A sign welcoming visitors to the Greenbelt.
A sign welcoming visitors to the Greenbelt. Credit: Jimmy Emerson / Flickr Credit: Jimmy Emerson / Flickr

“The people have spoken. We won’t touch the Greenbelt,” Doug Ford (2018).

Ford may have heard the people, but it only took until November 2022 to renege on that promise. Late on a Friday, while the public was distracted by the educational assistants crisis, Ford announced his plan to remove 7,400 acres of land from the Greenbelt.

By December 14 the deed was done and these lands were officially removed from the protection of the Greenbelt and Oak Ridges Moraine legislation.

Ford does plan to swap in land from other places but that destabilizes the efficacy of Greenbelt designation and implies that any land can replace environmentally sensitive land that gives life to species at risk.

Not surprisingly, the Greenbelt grab helps facilitate Bill 23, More Homes Built Faster Act – also passed in November 2022. This bill effectively strips the conservation authority of its powers and allows the sale of conservation lands.

And, the bill does nothing to build affordable homes or increase densification within existing urban boundaries where infrastructure and public transit already exist.

Perhaps most egregiously, Bill 23 overrides decisions made by municipal and regional councils to limit urban boundary expansion in order to build 1.5 million homes in ten years.

Unifying to stop the sprawl

In response to these imposed changes, Stop Sprawl Halton (SSH) and Stop Sprawl Hamilton Ontario (SSHamOnt) have been holding rallies across the region.

The December 4 rally held outside Hamilton City Hall attracted over 1,000 people and had a long list of speakers including Burlington Mayor, Marianne Meed Ward; Halton Hills Councillor Jane Fogal; eight Hamilton councillors; NDP MP Mathew Green; NDP MPP candidate for Hamilton Centre, Sarah Jama; and Mike Balkwill, Campaign Director with Water Watchers.

READ MORE: Ford uses bait and switch to sprawl onto farmland and Greenbelt

By maintaining the existing urban boundary, Halton Region saved 5,000 acres of farmland from development. With one swish of his pen, Ford added 8,300 acres for developers to sprawl over.

“The fact that he’s trying to do this under the guise of affordable housing is actually an insult to most intelligent Ontario residents,” said Kim Bradshaw in an interview with rabble.ca.

A SSH member, Bradshaw says that the group is looking to the federal government for some intervention because there’s no way Canada will make its carbon reduction commitments based on the amount of growth Ford is predicting.

Bradshaw points out that Ford’s initiative will also directly affect people’s health while endangering at risk species.

She believes the federal government should attack Ford’s legislation from those vantage points.

Land cannot be ‘replaced’

Ford mistakenly thinks he can swap pieces of the current Greenbelt for land in other parts of the province. But the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve, located between Scarborough and Pickering, is actually a feeder into the Rouge National Urban Park. This national reserve is home to several species at risk including Blanding’s turtles, red-headed woodpeckers and monarch butterflies.

“You can’t put a fence on it. You can’t stop animals. It must be continuous and uninterrupted to work. This land cannot be ‘replaced’ with other land in the Greenbelt,” observed Bradshaw.

Over 1,965 acres of Hamilton land will no longer have Greenbelt designation. Add to that, 5,435 acres of farmland the provincial government is opening up for development and Hamilton is losing 7,400 acres of irreplaceable land.

“We need to dispel the myth that there is not enough land to build the homes we need,” commented Hamilton Ward 12 councillor, Craig Cassar via email.

He went on to say, “From this perspective, Bill 23 is entirely redundant. The City of Hamilton has granted enough permits for housing construction for the next decade and already had plans to accommodate projected growth through 2051 – all within the existing urban boundary.”

Cassar indicated that Bill 23 is harmful to residents on many levels from destroying farmland and natural heritage to perpetuating urban sprawl and car dependency rather than walkable cities that are healthier, cheaper to live in and include a more diverse mix of housing.

He highlighted the fact that, “Bill 23 also robs municipalities of revenue from development charges and forces the construction of more costly urban infrastructure, so residents will be burdened with high property taxes for generations to come.”

SSHamOnt was instrumental in convincing city council to maintain a firm urban boundary. Now, they have undertaken a province-wide campaign to help educate and mobilize people.

SSHamOnt spokesperson, Lilly Noble, told rabble.ca that means focusing on PC MPPs  Donna Skelly and Neil Lumsden because as Noble sees it, “These are the two people who let Ford do what he wanted and didn’t disagree.”

Noble maintains Ford has not been following democratic norms for some time. His policies have been harming people and the environment and eventually, it’s going to cost Hamilton both financially and through environmental degradation.

SSHamOnt is looking for volunteers to do lit drops – deliver post cards and flyers — in the MPPs ridings of Flamborough-Glanbrook and Hamilton East.

They are also asking constituents to phone Skelly and Lumsden to share their concerns for Bill 23 and to ask them why they overruled city council’s decision to establish a firm urban boundary.

In addition, SSHamOnt is supporting Environmental Defence (ED) and Democracy Watch (DW) as they call on the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) to investigate insider information leaks to sprawl developers in advance of Greenbelt land removals.

In the fall of 2021, Hamilton city council voted 13 to 3 to maintain the urban boundary and saved over 3,300 acres of farmland from development. Ford not only wants to usurp that essential farmland, but he has bumped it up to 5,436 acres.

That has left SSHamOnt wondering what they can do to combat a provincial government that is using its unprecedented power to rewrite laws.

The present city council seems amenable to maintaining the current urban boundary but Noble observes, “If they try to ignore builders’ demands to build in these new areas, we’re afraid they’ll just go to the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT) and they’ll say, ‘fine, do it,’ because Ford wants it to happen.”

Hamilton currently has designated land within its urban boundary that the municipal government wants to use for development before sprawling out. That’s because this land is close to existing municipal services.

According to Noble, “There’s no need to leap frog into farmland.” She went on to say, “It’s a slippery slope with him [Ford]. The farmland thing is one little favour to his buddies. And, of course, the Bradford Bypass and the 413. But the rest of it is just an erosion of democracy.”

New stop the sprawl movements forming

Tapping into the existing momentum of stop sprawl groups across the province, new organizations are emerging to ensure information gets out to a broader audience.

Waterloo based 50by30WR is a grassroots, community-led campaign advocating for Waterloo Region to commit to a 50 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030.

The group wants to ensure that Waterloo creates a green recovery from the COVID pandemic centered on human well-being and innovation while building a socially just, sustainable and climate-smart region.

50by30WR member, Barbara Schumacher, told rabble.ca via email, “With Bill 23 and subsequent regulations for carveouts to the Greenbelt, we organized awareness raising zoom meetings and opened registration across the province. We have joined the Ontario Climate Emergency Campaign and are working with a diverse groups of climate activists across our region and the province to demand that our government keep its Greenbelt Promise, stop urban sprawl, restore the powers of the Conservation Authorities and end destruction of our natural heritage and prime farmland.”

The Greenbelt Guardian initiative — an offshoot of sorts from 50by30WR — is the result of grassroots anger and sense of betrayal. The collective responded by creating the space for people right across Ontario who feel betrayed and enraged to gather.  

“What is happening is very much a rising up of people who normally would not think of going to a rally, or striking, but this government’s action is propelling them to a higher level of resistance and action,” said Schumacher.

In that space, people identified regional teams and committed to organizing themselves to monitor and survey what is happening on the ground.  Their intent is to post signs of destruction on social media and to hold pop-up rallies that draw media attention while continuing to show the government the extent of public opposition to Bill 23, forced urban sprawl and Greenbelt cutouts.

Bradshaw shared, “We know there’s one spot on the Hamilton Whitebelt that has a drill on it. This was being done under the cover of the holidays when folks were too busy to get things going.”

“The key is to make sure we break out of our echo chamber. We have a lot of people who are upset about his, but you can still find lots of people who haven’t clued in to the fact that there’s this [land] grab going on and that Ford is attacking democracy through Bill 23,” added Bradshaw.

Municipalities have to announce when they’re going to discuss development requests at council. So, Bradshaw encourages people to keep an eye on municipal alerts. It’s a way to see all of the requests coming in from developers and to find out which lands they are trying to develop.

She also suggests speaking with municipal councillors to ensure council understands the importance of preserving these lands.

Bradshaw acknowledges these land issues intersect with climate change, food security, sustainability and livability as well as health and education and hopes these folks join the movement.

SSH has also been collaborating with Indigenous groups because they recognize this movement is part of Truth and Reconciliation.

Bradshaw would like to see a liveable Ontario that holds governments accountable for their actions to ensure they act in the best interests of the people — not their own party’s interest.

“It’s really frightening to imagine what Ontario will become if Ford is successful. All of these commons issues should be beyond one party’s reach. Our government should be treating them that way and they’re not,” said Bradshaw.

To sign the ED/DW OPP investigation petition click here.

Doreen Nicoll

Doreen Nicoll is weary of the perpetual misinformation and skewed facts that continue to concentrate wealth, power and decision making in the hands of a few to the detriment of the many. As a freelance...