Hamilton MPP Donna Skelly says 'fear tactics' being used to fight urban boundary expansion

A Hamilton Progressive Conservative (PC) member of provincial parliament (MPP) says people who say the provincial government is paving over farmland are using "fear tactics" to oppose the expansion of the city's urban boundary and removal by the province of some parts of the Greenbelt.

"We are talking about developing lands earmarked for this years ago … it isn't being farmed," Donna Skelly, the PC MPP for Flamborough—Glanbrook, told CBC Hamilton.

Skelly's comments come days after the PC government announced late Nov. 4 it was ordering Hamilton to expand its urban boundary by 2,200 hectares.

Skelly says the expansion is necessary to accommodate projected growth for the next 30 years, citing the federal government's plan to see 500,000 immigrants come to Canada per year by 2025.

"Hamilton needs these people … but they won't come here if they don't have a place to live," she said.

"None of the land we're talking about isn't earmarked for mansions, we're talking about townhouses and multiplex homes and intensification around transit routes. We're doing everything we can to address the housing crisis."

Last year, the city considered expanding its boundary by 1,310 hectares before city council voted 13-3 in November 2021 not to touch it. Residents had overwhelmingly supported maintaining the current boundary — the results of a mail-out survey by the city saw 16,636 people vote to hold the boundary and just 1,088 vote to expand it. 

The province's expansion plan includes more density in some parts of the city but also development over most of the city's "whitebelt" lands, which is land between the current boundary and the Greenbelt. 

That also includes Elfrida — which has some of the finest and most productive farmland in the province, according to Drew Spoelstra, a Binbrook, Ont., farmer and vice-president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.

"We need to ensure farmers can expand their businesses and we can continue to produce food at home," Spoelstra told CBC Radio's Metro Morning.

The province also said it planned to remove roughly 769 hectares of land in Hamilton and Niagara from the Greenbelt, despite Ford previously saying he wouldn't touch those lands.

"We're looking at land that should have never ever been part of the Greenbelt … land that is ready to be developed," Skelly said. "It's the right thing to do."

Skelly said every hectare removed from the Greenbelt for growth will be replaced by twice as much — and she says it's land that actually should be in the Greenbelt.

That compromise isn't good enough for Spoelstra.