EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a new Village Media website devoted to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.
The provincial government is launching a full-scale review of the Greenbelt — including the lands controversially removed last fall — the premier announced a day after Steve Clark resigned from cabinet for his role in the ongoing scandal.
Paul Calandra, the newly-minted minister of municipal affairs and housing, will oversee the process that could see more land removed from the Greenbelt.
"There's going to be a complete review, from top to bottom," Ford said, speaking to reporters at Queen's Park on Tuesday.
The 14 sites removed from the Greenbelt will "have to survive on their own merit," he said. Numerous other applications for land removals — a figure he put at 700 to 800 — will be considered as well.
The Greenbelt is supposed to be reviewed every 10 years, according to the original legislation. The last full-scale review happened between 2015–2017. It brought about hundreds of requests from landowners to have their lands removed from the protected area.
Ford didn't rule out removing more land after the upcoming review.
"We're going to see what the review says. At the end of the review, we'll analyze it and it will be up to the minister to make that decision," Ford said.
More to come...
