Heavy duty lobbying for sprawl
Underscoring the significance of imminent city decisions, developers and their hired agents have been lobbying councillors on growth plans that could affect thousands of acres of farmland south of the current urban area. A crucial staff report and council decision is scheduled for the end of March that is expected to determine the extent of Hamilton’s residential expansion over the next 30 years.
Over 3000 acres in the Elfrida area – south and east of the intersection of Rymal and Upper Centennial – is currently favoured by city planners. And provincial rule rewrites make its urbanization likely along with much more of Hamilton’s remaining farmland.
Multi-Area Developments Inc, one of Elfrida’s largest landowners, has hired two people from Strategy Corp, one of Canada’s best-known, most influential and probably most expensive lobbying firms. Its founder, Leslie Noble, was campaign manager for both election wins of the Mike Harris provincial Progressive Conservative Party in the 1990s.
Strategy Corp describes itself as specializing “in providing strategic advisory services – public affairs, strategic communications, and management consulting – to private and public sector organizations operating in complex, highly regulated and highly scrutinized environments. We are a trusted advisor to clients with interests and high-stakes mandates throughout Canada, as well as in the United States, the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean.”
Noble retired late last year, but Multi-Area is represented by one of the company’s five Principals, John Matheson, as well as by Strategy Corp consultant John Lang-Weir. Matheson was chief of staff in Ontario’s Ministry of Municipal Affairs under Harris. Lang-Weir has a more recent involvement with the same ministry “where he worked to engage key stakeholders on land use planning policy, including the release of land use plans for the Greater Golden Horseshoe.”
Those land use plans are exactly what Hamilton council is now grappling with – especially drastic changes that have been put in place in the last two years since the election of the Doug Ford administration. They now are requiring municipalities to determine how to accommodate provincially-projected population growth for the next 30 years, and locking that in by July of next year.
The new rules impose a calculation method exclusively using “market-demand” and excluding such factors as climate change, protection of agricultural land, and sustainability objectives. That seems designed to ensure a massive expansion of the urban area onto all the remaining Hamilton farmland that is not otherwise protected by the Greenbelt.
The official purpose of the lobbying by both Matheson and Lang-Weir is given as “discussion regarding planned updates to the City of Hamilton’s growth management strategy”. Both started at the end of July 2020 and officially stopped on March 10 and are listed as lobbying all 16 members of council as well as the city manager.
A second major Elfrida landowner, a numbered company referred to as the “Frisina Group”, has also registered to lobby for similar purposes. One is its owner, Al Frisina, while the other is a recently retired city growth planner, Guy Paparella, who concluded a long career with the city last fall.
Frisina’s official focus is “urban boundary expansion” while Paparella’s more formally lists “GRIDS 2 and Municipal Comprehensive Review and Land Needs Study.” Curiously the former lists only 13 councillors as targets; and Paparella only nine.
The three missing from both lists are councillors Maureen Wilson, Nrinder Nann and Arlene Vanderbeek. The four additional ones ignored by Paparella are Jason Farr, John-Paul Danko, Brenda Johnson and Sam Merulla. The reason for these omissions is not clear, although at least some of these councillors have publicly opposed more urban boundary expansions.
On-going lobbying on the city’s emerging growth plans is also being conducted on behalf of the local home builders association. It changed its name a year ago from the Hamilton Halton Home Builders Association to the West End Home Builders Association. Their representative, Michael Collins-Williams, is registered to lobby all 16 councillors plus the general manager of planning Jason Thorne.
The city’s lobbyist registry took eight years of debates before being established in 2014 and is characterized by Public Record publisher Joey Coleman as “near-voluntary” with “numerous loopholes that makes it the weakest registry in Ontario”. He notes that “companies do not have to register if they rent or own property in the ward of the councillor they lobby” and that “the rental of a postal box will fulfill this requirement.”
