Stop taking on the Greenbelt
Though it was founded more than a decade ago, the Greenbelt only became permanent this week.
That’s the enduring outcome of the remarkable few days in the life of the 2-million-acre protected area that envelopes southern Ontario.
Last Monday, a video was released showing PC Party leader Doug Ford, in a private meeting with housing developers, promising to open “big chunks” of the Greenbelt to development. After all, “it’s just farmers’ fields” he dismissively said.
The most damaging part was Ford’s on-camera admission that the idea wasn’t his but rather came from the industry: “I’ve already talked to some of the biggest developers in this country … I wish I could say it’s my idea, but it was their idea, as well.”
The public reaction was swift and fierce, including from Tory supporters. This Hour Has 22 Minutes summarized the derision for Ford’s environmental approach by quoting Joni Mitchell: “Pave paradise and put up a parking lot.” Such was the uproar that Ford was forced into complete retreat less than a day later.
“The people have spoken,” he said. “They don’t want me to touch the Greenbelt. We won’t touch the Greenbelt. Simple as that.”
How to account for this public backlash? After all, Ford has said he’d tear down many policies of the current government without provoking such a heated response. His vow to end carbon pricing has not been met with similar outrage. I think there’s three reasons for the Greenbelt issue’s resonance.
First, the Greenbelt is tangible. It’s a place demarcated by lines on a map and extensive highway signage. The fact Ford crassly swore to reduce, in the most measurable of ways, the Greenbelt’s square footage, is something that everybody can understand. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. Had his assault been subtler, perhaps involving the weakening of the Greenbelt’s regulatory underpinnings, he would have been more likely to get away with it.
Second, the Greenbelt is broadly supported. From the hard-working farmer in the Holland Marsh to the inn operator in Niagara to the downtown Toronto hipster buying produce at her local farmer’s market, the Greenbelt’s army of supporters is unusually diverse and vast. Environmentalists admire its protection of the headwaters of southern Ontario’s rivers. Farmers and tourism operators point to its safeguarding of tens of thousands of jobs. Municipal leaders have come to appreciate its positive reshaping of development patterns.
As a consequence, Greenbelt protection has transcended the “environmental issue” pigeonhole. Though the idea of the Greenbelt originated in environmental advocacy, it’s appeal is now much bigger than that. As I’ve written elsewhere, when environmental issues and policies become imbued, in the minds of the public, with values related to human health, wellness, and quality of life, they become far more robust and difficult to assail.
There are lessons here for public policy advocacy. Though the tangibility of the Greenbelt cannot be replicated across all issues, most policy can be better harnessed to a broader coalition of support and a more immediate connection to people’s daily lives.
Ironically, the most eloquent proponents of land conservation in southern Ontario have come from Ford’s own party. In one of his many impassioned speeches in the Ontario legislature in 1973 in defence of the much-maligned Niagara Escarpment Act, Premier Bill Davis said “I am sure that all members of the Legislature … recognize the vital necessity of checking urban sprawl, of preserving community identity and of ensuring that there will always be sufficient green space among the grey.”
It was this imperative that drove the Davis government to protect the Escarpment, that motivated the Rae government to expand Rouge Park, and the Harris government to safeguard the Oak Ridges Moraine. It was these pre-existing protected areas that the McGuinty government knit together and added to, in order to create the magnificent Greenbelt we have today.
Though he may have been ignorant of this powerful multi-partisan history of conservation, we can thank Doug Ford for forcing the issue this week. No politician is going to take on the Greenbelt again any time soon.