Some developers win big after province expands urban boundary

Of all the land around Ottawa's suburban edges that Ontario's housing minister unilaterally designated for development earlier this month, one37-hectare farm arguably came as the biggest surprise.

The east-end farm is asmall part ofthe 654-hectare urban expansion Steve Clark imposedNov. 4when he overrodea hotly debated 2020 citydecision one of many recent controversialsteps the Progressive Conservativegovernment has taken to boost housing supply.

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Unlike other lands the province tapped for future suburbs, and beyond the 1,281 hectares council itself had approved, the farm on Watters Road wasn't even contemplated for developmentduring lengthy debates in 2021becauseOntario's own planning policies call for good farmland to be protected.

The rural scene on that dead-end dirt road is peaceful, with snowy corn stalks standing rigid in a field near an old barn. The pine trees that line nearby Cardinal Creek disguise the rows of suburban homes just half a kilometre up the hill in Orlans.

The property's foreseeable lack of development potential seemed plain enough when city council took an official stance to not allow houses on farmlandand marked out the urban expansion line in February 2021, leavingout that particular parcel.

Yet records show that in August 2021, the newly incorporated 1177 Watters Developments Ltd. bought it for $12.7 million which equates to $139,382 an acre from the family that had long owned it.

According to corporate records, all five directors are with the Verdi Alliance group of concrete companies. The five men donated a combined $12,315to the Progressive Conservativesin 2021 and 2022.

CBC News tried to reach the directors but got noresponse.

Questions to Clark's office about the farm, any perception of a conflict of interest, and lobbying by developers connected to other parcels he added tothe urban boundary also went unanswered.

129 hectares of farmland disappear daily

Meanwhile in the Greater Toronto Area, the province isfacing criticism for proposing to open up its Greenbelt for housing, including repealinga law that protects some 2,000 hectares of agricultural land near Pickering, Ont.

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The government is "taking steps backward" and choosing new housing over future food security when it should be able to have both, according to Emily Sousa, a farm policy analyst at the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA).

The current policy guiding land useorders cities and towns to buildefficiently neartransit and infrastructureand avoid urbanizing farmland. But the province doesn't seem to be followingitsown rules or listening to the OFA or municipalities,said Sousa.

Sousa points out that Ontario is losing129 hectares of farmland each day,according to Statistics Canada's latest census of agriculture.

Not only is it disappearing at an increasingrate, but farming itself becomes harder as urban sprawl edges outward and farm equipment mixes with trafficon country roads, she said.

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"It's worrisome on so many different levels," said Sousa.

"What is scary about the rate of farmland loss, and these seemingly small decisions to bring [in] a small bit of land here and a little bit of land there, is the cumulative impact that has over time."

$40M in land purchases at Findlay Creek

Land speculation is nothing new.

Buyershave always snapped uprural land on cityperipheriesyears or decades in advance, expecting that some day neighbourhoods will stretch out and once-rural lands will spike in value.

Nor is it unexpected that landowners will argue to get their properties inside the urban boundary. At public committee meetings in 2020 and 2021, owners made their pitches to Ottawa city councillors and as a provincial registry shows hired lobbying firmstotalk to the minister himself.

To find some of the biggest winners of Clark's decision, one has to follow Bank Street south until it hits the countryside and the booming suburban neighbourhood of Findlay Creek.

Well-known local developers likeClaridge Homes, Urbandale, Richcraft, and Multivesco, along with local golf club owner Patterson Group, asked a joint committee in January 2021 to let them"complete" the Findlay Creek areaall the way west to Hawthorne Road.

Property records show that while Claridgepurchasedsome parcels as far back as 2006, those four developers bought more than half the land in 2019 alone. Together they've paid more than $40 million.

But that land initially failed to make it inside the boundary.

City staff scored those parcelspoorly, saying transit and water infrastructure would be costly. Plus, the southernmost Claridge parcel was too close to an active quarry.

Despite that, the Ontario housing minister this monthallowed an extra 257 hectares inside the urban boundary.

Some of those same developers also spent tens of millions buying175hectares north of Kanata in the South March area, which were also let inside the boundary.

Companies Claridge, Multivesco,eQ Homes, Uniform Developments, and Mintoreleased a statement when the city committeeswapped their land out in favour of Tewin in 2021, despite their lands scoring well with staff.Now, all are back in.

Theydeclined to comment for this story.

Suburban growth exploding

The divide between city and country can be stark.

Where Bank Street meets the countrysidein Findlay Creek, for instance, townhomes still clad in white house wrap sit mid-construction as a barn falls intodisrepair behind them.

The area has exploded, said Mariam Zeitoun, who's lived there for a dozen years and she's not wrong.

The City of Ottawa's annual report on development shows the population in the Findlay Creek area grew by 6,754 over five years to 16,038 people in 2021.

It added more people than liveinPerth, Ont., and is a few hundred people short of the populationof Pembroke, Ont.

Residents say the community is family-friendly, but they also note the elementary school's yard is filled with portable classroomsand that traffic on both Bank Street and Albion Road is getting worse. The area doesn't have its own community centre, library, or recreation centre.

The newly added Findlay Creek lands are nearly fivekilometres from the future Leitrim LRT station. Zeitoun says the area needs more transit she has to drive her oldest children to jobs and university.

"How many more people are we going to add? It's insane. It makes no sense how it's going to help the community that's already here," said Zeitoun.

"It seems it's more about profit than anything else."