Ford government reverses changes to urban expansion in Ottawa, other municipalities

The Doug Ford government is reversing Ottawa's Official Plan, the controversial urban expansion that would have significantly changed Ottawa's boundaries.

New Housing Minister Paul Calandra made the announcement at Queen’s Park on Monday morning.

"In reviewing how decisions were made regarding official plans, it is now clear that they failed to meet this test," Calandra said in a statement.

Calandra said he will be introducing legislation that would reverse the official plan decisions for Barrie, Belleville, Guelph, Hamilton, Ottawa and the City of Peterborough, the Regional Municipalities of Halton, Niagara, Peel, Waterloo and York, as well as Wellington County.

Calandra added there will be exceptions in “circumstances where construction has started or where doing so would contravene existing provincial legislation and regulation.”

"It's a stunning reversal," said Interim Ontario Liberal Leader John Fraser.

"The Greenbelt is just the tip of the iceberg - it's really about the way this government thinks it can do business in this province and I think that's the reason for this reversal."

The Official Plan was expected to expand Ottawa's urban boundary by 2046 and accommodate for an extra 450,000 residents in the capital.

Council approved the new Official Plan in 2021, expanding Ottawa’s urban boundary by 1,281 hectares. Last November, former minister of municipal affairs and housing Steve Clark used his powers to expand the urban boundary by an additional 654 hectares. 

Several Ottawa councillors and Orleans MPP Stephen Blais had raised concerns about the urban boundary expansion pertaining to the 37-acre farm located at 1177 Watters Road.

Eleven Ottawa city councillors signed an open letter in September to Ontario Auditor General Nick Stavropoulos and Integrity Commissioner David Wake, calling on them to investigate how and why the province added more land to Ottawa's urban boundary.

Coun. Shawn Menard, seconded by Coun. Riley Brockington, introduced a motion calling on council to ask the Auditor General and Integrity Commissioner to consider reviewing the provincial government's decision to add urban boundary expansion lands to the city of Ottawa.

The motion said the 654 hectares of expansion lands, "were evaluated by the municipality to be poor candidates for expansion due to the high cost and various scoring criteria by the municipality."

Menard celebrated the reversal on X.

"Still waiting to see the results of this but thank you to City Council and the 11 city councillors who joined me in asking for investigation into the expensive expansion approved without consultation.," Menard wrote on Monday.

Jason Burggraaf, a spokesperson for the Ottawa Home Builder's Association called the government's reversal "devastating" and said the decision will "greatly impact home building in Ottawa during a supply crisis."

The decision is another flip-flop for the Ford government, who in September reversed their decision to open up the Greenbelt to developers after calling the controversial land removals "a mistake."

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Ontario's Minister of Housing Steve Clark resigned as Ontario's housing minister following two reports on the Greenbelt that outlined a deeply flawed process that favoured certain developers and lacked transparency.

The Integrity Commissioner recommended Clark be reprimanded in the Legislature for "failing to oversee the process by which lands in the Greenbelt were selected to development."

With files from CTV's Josh Pringle and CTV's Katherine DeClerq