After the release of the auditor-general and integrity commissioner’s reports on the Ontario Greenbelt removals, and the resignation of Steve Clark, the housing minister, it seemed inevitable that the Doug Ford government would cancel the Greenbelt removals.
But it didn’t actually happen until a couple weeks later, after CTV published a story about a cabinet minister, Ford’s former principal secretary, and a developer getting massages together in Las Vegas.
November 2022 - Ontario housing minister Steve Clark announces that about 3000 hectares of land will be removed from the Greenbelt.
January 2023 - Ontario’s auditor general and integrity commissioner announce that they will be investigating the decision.
August 9, 2023 - Auditor general releases her report. The removals increased the value of the land by $8 billion.
August 23, 2023 - Steve Clark’s chief of staff, Ryan Amato, resigns.
August 30, 2023 - Integrity commissioner releases his report. Ryan Amato was running the process: the commissioner describes Clark as having his head in the sand. Amato was receiving requests from developers to remove parcels of land from the Greenbelt.
September 4, 2023 - Steve Clark resigns from cabinet.
September 20, 2023 - Kaleed Rasheed resigns from cabinet.
September 21, 2023 - Ford announces that the Greenbelt removals will be reversed.
September 21, 2023 - Jae Truesdell, housing policy director in the premier’s office, resigns.
September 28, 2023 - Ford cuts ties with Amin Massoudi, his former principal secretary.
October 10, 2023 - The RCMP is investigating the Greenbelt decision.
Monte McNaughton also resigned from cabinet and from the legislature, taking a private-sector job, but this doesn’t appear to be directly related.
Ford’s announcement on September 21:
"I made a promise to you that I wouldn't touch the Greenbelt. I broke that promise. And for that I'm very, very sorry," Ford said.
"It was a mistake to open the Greenbelt. It was a mistake to establish a process that moved too fast. This process, it left too much room for some people to benefit over others. It caused people to question our motives. As a first step to earn back your trust, I'll be reversing the changes we made and won't make any changes to the Greenbelt in the future."
Scott Reid had predicted exactly this, shortly after Steve Clark resigned:
I'm sorry, Kory, you're sitting right there, it feels weird. But this is so uncharacteristic of the Ford government's issues management style. Forget the first year, forget the Dean French alternate universe in which the Ford government operated for the first year, before people said, Jesus Christ, we've got to get in a time machine and fucking butterfly-effect our way out of this government!
Since that point, when Ford hits trouble, he'll spend a couple days, like all political leaders, going no, no, it's not a problem, no no no, stop, you know you're wrong, I'm right. And then he'll just get up one day and go, all right everybody else is right, I'm wrong, golly gee willikers, folks, I'm so sorry, I got it wrong, and you know what, we're gonna try to do the right thing, and reverse his course completely. And that usually stems it.
And then he also has the added benefit that everybody thinks he's kind of the A&W Root Beer bear and kind of too dumb to really run the government, therefore too dumb to be accountable. And therefore they go, well, shit, you know, it wasn't really his fault, he didn't really know what was going on, and at least he's doing the right thing by apologizing. And so he skates away on this stuff.
The RCMP investigation may make it harder for Ford to skate away.
John Michael McGrath: Why carve up the Greenbelt? Suburban nostalgia.
You can’t explain this omnishambles without understanding something about both Doug Ford and the PC Party, who were critics of the Greenbelt when it was created and have remained skeptics of the entire enterprise — apparently — into the present day. We got a hint of this not long ago, when the premier was speaking to a crowd of adoring fans at the most recent “FordFest” in Kitchener. “We’re going to offer a 1,600-square-foot home, with a basement that’s finished that you can rent out or have family there,” Ford promised. “You’re going to have a backyard with a fence.”
Notably, Ford promised that public land would be donated to accomplish this. It’s telling that at the highest levels, this government can’t conceive of a solution to the housing crisis that doesn’t involve replicating the suburban ideal — using the power of the state, if need be. Across the political spectrum, people tie themselves in knots on housing policy because they think, in the absence of government action, the wrong kind of homes will be built. They’ll either be too big, too small, too ugly, too expensive or simply too many. Ford, here, is no different, except that sitting at the head of a government with a $200-billion budget he really can do what he wants — and it seems what he wants is for taxpayers to replicate the neighbourhood he grew up in. Nostalgia, just at everyone else’s expense.
The housing task force appointed by Ford recommended pushing for more infill housing, especially around transit, rather than sprawl. So why hasn’t the Ford government pursued their recommendations?
While there are undoubtedly people inside the government who understand the importance of adding new homes close to where the new jobs are, the people actually in charge – the Premier himself, and several onion-rings of advisors around him – just don’t believe it, and are wearing ideological and aesthetic blinders that only let them see what they want to see.
Even as they decry NIMBYism that blocks new housing from being built, Ford and his government have fallen victim to a kind of NIMBYism of the mind: they can’t imagine anyone wanting to live anywhere other than suburbia — certainly, they can’t imagine anyone being happy there — so they’ve let actual effective housing policy fall almost entirely off their radar. Instead, they’ve burnt one of only four years they get between elections and have accomplished very nearly nothing except a scandal that might yet chase Ford all the way out of office while producing zero new homes.