Ontario’s auditor general says the provincial government’s decision to open up the protected Greenbelt to housing construction “favoured” developers with connections to the housing minister’s chief of staff.
Bonnie Lysyk says the Ontario government also failed to consider the environmental, agricultural and financial risks and impacts of the move in 2022 to remove some lands while adding others to the protected Greenbelt.
She says the owners of the 15 land sites removed from the Greenbelt could see an 8.3-billion-dollar increase to the value of those lands, and that 14 of those sites were “brought to the exercise” by the housing minister’s chief of staff.
Premier Doug Ford and Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark have both denied tipping off developers ahead of the public announcement last year that the government would remove land from 15 different Greenbelt areas so that 50 thousand homes can be built.
However, Ford and Clark say they accept much of what the auditor general found and pledged to do better going forward.
