Opinion Martin Regg Cohn: Doug Ford’s never liked the Greenbelt. Here’s why he’s broken every public promise to protect it
“We will not be influenced by money,” he insisted.“The scandal reaches right up the food chain,” one MPP alleged.Wrong premier, wrong party, wrong time.
The whiff of scandal has a way of getting people’s attention, but it can also be a distraction. Many suspect Ford of bowing to high-rolling developers who paid aDoes $150 buy you a multimillion-dollar land grab from a Progressive Conservative premier? Did $10,000 bend the ear of a Liberal premier even if he didn’t amend boundaries?Despite loving the colour of money, McGuinty’s Liberals went ahead with the Greenbelt all those years ago ― notwithstanding those $10,000 contributions.
“We will open up the Greenbelt, not all of it. We’re going to open a big chunk of it up and we’re going to start building,” he told a private fundraising event.“Unequivocally, we won’t touch the Greenbelt, I’ve heard it loud and clear,” he said after being caught out. “We won’t build on the Greenbelt,” he said again in 2020..
And then Ford named names, starting with ex-mayor John Tory: “I remember talking to Mayor Tory, he used to call it the dartboard ― they literally put a dartboard and they just started throwing darts wherever it’s convenient … A bunch of staffers grabbed the highlighters and just randomly start to go down streets.”Let’s connect the dots: There’s a straight line from Ford’s fulmination to Tory’s opposition all those years ago, which also runs through Tim Hudak’s time as PC leader.
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