Wealthy Ontario developer close to winning long battle to build homes on protected Greenbelt

Almost 20 years after taking the province to court, attempting to embarrass a former premier and pushing to change local zoning rules, a prominent Ontario developer may now finally be set to cash in on his multi-million dollar gamble involving the Greenbelt.

In 2003, Silvio De Gasperis of the Tacc Group of companies started buying up parcels of cheap farmland in north Pickering, Ont., east of Toronto, with hopes of transforming them into lucrative housing subdivisions. Just two years later, those plans began to fall apart.

Much of the land the developer had purchased was located in what is now known as the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve (DRAP), and was protected by easements and a zoning order. In 2005, former premier Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government also included the preserve lands in what it called the Greenbelt — a vast 810,000-hectare area of farmland, forest and wetland stretching from Niagara Falls to Peterborough — marking it as off limits to development.

De Gasperis told the National Post in March 2005 that the province's move to include the DRAP in the Greenbelt would cost his company an estimated $240 million in lost revenue. 

"McGuinty has already hurt me," De Gasperis told the Toronto Star in 2006. "I'm going to hurt him."

De Gasperis then launched a campaign to stymy plans for the Greenbelt, working with Pickering to develop the preserve land anyway, and eventually took the province to court. His efforts failed and the agricultural land has remained protected, with De Gasperis unable to build new subdivisions as he originally planned.

But that could soon change thanks to the Ford government's proposal to free up thousands of hectares of Greenbelt land in 15 areas of the province, including the DRAP. This could pave the way for housing and millions in development profits for landowners, including De Gasperis. 

Critics of the Ford government's plan are raising questions.

Victor Doyle, a former senior provincial planner who helped design the Greenbelt, said he felt "deceived as a planner and as a citizen," given that Premier Doug Ford and Housing Minister Steve Clark have both previously promised to leave the Greenbelt alone.

"It's all about, in my view, rewarding the land development interests who own this land and are clearly of primary interest to the government," Doyle said.

The DRAP contains around 2,000 hectares of prime agricultural land, according to the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA).

The provincial government expropriated much of it in the 1970s ahead of construction of a planned Pickering airport nearby. When the airport didn't pan out, the government began selling the land back to tenants and farmers in the late 1990s at a discount because easements placed on the land designated it for agricultural uses only in perpetuity. 

Still, developers — including De Gasperis — began buying up parcels and working with the City of Pickering to obtain permission to build housing.

After the McGuinty government included the preserve in the Greenbelt in February 2005, the city tried to cancel some of the easements. In response, the province reinstated them by passing the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve Act, which enshrined the agricultural status of the land in law.