This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted exclusively to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.
Premier Doug Ford issued a warning to the owners of a chunk of former Greenbelt land on Tuesday morning, but the owners say it's all just a misunderstanding.
In a statement blasted to the media, Ford threatened to put the land back into the Greenbelt after finding out it was listed for sale.
A just over 100-acre parcel of land in Ajax between Highways 401 and 2 was one of 15 sites removed from the Greenbelt last year. It accounts for just under two per cent of the land that the Ford government controversially removed from Ontario’s signature protected area.
“Recently, we learned that the owner of 765 and 775 Kingston Road East in Ajax … listed this land for sale,” Premier Doug Ford said in a statement, which his office sent to journalists early on Tuesday. “At no point was the intention to sell disclosed to the government’s facilitator during active and ongoing discussions.”
“This behaviour goes against everything that our government is doing to bring home ownership into reach for more people. In response, our government is exploring every option available to us, including immediately starting the process to put these sites back into the Greenbelt,” Ford added.
The land includes two properties on Kingston Road (also known as Highway 2) in Ajax, most of which is at 775 Kingston Rd. East. It was purchased by a numbered company on June 18, 2018 for $15.8 million.
Corporate records for 2615898 Ontario Inc., the company owning 775 Kingston Rd. East, show two directors. Their listed addresses are in Richmond Hill and China.
When Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk's office was working on its Greenbelt report it was told by the Provincial Land and Development Facilitator (PLDF) that Buena Vista Development Corp. was expected to be the primary developer of the land, Lysyk told The Trillium on Tuesday.
The PLDF is a largely unknown agency under the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing that has been assigned to negotiate with developers of the former Greenbelt lands.
However, when The Trillium reached out to Armand Reale, president of the Buena Vista Development Corp., he disputed his company’s involvement in the process.
“I am not the owner or development of the land, contrary to the (auditor general’s) report,” Reale said in an email to The Trillium. “I was part of a group of consultants assembled by the owner including planner(s) and lawyers to help them respond to the government process.”
The auditor general's Aug. 9 report noted that the PLDF had not finalized any agreements with developers as of this June.
Reale connected The Trillium with John Dong, who said he represents the owners of 2615898 Ontario Inc., and chalked Ford’s reaction up to a misunderstanding.
“I think it was all misunderstood. My clients are foreign owners and are not developers. They purchased the property six years ago to hold as an investment,” Dong wrote.
“My clients have no development experience and required a partner with the requisite experience to meet the government's policy objective to have shovels in the ground in 2025,” he added.
“To accomplish this we engaged in a process to a find joint venture partner with the experience necessary to help us develop the property. At no time was the property going to be sold outright,” Dong said.
Ford’s office said it had “nothing further to add at this time” when asked for a response to Dong’s comments.
Tuesday’s developments were the latest in the ongoing Greenbelt saga that has its roots in the earliest days of the Ford-led Progressive Conservative (PC) Party.
“Unequivocally, we won’t touch the Greenbelt,” Ford had promised on May 1, 2018, shortly after a video surfaced of him saying at a private event that the PCs would do the opposite. Ford’s PCs were elected to govern Ontario on June 7, 2018.
Late last year, the government surprisingly removed over 7,000 acres from the protected area and added over 9,000 acres elsewhere.
Subsequent reporting found well-connected developers — who’ve donated thousands to Ford and the PCs — stood to benefit from the decision.
A recent auditor general report found developers with “direct access” to key government staff were given “preferential treatment” and had significant influence over the removal process.
The developers who had their land removed now stand to make more than $8 billion, the report found.
The Kingston Road site was initially proposed for removal from the Greenbelt by Ryan Amato, Housing Minister Steve Clark’s former chief of staff, last fall, according to the auditor general’s report.
Amato presented the site to civil servants working on the project via a USB key, but he “could not recall” how he got information on the site, the report said.
Fourteen of the 15 sites eventually removed from the Greenbelt were proposed by Amato, whereas only one came from public servants whom he closely managed under confidentiality agreements.
Amato resigned last week just ahead of news breaking that the OPP referred a decision on whether to investigate the land swap to the RCMP.
Ford also fired another warning shot at the other Greenbelt developers in his statement on Tuesday.
“To the other property owners, you’re on notice,” Ford’s statement added. “If you don’t meet our government’s conditions, including showing real progress by year-end with a plan to get shovels in the ground by 2025, your land will go back into the Greenbelt.”
The province hasn’t explained further what making “real” or “significant” progress on approvals by the end of 2023 actually means.
As of June 2023, the government hasn’t “defined these expectations so that they can be measured, nor have they established performance indicators to do so,” the auditor’s report said.
The PLDF has outlined a “framework that the negotiation and agreements are being conducted under,” which includes progress milestones, according to the auditor’s report.
Several other properties involved in the land swap are in varying stages of the development approval process, according to local governments.
In Pickering, home to the largest chunk of land removed from the Greenbelt, the approval process has started.
TACC Developments owns over 4,200 acres of land in the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve in Pickering. The site represents nearly 60 per cent of the land removed from the Greenbelt.
TACC is headed by Silvio De Gasperis, who has fought against Greenbelt protections for decades.
De Gasperis was also one of the developers who handed packages of information on land later removed from the Greenbelt to Amato at a September 2022 industry dinner.
The developer hasn’t submitted a formal application for an expected subdivision but the city has held pre-consultation meetings at TACC’s request, a spokesperson for the city of Pickering told The Trillium.
The current concept is for about 1,300 homes, including affordable housing units, as well as parks, a school, storm-water ponds, mixed-use areas, and natural heritage areas, all on about 200 acres of land, the city spokesperson said.
The next step in the process involves TACC presenting a pre-submission application for a draft plan of subdivision, which starts a review process.
The city, the conservation authority, school boards, utility providers, and other parties will have the opportunity to comb over the proposal “to identify significant concerns and potential issues related to the proposal before the formal development application is submitted,” the Pickering spokesperson said.
TACC also owns former Greenbelt land in Vaughan, known as Block 41, where the company plans to develop a subdivision with low- and mid-rise housing.
Planning started in 2015, a Vaughan city spokesperson said, though the Greenbelt lands were not a part of the original planning process.
Since the additional land was removed from the Greenbelt, city staff have had discussions with the province and TACC about the future of the lands, Vaughan staff told The Trillium.
Meanwhile, there isn’t much progress to report on for two of the three sites removed from the Greenbelt in Markham, a city spokesperson said.
“The city has not received a formal submission of any planning application for” two properties: one along Highway 48 and the other near 19th Ave. and McCowan Road. “Therefore it is premature to comment on the timing of construction.”
The Wyview Group is responsible for developing 88 acres of land along Highway 48, according to the auditor’s report.
Flato Upper Markham Village Inc. — headed by Shakir Rehmatullah — owns about 11 acres of land near 19th Ave. and McCowan Road in Markham.
Rehmatullah attended the premier’s daughter’s wedding last September and took a trip to Las Vegas in early 2020 with former high-ranking PC staffers and current Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery Kaleed Rasheed, sources said.
The third site in Markham has seen some progress on approvals.
Three companies — Minotar Holdings, Beechgrove Estates Inc., and Halvan 5.5 Investments Ltd. — are involved in the property’s development, according to the auditor general’s report.
It’s “one of several properties included in a pre-consultation application that the city received in May 2023,” a city spokesperson said.
The application included a proposed official plan amendment for a residential community. The city held a pre-consultation meeting about the proposal on Aug. 14, and staff are now waiting for an actual official plan amendment application, according to the city. No start date has been set for construction.
