Why is Doug Ford doubling down amid Ontario’s Greenbelt scandal?
Why is Doug Ford doubling down amid Ontario’s Greenbelt scandal?
By Mark Winfield
Professor, Environmental
and Urban Change,
York University, Canada
September 11, 2023
The past few weeks have witnessed an extraordinary series of events in Ontario politics. Reports tabled by the province’s auditor general and its integrity commissioner on the government’s November 2022 decision to remove 7,400 acres of land from the Greater Toronto Area’s Greenbelt have set off a political firestorm.
The controversy has resulted in the resignation of Housing Minister Steve Clark and his chief of staff and angry protesters greeting Premier Doug Ford in Kitchener, Ont., when he arrived for the annual Ford Fest under heavy police escort.
The auditor general found that normal decision-making processes related to the Greenbelt had been bypassed, that it was well-established there was no need to remove land from the Greenbelt for housing purposes and that decisions were “biased” in favour of certain developers who had bought the lands in question and who stood to reap a $8.3 billion windfall from their development.
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