to tell Doug Ford to halt his plan to destroy the Greenbelt so we don’t hasten climate change. You are free to tell Doug Ford to stop paving over agricultural land so we can rely on our own country to supply us with food.

As evidenced by his about-face with CUPE, public opinion does matter.

Jennifer Mills, London 

It has been said that politics is perception. If that is true, much of the public is perceiving the dark shadow of corruption and insider information in the government it helped re-elect, either by intention or inertia, this past June.