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 says he takes full responsibility for the need for a better process.
However, Ford says his government’s plans for the conservation area will go unchanged.
Both Ford and Housing Minister Steve Clark have said they did not tip off developers about any moves beforehand and denied having benefited personally from any Greenbelt policy decisions.
Ford and Clark say they accept much of what the auditor general found and pledged to do better going forward.