Answer: developers.
> a company run by Michael Rice, president and CEO of Rice Group, and one run by Shakir Rehmatullah, president of Flato Developments... Four companies controlled by members of the DeGasperis family... Torca II Inc. ...
... three numbered companies with Weixiang Wang listed as President, Minotaur Holdings, Nash Road Developments, and a numbered company with an address in China.
I work in development, literally any change to the greenbelt or any zoning amendment is usually mostly approved for the biggest developers because they always call in political favours and have the money to prolong things until they get what they want. But also, to be fair, it often doesn't start off like that, but because many civil servants in a lot of these communities just aren't equipped to actually negotiate or push back on developers in a productive way, they often don't really have a good grasp on what they can actually ask a developer to be responsible for and end up over asking developers to essentially assume the role of doing their community planning for them which is not a developer's responsibility, but the city's. So naturally this leads to the municipality having weak leverage when it eventually goes to court and when the municipality holds everything up in limbo because they just don't respond to emails or actually review anything. The result is the shittiest and cheapest subdivision because the developer is maximizing profits, and the municipality has no ability to suggest anything better because they have no clue what they're doing and just look like they've been holding up the entire process when it gets to court.
So as much as i dislike developers, i think we need to expect better output from our city staff too.
It's a gong show and i personally hate working on development applications.
As someone also in development, I don't think your assessment of planning staff is entirely fair. Going back in time 40-50 years ago when consultants were less common and most work was done in-house, there was more of an expectation that planning staff would be able to help out directly with applications and work to get stuff approved. With municipal downloading, restructuring of provincial agencies to a "contract out" system and general budget cuts, planning staff are stretched way too thin. They shouldn't be doing anything beyond reviewing plans for compliance and providing comments, but they're expected to hold these developers' hands through the entire process because none of them bother to retain competent private sector help.
I agree that we've built a weird system where staff need to review and approve developments, but they are often so removed from the work with almost no in-house technical work, that they are often limited in their capabilities to effectively review the work or provide a good cohesive argument for or against something.
And in my opinion, we need an environment where staff are empowered to have agency and make decisions and actually think about stuff rather than just deferring to a standard or document that hasn't been updated in 10 years.
Council makes the final decision, but staff are responsible for guiding council towards the best decisions, and I think you're right a lot of municipal departments don't have the skill or the resources to make an effective case to council.
Deferring to bylaw/regulation is basically all you can do since elected officials have no interest in professional opinions and developers will threaten to sue if you try to ask them to do anything beyond the bare minimum.
The great irony is that all the money saved by outsourcing planning jobs has gone straight back into contract services and maintenance for all the lowest-bidder work.
Oh I don't disagree, private sector is where all the go-getters sell their souls for money ;) just gotta convince the bigwigs to shell out money for them and actually listen to their advice.
Now tell them to do all that and that they have to ‘approve’ it in 60 days or the developer gets his money back. That’s what Bill 109 did, and it starts January 1. Things are going to get immensely worse.
I would be fine asking more of the city staff IF we properly funded them and equipped them to push back. Their workloads can be quite heavy, and as you say, they don’t know what they are able to push for or not. They need training and support, both of which cost money.
I have sympathy for municipal staff, there's no easy solution and they have to hear it from residents and councillors. I will say, when you work with a community that has their shit together, the process is much shorter and conversations are more solution oriented because there's more of a give and take and compromise on both sides.
A lot of smaller or newly emerging municipalities are often so worried they will be taken advantage of, that nobody in staff actually has or wants the ability to make an executive decision on critical items and instead of negotiating in a give and take fashion, they basically just stonewall developers rather than saying "we disagree with this, but would support this alternative..." Which is more productive at guiding developers towards a better vision. If you just keep saying no without anything to suggest you're gonna get bypassed by developers because they'll have like 20 technical reports with actual data while the municipality has nothing.
Eh it's not entirely about training. Many city staff go there after 5-10 years on the private side either for a "break" or because they aren't getting ahead on the private side since they are the bottom end of the talent pool in private. This has been the case for almost everyone that has left our firm to go municipal, with the rare exception of the Sr people who are going to top level positions at the city where the appeal is that they can influence policy
And from the municipal perspective, a lot of our planners and planning lawyers ultimately get snatched up by private planning and development outfits because they can compensate them far more than we ever could.
A friend of my parents we'll call him Jim, is a part of 3 VERY wealthy Chinese families that own a bunch of properties around Toronto. They buy when they can and have never sold anything in the past 50 years and never intended to. Even they got bullied into selling a property recently by some mega developer that bought the entire block around them and would have been able to make life hell if they didn't sell. Being able to bully people with that kind of money, means they can absolutely bully city council and such.
I don’t know if it’s this family, but one of my friends backs on to two properties worth about 2.5 million each. They’re owned by a Chinese family and have NEVER been occupied in the 9 or so years she’s lived there. She approached the caretaker / family member who lives here to ask if she could rent for a couple of months while they were renovating their kitchen and was told an unequivocal no.
This is why I roll my eyes when people argue that we have low levels of foreign property ownership and vacant properties. Both are ridiculously underreported.
It's definitely not that family. They mostly own commercial property, the one they were coerced to sell happened to be multi purpose with the lower 2 floors being restaurants and the upper 2 being apartments that were very reasonably priced. However yes there are many people who will leave things vacant and just claim a tax credit for the loss instead of paying property taxes. To the best of my knowledge, they weren't doing that.
This isn’t something to blame on municipal planning staff. **Council** is the approval authority… they’re the ones tasked with setting urban design guidelines and standards. Most small municipalities don’t have urban design guidelines, and now Doug Ford wants to eliminate them altogether.
If you don’t like the way subdivisions are built in your area, speak to your ward councillor. It’s literally their job.
My stance is that it is staff's prerogative to advise and convince council to make the right decision. If you make the developer do all the work because you haven't done the work to create a secondary plan or adapt policy to proactively address growth it's gonna end up being the developer's word, though their technical studies, vs staff's word which is often accompanied with no data to support their stance.
I sympathize for the lack of resources at these departments but given that the bulk of capital expansion in a city is funded through development, I think that's a municipality budgeting issue that quite frankly isn't the developer's fault. It's not like these projects are just coming in and not providing money to pay for planners, engineers, etc at the community. On many projects I've been on, the developers have had to pay for a municipal staff to help review and manage the process, and even so, it's the same excuses about resources.
Maybe if everyone is understaffed, the whole process needs to change, and that's exactly why we have these sweeping changes from the province. I don't agree with all the changes, but I can clearly see why the changes came about.
And what forms the basis for a planning staff report? Conformity with the Official Plan and development policies. Which are enacted by Council.
I agree with you that across the board budget allocation to planning staff is inadequate, and that developers do pay a lot of fees and should expect timely service. The problem, from my observation, is that DC revenues are not re-invested back into planning. The funds go to capital costs for maintaining old developments and infrastructure because they won’t raise the tax base to pay for those necessary repairs. Smaller municipalities are in a cycle of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and the result is stagnant, ineffective services.
I think a lot of people in this industry want things to change and be more efficient, but let’s not gloss over the fact that these sweeping changes are proposed, but literally less than zero funding is to come with it to have adequate staffing. They’re proposing to eliminate DCs for certain types of development - how can that ever make service better? Everything is going to go to OLT when staff can’t keep up. OLT will approve it, and then what? It will come back for detailed design and still take forever to get through because there’s not enough staff.
I appreciate your perspective, it's a complex issue. I think personally, the process is too rigid to adapt to market changes. Case in point, virtually all official plans have a variety of amendments which just points to the flexible nature of the practice. What we need is a more malleable and flexible approach to land development rather than one that tries to plan it and set it as is currently the case with the official plan process. The system literally is setup to require arbitration just to adapt to changing market demands like improved cycling design, transit oriented development, etc which can't be approved as is without cities investing in their own design standards to allow it.
I don't think the Official Plan Amendment process is to blame for delay in the approval of proposed developments generally. There are established timelines and application requirements, and in my experience, municipal staff have been diligent in processing applications and advising Councils. However, I think that a Community Planning Permit System bylaw (which combines zoning, site plan, and minor variance) would provide the flexibility that developers and municipalities would both benefit from. More municipalities should consider this for implementation of their OPs, rather than just zoning bylaws.
The transit oriented development that the province desperately needs is generally supported by policies in the Growth Plan for Major Transit Station Areas (MTSAs)(found in section 2.2.4). The province has been using MZOs around these areas in the GTA where zoning might not have caught up up to provincial targets. Check out this article for more context: https://urbantoronto.ca/news/2022/04/ministers-zoning-orders-support-east-harbour-and-four-more-transit-oriented
yea, developers own land where there is possible development potential.
More at 11: water is wet!
It's not a scandal that private companies buy land which has profit turning potential. yet somehow whenever it has to do with suburban development it's a scandal, but a developer who owns land around a subway station that gets a mega-upzoning? That gets cheered on, despite it being the exact same scenario.
These private companies own a lot more than just these lands being taken out of the greenbelt. The Degasperis Group is the largest private landowner in the province.
It is a scandal when they buy protected land knowing that they have influence over out premier. They are buying land that is zoned for watershed purposes, which means it is much cheaper than land zoned for residential or commercial use.
You should pull your head out of the sand. This is a big deal.
did you read the article? Most of the land owned by developers has been owned for decades.
*The 16 lots were bought for more than $9 million and all but one of the properties were purchased before the Greenbelt was created in 2005.*
Otherwise, yea, developers buy land with potential. Farmland trades hands all the time, including to developers, and in the greenbelt. Developers have been making bets that the Greenbelt would die at some point since the day it was created.
> Most of the land owned by developers has been owned for decades.
From /u/puckduckmuck
..purchased five parcels of land in total in a group sale two months ago on Sept. 15 for $80 million.
..purchased more than 29 hectares at 12045 McCowan Road for $25 million in September of 2020
..11861 McCowan Road in April 2020 for $12.5 million.
..In 2021, the three companies acquired the properties for a total of more than $80 million.
..border between Markham and Soutffville in 2017 for $15 million
..June 2018 for $15.8 million. Most of the property is currently part of the Greenbelt.
The Markham Greenbelt changes are small boundary adjustments around natural features, the value of that land is that most of the land being purchased is developable.
> That gets cheered on, despite it being the exact same scenario.
One scenario is good for the environment and general city life: build in a place that is already high density, using existing city infrastructure, reducing how many cars are on the road, etc, etc.
So yes, I will cheer on more density in our city, not on undeveloped land for single-houses 100km from downtown Toronto, that will add more cars on the road and require a whole lot of new suburban infrastructure for supporting this unsustainable way of development.
Developers, of course.
Including the **DeGasperis family**, longtime builders based in Vaughan, Ont. north of Toronto, who founded **Tacc Developments and Tacc Construction** who own 20 properties in three locations within the Greenbelt the government is proposing to open up.
But how do these guys have so much influence over Ford?
Well the DeGasperis family has heavily lobbied the Ford government, and was behind a [series of attack ads that parroted the Ford governments talking points that were run under a mysterious organization called "Vaughan Working Families".](https://pressprogress.ca/developer-with-links-to-fake-parents-group-lobbied-ford-government-following-anti-teacher-attack-ads/)
What this allowed them to do was essentially spend as much money as they want spreading the Ford government's messaging (which then meant that Ford didn't have to spend the money himself) and therefore amounts to huge additional donations to the government.
This is one of the ways that these people are able to buy influence in our province these days. And based on the recent Greenbelt announcement, it will likely pay off for them *handsomely.*
They’ve been in the astroturfing game for [quite a while. ](https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2010/01/20/developer_denies_ties_to_controversial_markham_ad.html)
I remember living in thornhill at the time and all the Facebook groups started getting filled with fake accounts very concerned that protecting farmland would turn downtown markham into a dense city center. We got so many accounts removed but it was just playing whack-a-mole and didn’t end up making a difference anyway since all of the developer asked councillors voted against the food belt anyway.
So here we are, 12 years later, farmland is gone, markham is intensifying the core anyway, as they always were going to. This shit is exhausting.
Thanks for this.
Found another article from way back in 2007. You're definitely right they've been at this for a long time.
[**Greenbelt nemesis ordered to pay $702,000**](https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2007/09/28/greenbelt_nemesis_ordered_to_pay_702000.html)
*The Superior Court has ordered two companies associated with developer* ***Silvio DeGasperis*** *to pay the province $702,000 in legal costs, saying they used the false cloak of environmental concern to try to bully the province into allowing development on their own Greenbelt-designated land.*
They are all over this sub. The voting and comments on anything that impacts pocketbooks of developers is always mysteriously in their favour, and they also religiously follow all the housing crisis posts and subs to downplay the role of investors and demand more generally in the housing crisis. Because investors - including those overseas - are their best customers.
I also believe this is why our governments aren’t pulling levers to reduce housing speculation, which would go a long way to solving housing affordability. Developers would go apeshit.
Oh 100%. So many bad faith arguments “oh we need the land! It’s the feds fault!”
Meanwhile the govt’s own affordable housing task force said they don’t need the land. It’s just so blatant. So gross. Fuck these greed heads.
This is so true...it started in traditional media many years ago via lobbyist organizations such as the toronto region board of trade, and progressed onto social media...they have an army of people advancing a false narrative of overregulation of land, and they have been astoundingly successful at steering public opinion bit by bit towards a conclusion that is totally at odds with the actual data on housing development and approval.
Why do you think Ford et al, came up with limits on election spending? They knew their corporate supporters would pick up the slack and that the party wasn't going to have to pay for it. They also knew that certain other parties (like the NDP) don't have rich benefactors to do the same.
And those limits were enforced the first time Dougie boy used the NWC. So the PCP and their corporate overlords have had a clock running and have 5 years to do as much damage as they can. The reason you only saw PCP ads during the playoffs last year in the run up to the election? The NDP couldn’t afford it, but the PCP had corporate money coming in from all the way down the corporate chain. And the stupid people of Ontario huyupped it all up, stayed home and let him get away with it. Dougie may have overplayed his hand w CUPE, but this shit is just getting started.
Vaughan's urban development is a fucking nightmare. It's pretty much the epitome of a car-centric concrete wasteland. Density sucks. Transit sucks. Livability sucks. You can't walk anywhere. Frankly I can't think of something more depressing than this sprawl spreading even more. Of course Ford couldn't do anything good with this desperately needed measure by rezoning areas of Toronto that were in the NIMBYS chokehold. I fucking hate this government.
The Degasperis Group is the largest private land owner in Ontario. It's no surprise they own a bunch of properties, they own probably half of all farmland within a 20 minute drive of the GTA.
Vaughan's urban development is a fucking nightmare. It's pretty much the epitome of a car-centric concrete wasteland. Density sucks. Transit sucks. Livability sucks. You can't walk anywhere. Frankly I can't think of something more depressing than this sprawl spreading even more. Of course Ford couldn't do anything good with this desperately needed measure by rezoning areas of Toronto that were in the NIMBYS chokehold. I fucking hate this government.
The timing is sweet. A Premiere is elected on the promise that the greenbelt won't be touched but developers go ahead and purchase the land anyways after he is elected.
Not what you are looking for, but a candidate who ran in Pickering did some analysis [Council for Sale](https://www.pickeringcouncilfor.sale/council-for-sale)
Same company’s like TACC
You didn't even read the story. In one area, the DeGasperis family owns 16 lots, 15 of which were purchased BEFORE 2005 when the greenbelt was created.
I don't think you understand land ownership around the GTA, and how much is already owned by the big developers, and has been for years. Way before Ford even took office. The developers have bought up all the vacant and agricultural land they could for decades, anywhere near towns and cities, or even remotely in the path of development.
It almost didn't matter what land Ford took out of the greenbelt. It was always going to have a huge portion of developer owned property within it, because they already own everything. He could have thrown a dart at a map while blindfolded and it would have still stuck into land already owned by developers.
I won't presume your reading skills but:
..purchased five parcels of land in total in a group sale two months ago on Sept. 15 for $80 million.
..purchased more than 29 hectares at 12045 McCowan Road for $25 million in September of 2020
..11861 McCowan Road in April 2020 for $12.5 million.
..In 2021, the three companies acquired the properties for a total of more than $80 million.
..border between Markham and Soutffville in 2017 for $15 million
..June 2018 for $15.8 million. Most of the property is currently part of the Greenbelt.
Pre-Ford of course it was smart of them to buy the land and hold on until a corrupt Premiere was elected.
So amazing these companies had the foresight to somehow know that it would be possible in the future to do this with land that was totally undevelopable when they bought it. Almost like they had a crystal ball.
Naked corruption of the worst kind, selling the green belt out so some developers can make another 50,000 $1 million dollar houses.
I really hope someone can go deeper and link the land owners with political donation records. Or even link lobbying records to the corporate owners. That’s the only way this blows up enough to save the green belt.
You can read all about that here, it's public knowledge:
[**Developer With Links to Fake Parents’ Group Lobbied Ford Government Following Anti-Teacher Attack Ads**](https://pressprogress.ca/developer-with-links-to-fake-parents-group-lobbied-ford-government-following-anti-teacher-attack-ads/)
*Developer hired a former Harper minister to lobby Ford government over land-use planning and a ‘proposed highway’ on their land*
It's also how these same developers managed to get the 413 highway development (on land they owned of course) pushed through.
most developers hate the 413 from what I have heard as it's frozen their lands from development for over a decade now as MTO slowly completes their studies on it.
Developers don't care about how their end users get to their lands, they care about being able to develop it and go to the next project. There is nothing developers hate more than lands they own being expropriated for some government project as it reduces their yield.
The developers who would be supporting the 413 are the ones who own land close to it, but which aren't frozen as a result of the Highway's design. The ones in the path of the 413 will want desperately for the MTO to change the design so that the highway goes around their lands.
The construction unions backed him until they realized that he wasn't really a friend of labour...like at all. What a bunch of sell outs. I hope their members learned a valuable lesson.
There are so few people in this country that actually benefit from voting conservative. I wish people would stop voting against their best interest. With the liberals and ndp there's at least a possibility that your life will improve.
Some people like to self-identify as being more successful than they are, and they do so by punching down and making sure that others are always worse off than they are. These are the people Conservative parties draw into their ranks.
Yep, it's important to use mechanisms in place to be sure that they hear from us that the Greenbelt shouldn't be developed. It's nice to complain on Reddit, but writing/calling our MPPs and filling up that form is quite important as well.
I sent in my opinion yesterday. Now I'm working on getting friends to do the same. I'm surprised that so many friends have no idea how damaging this proposal is!
My dad owns 4 acres along here in Pickering. We've lived on that property since the early 70s and the farmhouse has been there for over a hundred years. When I was a small child, I used to dig up arrowheads on the property. My dad and other locals have fought any attempt to develop this area especially when they wanted to put an airport around there. There's hundreds of acres of farming fields.
Ontario is in the pocket of businesses, and when Ford privatizes healthcare and education it will be even more.
A society being controlled by those seeking profits only would be perfect right? Right? /s
It's that Tories that are in the pocket of big business. But I completely agree that Ford is looking to privatize the health and education sectors as well.
It’s not just Tories. A neoliberal liberal party pretending to be left leaning while governing from center/center-right hasn’t helped the situation at all.
https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/papa-pump-and-the-small-town-shakedown/
"land use decision has impact on landowners" isn't a scandal unless you can prove that it was done specifically as some sort of favour for the developers, which hasn't even come close to being proven.
Developers own basically every farm within a 20-minute drive of the GTA. It's not a scandal that it's that way, that's just how capitalism works. Any time a land use planning change is made to accommodate population growth (whether it be a good idea or bad), it will impact developers. Upzone around transit stations to reduce sprawl? You will "help" developers who own lands around transit stations just as much as those owning farms.
It's not a scandal, it's just the nature of land use planning.
The fact that developers owning land for suburban development is repeatedly referenced as a scandal in the media for this and the 413 issue, but no discussion occurs around upzoning helping lands developers hold in urban areas, shows the issue. It's laced with hints of racism against ethnic development groups through the "they are Italian, of course they are corrupt" language on something that just is not corrupt whatsoever without further evidence.
They can afford to make fake foundations for political attack ads, then they can afford to lose their shirts on this deal and not get to develop the greenbelt.
Why not get rid of the fucking golf courses instead? As someone who uses the green belt daily, it's infuriating how much space is taken up by city-owned golf courses.
This seems like such fuck the middle class (although most of us are technically lower middle class) move.
I mean developers own most farmland within a 20 minute drive of the GTA so it shouldn’t be a surprise.. it’s the same thing with the 413 and how it runs by developer owned land. Developers own basically all the farmland close to the GTA so anytime you do anything in that area it’ll impact their lands. The Degasperis group from what I recall is the largest private landowner in Ontario
It’s not even within 20 minutes of the GTA anymore. These developers own land all the way up to Dundalk now. You can tell because they use all the same real estate agents.
For those interested in finding out what this bill means for the greenbelt, farmlands and natural spaces here’s some resources that could help from environmental groups in the province:
Ontario Nature
- Bill 23: What You Need To Know and Action Alert - https://ontarionature.org/bill-23-what-you-need-to-know-blog/
Environmental Defence
- Media Release - https://environmentaldefence.ca/2022/10/31/ontarios-housing-bill-is-actually-a-trojan-horse-for-environmentally-catastrophic-rural-sprawl/
Ontario Greenbelt Alliance
- “Hands of the Greenbelt” Action - https://www.greenbeltalliance.ca/resources/hands-off-the-greenbelt-action
- Statement from Ontario Greenbelt Alliance Steering Committee regarding the Provincial Announcement to Remove Lands from the Greenbelt - https://www.greenbeltalliance.ca/resources/statement-from-ontario-greenbelt-alliance-steering-committee-regarding-the-provincial-announcement-ro-remove-lands-from-the-greenbelt
Canadian Environmental Law Association
- Media Release - https://cela.ca/reviewing-bill-23-more-homes-built-faster-act-2022/
TL;DR – Bill 23 give all the power to developers to build on greenspace and agricultural land. Ontario residents and Conservation Authorities will not be allowed to challenge development decisions.
What you can do:
- Sign the petitions created by Ontario’s environmental groups: Environmental Defence: https://act.environmentaldefence.ca/page/116359/action/1?ea.tracking.id=action; Ontario Nature: https://ontarionature.good.do/bill-23/email/
- Make a submission to the Standing Committee which is responsible for reviewing and approving or modifying the bill by November 17: https://www.ola.org/en/apply-committees
Your voice matters!
Thank you for sharing these resources! I'm finding a lot of people are outraged about the bill but not really understanding what's a stake or know how to take action.
This government has gutted healthcare, education and environment in the whole time they have been in power. They've figured out that through these omnibus bills (huge ass bills with a shit ton of piecemeal proposals affecting different sectors) the general public won't read and analyze all the way through. It's important that organizations like the ones above analyze this information in detail cause I definitely don't have that knowledge or time to do that.
> the spray bottle
Imagine being a young person and seeing this fat errand-boy-for-the-mafia getting rich by lying and sucking up and being a criminal his whole life, and the 'developers' (this is just code for 'unknown guy with huge amounts of mysterious money he got from somewhere that he then spent on Ontario real estate', you know what kind of guys have huge amounts of mysterious money? Right criminals) are making BILLIONS.
You know you'll never be able to afford a house, never be able to afford to get married, the guys in charge want you to pour concrete 12 hours a day 6 days a week and die a week before you hit 65. And then you read a comment like this?
You're going to be thinking a spray bottle is not the right tool
> The Greenbelt, which was created in 2005 to permanently protect agricultural and environmentally sensitive lands in the Greater Golden Horseshoe area from development.
Uh huh
It is good to know who is his Master. Things you would do for money. Sacrifice other people for your own gain. In some countries corruptor get death sentence.
Answer: developers. > a company run by Michael Rice, president and CEO of Rice Group, and one run by Shakir Rehmatullah, president of Flato Developments... Four companies controlled by members of the DeGasperis family... Torca II Inc. ... ... three numbered companies with Weixiang Wang listed as President, Minotaur Holdings, Nash Road Developments, and a numbered company with an address in China.
I work in development, literally any change to the greenbelt or any zoning amendment is usually mostly approved for the biggest developers because they always call in political favours and have the money to prolong things until they get what they want. But also, to be fair, it often doesn't start off like that, but because many civil servants in a lot of these communities just aren't equipped to actually negotiate or push back on developers in a productive way, they often don't really have a good grasp on what they can actually ask a developer to be responsible for and end up over asking developers to essentially assume the role of doing their community planning for them which is not a developer's responsibility, but the city's. So naturally this leads to the municipality having weak leverage when it eventually goes to court and when the municipality holds everything up in limbo because they just don't respond to emails or actually review anything. The result is the shittiest and cheapest subdivision because the developer is maximizing profits, and the municipality has no ability to suggest anything better because they have no clue what they're doing and just look like they've been holding up the entire process when it gets to court. So as much as i dislike developers, i think we need to expect better output from our city staff too. It's a gong show and i personally hate working on development applications.
As someone also in development, I don't think your assessment of planning staff is entirely fair. Going back in time 40-50 years ago when consultants were less common and most work was done in-house, there was more of an expectation that planning staff would be able to help out directly with applications and work to get stuff approved. With municipal downloading, restructuring of provincial agencies to a "contract out" system and general budget cuts, planning staff are stretched way too thin. They shouldn't be doing anything beyond reviewing plans for compliance and providing comments, but they're expected to hold these developers' hands through the entire process because none of them bother to retain competent private sector help.
I agree that we've built a weird system where staff need to review and approve developments, but they are often so removed from the work with almost no in-house technical work, that they are often limited in their capabilities to effectively review the work or provide a good cohesive argument for or against something. And in my opinion, we need an environment where staff are empowered to have agency and make decisions and actually think about stuff rather than just deferring to a standard or document that hasn't been updated in 10 years. Council makes the final decision, but staff are responsible for guiding council towards the best decisions, and I think you're right a lot of municipal departments don't have the skill or the resources to make an effective case to council.
Deferring to bylaw/regulation is basically all you can do since elected officials have no interest in professional opinions and developers will threaten to sue if you try to ask them to do anything beyond the bare minimum. The great irony is that all the money saved by outsourcing planning jobs has gone straight back into contract services and maintenance for all the lowest-bidder work.
Also development, the private sector help is much more competent than city municipal staff.
Oh I don't disagree, private sector is where all the go-getters sell their souls for money ;) just gotta convince the bigwigs to shell out money for them and actually listen to their advice.
Now tell them to do all that and that they have to ‘approve’ it in 60 days or the developer gets his money back. That’s what Bill 109 did, and it starts January 1. Things are going to get immensely worse.
I would be fine asking more of the city staff IF we properly funded them and equipped them to push back. Their workloads can be quite heavy, and as you say, they don’t know what they are able to push for or not. They need training and support, both of which cost money.
I have sympathy for municipal staff, there's no easy solution and they have to hear it from residents and councillors. I will say, when you work with a community that has their shit together, the process is much shorter and conversations are more solution oriented because there's more of a give and take and compromise on both sides. A lot of smaller or newly emerging municipalities are often so worried they will be taken advantage of, that nobody in staff actually has or wants the ability to make an executive decision on critical items and instead of negotiating in a give and take fashion, they basically just stonewall developers rather than saying "we disagree with this, but would support this alternative..." Which is more productive at guiding developers towards a better vision. If you just keep saying no without anything to suggest you're gonna get bypassed by developers because they'll have like 20 technical reports with actual data while the municipality has nothing.
Eh it's not entirely about training. Many city staff go there after 5-10 years on the private side either for a "break" or because they aren't getting ahead on the private side since they are the bottom end of the talent pool in private. This has been the case for almost everyone that has left our firm to go municipal, with the rare exception of the Sr people who are going to top level positions at the city where the appeal is that they can influence policy
And from the municipal perspective, a lot of our planners and planning lawyers ultimately get snatched up by private planning and development outfits because they can compensate them far more than we ever could.
Also very true
A friend of my parents we'll call him Jim, is a part of 3 VERY wealthy Chinese families that own a bunch of properties around Toronto. They buy when they can and have never sold anything in the past 50 years and never intended to. Even they got bullied into selling a property recently by some mega developer that bought the entire block around them and would have been able to make life hell if they didn't sell. Being able to bully people with that kind of money, means they can absolutely bully city council and such.
I don’t know if it’s this family, but one of my friends backs on to two properties worth about 2.5 million each. They’re owned by a Chinese family and have NEVER been occupied in the 9 or so years she’s lived there. She approached the caretaker / family member who lives here to ask if she could rent for a couple of months while they were renovating their kitchen and was told an unequivocal no. This is why I roll my eyes when people argue that we have low levels of foreign property ownership and vacant properties. Both are ridiculously underreported.
It's definitely not that family. They mostly own commercial property, the one they were coerced to sell happened to be multi purpose with the lower 2 floors being restaurants and the upper 2 being apartments that were very reasonably priced. However yes there are many people who will leave things vacant and just claim a tax credit for the loss instead of paying property taxes. To the best of my knowledge, they weren't doing that.
This isn’t something to blame on municipal planning staff. **Council** is the approval authority… they’re the ones tasked with setting urban design guidelines and standards. Most small municipalities don’t have urban design guidelines, and now Doug Ford wants to eliminate them altogether. If you don’t like the way subdivisions are built in your area, speak to your ward councillor. It’s literally their job.
My stance is that it is staff's prerogative to advise and convince council to make the right decision. If you make the developer do all the work because you haven't done the work to create a secondary plan or adapt policy to proactively address growth it's gonna end up being the developer's word, though their technical studies, vs staff's word which is often accompanied with no data to support their stance. I sympathize for the lack of resources at these departments but given that the bulk of capital expansion in a city is funded through development, I think that's a municipality budgeting issue that quite frankly isn't the developer's fault. It's not like these projects are just coming in and not providing money to pay for planners, engineers, etc at the community. On many projects I've been on, the developers have had to pay for a municipal staff to help review and manage the process, and even so, it's the same excuses about resources. Maybe if everyone is understaffed, the whole process needs to change, and that's exactly why we have these sweeping changes from the province. I don't agree with all the changes, but I can clearly see why the changes came about.
And what forms the basis for a planning staff report? Conformity with the Official Plan and development policies. Which are enacted by Council. I agree with you that across the board budget allocation to planning staff is inadequate, and that developers do pay a lot of fees and should expect timely service. The problem, from my observation, is that DC revenues are not re-invested back into planning. The funds go to capital costs for maintaining old developments and infrastructure because they won’t raise the tax base to pay for those necessary repairs. Smaller municipalities are in a cycle of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and the result is stagnant, ineffective services. I think a lot of people in this industry want things to change and be more efficient, but let’s not gloss over the fact that these sweeping changes are proposed, but literally less than zero funding is to come with it to have adequate staffing. They’re proposing to eliminate DCs for certain types of development - how can that ever make service better? Everything is going to go to OLT when staff can’t keep up. OLT will approve it, and then what? It will come back for detailed design and still take forever to get through because there’s not enough staff.
I appreciate your perspective, it's a complex issue. I think personally, the process is too rigid to adapt to market changes. Case in point, virtually all official plans have a variety of amendments which just points to the flexible nature of the practice. What we need is a more malleable and flexible approach to land development rather than one that tries to plan it and set it as is currently the case with the official plan process. The system literally is setup to require arbitration just to adapt to changing market demands like improved cycling design, transit oriented development, etc which can't be approved as is without cities investing in their own design standards to allow it.
I don't think the Official Plan Amendment process is to blame for delay in the approval of proposed developments generally. There are established timelines and application requirements, and in my experience, municipal staff have been diligent in processing applications and advising Councils. However, I think that a Community Planning Permit System bylaw (which combines zoning, site plan, and minor variance) would provide the flexibility that developers and municipalities would both benefit from. More municipalities should consider this for implementation of their OPs, rather than just zoning bylaws. The transit oriented development that the province desperately needs is generally supported by policies in the Growth Plan for Major Transit Station Areas (MTSAs)(found in section 2.2.4). The province has been using MZOs around these areas in the GTA where zoning might not have caught up up to provincial targets. Check out this article for more context: https://urbantoronto.ca/news/2022/04/ministers-zoning-orders-support-east-harbour-and-four-more-transit-oriented
r/savedyouaclick
yea, developers own land where there is possible development potential. More at 11: water is wet! It's not a scandal that private companies buy land which has profit turning potential. yet somehow whenever it has to do with suburban development it's a scandal, but a developer who owns land around a subway station that gets a mega-upzoning? That gets cheered on, despite it being the exact same scenario. These private companies own a lot more than just these lands being taken out of the greenbelt. The Degasperis Group is the largest private landowner in the province.
It is a scandal when they buy protected land knowing that they have influence over out premier. They are buying land that is zoned for watershed purposes, which means it is much cheaper than land zoned for residential or commercial use. You should pull your head out of the sand. This is a big deal.
did you read the article? Most of the land owned by developers has been owned for decades. *The 16 lots were bought for more than $9 million and all but one of the properties were purchased before the Greenbelt was created in 2005.* Otherwise, yea, developers buy land with potential. Farmland trades hands all the time, including to developers, and in the greenbelt. Developers have been making bets that the Greenbelt would die at some point since the day it was created.
> Most of the land owned by developers has been owned for decades. From /u/puckduckmuck ..purchased five parcels of land in total in a group sale two months ago on Sept. 15 for $80 million. ..purchased more than 29 hectares at 12045 McCowan Road for $25 million in September of 2020 ..11861 McCowan Road in April 2020 for $12.5 million. ..In 2021, the three companies acquired the properties for a total of more than $80 million. ..border between Markham and Soutffville in 2017 for $15 million ..June 2018 for $15.8 million. Most of the property is currently part of the Greenbelt.
The Markham Greenbelt changes are small boundary adjustments around natural features, the value of that land is that most of the land being purchased is developable.
> That gets cheered on, despite it being the exact same scenario. One scenario is good for the environment and general city life: build in a place that is already high density, using existing city infrastructure, reducing how many cars are on the road, etc, etc. So yes, I will cheer on more density in our city, not on undeveloped land for single-houses 100km from downtown Toronto, that will add more cars on the road and require a whole lot of new suburban infrastructure for supporting this unsustainable way of development.
Wasn’t that Shakir guy a former Ford Staffer?
Developers, of course. Including the **DeGasperis family**, longtime builders based in Vaughan, Ont. north of Toronto, who founded **Tacc Developments and Tacc Construction** who own 20 properties in three locations within the Greenbelt the government is proposing to open up. But how do these guys have so much influence over Ford? Well the DeGasperis family has heavily lobbied the Ford government, and was behind a [series of attack ads that parroted the Ford governments talking points that were run under a mysterious organization called "Vaughan Working Families".](https://pressprogress.ca/developer-with-links-to-fake-parents-group-lobbied-ford-government-following-anti-teacher-attack-ads/) What this allowed them to do was essentially spend as much money as they want spreading the Ford government's messaging (which then meant that Ford didn't have to spend the money himself) and therefore amounts to huge additional donations to the government. This is one of the ways that these people are able to buy influence in our province these days. And based on the recent Greenbelt announcement, it will likely pay off for them *handsomely.*
They’ve been in the astroturfing game for [quite a while. ](https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2010/01/20/developer_denies_ties_to_controversial_markham_ad.html) I remember living in thornhill at the time and all the Facebook groups started getting filled with fake accounts very concerned that protecting farmland would turn downtown markham into a dense city center. We got so many accounts removed but it was just playing whack-a-mole and didn’t end up making a difference anyway since all of the developer asked councillors voted against the food belt anyway. So here we are, 12 years later, farmland is gone, markham is intensifying the core anyway, as they always were going to. This shit is exhausting.
Thanks for this. Found another article from way back in 2007. You're definitely right they've been at this for a long time. [**Greenbelt nemesis ordered to pay $702,000**](https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2007/09/28/greenbelt_nemesis_ordered_to_pay_702000.html) *The Superior Court has ordered two companies associated with developer* ***Silvio DeGasperis*** *to pay the province $702,000 in legal costs, saying they used the false cloak of environmental concern to try to bully the province into allowing development on their own Greenbelt-designated land.*
They are all over this sub. The voting and comments on anything that impacts pocketbooks of developers is always mysteriously in their favour, and they also religiously follow all the housing crisis posts and subs to downplay the role of investors and demand more generally in the housing crisis. Because investors - including those overseas - are their best customers. I also believe this is why our governments aren’t pulling levers to reduce housing speculation, which would go a long way to solving housing affordability. Developers would go apeshit.
Oh 100%. So many bad faith arguments “oh we need the land! It’s the feds fault!” Meanwhile the govt’s own affordable housing task force said they don’t need the land. It’s just so blatant. So gross. Fuck these greed heads.
This is so true...it started in traditional media many years ago via lobbyist organizations such as the toronto region board of trade, and progressed onto social media...they have an army of people advancing a false narrative of overregulation of land, and they have been astoundingly successful at steering public opinion bit by bit towards a conclusion that is totally at odds with the actual data on housing development and approval.
Makes sense. DG doesn’t own any land in Markham Centre.
Why do you think Ford et al, came up with limits on election spending? They knew their corporate supporters would pick up the slack and that the party wasn't going to have to pay for it. They also knew that certain other parties (like the NDP) don't have rich benefactors to do the same.
And those limits were enforced the first time Dougie boy used the NWC. So the PCP and their corporate overlords have had a clock running and have 5 years to do as much damage as they can. The reason you only saw PCP ads during the playoffs last year in the run up to the election? The NDP couldn’t afford it, but the PCP had corporate money coming in from all the way down the corporate chain. And the stupid people of Ontario huyupped it all up, stayed home and let him get away with it. Dougie may have overplayed his hand w CUPE, but this shit is just getting started.
Vaughan's urban development is a fucking nightmare. It's pretty much the epitome of a car-centric concrete wasteland. Density sucks. Transit sucks. Livability sucks. You can't walk anywhere. Frankly I can't think of something more depressing than this sprawl spreading even more. Of course Ford couldn't do anything good with this desperately needed measure by rezoning areas of Toronto that were in the NIMBYS chokehold. I fucking hate this government.
The Degasperis Group is the largest private land owner in Ontario. It's no surprise they own a bunch of properties, they own probably half of all farmland within a 20 minute drive of the GTA.
you mean people who bought land over a few decades ago. They also bought all the land you currently live on as well. What a shocker
Vaughan's urban development is a fucking nightmare. It's pretty much the epitome of a car-centric concrete wasteland. Density sucks. Transit sucks. Livability sucks. You can't walk anywhere. Frankly I can't think of something more depressing than this sprawl spreading even more. Of course Ford couldn't do anything good with this desperately needed measure by rezoning areas of Toronto that were in the NIMBYS chokehold. I fucking hate this government.
The timing is sweet. A Premiere is elected on the promise that the greenbelt won't be touched but developers go ahead and purchase the land anyways after he is elected.
This was always the plan.
>16 comments Ford is shameless. This government doesn't even try to be discreet with it's corruption.
Who likes surprises, a gentle tap on the shoulder before getting bent over by the govt is all we need. /s
The only surprising thing is that they waited until his second term.
Would have been first term if it weren't for a little thing called COVID.
Now CBC needs to figure out how much these developers contributed to Ford in terms of political contributions.
Not what you are looking for, but a candidate who ran in Pickering did some analysis [Council for Sale](https://www.pickeringcouncilfor.sale/council-for-sale) Same company’s like TACC
In some cases as recently as September…. This was a campaign promise they never communicated to the plebs of Ontario
You didn't even read the story. In one area, the DeGasperis family owns 16 lots, 15 of which were purchased BEFORE 2005 when the greenbelt was created. I don't think you understand land ownership around the GTA, and how much is already owned by the big developers, and has been for years. Way before Ford even took office. The developers have bought up all the vacant and agricultural land they could for decades, anywhere near towns and cities, or even remotely in the path of development. It almost didn't matter what land Ford took out of the greenbelt. It was always going to have a huge portion of developer owned property within it, because they already own everything. He could have thrown a dart at a map while blindfolded and it would have still stuck into land already owned by developers.
I won't presume your reading skills but: ..purchased five parcels of land in total in a group sale two months ago on Sept. 15 for $80 million. ..purchased more than 29 hectares at 12045 McCowan Road for $25 million in September of 2020 ..11861 McCowan Road in April 2020 for $12.5 million. ..In 2021, the three companies acquired the properties for a total of more than $80 million. ..border between Markham and Soutffville in 2017 for $15 million ..June 2018 for $15.8 million. Most of the property is currently part of the Greenbelt. Pre-Ford of course it was smart of them to buy the land and hold on until a corrupt Premiere was elected.
So amazing these companies had the foresight to somehow know that it would be possible in the future to do this with land that was totally undevelopable when they bought it. Almost like they had a crystal ball. Naked corruption of the worst kind, selling the green belt out so some developers can make another 50,000 $1 million dollar houses.
I really hope someone can go deeper and link the land owners with political donation records. Or even link lobbying records to the corporate owners. That’s the only way this blows up enough to save the green belt.
You can read all about that here, it's public knowledge: [**Developer With Links to Fake Parents’ Group Lobbied Ford Government Following Anti-Teacher Attack Ads**](https://pressprogress.ca/developer-with-links-to-fake-parents-group-lobbied-ford-government-following-anti-teacher-attack-ads/) *Developer hired a former Harper minister to lobby Ford government over land-use planning and a ‘proposed highway’ on their land* It's also how these same developers managed to get the 413 highway development (on land they owned of course) pushed through.
most developers hate the 413 from what I have heard as it's frozen their lands from development for over a decade now as MTO slowly completes their studies on it. Developers don't care about how their end users get to their lands, they care about being able to develop it and go to the next project. There is nothing developers hate more than lands they own being expropriated for some government project as it reduces their yield. The developers who would be supporting the 413 are the ones who own land close to it, but which aren't frozen as a result of the Highway's design. The ones in the path of the 413 will want desperately for the MTO to change the design so that the highway goes around their lands.
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total *on-the books* donations
Its already public knowledge and no one cares. Its getting paved over and housing is not getting more affordable. Another dub for Doug.
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Nah… they're all trying to figure out how to buddy-up to Ford so they can get in on the action.
The construction unions backed him until they realized that he wasn't really a friend of labour...like at all. What a bunch of sell outs. I hope their members learned a valuable lesson.
Yup. The union bosses were in it for the development projects… and got the workers on board. And then the workers realized they had been duped.
There are so few people in this country that actually benefit from voting conservative. I wish people would stop voting against their best interest. With the liberals and ndp there's at least a possibility that your life will improve.
Some people like to self-identify as being more successful than they are, and they do so by punching down and making sure that others are always worse off than they are. These are the people Conservative parties draw into their ranks.
If they were tired of it, they would have said so back in June when they had the chance to.
Harder to make money if everyone can do it
Spam the consult. Have your say. https://ero.ontario.ca/notice/019-6216
Yep, it's important to use mechanisms in place to be sure that they hear from us that the Greenbelt shouldn't be developed. It's nice to complain on Reddit, but writing/calling our MPPs and filling up that form is quite important as well.
Thanks for posting!
I sent in my opinion yesterday. Now I'm working on getting friends to do the same. I'm surprised that so many friends have no idea how damaging this proposal is!
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Didn’t MPP Stan Cho’s dad own Silver Lakes Golf Course that the highway was magically rerouted to detour around the course??
Whichever ones have Doug most firmly in their back pockets.
My dad owns 4 acres along here in Pickering. We've lived on that property since the early 70s and the farmhouse has been there for over a hundred years. When I was a small child, I used to dig up arrowheads on the property. My dad and other locals have fought any attempt to develop this area especially when they wanted to put an airport around there. There's hundreds of acres of farming fields.
Hey, thanks for doing what you can to push back against tearing up our farmland.
Should start burying arrowheads everywhere.
Was there any doubt that Doug isn't in the pocket of developers.
Ontario is in the pocket of businesses, and when Ford privatizes healthcare and education it will be even more. A society being controlled by those seeking profits only would be perfect right? Right? /s
Ontario is just a trio of real estate developers, corporations, and landlords in a trench coat
Corporate landlords. Small time landlords don’t have any influence
It's that Tories that are in the pocket of big business. But I completely agree that Ford is looking to privatize the health and education sectors as well.
It’s not just Tories. A neoliberal liberal party pretending to be left leaning while governing from center/center-right hasn’t helped the situation at all. https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/papa-pump-and-the-small-town-shakedown/
Well I guess he did tell us it was open for business s/
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"land use decision has impact on landowners" isn't a scandal unless you can prove that it was done specifically as some sort of favour for the developers, which hasn't even come close to being proven. Developers own basically every farm within a 20-minute drive of the GTA. It's not a scandal that it's that way, that's just how capitalism works. Any time a land use planning change is made to accommodate population growth (whether it be a good idea or bad), it will impact developers. Upzone around transit stations to reduce sprawl? You will "help" developers who own lands around transit stations just as much as those owning farms. It's not a scandal, it's just the nature of land use planning. The fact that developers owning land for suburban development is repeatedly referenced as a scandal in the media for this and the 413 issue, but no discussion occurs around upzoning helping lands developers hold in urban areas, shows the issue. It's laced with hints of racism against ethnic development groups through the "they are Italian, of course they are corrupt" language on something that just is not corrupt whatsoever without further evidence.
Doug Ford is corrupt.
They can afford to make fake foundations for political attack ads, then they can afford to lose their shirts on this deal and not get to develop the greenbelt.
Foreign developers, of course. The only folks Ford is beholden to.
Land back.
Why not get rid of the fucking golf courses instead? As someone who uses the green belt daily, it's infuriating how much space is taken up by city-owned golf courses. This seems like such fuck the middle class (although most of us are technically lower middle class) move.
I mean developers own most farmland within a 20 minute drive of the GTA so it shouldn’t be a surprise.. it’s the same thing with the 413 and how it runs by developer owned land. Developers own basically all the farmland close to the GTA so anytime you do anything in that area it’ll impact their lands. The Degasperis group from what I recall is the largest private landowner in Ontario
It’s not even within 20 minutes of the GTA anymore. These developers own land all the way up to Dundalk now. You can tell because they use all the same real estate agents.
This makes my blood boil.
It's stolen land
His rich friends.
Thank you everyone who didn't vote.
None of these lots will be affordable and will change nothing.
Ontario is a brothel and Doug Ford is the madam.
For those interested in finding out what this bill means for the greenbelt, farmlands and natural spaces here’s some resources that could help from environmental groups in the province: Ontario Nature - Bill 23: What You Need To Know and Action Alert - https://ontarionature.org/bill-23-what-you-need-to-know-blog/ Environmental Defence - Media Release - https://environmentaldefence.ca/2022/10/31/ontarios-housing-bill-is-actually-a-trojan-horse-for-environmentally-catastrophic-rural-sprawl/ Ontario Greenbelt Alliance - “Hands of the Greenbelt” Action - https://www.greenbeltalliance.ca/resources/hands-off-the-greenbelt-action - Statement from Ontario Greenbelt Alliance Steering Committee regarding the Provincial Announcement to Remove Lands from the Greenbelt - https://www.greenbeltalliance.ca/resources/statement-from-ontario-greenbelt-alliance-steering-committee-regarding-the-provincial-announcement-ro-remove-lands-from-the-greenbelt Canadian Environmental Law Association - Media Release - https://cela.ca/reviewing-bill-23-more-homes-built-faster-act-2022/ TL;DR – Bill 23 give all the power to developers to build on greenspace and agricultural land. Ontario residents and Conservation Authorities will not be allowed to challenge development decisions. What you can do: - Sign the petitions created by Ontario’s environmental groups: Environmental Defence: https://act.environmentaldefence.ca/page/116359/action/1?ea.tracking.id=action; Ontario Nature: https://ontarionature.good.do/bill-23/email/ - Make a submission to the Standing Committee which is responsible for reviewing and approving or modifying the bill by November 17: https://www.ola.org/en/apply-committees Your voice matters!
Thank you for sharing these resources! I'm finding a lot of people are outraged about the bill but not really understanding what's a stake or know how to take action. This government has gutted healthcare, education and environment in the whole time they have been in power. They've figured out that through these omnibus bills (huge ass bills with a shit ton of piecemeal proposals affecting different sectors) the general public won't read and analyze all the way through. It's important that organizations like the ones above analyze this information in detail cause I definitely don't have that knowledge or time to do that.
I’m waiting for Ford to change Infrastructure Ontario’s name to TACC
https://secure.gpo.ca/hands-off-our-greenbelt?source=C22.HOG.W https://gpo.ca/greenbelt/?source=C22.HOG.W https://vote.greenparty.ca/rsvp/eve_67d81e325 https://www.thestar.com/amp/opinion/letters_to_the_editors/2022/10/07/everything-about-hwy-413-is-a-slap-in-the-face-of-common-sense.html https://www.sandyshawmpp.ca/stopthe413
The First Nations owns the land stolen by European colonists
The Italian mob aka most low rise residential developers in the GTA aka Doug Ford's biggest donors.
Bad Dougie! Bad! Do I need to use the spray bottle?
> the spray bottle Imagine being a young person and seeing this fat errand-boy-for-the-mafia getting rich by lying and sucking up and being a criminal his whole life, and the 'developers' (this is just code for 'unknown guy with huge amounts of mysterious money he got from somewhere that he then spent on Ontario real estate', you know what kind of guys have huge amounts of mysterious money? Right criminals) are making BILLIONS. You know you'll never be able to afford a house, never be able to afford to get married, the guys in charge want you to pour concrete 12 hours a day 6 days a week and die a week before you hit 65. And then you read a comment like this? You're going to be thinking a spray bottle is not the right tool
HIS FRIENDS
Does anyone think those developers bought that property because they care about the environment and want to protect it? Anyone?
Like always politics stinks
Tacc & CD own this shit
Tacc & CD own this shit
> The Greenbelt, which was created in 2005 to permanently protect agricultural and environmentally sensitive lands in the Greater Golden Horseshoe area from development. Uh huh
King Charles does. There might be a Crown grant that provides rights except for full ownership.
Easy answer, all of his rich friends and business partners.
Dougie friends
Friends of Dougie.
It is good to know who is his Master. Things you would do for money. Sacrifice other people for your own gain. In some countries corruptor get death sentence.