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From link.

Ford Getting Closer to Keeping One of His Promises – Paving Over a “Big Chunk” of Ontario’s World-Renown Greenbelt

osted August 20th, 2019 on Niagara At Large

“Promise made. Promise kept.”

It is one of the lines Ontario Premier Doug Ford seems to love to throw in when he claims he is fulfilling another pledge in a campaign platform that had to be one of the thinnest when it came to specifics in modern Canadian political history.

There was at least one pledge Ford made that he was real specific about – this one caught on a leaked video that was made without his awareness – while he stood before a group of friends and supporters in the development industry weeks before Ontario’s June, 2018 provincial election and told them he would be willing to carve up a “big chunk” of the protected Greenbelt running around Lake Ontario from the GTA and Hamilton, and through Niagara to the Niagara River.
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But now- just a little more than 13 and a half months into his first, and hopefully his last four-year term as Ontario’s premier, he is ever so closer to fulfilling that kind of pledge with everything he has been doing to reshape and weaken planning and environmental protection and conservation rules, and slash resources for field workers and enforcement officers in the environmental and natural resources areas.
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City of Hamilton Taking Steps to Block Ford Bid to Allow Urban Sprawl into Countryside

From link.

In the wake of new provincial loopholes, local developers may be lining up to convert their rural properties to subdivisions, but the city says it’s determined to block them.

It has approved prohibitive application fees and warned developers that it will almost certainly reject any attempts to use the Ford government rule changes to expand Hamilton’s urban area.

That doesn’t mean an end to conversion of foodlands into residential suburbs just that this will continue to be driven by city initiatives not those of private landowners.

Indeed the main justification city planning staff are providing for their dramatic anti-developer moves is so they can uninterruptedly proceed with the GRIDS2 and MCR process whose primary purpose is to justify “orderly” urban boundary expansions.

Director of Planning Steve Robichaud told councillors that expansion proposals will be rejected so that his staff can “maintain control of the GRIDS2 and MCR process because … we don’t want to have resources being reallocated to fighting urban boundary expansions when we’re looking at all the other aspects of that GRIDS2 process. That’s the messaging that we’ve been giving to the development community – just let us complete our process and then make determinations at that point in time.”

The provincial rules approved in June allow any owner of rural property to initiate an urban boundary expansion of up to 40 hectares – a process that until now has been reserved to municipal governments. The surprise change to provincial law has city planners pulling their hair out at what developers might attempt to do.

“They could do one hectare to 39.9 hectares,” explained Robichaud, “but it could be a situation if they are numbered companies all owned by the same individual, each numbered company could make their own application for 40 hectare urban boundary expansion and you could end up with three or four contiguous applications coming forward at the same time but by different numbered companies.”

Attempts could be made anywhere in the rural area except Greenbelt lands and wouldn’t even have to be abutting the existing urban area. “They could actually look to leapfrog and have intervening rural lands between the existing urban area and some new future urban area,” noted Robichaud.

In each case the city would have only 120 days to make a decision, instead of the 210 days previously allowed for major changes. And prior to last month, there wasn’t even an application fee to cover staff time and associated studies.
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That fee has now been set at nearly $68,000 per application and most of that won’t be refundable if the city carries through with its threat to deny all such applications. Waterdown councillor Judi Partridge wanted the fee to developers to be far higher “if they’re going to start digging into the rural lands” but the amount is limited by law to the actual cost of staff time in dealing with each application.

Developers would also have to pay for required studies such as traffic, archeological and hydro-geological, as well as for peer reviews of those studies. Robichaud said Hamilton’s aggressive response to the provincial changes have attracted substantial interest from other municipalities frustrated by the new loopholes.

“We were actually one of the first municipalities in the Greater Golden Horseshoe that’s adopted that strategy,” he explained. “There’s a lot of great interest as to how we are dealing with that issue.”

Despite these hurdles, Robichaud told councillors it isn’t clear that the strategy will work. “I think that the developers, landowners and consultants are reviewing their options right now,” he reported.

The focus on GRIDS2 and MCR has also put the proposed massive urban expansion in Elfrida at least temporarily on hold. “All studies related to Elfrida have been put on hold” senior planner Heather Travis told councillors at an earlier August meeting, although it remains the city’s identified growth area up to 2031. She said the MCR-GRIDS2 process and the rapid-fire changes to provincial planning rules have led staff to delay further spending on the Elfrida plans.

Council will get an update in a public session on October 21, but the projected completion of the city’s preferred growth plan is now September of next year.
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tiffer24 said:
Doug Ford government held private talks with PC donor on removing Greenbelt land.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toro...sing-vaughan-milani-rizmi-developer-1.5263980
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Honestly, are we surprised at all? NO they are thugs, the whole lot! UP NEXT: A lie stating it's going to be affordable housing.
We all know that builders build what the market demands, affordable housing is just not on their mind, they'll build stack condos, townhouses and mansions with no back yard. Cities build affordable housing through city owned land and Habitat for humanity..
 
It's disgusting, really. Even Toronto, the densest part of the GTA, still consists of 70% single detached homes, and yet there is still a push from certain developers to pave over agricultural land. It doesn't make any sense at all. Toronto alone could easily double or triple its population just from intensifying all the low density suburban crap lining most of its arterial roads, and even then we still haven't begun to discuss the so-called "stable neighbourhoods".

Don't even get me started on the 905. Developing agricultural land or the Greenbelt should be against the law at this point, period.
 
Towered said:
It's disgusting, really. Even Toronto, the densest part of the GTA, still consists of 70% single detached homes, and yet there is still a push from certain developers to pave over agricultural land. It doesn't make any sense at all. Toronto alone could easily double or triple its population just from intensifying all the low density suburban crap lining most of its arterial roads, and even then we still haven't begun to discuss the so-called "stable neighbourhoods".

Don't even get me started on the 905. Developing agricultural land or the Greenbelt should be against the law at this point, period.
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I'll see your ban on greenbelt development; and raise you..............we should be reversing some sprawl, selectively, where we can reconnect wildlife corridors, better protect source water/infiltration, or cut off isolated neighbourhoods that expensive to service.

Those people can be better accododated along intensified main roads, or even redeveloping some of the older ranch-style subdivisions in scarborough with 60ft frontages into 2 for 1s with 30ft frontages.
 
Northern Light said:
I'll see your ban on greenbelt development; and raise you..............we should be reversing some sprawl, selectively, where we can reconnect wildlife corridors, better protect source water/infiltration, or cut off isolated neighbourhoods that expensive to service.

Those people can be better accododated along intensified main roads, or even redeveloping some of the older ranch-style subdivisions in scarborough with 60ft frontages into 2 for 1s with 30ft frontages.
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Absolutely. It's totally irresponsible not to do so. Not a single square inch of undeveloped land should be used in the future while a detached home remains standing.
 
Videodrome said:

Doug, that's not true.
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So it looks like Ford reduced the deficit projection from $15.0B to $7.4B. A reduction of $7.4B in 9 months. Its a good thing the PCs had an independent commission determine the deficit value early in their mandate.

This in great contrast to the Trudeau government, the turned a $0.7B surplus into a $5.4B deficit. Again, it's a good thing this was confirmed by the PBO.

Thanks to the independent verification of these numbers, it is quite clear that Ford is doing a much better job economically than Trudeau.
 
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