Mistakes were made. They won't happen again. Nevertheless, Ontario desperately needs more homes — so full steam ahead.
That was the gist of Premier Doug Ford's and Housing Minister Steve Clark's response to the lightning rod report about their Greenbelt land swap that Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk released last week.
Prominent developers with "direct access" to Clark's chief of staff, Ryan Amato, received "preferential treatment" during the speedy and secretive process he engineered to decide which lands' development-restricting environmental protections would be removed, which will see their value balloon by $8.3 billion-plus, Lysyk's scathing 93-pager revealed.
Ford's government has promised to implement 14 of the auditor general's 15 recommendations, which it's putting together a team to do. The lone recommendation the government is ignoring happens to be Lysyk's most consequential; it's that the government re-evaluate its "biased" Greenbelt changes — for which the opposition parties at Queen's Park have also been calling.
"We're going to continue building and at minimum we're going to need 1.5 million homes," Ford said on Aug. 9 after the release of the report, which said there "is no evidence this (Greenbelt) land is needed to reach that goal," which has been a top priority for the Progressive Conservatives since they adopted the 10-year target in early 2022.
"We can stop, or we can move forward, and it's very important for us to build upon our housing supply action plans, our municipal pledges, (and) our transit-oriented community plan," Clark added on Aug. 9 in defence of the decision not to reassess the Greenbelt changes.
As mentioned: full steam ahead.
But how, exactly, will the Ford government execute its plans for 50,000 homes to be built on the newly unprotected 7,400 acres of land? The auditor general dug into that as well.
The former Greenbelt land is all privately owned. To develop it, the government has a few critical expectations of the developers.
Developers' projects must make "significant progress on approvals and implementation... by the end of 2023," and that "new home construction begins on these lands by no later than 2025," according to the government's requirements.
On "most of the land," these deadlines will be tough to meet, the auditor general determined from speaking with the chief planners from Durham, Hamilton and York, where all 15 parcels of newly unprotected land are located.
Necessary infrastructure upgrades — things like water, sewage, and electrical systems, roads, and supporting services like schools, hospitals, and fire and police stations — could require "10 years or longer" to build, Lysyk took away from talking with the regions' planners.
The Greenbelt Project Team, the small team of public servants in the Housing Ministry who worked under Amato's instruction in the fall, was not asked to analyze what it would cost to properly service the lands it considered for removal, Lysyk's report said. These public servants also had to sign confidentiality agreements, preventing them from working with other ministries and municipalities on this component.
Of the former Greenbelt lands, the majority are in one site owned by Silvio DeGasperis' TACC Development. This Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve land, in the Durham Region, is also believed to be the most challenging to develop in the near future.
These 4,300 acres of land were one of two land sites that were identified in separate packages that a pair of developers handed to Amato at a development industry gala last Sept. 14, according to Lysyk's report.
Two days later, Amato told public servants in the Housing Ministry that the government intended to move forward with removing certain lands, at which time he also identified the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve parcel to them. This removed site accounted for 58 per cent of the lands that were taken out of the Greenbelt last fall.
Lysyk estimated these lands' value increased by $6.63 billion by being removed from the Greenbelt.
The auditor general's report noted that Durham Region estimated that infrastructure upgrades needed to complete developments in the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve could take up to 25 years to finish.
Development of the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve faces another question mark in the form of a federal study. The Impact Assessment Agency of Canada is looking at how the nearby Rouge National Urban Park and protected species within it could be affected by development. This study isn't expected to be finished until a few months into 2025. Its outcome could empower the federal government to intervene in development.
York Region believes infrastructure upgrades at a removed Greenbelt land site within the area could take up to 10 years, the auditor general's report said.
In Hamilton, one of the former Greenbelt sites is located in an area where residential development is restricted due to its proximity to the Hamilton International Airport, according to Lysyk's report.
Costs of the infrastructure upgrades needed for the developments planned in these regions is also expected to be significant. It's another of the Ford government's expectations that the developers benefiting from its Greenbelt changes pay for these.
For the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve lands alone, Durham Region estimated that it could cost upwards of $1 billion to service them.
As of midsummer, York and Hamilton hadn't estimated what it would cost to build the infrastructure needed for the developments in their regions.
The Ford government has assigned a small agency under Clark's ministry to be in charge of negotiations with the developers to ensure they — rather than taxpayers — pay for the necessary upgrades.
The Provincial Land and Development Facilitator (PLDF) is handling these on a site-by-site basis. It hadn't settled any agreements by June 2023, Lysyk's report noted.
The PLDF identified to Lysyk that each of these agreements will include requirements that "infrastructure and related costs will be paid by developers in full and upfront," and that "progress milestones," like the end-of-2025 construction-commencement deadline, are met, the auditor's report said.
During this spring's sitting, the government passed legislation altering how the PLDF operates and ultimately giving the housing minister more authority over the dealings it assigns to the agency. Bill 97, the Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act, which Clark introduced and steered to passage, allows him to make an order requiring a landowner to enter into an agreement in many kinds of matters the PLDF has been assigned to.
Bill 97 also allows Ontario's housing minister to exempt lands subject to minister's zoning orders (MZOs) from complying with provincial policies and official plans where other approvals are applied for. Clark has utilized MZOs, which fast-track developments, at an unprecedented rate.
Public servants in the Housing Ministry told the auditor general that they expect Clark to use MZOs on the lands removed from the Greenbelt "to expedite development," Lysyk's report said.
The Ford government has said they'll return the removed Greenbelt lands to the protected area if the developers don't meet their expectations, including their deadlines and requirements to pay for infrastructure upgrades.
