Ontario Greenbelt development plan faces new threat from federal government
Global News
A list of federally protected species living on land removed from the Greenbelt gives Ottawa significant powers to intervene in the Ford government's plan to allow new development.
The federal government may have the ammunition it needs to derail Premier Doug Ford’s controversial plan to develop portions of Ontario’s Greenbelt, Global News can reveal.
A briefing note prepared in March for Canada’s minister of the environment and climate change lists 29 at-risk species that live — or are likely to live — on the previously protected lands.
The birds, reptiles, mammals and insects protected by federal laws could be used by Ottawa to force Ontario to slow or abandon its plan to build thousands of homes on land removed from the Greenbelt.
The government document, obtained exclusively by Global News through access to information laws, lists the endangered species protected under federal and provincial control.
It says a range of animals and plants on the land the Ford government removed from the Greenbelt in November are considered either threatened or endangered under the Species At Risk Act. That legislation is federal and could be leveraged by Ottawa to slow down or potentially even freeze developments on former Greenbelt lands.
In November, the Ford government announced it would remove 7,400 acres of land from the Greenbelt and convert it into housing developments.
The memo to Canada’s environment minister is dated March 17, 2023. It appears to have been finalized days before Steven Guilbeault said the federal government would study lands around Rouge Park and hinted he could intervene with the province’s Greenbelt changes.
The documents obtained by Global News catalogue endangered or threatened species across the entire 7,400 acres that were removed.
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