Mayor wants MZO revoked

Move would allow housing builds on properties now included in Greenbelt

- ROBERT BENZIE, MARK RAMZY

Although the Pickering airport scheme has been scaled back over the years, the project remains in a holding pattern and has never been scrapped. Community groups such as Land Over Landings worry about the project's impact on agricultural land.

The mayor of Pickering wants Premier Doug Ford’s help to have land set aside in the 1970s for a never-built international airport eventually opened up for housing.

Kevin Ashe has written to provincial Housing Minister Paul Calandra formally requesting he revoke a 1972 minister’s zoning order (MZO) that prevents construction of any houses or apartment towers on properties adjacent to the federal-owned Pickering Airport Lands.

But some of the lands in question are now part of the protected Greenbelt.

Former premier Bill Davis’s government issued the MZO as part of an agreement with then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau to ensure the flight paths of jetliners using the planned Pickering international airport wouldn’t be hindered by tall buildings.

Ashe’s request was quietly posted to the Environmental Registry of Ontario (ERO) late Wednesday and would affect 3,563 hectares, or 8,804 acres, of land.

In the wake of Ford’s Greenbelt land swap scandal now under investigation by the RCMP, Queen’s Park will only consider an amendment to the MZO rather than revoking it. That’s because the provincial government, still stinging from the $8.28-billion land debacle, does not want anything built on the Greenbelt.