When my colleague Norimitsu Onishi wrote about the matter early this year, there was a lot of suspicion, but little firm evidence, of undue development industry influence surrounding the process that led Doug Ford, Ontario’s premier, to open up the Greenbelt around Toronto to housing construction.
This week, a number of blanks were filled by the release of a withering report from the province’s auditor general, which immediately raised a whole new batch of ethical questions.
Norimitsu wrote that after its creation in 2005, the two-million-acre Greenbelt “quickly gained a cultural significance that belies its age: sacred to its fervent supporters, and derided as a rainforest by others who consider it an arbitrary obstacle to growth.”
[Read: ‘It’s Our Central Park’: Uproar Rises Over Location of New Toronto Homes]
Mr. Ford’s position about the Greenbelt’s future has undergone several shifts. When he was running in 2018 to lead the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, a video surfaced of him telling supporters at a fund-raising event that after speaking with developers, he planned to open the area to housing construction if his party took power. After that prompted widespread criticism, Mr. Ford dropped the idea, saying: “The people have spoken — we won’t touch the Greenbelt. Very simple.”
Then late last year, Mr. Ford’s government cited Toronto’s housing shortage and an influx of newcomers from sharply rising immigration to announce that parts of the Greenbelt would indeed lose their untouchable status as part of his previously announced promise to build 1.5 million homes over a decade.
Mr. Ford’s political opponents suggested that his position was less related to the housing shortage than to his close ties to real estate developers. Those concerns multiplied after the Toronto Star and The Narwhal reported that a substantial portion of the 7,400 acres being removed from the Greenbelt belonged to developers who are generous donors to the Progressive Conservatives. And some of those developers had bought the land after Mr. Ford took office, according to the report.
When Mr. Ford moved from municipal to provincial politics, he was immediately favored by developers. After their companies were barred from making political donations during the 2018 election, they became major backers of a group called Ontario Proud that ran an aggressive, largely online campaign attacking Mr. Ford’s opponents.
In her report, Bonnie Lysyk, the auditor general, concluded that the process for picking the land for development was largely directed by the housing minister’s chief of staff. And the report found that process was heavily influenced by two developers who, at a housing conference, handed the political aide envelopes detailing the land they wanted removed from the Greenbelt. The aide then directed a selection process that sidelined the usual reviews by nonpartisan public servants and proper public consultations.
In the end, Ms. Lysyk…
2023-08-12 05:00:09
Source from www.nytimes.com
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