[All] Breaking News! Province Reverses Forced Urban Boundary Expansions!

Tue Oct 24 09:12:59 EDT 2023

Congratulations and kudos to everyone who has spoken up for our Official Plans that were overridden by the province last year.  On Monday morning, the new Minister of Municipal Affairs Paul Calandra made a surprise announcement that the government would be cancelling these forced urban boundary expansions!

So not only have we succeeded in getting the Greenbelt removals reversed and the devastating 3 rural severances cancelled, we have now succeeded in getting the forced urban boundary expansions cancelled too!

Minister Calandra said he had no faith in the process that we have said all along bypassed all public consultation, First Nations input, and provided no data, rationale, or justification for the forced urban expansions that were slated to destroy tens of thousands of acres of irreplaceable farmland across the province in municipalities such as Waterloo, Wellington, Guelph, Halton, Hamilton, Ottawa, and elsewhere.  

The Minister said his embattled government was moving to “reset” relations with municipalities and that it now wants “to respect local planning” as the RCMP investigates the Greenbelt scandal that has so many parallels and unanswered questions similar to these forced boundary expansions.  The minister further said “I’m reverting back to what the municipalities have put in place.  The process was one that I was just not comfortable with” and that “the provincial planning orders had just a little bit too much involvement from individuals within the previous minister’s office.” 

It’s astonishing to see this last statement so seriously criticizing Luca Bucci and other staff of Steve Clark the previous MMAH minister.  We’ve been raising concerns for months and the serious issues with Doug Ford’s provincial government goes far deeper than any one particular Minister or Ministry.  We see consistent patterns of ignoring public consultation, First Nations, and the greater public good with decisions that benefit just a few well-connected party-insiders, speculators, and developers.

Thanks to everyone who wrote letters, attended rallies, made phone calls, put up lawn signs and undertook countless actions to get the government to change course and act in the best public interest to see these natural areas and agricultural lands protected for generations to come.  We have achieved what so many said would never happen.  It is a testament to the power of the people and our continuous extensive efforts over the past year.

The media coverage has been extensive:

	The Narhwal - Thousands Of Hectares Of Ontario Farmland Won’t Be Developed After Ford Government Backs Down:
	“Decisions to impose sprawl on 10 municipalities including Hamilton, Waterloo and Ottawa weren’t made “in a manner that maintains and reinforces public trust”.
	https://thenarwhal.ca/ontario-boundary-expansion-reversal/

	CityNews and CityTV - Ontario To Reverse Urban Boundary Expansions For Several Communities:
	https://kitchener.citynews.ca/2023/10/23/ontario-greenbelt-urban-boundary-expansions/?

	CBC - Ford Government To Reverse Controversial Urban Boundary Expansions:
	https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/official-plan-reversal-legislation-1.7004947

	CKCO CTV News - Waterloo Region Reacts To Provincial Reversal On Urban Boundary Expansion:
	https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/waterloo-region-reacts-to-provincial-reversal-on-urban-boundary-expansion-1.6613810

	Global News - Ontario Reversing Urban Boundary Expansions:
	https://globalnews.ca/news/10042687/ontario-urban-boundaries-reversal/

	The Toronto Star - Doug Ford Government To Scrap Municipal Boundary Changes After Greenbelt Scandal:
	https://www.thestar.com/politics/provincial/doug-ford-government-to-scrap-municipal-boundary-changes-after-greenbelt-scandal/article_fcd6f9f8-b8a7-5787-b0f6-05064ebf9e8e.html

	The Record - “Thanks A Lot For Wasting A Year Of Our Time”:
	https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-region/thanks-a-lot-for-wasting-a-year-of-our-time-province-to-reverse-changes-it/article_bccd5b14-2d48-5abc-a6c3-dd5ef537579a.html

It may have been two different legal actions by Ecojustice against the Forced Boundary Expansions that helped the government realize the need to reverse course:
	Ecojustice Statement On Boundary Expansion Reversal Announcement:
	https://ecojustice.ca/news/ecojustice-statement-on-boundary-expansion-reversal-announcement/

Official Provincial Release From Minister Calandra:
	https://news.ontario.ca/en/statement/1003689/ontario-winding-back-changes-to-official-plans

Next Steps:

The impacted municipalities now have 45 days to respond to the Minister.  This should be a very easy process as we already have spent several years working on the Official Plans that we need for the next 30 years and these long-term community plans were just overwhelmingly approved by our municipal and regional councils in the summer of 2022.  Millions of taxpayer dollars have been invested in these plans that included input from thousands of citizens, businesses, and organizations throughout our communities.  These are the visionary, sustainable plans for the future with complete, walkable communities, affordable housing, the missing middle, improved public transit, and stronger environmental protections we will need to succeed in the future.

Karen Redman, Chair of the Region of Waterloo has committed to responding to the province within 45 days while Guelph Mayor Cam Guthrie said he was beyond upset and blasted the province for “wasting a year of time, and for nothing.”

The pressure from developers and land speculators will be intense over the weeks ahead to get these local Official Plans changed to promote urban sprawl on the specific lands they own and we will need to continue to speak up loud and clear for the sustainable future that we want to see. 

Join us on our regular bi-weekly group Zoom call this Friday, October 27th at 5:30pm to discuss things further (https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82644695701?pwd=bnRsUGtWSUcrRnFWR21uYVBISG9jZz09) and please reach out to your local Councillors to urge them to support our visionary, sustainable Official Plans already approved in summer of 2022.

Minister Calandra also hinted that some recent Ministerial Zoning Orders (MZO’s) may be revisited.  Now that the government has admitted their approach to housing policy has failed as we never had a shortage of land designated for development, we need to fight to get the Conservation Authority changes and orders to sell off Conservation Authority lands reversed as well.

Congratulations!  Once again by working together with citizens and groups across our municipalities along with other groups in communities across the province we have accomplished what many said was impossible!

Cheers!
Kevin Thomason and Mike Marcolongo on behalf of all our community groups.

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The Narwhal, October 23, 2023:

Thousands of hectares of Ontario farmland won’t be developed after Ford government backs down
Housing Minister Paul Calandra said decisions to impose sprawl on 10 municipalities including Hamilton, Waterloo and Ottawa weren’t made “in a manner that maintains and reinforces public trust”
 <https://thenarwhal.ca/author/emma-mcintosh/>
 <https://thenarwhal.ca/author/emma-mcintosh/>
By  Emma McIntosh <https://thenarwhal.ca/author/emma-mcintosh/>
Oct. 23, 2023   5 min. read
 <https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Thousands%20of%20hectares%20of%20Ontario%20farmland%20won%E2%80%99t%20be%20developed%20after%20Ford%20government%20backs%20down:%20https://thenarwhal.ca/ontario-boundary-expansion-reversal/> <https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite?mini=true&url=https://thenarwhal.ca/ontario-boundary-expansion-reversal//&title=Thousands%20of%20hectares%20of%20Ontario%20farmland%20won%E2%80%99t%20be%20developed%20after%20Ford%20government%20backs%20down> <https://www.reddit.com/submit?url=https://thenarwhal.ca/ontario-boundary-expansion-reversal/&title=Thousands%20of%20hectares%20of%20Ontario%20farmland%20won%E2%80%99t%20be%20developed%20after%20Ford%20government%20backs%20down> <mailto:?subject=Thousands%20of%20hectares%20of%20Ontario%20farmland%20won%E2%80%99t%20be%20developed%20after%20Ford%20government%20backs%20down%20|%20The%20Narwhal&body=Thought%20you%20might%20be%20interested:https://thenarwhal.ca/ontario-boundary-expansion-reversal/>Ontario will reverse its decision to impose urban sprawl on Hamilton and nine other municipalities, preserving thousands of hectares of farmland and green space. The move is another huge reversal of the Progressive Conservatives' housing policy. 
Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal 
The Doug Ford government is walking back its plans to extend the urban boundaries of 10 southern Ontario municipalities that would enable housing development on farmland.

In recent weeks, the government had faced increasing heat over the urban boundary changes — especially those affecting Hamilton <https://thenarwhal.ca/ontario-housing-hamilton-halton/> — which critics said followed a similar pattern to contentious and now-reversed carveouts from Ontario’s Greenbelt <https://thenarwhal.ca/topics/ontario-greenbelt/>. In a press conference Monday morning, Housing Minister Paul Calandra said he had reviewed the urban boundary decisions, including Hamilton’s, and found they weren’t done “in a manner that maintains and reinforces public trust.”

“The process was one that I was just not comfortable with,” Calandra told reporters.

“I think there was just a little bit too much involvement from the minister’s office, from individuals within the previous minister’s office.”

[bravepop id=”49308″ align=”center”]

Calandra’s decision comes weeks after an investigation by The Narwhal <https://thenarwhal.ca/hamilton-urban-boundary-expansion-docs/>showed the province made many of the changes to Hamilton’s urban boundaries in response to requests from unnamed third parties, and despite public opposition and warnings from public servants about unknown environmental consequences. The reversal means 2,200 hectares of land in Hamilton alone are no longer on the table for development, along with thousands of hectares more in nine other municipalities.

Grassroots group Stop Sprawl Hamilton, which has pushed against urban sprawl, hailed the announcement as a victory for citizens who protested the decision to allow development on farmland. 

“Thousands of Hamiltonians have engaged in this fight,” the group said in a statement. “People power has won the day.”

For the past year, Hamilton residents have protested the province’s decision to expand the city’s urban boundary. Photos: Stop Sprawl Hamilton
Ford government’s boundary expansions went against trends in urban planning

Urban boundaries separate farmland and green space from land that is developable. In Ontario, municipalities set those lines by planning how much they’ll need to build in the coming years to keep up with population growth. That’s because land is a finite resource — especially in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, where urban planners are reconciling the urgent need to build more housing with an ever-diminishing amount of farmland <https://thenarwhal.ca/southern-ontario-housing-farmland/>. 

Meanwhile, land speculators buy up land on the edges of urban boundaries, betting that as cities grow they’ll be able to lobby to have their land added to the developable area and see its value go up. 

For a long time, cities have approached urban expansion by building suburbs of detached, single-family homes. But now, many cities are looking to preserve farmland and green space by enabling denser development in existing urban centres, like apartments and townhouses, which require less room and also discourage car travel that begets more pollution. This shift has other benefits too: farmland ensures a local supply of food, and unpaved green spaces sequester carbon and provide habitat for species at risk and naturally mitigate floods.

The Ford government, however, has pushed cities over the last few years to sprawl outwards to enable construction of more single-family homes, which it has said are what most people want to buy. The conflict came to a head last fall, when previous housing minister Steve Clark overrode municipal councils and imposed sprawl on two municipalities <https://thenarwhal.ca/ontario-housing-hamilton-halton/]>, Hamilton and Halton Region, that had wanted to protect farmland instead.

Clark handed down the directives the same day in November 2022 that he introduced now-reversed changes to the Greenbelt. In the year since, he also expanded urban boundaries in a slew of other municipalities, including Waterloo Region <https://thenarwhal.ca/ontario-waterloo-sprawl-farmland/>, west of Toronto, and Ottawa.

Over the summer, public backlash over the Greenbelt changes escalated into a political crisis <https://thenarwhal.ca/ontario-greenbelt-report-reaction/> that led to Clark resigning on Labour Day.

The City of Hamilton had decided to maintain its boundary after a year-long public consultation process, before the Ford government required it to sprawl into farmland. Photos: Carlos Osorio / The Narwhal
Calandra could walk back some land zoning orders

Calandra’s decision is a significant reversal for the Ford government: in the weeks since he took over from Clark, Calandra had maintained that the government would not reconsider Hamilton’s urban boundaries, even though the process that led to those changes involved some of the same government staffers and developers <https://thenarwhal.ca/hamilton-urban-boundary-expansion-docs/> implicated in the Greenbelt scandal. 

On Monday, Calandra said he’ll soon introduce a bill doing just that. If passed, the bill would also walk back urban boundary changes in Barrie, Belleville, Guelph, Ottawa, Peterborough, Halton Region, Niagara Region, Peel Region, Waterloo Region, York Region and Wellington County. Many of those changes opened more land for development than local councils had wanted, sparking public and political backlash. Speaking to reporters Monday, Calandra said a discussion with Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe <https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/shawn-menard-letter-council-urban-boundary-ottawa-1.6979785>helped frame his approach.

“This really is a reset for me as a minister to work with municipal partners, so that we can remain focused on working together,” Calandra said.

Calandra said the legislation would have an exception for cases where construction might have already started, or where cancelling the official plan would go against another provincial policy. The municipalities included in the bill will now have 45 days to work with the government to amend their urban boundaries. He also said the government will “assist” with the costs of writing their growth plans again. The province is already facing requests for reimbursement <https://globalnews.ca/news/10037164/ontario-municipalities-greenbelt-costs-province-repay/> from two municipalities, Pickering and Grimsby, for expenses from the government’s Greenbelt reversal. 

Calandra also said more walkbacks on the government’s housing policy may be coming: he has also reviewed the government’s use of a controversial land zoning power <https://thenarwhal.ca/ministers-zoning-order-ontario-explainer/> called a minister’s zoning order, or MZO. The orders, which are unappealable and can be issued without public consultation, instantly fast-track development by changing how a piece of land can be used.

Former housing minister Steve Clark signed off on the urban boundary expansions the government is now reversing. Photo: Carlos Osorio / The Narwhal

Paul Calandra became the new minister of municipal affairs and housing after Clark resigned amid the Greenbelt scandal. Photo: Alicia Wynter / The Narwhal
The Ford government has used these orders more than any past Ontario government and faced criticism for using them to override environmental concerns, and for giving them to developers who have sought to sell their rezoned land <https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/mr-x-and-his-mzos-the-greenbelt-consultant-has-claimed-credit-for-getting-special-zoning/article_98189833-b37e-5e12-ada1-cb717db59314.html> instead of building on it. 

“The vast majority of them, frankly, I’m not concerned with,” Calandra said, referring to the over 100 minister’s zoning orders issued by the province since 2018.

“Where I want to look at, full disclosure, is those that have been given [a minister’s zoning order] but work has not started in any way.”

Ontario Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner said the Ford government’s flip-flop is yet another admission that their approach to housing policy has failed.

“For two years, this government has poured their time, money and energy into helping well-connected insiders cash in on sprawl,” Schreiner said in a statement.

“This government is spiralling out of control.”

–With files from Fatima Syed

Updated Oct. 23, 2023, at 3:00 p.m. ET: This story was updated to include comment from Stop Sprawl Hamilton. 

[bravepop id="49320" align="center"]

PUBLISHED BY 

Emma McIntosh <https://thenarwhal.ca/author/emma-mcintosh/>Emma McIntosh is a reporter based in Toronto who really likes being outside. She started her career in newspapers, working for the...
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2) Provincial Statement:

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Kevin Thomason
Vice-Chair, Grand River Environmental Network
www.gren.ca

Phone: (519) 888-0519
Mobile Phone/WhatsApp: (519) 240-1648
Mastodon: @kthomason at mstdn.ca <mailto:kthomason at mstdn.ca>
E-mail: kevinthomason at mac.com <mailto:kevinthomason at mac.com>

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