Greenbelt controversy putting pressure on Ford government, knocking it off message, experts say
CBC
It's been a rough couple weeks for Premier Doug Ford's government.
Two independent, legislative watchdogs — in successive reports released just weeks apart from each other — found major flaws with the province's decision to remove land from the Greenbelt last December to build housing.
On Wednesday, Integrity Commissioner J. David Wake found that Housing Minister Steve Clark chose to "stick his head in the sand" rather than oversee the process of selecting which sites would be removed from the Greenbelt — a vast 810,000-hectare area of protected farmland, forest and wetland stretching from Niagara Falls to Peterborough meant to be permanently off-limits to development.
Instead, Clark left it to his chief of staff at the time, Ryan Amato, whose actions alerted some developers to a potential policy change and resulted in their private interests being improperly advanced, the integrity commissioner found.
That report came just two weeks after Ontario Auditor General Bonie Lysyk's report first revealed how a small group of well-connected developers suggested to Amato many of the sites that would ultimately be removed, providing the landowners with a potential windfall upwards of $8 billion.
Political watchers who spoke to CBC Toronto say the impact of the Greenbelt controversy is putting pressure on the Ford government, and knocking it off its preferred course at a crucial time.
Mitch Heimpel, director of campaigns and government relations with public affairs firm Enterprise Canada, said the government has been "caught in a news cycle" for the past month that is preventing it from getting its message out.
He said Ford's "big announcement" at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference earlier this month "largely got eaten" by stories related to the Greenbelt controversy. The premier announced there the province would extend "strong mayor" powers to 21 smaller cities and launch a $1.2 billion fund to reward municipalities that meet home-building targets.
At recent events, reporters have asked both Ford and Clark flurries of questions about Greenbelt-related issues, no matter the substance of the announcement.
"It's making it hard for them to get positive news out," Heimpel said.
All three Opposition party leaders have repeatedly called over the past few weeks for the resignation of Clark, who has apologized for the "very real flaws" in the process and for failing to oversee his former chief of staff. Ford has said Clark will keep his job and the government will continue to move forward with its agenda to build 1.5 million homes by 2031.
Heimpel said replacing Clark right now would come with a cost.
On the one hand, Heimpel said, it would demonstrate accountability. But it would also slow down the government while a new minister gets up to speed on the many initiatives underway to spur housing construction and change planning rules across the province.
"That could really hamstring the government's agenda in the fall if they were to change horses now," he said.
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