Why We Should Care About a Major Land Swap in Ontario

We have blogged previously about the Campbell Heights farm in Surrey and it’s imminent transfer to the Agricultural Land Reserve in British Columbia. At the same time this was transpiring, the Ontario government was approving a massive land swap of protected agricultural land for housing development. The province removed Greenbelt land in Hamilton, Grimsby and the Greater Toronto Area, totaling 3,000 hectares.

The primary difference between these two situations is that Campbell Heights - one of the most fertile parcels of land in the Lower Mainland - was not in the Agricultural Land Reserve - and you would think as a result, more vulnerable to the pressures of urban expansion and industrial development….

But the Ontario farmland in question is in the Ontario Greenbelt - a younger cousin to the BC Agricultural Land Reserve - created in 2005 by the Ontario government.

The Greenbelt’s own website states “Ontario's Greenbelt is the world's largest, protecting farmland, forests, wetlands, rivers, and lakes. Farmland makes up 40% of the protected Greenbelt, including rare specialty crop areas: the Holland Marsh and the Niagara Tender Fruit and Grape Area.”

So why did Doug Ford and his posse think taking land out of the Greenbelt was an easy win to achieve housing targets? Particularly when the Ontario government’s own housing affordability task force concluded last year that Ontario didn’t need to open the Greenbelt because it already had enough developable land available to meet its housing needs…

Greed for sure. But maybe also because in the past nobody was looking.

It seems that has changed.

On September 21, after a damning report by the auditor general, significant protest, and much media flurry, Ford has announced that the removal of the land from the greenbelt will be reversed.

While difficult to watch, Ford’s faux pas sets a precedent for other leaders grappling with these same issues. We can’t let our future be defined by short term politics. Housing and food security are both issues that define the era that we live in. Pitting them against each other does not lead to holistic solutions.

And the fertile land that feeds us can no longer be the fall guy.