Premier Doug Ford says that he is ‘confident’ that nobody within his government tipped off developers about plans to open up a portion of previously protected lands within the Greenbelt.
Ford made the comment to reporters during a news conference in London, just two days after the Ontario integrity commissioner confirmed that his office would be investigating whether Housing Minister Steve Clark gave developers advance notice about the changes.
“I'm confident no one gave anyone a heads up,” Ford said on Friday. “It's not government land. It's private individuals' land. They have the right to sell to anyone they want.”last month which will remove 7,400 acres from the protected Greenbelt, effectively opening that land up for housing for the first time.Ford has insisted that the changes to the Greenbelt are necessary for the province to meet its goal of building 1.5 million new homes over the next decade.
“It is not just in the middle of some Marsh or something,” Ford insisted Friday. “It's bumped up against an existing community. So you have a community with all the services there on one side of the road with hundreds, if not thousands of homes, and on the other side of the road you have an empty field. We have people coming here. We need to build homes.”
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