Opinion Martin Regg Cohn: Doug Ford will be haunted by these 5 questions on his Greenbelt land grab
in 2016. Personal contributions made by individual developers rarely amount to more than a few tens of thousands of dollars — a drop in the bucket for the PC fundraising arm that has raised tens of millions of dollars over the last few years.
Among its quick and dirty incentives, the PC government has removed development fees for new homes. But not all sprawl is equally costly to the environment: Why exempt a 10,000-square-foot monster home from any charges? Why put a 4,000-square-foot suburban overbuild on the same footing as an affordable starter home half that size, with waivers for all — and all sizes?
As if Ford hadn’t fouled things up enough, Municipal Affairs Minister Steve Clark defiantly refused to answer opposition questions last week about whether he’d tipped off developers to buy parcels of Greenbelt land ahead of time. Brimming with arrogance, oblivious to accountability, blind to optics, Clark repeatedly refused to say either way.
You can decide for yourself if he did or didn’t. But you don’t need to be a rocket scientist — or a savvy developer — to know that inexorable demographic and political pressures will inevitably prompt adjustments to the Greenbelt . Equally, you don’t have be a political scientist to know that if you stonewall questions about tipping off developers, people will assume that’s precisely what you did.
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