Regg Cohn: Doug Ford hits a new low by using immigrants to sell his Greenbelt scheme

Of note:

Doug Ford is peddling a risky strategy to save his political skin, and it’s not pretty.

It goes like this:

Unless we gut the Greenbelt, we can’t construct all the homes needed for waves of new immigrants and refugees.

And unless we build all that new housing urgently, resentment will build up rapidly against all those newcomers.

Day after day, as the premier digs himself into a deeper and deeper political hole, he repeatedly raises the alarm: If you block the bulldozing of protected lands, you risk a popular backlash.

Far better to let me unravel the Greenbelt than allow my opponents to undermine tolerance for immigrants and refugees — which will surely happen if anyone thwarts my controversial new housing plan. Unless you let me chew up those protected lands, we will all choke on a housing shortage that is somehow the fault of foreigners.

If Ford’s fanciful scenario sounds over the top, the unpleasant reality is that he has hit a new low. Just listen to how Ontario’s premier keeps drumming up support by whipping up fears of an unaffordable foreign influx:

“Failing to act threatens to erode Canadians’ so-far unwavering support for immigration,” Ford claimed on Aug. 9, the day the auditor general delivered a damning report of his government’s political interference in gifting Greenbelt lands worth $8.28 billion to “favoured” developers.

He used the same phrasing again two days later, reading from the same Teleprompter: “Failing to act threatens to erode our unwavering support for immigration.”

Again on Monday, in a highly touted speech to municipal leaders from across the province, the premier repeated his gut-the-Greenbelt-or-else warning: “Failing that would threaten to erode Canadians’ unwavering support for immigration.”

Over and over, again and again, Ford purports to be raising the alarm in his role as a guardian of social cohesion. But if tolerance is truly his goal, the premier is playing with rhetorical fire.

It’s not a dog whistle. It’s a bullhorn being blown from Ford’s bully pulpit.

The premier’s comments this week to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario were especially unseemly and unsettling. His speech brought back memories of Ford’s performance in early 2018, when he told an audience of northern mayors that he wanted to put Ontarians to work first, before ever letting in foreigners who might take their jobs.

Back then, Ford’s parochial pitch fell flat in front of a more worldly audience of northerners, who well understood the massive demand for talented foreign doctors and nurses, teachers and preachers, traders and tradespeople in their rapidly depopulating cities and towns. But it took a while for the premier to catch on.

Again in 2018, Ford turned his wrath on “illegal border-crossers,” picking a fight with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by claiming, wrongly, that “this mess was 100 per cent the result of the federal government.” It was an attempt to whip up resentment then, just as he risks fanning prejudice now.

Let’s be clear about the housing squeeze, the Greenbelt gambit and the foreign factor. No matter how many times Ford tries to connect the dots and paint by numbers, he is making it up as he goes along.

As much as Ford keeps pointing to future immigration levels as justification for his action, the truth is that the housing shortage long predates it. Even as the premier continually cites the Greenbelt giveaway as the prerequisite to building new homes, the reality is that his own housing advisory task force (and the auditor) argued the precise opposite.

In fact, there is more than enough land that can be repurposed to meet the government’s building targets without cannibalizing protected lands. In any case, the auditor’s report notes that the government had already met its specific housing targets last October, a full month before it suddenly went back to the well by targeting the Greenbelt.

There is no shortage of land in the region, just a paucity of political will and economic ambition. There is, however, a shortage of skilled labour today that will grow more acute in future, which explains the need for rising immigration targets.

Historically, there has been a remarkable political consensus on the benefits of immigration for a small population in a big country. That’s not to say that asking questions about the right level of immigration should be taboo.

But an elected leader must be mindful of his musings lest he legitimize the blaming and scapegoating of outsiders for our own internal miscalculations and misconceptions. Our housing shortage remains a homegrown problem, and our affordability challenges are not about foreigners.

The environmentally and agriculturally sensitive lands that form a protective cordon against uncontrolled urban sprawl are neither the problem nor the solution — just a distraction and a temptation. Which is why this Progressive Conservative government is playing a dangerous game by pretending we cannot afford to preserve the Greenbelt without fracturing societal tolerance toward newcomers.

This premier has vowed never to back down on his scandalous rezoning of the Greenbelt — a bonanza that is benefiting developers with billions of dollars in windfall profits. The least he could do is stop using immigrants and refugees as fodder for his speeches.

Source: Doug Ford hits a new low by using immigrants to sell his Greenbelt scheme