Greenbelt Decision Just Business As Usual

09/14/2023

By Clive Doucet

Premier Doug Ford’s folksy, buck a beer, open-neck shirt, we’re-all-just-folks-in-this-together approach to government isn’t working to rebrand his back-door sale of southern Ontario greenbelt land as a “flawed process.”

Nor does the decorative resignation of his housing minister Steve Clark seem to be working. People are insisting something actually be done as in the land be returned to the public sector.

I don’t understand this. What is going on? In Ottawa, a simple resignation would be more than enough to send the jackals home and get on with business as usual. Ottawa’s integrity commissioner found an unacceptable conflict of interest between the former chairwoman chairwoman of the city planning committee and developers. Jan Harder duly resigned, and nothing changed. Not a single decision of her planning committee was reviewed. It was business as usual.

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It was business as usual when former mayor Jim Watson protected local developers’ plans for the redevelopment of Tunney’s Pasture by shifting the hospital to public land at the Central Experimental Farm.

It was business as usual when a developer wanted to break the urban growth line in Cumberland (Tewin) and force the city to expand city water, sewer and social services.

It was business as usual when a provincial inquiry into the management of the city’s light-rail project found the project riven with unacceptable secrecy and political interference.

It was business as usual when the city forced the new light-rail project along the western parkway against the wishes of the National Capital Commission because that’s where developers wanted it, not an urban route such as Carling Avenue.

It was business as usual when the city cancelled the competitive process for the redevelopment of Lansdowne Park and began subsidizing developers for a mall in the park.

So why can one back-door deal for land in Toronto-area greenbelt threaten the happy existence of Ford and his government? This never happens in Ottawa or almost never.

Developers become rich by doing land deals at the public expense. It has been this way for as long as Ottawa and Toronto have been cities. In 1830-31 Captain John LeBreton purchased the land that later became known as LeBreton Flats as developers always do on leveraged money (today it’s called plug-in and play) from banks on the expectation that Colonel John By would be forced to buy his land for his Rideau Canal project. This made perfect sense because the LeBreton Flats route was in the middle of the easiest and most direct canal connection between the Ottawa River from Dow’s Lake.

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But things came unstuck when Colonel By received LeBreton’s price for the flats. He said no to LeBreton’s blackmail and instead blasted his way through solid rock east then north. At Parliament Hill using Thomas McKay, a local contractor, they built a magnificent flight of locks down a narrow gap on the east side of Parliament Hill which have decorated Ottawa ever since. Poor old John LeBreton’s land was now worth much less than he paid for it. Instead of becoming rich, he went bankrupt.

There’s no law which says the public is obliged to make developers rich as people in Toronto have been telling Ford’s government. Who knows? Maybe, the public outrage in Toronto over the backdoor Greenbelt decision will be enough to reverse the decision. Could the same thing ever happen in Ottawa? I have always hoped it would because business as usual in Ottawa has never worked for the city’s benefit. Without it, we would have a park, not a mall and condos at Lansdowne Park, a hospital where it should be and a light-rail system which served people where they lived, not where developers wanted them to live.

Clive Doucet was a city councillor in Ottawa from 1997 to 2010. His book Urban Meltdown; Cities, Climate Change and Business as Usual was short-listed for the Shaughnessy-Cohen Award for political writing. At present, he lives in Cape Breton.

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Tags: development Greenbelt Ottawa Toronto

Andrew says:
09/14/2023 at 8:26 AM
Transparency is required in democracies, yet we keep getting less and less.
Richard says:
09/14/2023 at 4:48 PM
Citizens need to push back now, and not wait for an election where deflection and misinformation are used to muddy the waters.
Hamilton has taken the step this week to seek legal opinion on challenging the GreenBelt re-zoning using Judicial review. In addition, they are slowing down the discussion of whether and how and at what cost to developers GreenBelt subdivisions could theoretically be connected to city services.
In the Lansdowne 2.0 case, we are hampered by a majority on council who are either too afraid of the developers or not competent enough to take a stand. Perhaps a review by the provincial AG is in order?
And in the interim, any one on council who has taken political donations from the developers/sports and entertainment groups associated with Lansdowne should recuse themselves from any council votes related to Landsdown.