Governments don’t see the world the way normal people do. They have priorities and obsessions that would never occur to anyone who works more than 100 metres away from (for example) Queen’s Park, which is why sometimes things that are relatively obvious and straightforward for people who have “the honorable” on their business cards are mystifying to the people who pay their salaries.
This week’s example comes from Waterloo Region, where all year a controversy has been bubbling away as the regional municipality has been trying to buy nearly 800 acres of land in Wilmot Township on Kitchener’s western flank. In the spring, the region sent out notices to landowners — primarily farmers — notifying them that their lands had been identified for acquisition and that expropriation was a possibility if they refused to negotiate with the municipality.
That last bit has been the most controversial, though, once again, viewed from the perspective of the municipality — or Queen’s Park — it’s sort of like saying that water is wet or that the sun rises in the east: municipalities have the power to expropriate land for public purposes, as do any number of other organs of government. Frankly, for many landowners, it’s not even bad news: because expropriations can be lengthy and expensive legal contests, a prospective buyer will often offer a substantial premium to sellers to avoid the unpleasantness.
But what’s the public purpose in Wilmot Township? According to the regional municipality, it’s just following orders that have come from the province, which announced a “job site challenge” way back in 2019. The Ford government has made no secret of its desire to attract large industrial employers to Ontario, and large industrial employers need large plots of land to build on. The province is particularly seized by the need for so-called shovel-ready sites, land where a prospective investor could quickly get the services (water, gas, power) and building permissions needed with minimal or zero fuss.
The most dramatic case we’ve seen of this came from Elgin County early last year, when the province literally redrew the boundaries of Central Elgin and St. Thomas to ensure that an industrial site would face minimal procedural hurdles. That site ended up hosting a plant for Volkswagen electric-vehicle batteries. But this fixation on “shovel ready” sites long predates the Ford government: previous Liberals governments made numerous efforts to coax municipalities into prezoning large areas for industrial use, although they had limited success.
Although earlier this year, Premier Doug Ford told reporters that there was no specific investor looking at the lands in Wilmot Township — no Volkswagen waiting in the wings — the land purchases have continued. In July, the region said it had acquired a third of the target lands, even as the controversy continued to simmer. The NDP at Queen’s Park have been vocal on the topic, with leader Marit Stiles saying as recently as this week that the lack of transparency around the land purchases was “really shameful.”
The Ford government has mostly avoided direct political entanglement in the Wilmot land assembly, but that may have come to an end this week. On Thursday, Kitchener–Conestoga MPP Mike Harris Jr. issued a joint statement with Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade Vic Fedeli that seemed to disavow any expropriations, saying that “it is disappointing to see recent events unfold … particularly the threat of expropriation.” Regional Chair Karen Redman, in turn, told reporters she was “surprised” and “confused,” since the region had simply been dancing to a tune set by Queen’s Park from the beginning. Notably, the joint statement did confirm that Queen’s Park — not Waterloo Region taxpayers — is paying for the land-acquisition costs.
What prompted the joint statement from Fedeli and Harris isn’t clear. There’s lots of local, vocal opposition to the land assembly, but that’s been true all year, and this is one of the first signs that government MPPs are facing any serious heat. It’s August, and it’s possible that Harris has simply gotten an earful from his constituents during the long summer break that MPPs voted themselves in the spring.
There’s another possibility related to the calendar, however. If the controversy over land purchases drags on into the winter, Harris would be facing opposition specifically from rural landowners (normally a solid Tory constituency) just as the government starts preparing for the rumoured early election call for spring of 2025. The problem for Harris, at least, is that it’s now clear that the government is already up to its neck in all this, and short of abandoning the mega-site plan entirely, voters aren’t likely to forget.
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