Staff recommends Niagara town ask province to keep its Greenbelt sites removed

A town in the Niagara Region is poised to urge the Ford government to stick with its controversial decision to remove two sites from the Greenbelt and make it easier for municipalities to open up other protected farmland for development.

Grimsby staff's recommendations — made without public consultation, according to a report released Thursday — are in stark contrast to the changes the province is in the process of making after months of public pressure. 

Following scathing reports from the auditor general and integrity commissioner, the launch of an RCMP criminal investigation and the resignation of two cabinet ministers and other staff in recent months, Housing Minister Paul Calandra tabled a bill to return all land back to the Greenbelt. 

His bill would also make it more challenging for anyone to remove land in the future by requiring the legislature to approve any changes. 

The province is currently accepting feedback from municipalities, which is what prompted Grimsby staff to prepare their recommendations in a report that will go to council Monday.

Grimsby, a town east of Hamilton close to Niagara's wine country, is one of the 10 municipalities impacted by the the recent Greenbelt scandal, with two sites abruptly removed by the province in 2022 at Winston and Cline Roads.

Liz Benneian, director of the civic engagement group A Better Niagara, said the recommendations from the town are "totally wrong" and would undermine permanent protection of the Greenbelt, its natural heritage systems and prime agricultural land.

"The people in Niagara want the Greenbelt to be protected, there's no doubt about it," said Benneian, who is also the founder of Biodiversity and Climate Action Niagara. 

"They deserve to have a voice about this." 

Planning staff say in their report that their recommendations follow what Grimsby has "continuously advocated" for — opening up Greenbelt land within their town boundaries to make room for expansion. 

They say the town is in a unique position because the urban area is "sandwiched" between the Niagara escarpment and Lake Ontario and the majority of the rest of Grimsby is designated as prime specialty crop Greenbelt land, preventing development. 

"To properly plan for the future, the town requires the cooperation of the province, and a change in the proposed legislation," the report says.

If members of the public want to weigh in after staff recommendations are passed, they can do so not through the town, but rather the province's environmental registry, says the report.

Local developers, officials met at private event

A month before Grimsby staff released their recommendations about the Greenbelt, the town's economic development advisory committee, senior staff and mayor held a private, invite-only luncheon. 

The event was called a "community development roundtable" and held at a hotel with dozens of local developers, investors and other builder stakeholders.

The town confirmed the event occurred Oct. 12 but declined to provide a list of those who attended citing privacy concerns. The event was not advertised to the public or live streamed and no minutes were taken. 

Town spokesperson Christina Davidson said staff do not have concerns about transparency as those who have a "vested interest" in the town's growth were invited. As to the cost of the event to taxpayers, the town doesn't have an exact total at this time.

Coun. Veronica Charrois, who wasn't invited to the event, raised questions at a council meeting earlier this month. 

"The accountability factor sucked," she told council. "The optics are absolutely atrocious. If this was something that was out in the open, then put it out in the open, I should've been able to see what was going on." 

While there were some developers in attendance caught up in the "Greenbelt fiasco," Coun. Reg Freake, who was at the roundtable, told Charrois it shouldn't be turned into a "conspiracy theory." 

Mayor Jeff Jordan also defended the event and added that staff held an invite-only meeting a few weeks later for "green" environmental advocates. 

The reason why the meeting wasn't opened to the public is because then "everybody could have their little says" and many developers wouldn't have shown up, said Coun. Don Howe, who also attended.

"They wouldn't have wanted to put up with political nonsense," Howe said. "They were there to talk business." 

Planning director Harold Madi, who helped prepare the report recommending the province keep the land removed from the Greenbelt, told council the event was intended to provide an update about the development approval process and recent changes to provincial legislation. 

"It was also an opportunity to … listen to the business community's ideas, opinions and concerns about a whole broad spectrum of things," Madi said.

But Hamilton-based researcher Chris Erl, a politics and public administration post-doctoral fellow at Toronto Metropolitan University, called the situation "strange" and said "the entire idea of a closed-door meeting between those who stand to profit off municipal decisions and municipal officials is rather contrary to good governance practices."

Matt Johnston of UrbanSolutions is a planner for landowners of both Greenbelt sites the province removed in Grimsby and confirmed to CBC Hamilton he went to the roundtable. 

Johnston said he did not bring up the Cline or Winston Roads properties or anything related to the Greenbelt. He said he attended to "show appreciation" for the initiative, meet the town's senior leadership team and "exchange insights and perspectives on development matters and process." 

Recommendations would test Ford government: advocate 

The roundtable appears to be a "backroom meeting" that's both "astounding" and "mind boggling," said Mike Marcolongo, campaign director for the Greenbelt Promise. He called on town council and staff to demonstrate otherwise by being more transparent.

Four days after the event, council passed a motion directing staff to request the province keep the sites at Cline and Winston Roads out of the Greenbelt and also waived the requirement to hear from the public first to be able to meet the provincial deadline for feedback.

The short timeframe between the developer roundtable, council's direction to staff and the resulting recommendations about the Greenbelt is a "mere coincidence," said Davidson.

If staff's recommendations pass, Marcolongo said it will be a test for the Ford government.

"If [the housing minister] is serious about protecting the Greenbelt, he cannot give the town the option to carve it up," he said. 

If the Ford government accepts Grimsby's recommendations, Benneian fears it will allow other municipalities to remove land and the Greenbelt will resemble "Swiss cheese." 

"We won't have any farmland left," she said. "We'll be right back where we started with corrupt removals of land."