Earlier today (Friday 20 January 2023) Doug Ford said he was confident no developers had been tipped off about the changes to the Greenbelt which would allow building on land that was out of bounds to developers. 

They were.

On Friday 4 November 2022, the Minister for Municipal Affairs and Housing, Steve Clark, announced that 15 areas of land totalling approximately 7,400 acres were to be removed from the Greenbelt. 

This was the first time the Government indicated that this land would be taken from the Greenbelt for development.

And yet on Tuesday 1 November 2022 – three clear days before the new Greenbelt policy was publicly unveiled – a representative of the Rice Group told the Mayor of King, Steve Pellegrini, that some of their soon to be redesignated Greenbelt lands in King (west of Bathurst and south of Miller's Side Road) would be made available to Southlake Hospital “for a nominal fee”.

The Rice Group purchased 687 acres of Greenbelt land for $80M in September 2022. (see right)

On 7 November 2022, Steve Pellegrini tabled a motion saying King supported a new hospital on the (soon to be) former Greenbelt lands and that:

“the landowner is committed to providing the necessary lands for the Southlake Regional Health centre site for a nominal fee.”

In December 2022 I lodged a Freedom of Information request with the Township asking what form that commitment took and to whom it was conveyed. (See below) The Town tells me:

“The commitment of a nominal fee for the hospital lands was conveyed verbally to Mayor Pellegrini during an in-person meeting with Rice Group and Southlake Representatives on November 1, 2022.”

When did the Rice Group first realize their Greenbelt land could be developed?

This begs a number of questions. When did the Rice Group first realise the Greenbelt land it purchased a few months earlier could be developed? When did the Rice Group first approach Southlake offering some of the land for a nominal fee and what precisely was said? Did Southlake not raise questions about the land being in the Greenbelt? And how did the Rice Group respond to that?

Steve Pellegrini told the ERA newspaper yesterday that King was doing nothing nefarious by asking the Province to fast track its land for a new hospital. Clearly, he was assuming the sale or gift of the land for a nominal fee would go through.

Pellegrini told the ERA:

The Township had worked with a previous owner looking to develop the land but couldn’t because it was in the Greenbelt.

The landowner died a few years ago and the family sold the land to the Rice Group. The sale closed a couple of weeks before it was pulled from the Greenbelt. 

When without warning the province pulled the King land out of the Greenbelt, council capitalised on it by saying “at least give us a hospital”.”

Did Pellegrini tell the Rice Group at the in-person meeting on 1 November that the hospital was a non-starter because the proposed site was in the Greenbelt? And if he did say that how did the Rice Group respond?

The Integrity Commissioner and the Auditor General will be interested in the answers.

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Motion carried by King's Committee of the Whole on 7 November 2022:

8. NEW BUSINESS 

C.O.W. #8 

Bill 23 – ‘More Homes Built Faster Act, 2022’ Re: New Southlake Regional Health Centre 

Mayor Pellegrini put forth the following Motion, seconded by Councillor Cober, for consideration and support: 

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT the Council of the Township of King: 

- 7 - C.O.W. Minutes – November 7, 2022 

Motion Carried Unanimously.