Critics call on Ford government to begin mandatory Ontario Greenbelt review

A mandatory critique of the greenway that was to feature started before this twelvemonth has yet to begin, and critics are demanding “substantive guardrails” around the Ford government’s assessment of the protected lands. 

The two-million acre, ecologically sensitive zone around the Greater Golden Horseshoe area was to have undergone a mandatory review starting in February.

But thus far, the Ford government has not launched the wide-ranging consultation or appointed members of a key advisory group which is crucial to delivering the review. The original legislation that created the Greenbelt has a clause requiring a government review once every decade.

Environmentalists and opposition critics are calling on the government to break its months-long silence on its plans for the review and to definitively say that no lands will be removed from the protected area through the review.

“Premier Ford promised in crystal clear language that his government won't make any changes to protection for any current Greenbelt land in the future,” said Phil Pothen of Environmental Defence.

“Any process that included any of those things would very clearly be a breach of the premier's promise and would reignite the Greenbelt scandal," Pothen said.

Critics slam Ford government for dragging its feet on mandatory Greenbelt review

The Greenbelt was created in 2005 to protect farm land and some of the most ecologically sensitive areas of the Golden Horseshoe region. The law that created it provides environmental protection and specifies where development should not occur.

The Greenbelt has been the subject of scandal for the Ford government since 2022, when it announced it would swap 15 pieces of land from the protected area and open them up for development. Reports from the auditor general and integrity commissioner found that the process to select lands was rushed and favoured certain developers.

The property owners with land removed from the Greenbelt stood to see their land value rise by $8.3 billion, the auditor general found in her investigation.

Ford reversed course after public outcry, and the RCMP continues to investigate the matter.

Pothen said that the scandal has shaken public trust in the Ford government’s ability to conduct the review. For that reason, the terms need to be clear, he said.

“What we really are concerned with, most of all, is that substantive guardrails be placed on the Greenbelt review explicitly, right from the outset, refusing to consider any … removals or any downgrading of protections,” Pothen said.

NDP environment critic Peter Tabuns said the government doesn’t want to talk about the mandatory review because it raises the spectre of the scandal and the ongoing RCMP probe.

“It puts them in a bad light and also reminds people that this is a government under police investigation,” Tabuns said.

“That police investigation is not over yet. And so every time those words come up, they look bad.”

The Greenbelt Council, an arms-length group to the government which is supposed to meet regularly and provide advice to the minister on land use planning related to the protected area, currently has no members. 

The last government-appointed member’s term expired in late June.

Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner slammed the government for allowing the group to sit dormant for months. 

“It either tells you that people don't want to be on the Greenbelt Council given how poorly the government treated the previous council, or the government doesn't see it as a priority,” he said.

Seven members of that body, including former Toronto mayor and PC cabinet minister David Crombie, resigned in 2020 in protest over changes the Ford government made to the powers of conservation authorities. 

Liberal environment critic Mary-Margaret McMahon called on Flack to explain what’s delayed the review and to move it forward before the end of 2025, as the legislation requires.

“I'd like to see the council filled back up again with experts and knowledgeable people, keen people who wish to preserve the Greenbelt,” she said. “But I'd also like to see the review started … in the timelines that it was supposed to be, which is this year.”

Tony Morris, conservation policy and campaigns director at Ontario Nature, says the lack of public progress on the review is disappointing. It needs to move forward, and he stressed that it’s more than just a bureaucratic exercise. 

“The Greenbelt, when it was originally created, was never intended to be frozen in time,” he said.

“That's why the review was built in. Context changed, the economy changed, and the environment is changing.”

The last review conducted by the previous Liberal government on the tenth anniversary of the Greenbelt’s creation resulted in a lengthy report with dozens of recommendations. Morris said this review should take a long view of the protected lands.

“It could just be a bureaucratic exercise, but really, for it to be a transparent and evidence-based review, it needs to be bigger than that,” he said. “It needs to be, what do we want the next 20 years of the Greenbelt to look like?”

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