The council tasked with being the guardians of the Greenbelt has largely been defunct since the Ford government was engulfed in scandal over changes to the protected land more than a year ago, Global News can reveal, leading to questions about who’s keeping watch over the land.
The Greenbelt Council, which is responsible for advising the minister of housing on “land use planning matters related to the Greenbelt,” has been whittled down from a nine-person board to just two members and is largely inactive.
Global News has learned the last meeting the council held was in December 2022 to discuss the government’s intent to open 15 parcels of land for housing development weeks after it was announced.
Since then, the council has been left directionless, leading to concerns about the government’s intent.
“If the premier was serious about protecting the Greenbelt, protecting farmland, protecting wetlands and the places we love in Ontario, you would have a Greenbelt council full of people committed to protecting the Greenbelt,” Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner said.
“But instead, the premier is essentially allowing the Greenbelt Council to lie dormant.”
In the final part of a three-part anniversary series, Global News looks into the current protections for the Greenbelt and whether a scandal of this magnitude could happen again.
Greenbelt council inactive
When the Ford government decided to remove 7,400 acres of protected land from the Greenbelt, its advisory panel was overseen by Hazel McCallion, a key ally of Premier Doug Ford.
McCallion, who died in January 2023, was still chair of the council when it last met in December 2022.
Since then, the government has been consumed with its changes to the Greenbelt, the scandal that followed and their ultimate reversal. Throughout, its key group of advisers has shrunk in size and has not been called upon once for advice.
The Greenbelt Council’s webpage shows that just two of its nine members remain, with one appointed in 2021 and another in 2023. The chair’s seat has been vacant since McCallion’s death and other members have left as their terms have lapsed without being replaced.
A spokesperson for Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Paul Calandra — whom the council is supposed to advise — said the government was “working” to fill vacant positions.
“The Greenbelt Council plays an important role in managing the Greenbelt plan,” they told Global News.
Despite the government’s claim that the council — whose existence is required by the Greenbelt Act — remains an important advisory body, its expert opinion was not formally polled at any point during 2023, a time when the government made changes to the protected swathe of land.
The province’s own website explains the Greenbelt council’s mandate is to “provide advice to the minister on land use planning matters related to the Greenbelt,” with “any matters pertaining to the Greenbelt Act” and “any proposed amendments to the Plan” included as examples.
But the government made changes to Greenbelt policy and legislation last year without seeking input from the panel.
In fall 2023, Ontario announced legislation adding the land it had removed the year before back into the Greenbelt and requiring laws to be passed in the future to make more changes without calling a meeting of its advisory council.
The Greenbelt Council’s web page says it “generally meets 10 times a year, or as required.”
The province is in the process of recruiting a new chair for the council but it remains unclear how long that might take, when that process began or if any candidates have been approached.
Minister re-enters the frame
Meanwhile, in a clear sign that the government intends to put the Greenbelt scandal behind it, Premier Doug Ford revealed he was bringing a key player back into the fold.
Steve Clark, the former minister of municipal affairs and housing who resigned after Ontario’s integrity commissioner found that he breached portions of the Member’s Integrity Act, was reintroduced as the new Government House Leader during an early June cabinet shuffle.
The government said that while Clark won’t attend cabinet meetings in his new role, he will determine the legislative agenda at Queen’s Park, which has raised concerns from the opposition.
Critics have pointed out that the integrity commissioner recommended Clark be reprimanded for failing to comply with Ontario’s ethics rules and that Clark, in his new role, would effectively control the process.
Premier Ford defended his return, calling Clark “one of the most experienced and qualified members” of the Progressive Conservative government.
“He knows Queen’s Park inside and out,” Ford said of Clark, an affable politician who has served as the MPP for Leeds-Grenville-Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes since 2010.
“He’s a very credible individual and I support him 100 per cent,” Ford said.
Could it happen again?
Ontario’s former auditor general Bonnie Lysyk, whose team first uncovered the questionable dealings between developers and the Ford government one year ago, told Global News structural changes were necessary to avoid a repeat of the scandal.
“This really is a case study of a number of things going wrong and showing that there are weaknesses in the system that needed to be strengthened,” Lysyk said.
Her recommendations to the Ford government, 15 in total, were designed to ensure that the type of decision-making that allowed developers to have direct influence over which land was removed had more “obstacles.”
But despite the premier’s promise that the government wouldn’t be developed under his watch, critics remain skeptical.
“I don’t feel confident, unfortunately,” said NDP Leader Marit Stiles. “I don’t think that under this premier and his conservative politicians, I fear that the lesson they’ve learned is that they need to try different ways to hide what their intentions are.”
The scandal, Stiles said, is one of the reasons why the NDP scrutinized every land-related policy the government has introduced including its planned changes to Ontario Place and the Ontario Science Centre.
Schriner, Green Party leader, told Global News that he is keeping a close watch on municipal boundary changes and the possible benefactors.
“The premier … is now doing it in other places where he’s imposing boundary expansions on municipalities like Waterloo Region, Hamilton and others to benefit wealthy, well-connected insiders,” Schreiner said. “This is Greenbelt 2.0.”
Even Lysyk worries that Ministers Zoning Order process, which the government has overhauled to specifically remove politics from the process, has created “backdoors into opening up the Greenbelt.”
Ultimately, Lysyk believes in spite of procedural and political obstacles, the Ford government could find itself back at square one.
“Could it happen again? Yes, it could happen again,” Lysyk said. “Where there’s a desire to do something, people find a way to do it.”
This is the third and final story in Global News’ Greenbelt report anniversary series. You can read part one and part two by clicking the links.