Premier Doug Ford’s decision to “re-evaluate” his government’s controversial land swaps in the Ontario Greenbelt and force each of the development sites to “stand on their own merit” will do nothing to stop a multi-billion-dollar handout to politically connected developers, one of the plan’s leading opponents said yesterday.

Ford “simply announced his plan to have someone else review what we know was an unacceptable process that led to an unnecessary removal of Greenbelt lands,” Franz Hartmann, coordinator of the Alliance for a Liveable Ontario, told The Energy Mix in an email. “Meanwhile, it’s full steam ahead for the select number of developers who stand to gain over $8.3 billion.”

The provincial plan, introduced just a day after last fall’s municipal elections and enacted in late December, led to questions about a “suspicious” coincidence that saw developer titans buy parcels of protected Greenbelt land, just ahead of Ford’s push to turn them into housing subdivisions. Those questions grew into a cascading scandal last month after reports by Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk and Integrity Commissioner J. David Wake led to the resignations of Housing Minister Steve Clark’s chief of staff, Ryan Amato, August 22, followed by the minister himself this week.

“Clark announced he would step down as housing minister on Labour Day morning, days after a scathing report from the province’s integrity commissioner found he violated ethics rules as his ministry selected Greenbelt sites for housing construction,” CBC reports. “Wake faulted Clark for not properly overseeing his chief of staff,” while concluding that Amato “was the driving force behind the selection of lands that would come out of the Greenbelt,” a treasured expanse that 83% of Ontarians and 76% of Progressive Conservative voters want to see protected.

On Tuesday, Ford told media the 15 sites totalling 2,995 hectares would be re-evaluated as part of a wider review of Greenbelt lands and development applications. “The previous Liberal government mandated in 2005 that Greenbelt lands be reviewed every 10 years,” CBC writes. “The last review was completed in 2015, meaning the province is moving up the timeline by about two years.”

Ford promised a complete “top to bottom” review, with its parameters set by incoming Housing Minister Paul Calandra and an independent adjudicator. While the review is under way, “the adjudicator will continue working with current landowners—which include some of the largest developers in the province—about their plans for building on the land,” the CBC story states. The premier did not rule out releasing even more Greenbelt land for development as a result of the review.

So in the end, Tuesday’s announcement “did nothing to stop the Greenbelt land removal that occurred late last year,” and left it “very likely” that more protected land will be lost, Hartmann said.

“The premier made it clear that the required 10-year review will consider every request made to remove land from the Greenbelt,” he told The Mix. “Given that this premier has made it clear he thinks the Greenbelt is a scam, I’m afraid every developer’s request to remove land from the Greenbelt may be seriously considered.”

While yesterday’s news “does nothing to solve the affordable housing crisis and does nothing to reverse the bad policy that removed lands from the Greenbelt, it does signal that [Ford] felt he had to respond to the growing public opposition he’s encountered” since he first announced the land swaps, Hartmann added. He credited 10 months of organizing, with activists and concerned citizens discussing the issue with the friends and families, with producing a powerful response after the Lysyk and Wake were released “in the dog days of summer”.

Now, Hartmann said, the Alliance and other community networks are asking Ontarians to:

• Urge the auditor general and the integrity commissioner to expand their investigations into “other very questionable policy decisions” that “appear to have been as indefensible as the Greenbelt land removal”;

• Ask local city councils to hit the brakes on any planning or housing policies driven by “indefensible” provincial processes.

[Franz Hartmann is a volunteer member of the community sounding board for The Energy Mix’s Cities & Communities digest.]