Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks to media at Queen’s Park on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2023.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford says the government will review the Greenbelt land swaps that two provincial watchdogs have said was rushed and flawed.
Ford says a non-partisan facilitator will review the 15 sites originally selected by the province to be removed from the protected Greenbelt to make way for housing development.
Steve Clark announced his resignation as housing minister on Labour Day morning, days after a scathing report from the province’s integrity commissioner found he violated ethics rules as his ministry selected land to be removed from the Greenbelt.
Paul Calandra is taking over as housing minister and is charged with reviewing all Greenbelt applications.
Last year, the province took 7,400 acres of land out of the Greenbelt to build 50,000 homes and replaced it with about 9,400 acres elsewhere.
Both the integrity commissioner and the auditor general found that Clark’s chief of staff favoured certain developers over others when selecting which lands would come out of the Greenbelt.