“It would absolutely, without a doubt be an out and out lie by the premier if he were to go ahead and proceed with this plan of chopping pieces out of the Greenbelt when they made such a clear promise not to touch it. And, to be honest, it would mean a death sentence to the Greenbelt as a whole,” Phil Pothen, Land Use Planning Lawyer and Ontario Environment Program Manager, with Environmental Defence.
Pothen is referring to the announcement made by Ontario’s Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Steve Clark. The Ontario government has committed 7,400 acres of Greenbelt lands for housing development.
Clark says the Class 1 agricultural lands will be swapped out for 9,400 acres that will eventually receive Greenbelt designation.
Used in conjunction with Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act (October 2022), which up-ends Conservation Authorities’ powers and the province’s wetland protection system, the Ford government is playing a dangerous shell game with ecologically sensitive areas and precious farmland. Progressives and environmentalists know that this is not going to end well.
As if those changes weren’t bad enough, the Provincial Government overturned Halton Region’s Official Plan Amendments 49 (ROPA) which contained development within the existing settlement boundary to 2051.
Overturning ROPA means that 5,000 acres of Whitebelt lands will be given to developers to build expensive, car dependent McMansion subdivisions.
In an interview with rabble.ca, Pothen said the forced boundary expansion in Halton was unnecessary because the region had more than enough land within the settlement area boundaries to house people for decades to come
The biggest changes Clark made were aimed at reducing the number of homes created while increasing the cost of those homes. Bottom line, Clark did not deliver more homes and the ones that are built will not necessarily be faster or affordable.
“The entire exercise in Halton was calculated simply to create a pretext for expanding settlement area boundaries and pushing growth much further out than would be necessary if we were delivering in a reasonable way,’ observed Pothen.
He went on to say this means Halton – comprised of Oakville, Burlington, Milton and Halton Hills – won’t meet its climate obligations.
Ford focused on car dependent development
The boundary expansion in Halton Hills swallows up a large chunk important farmland and natural heritage. It’s also land that is not included in any transportation plan and is so far from any major transit stations that residents will be totally car dependent.
This car dependent sprawl comes at a time when it’s vital that all lands be developed to densities that support robust public transportation.
According to Pothen, the main theme of Clark’s speech at the Toronto Board of Trade was about focusing more housing in existing neighbourhoods.
However, the official plans reveal the Minister has directly intervened to ensure less housing, more wasted land, less transit-oriented development, and no geared to income housing.
“The Minister seems to be removing the ability of municipalities to collect development charges to put towards affordable housing,” said Pothen. “They placed a cap on the percentage of development in high demand areas that can be required to be affordable housing. They capped the period for which housing can be required to be affordable so the most you can require is that it remain affordable for 25 years and then it’s completely deregulated.”
Pothen says there’s not much to like in the government’s official plans or in the government’s entire approach to people who care about the environment.
The changes to zoning and single detached neighbourhoods are so watered down that across the entire province it will only create 50,000 new homes by the government’s own admission.
Provisions that would allow building compact units in established neighbourhoods won’t happen under this legislation. So, it doesn’t even meet demands for homes in existing neighbourhoods.
Instead, the legislation will force more units on sprawl municipalities creating a pretext for boundary expansion.
“We are moving precisely in the opposite direction to where we need to be going in a climate emergency. We need to lean most of our trips away from cars in the next 30 years,” said Pothen.
Development leaving education behind
Education funding compounds the sprawl problem. Every school board can submit maximum of ten projects annually — regardless of board size or need. Only two to three from the list are chosen.
Milton is a perfect example of what has gone wrong with this system. Over the past 20 years a deficit of schools evolved because less than half the number of schools needed were actually built.
Saint Francis Xavier Catholic Secondary School in Milton has 60 portables. Teachers park off site and are bused to school. Milton has 24 per cent of the region’s population but 50 per cent of the region’s portables.
It’s a very arbitrary way of assigning new education infrastructure and given the population changes the Minister is requiring these municipalities to absorb, it’s absurd that Clark is not leaning on Education Minister Stephen Lecce to establish a system that actually funds schools according to need.
Democracy Watch and the Ontario Health Coalition have proposed an Honesty-in-Politics Law that would fine MPPs one years’ salary when they mislead the public. The MPPs party would be fined a similar amount.
Pothen says, “This would be very bad luck for any of the members of the government caucus if that policy would be passed because the loudest election promise of the PC party in this election was that they would never, under any circumstances, touch the Greenbelt.”
Greenbelt in the cross hairs
The Greenbelt was supposed to be permanent allowing farmers and land owners to maintain their property long-term, to maintain wetlands and woodlands, to continue building the soil knowing ecological investments would have long-term value.
Opening the Greenbelt for development is tantamount to painting a target on every piece of that land. It becomes cash crop land that’s managed in a way that destroys the property and the environmental values of the property.
While individual and organizations like Stop Sprawl Halton (SSH) worked to convince region council to build within the settlement area boundary, the Ford government was manipulating and undermining their efforts behind the scenes.
So, when the region managed to meet provincial population targets without expanding the boundary, the provincial government simply tore up those rules and made new ones forcing Halton to bend to their will.
ROPA was simply a diversion that created cover for the government to hand prime farmland to sprawl developers without getting blamed for it.
The only people who benefit from this are the people who own the particular plots of land that the government is needlessly expanding onto.
The loudest most effective advocates for more housing supply, More Neighbours Toronto, stated that the Minister’s decisions are a disaster for housing supply because they squander land as well as the very finite supply of construction materials, labour, and equipment needed to build the compact, low-cost homes that need to built fast.
Pothen says, “These fewer, larger homes are a physical manifestation of an increasingly unequal society where you have a lot of people who are made to make do with less than they need. And a few people who got far, far more than they need.”
This is actually a manifestation of the inequality of society that can be seen on a map.
The official plan imposed by the province is already enforced. However, unless these homes are actually built within the next four years, any future government is legally entitled to rescind the approvals.
That new government would have to expressly state that they intend to revoke these rights without compensation. In other words, the developer continues to own the land but has lost right to develop it and will not receive payment for the loss of that unrealized revenue.
In the meantime, Pothen recommends that individuals and organizations go after the land owners and make the prospect of developing these lands politically toxic.
In Halton, the regional council needs to use every tool at its disposal to delay the development of Greenbelt lands.
The most important step would be for Halton to super charge development approvals within the existing settlement area and established neighbourhoods, to ensure all housing demand is absorbed before they ever have to touch Greenbelt lands.
As Pothen sees it, progressives and environmentalists need to speak with one voice in this time of climate emergency and support density in existing neighbourhoods.
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