The Decibel - Ford government targets school lands to build housing

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has a clear housing goal. He wants to build 1.5 million new homes in 10 years. To accomplish this, his government has been looking at selling off the land under its possession, such as the Greenbelt, which has been engulfed in scandal.Now his government is looking at the lands owned by school boards across the province. Globe and Mail reporter Karen Howlett explains what the plan is and how the Ford government intends to execute it.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Here's a conundrum. How do you make housing more affordable when demand keeps rising, while the number of houses stay the same? For Ontario Premier Doug Ford, it's simple. Just build more houses. But where? Well, the government started off by selling chunks of the Greenbelt for houses to be built there.

But a recent Auditor General report criticized the way the Ford government handled that. And two weeks later, the chief of staff of the Minister of Housing resigned. Now, the RCMP is looking at whether to investigate further. And in addition to the Greenbelt, the Ontario government is looking at another option as its next housing frontier, the lands owned by school boards. Karen Howlett is a Globe and Mail reporter, and she's here to explain how a new bill in Ontario

could turn school land into the next big development project. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Karen, it's great to have you on the podcast. Thank you. So you've been looking into a bill that Doug Ford's progressive conservative government introduced earlier this year, this spring. Tell me what the bill is and why is it so important? So this Bill 98 is a piece of sweeping legislation that deals with education.

Basically, broadly, it gives the government more control over school boards and trustees. That's like the overarching point of the bill. It covers the conduct of trustees, the performance of directors of education and how students are performing, how many are graduating from grade 12, how many are performing at the provincial standard of math. But the piece of the bill that's attracted a lot of attention is the part that gives the government control over school lands. So this is a big omnibus bill, we might call it, right? It's got a lot of different parts in it. Yes. But this school lands thing is something very intriguing. And this has a connection

to housing here and how the government is dealing with housing in Ontario. So how does this bill fit into the Ford government's larger efforts to build more housing in Ontario? So this is really interesting. We've already seen the Ford government's larger efforts to build more housing in Ontario. So this is really interesting. We've already seen the Ford government saying that it's going to allow development on 3,000 hectares of the Greenbelt. Now, they've broken their promise because the Greenbelt is, these are wetlands, farmlands surrounding the greater Toronto area that are supposed to be protected from development in

perpetuity forever. He has broken that promise by saying we're taking 3,000 hectares out of that. So one hectare is equal to like two and a half football fields. So we're talking a lot of football fields here. So this is part of the government's pledge to build 1.5 million new homes over the next 10 years. Okay, so that's kind of the green belt aspect. And then let's come back to the school lands that you mentioned a bit earlier. So this is also maybe getting wrapped up in this. When we're talking about school lands, Karen, what kind of lands, buildings are we talking about? So what's really interesting, there's 72 school boards in Ontario. Collectively, they own $64 billion worth of operating schools. That's just operating schools, making them collectively the richest landlord in Ontario's public sector.

This is a very lucrative, collectively a very lucrative chunk of real estate. And what kind of land are we talking about? Like, are these active schools? What kind of buildings are included here? So this is interesting. We're talking about a lot of things. So the $64 billion, those are schools that are currently being used for education purposes. In addition to that, there are schools that are no longer needed for education.

So they're leased out maybe to a daycare center, a private school. There's also administration buildings, and there's even some empty, empty lots. So it's a collection of different things. So $64 billion is active schools. Do we know the value for the rest of those inactive areas? No. And that's the interesting thing. With Bill 98, the education minister, Steve Malet, she says that will give him the power to go out to every school board and say, you tell me, what are you sitting on in empty buildings, administration buildings? How much vacant land do you have? Okay, interesting. And I guess I wonder, why schools in particular?

Like, doesn't the provincial government have, I guess, access to other kinds of lands that it could sell to? Why schools? I think because there's so much, and because they know that some areas, like, let's take Bermondthorpe Collegiate, which is in Scarborough, only 27% of its space is being used for students. And then you go to another part of the Toronto District School Board, like Cottingham in central Toronto, where it's overflowing. Let's compare that, say, to hospitals, because hospitals are obviously also public land. But you couldn't imagine the government saying, oh, you've got empty space in a hospital when we know the situation in hospitals. So this is something where they do see opportunity. They do see that there were underutilized assets.

Underutilized assets. Yes. And I guess going back to the cost, there's a lot of money potentially that could be made, I guess, in that way? Yes. Yes. Okay. Let's get into some of the specifics, Karen, in terms of how this would work. So in order to do that, we should probably get a sense of how things work currently.

So what is the process right now of deciding to list a school as unnecessary? It's a really time-consuming process. So I'm going to use the example of the Toronto District School Board again, because it is the largest one. So what they call their accommodation study is public on their website. It's 300 pages. So it has a list of every single school in the board. And it tells you how much capacity there is, how much of that space is being used today, how much they expect will be used two years down the road, 10 years down the road, 20 years down the road. So school boards are planning this out, basically, to understand capacity. Yes. And so each trustee in each ward is very involved in this process.

We talked to one trustee in the Toronto board. She talked about the hours and hours and hours of meetings with school superintendents and other people to try to say, OK, what do we think is going to happen in this region? How many people might be immigrating to the area or migrating from other parts? So it's a very exhaustive process. They don't always get it right. Yeah, they're doing a little bit of looking into the future, right? So a little bit of predicting. In a way, they almost have to have a crystal ball. And that would be really difficult, like trying to forecast how many people might be moving into the area, how many people might be leaving. And just as one example, the Hamilton Wentworth School Board, back in 2004, they actually sold a high school in downtown Hamilton because enrollment was declining. It looked at the time

like they weren't going to need it. So they sold it to a developer. Fast forward nine years later, demographics had changed, and they thought, we need that property back because we're building a new high school. And they had to expropriate it from the developer. Which would probably cost a lot of money, I would imagine. Yes. They would not tell us how much they paid to expropriate it. Okay. So that's one example where they don't always get it right. Yes.

But I would imagine sometimes they do. This process must work in some way, right? So a really interesting example is the Toronto District School Board and a school in North Toronto called Bannockburn. So this school was built in the 1920s. And in the 1980s, so this is like several, like this is several decades ago, right? The school board closed the school because enrollment was declining, and they leased it out to a Montessori school. So they were getting some revenue through the lease. In September, the board is reopening that school because enrollment has grown. So imagine had they sold it back in the 80s, and then they would have to go through the process of, oh, we need to like somehow acquire a chunk of land. So these are the

kind of exercises the school boards go through in trying to say, okay, maybe we don't need it today, but maybe we need to hang on to it. Yeah, because what you're saying, it's a lot of work, you're looking at demographic projections, you're saying, it's a lot of work. You're looking at demographic projections. You're looking at all kinds of numbers. And so it's easier to do that on a smaller scale, right? Yes, when you know your community. Yes, that's right. And so then with the new, like, Bill 98, can school boards just sell these inactive schools now?

Or how would it work? So right now, and there has been for a few years, there's a moratorium. And that was brought in by the previous liberal government back in 2017. Because as you can imagine, selling a school is, that is a really controversial thing to do. And it's particularly controversial in rural communities and small towns because often an elementary school is the only school in the area. And so the previous government brought in the moratorium saying you can't declare any more school surplus, meaning you don't need them, and you can't sell them. There's a moratorium on selling them. We'll be back in a minute.

All right, so that's how things work at this point. What is the new process that the government is talking about bringing in? This is really the key part. The legislation says the government would be empowered to decide to determine whether a school is needed to meet current pupil needs or future pupil needs. And we don't know how they define that because we haven't seen the regulations yet. And that's what some trustees are wondering. Well, what do they mean by future? How long is their horizon? Is it five years, 10 years? Because, you know, school boards look out 20 years. Okay.

So why is it that we don't know these things? So typically when legislation is introduced, it's just the bill sets out like the sort of the broad purpose of it. But the details are missing. The details will all be in the regulations. And that'll be done just by bureaucrats. It's not like through the legislature, it'll be just something behind the scenes. And to be clear, we should say the bill is not law yet. It's well on its way, but not quite yet. That's right. It's passed third and final reading. But until the regulations are there, it won't be what they call proclaimed into law. Okay. But the idea is then the provincial government would have, I guess, a list of these properties and then it could decide what to do with them, essentially.

Yes, that's right. So it has what the bill says is first right of refusal. So let's just say there's an empty piece of land somewhere, whether it's a parking lot or green space. So it could say, okay, we've decided this is not needed to meet current or future pupil accommodation needs. So they will do what's already in the legislation, the existing thing, but they will offer it to another school board. And if that school board, another one doesn't need it, then they'll say, okay, well, I guess we can sell it on the open market to a long-term care developer, a housing developer. Okay, and this is kind of where we get to the idea of it could be sold for housing, essentially.

Yes, yes. And to be clear, these are unused lands. Is there the potential to close down schools in order to do this? So the government is pledging to keep the moratorium in place for the time being. So they will not be closing down schools that are currently open? That's correct, yes. They're off limits. Okay.

And when this kind of sale would happen, who's getting the revenue from that sale? So that should go back to the school board, but I'm not exactly sure how that works because, again, we need to see the regulations. Fair enough. Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, it sounds like school boards, like in the way that it used to be done, there's a lot of work that goes into these decisions. Will the provincial government at least be, I guess, I don't know, working with the school boards or trustees in order to decide how this is done? There's nothing in the bill that speaks to that. clear that they plan to work with Infrastructure Ontario, which is the province's own subsidiary that does deal with a lot of public lands. Like it handles, say, like a contract to build a new hospital, that kind of thing. And that they'll be also working with like private real estate

developers. Ah, okay. So Infrastructure Ontario, like who, I guess, who makes up Infrastructure Ontario? They are people from, with real estate expertise. They are a government agency and they do preside over the awarding of a lot of public sector contracts

to develop, like I said, hospitals, courthouses, other public sector buildings. So what does the government say about why it's doing this, Karen? So the government says it basically needs this overarching, this is Stephen Lecce, the education minister. He says he needs what he calls an overarching lens. He needs to know how many schools are sitting underutilized, how many vacant lots there are, how many administration buildings there are. He needs that big picture. And you actually spoke to Minister Lecce, right, directly? Yes, yes.

And so what exactly does he say about why he wants this macro lens or why he says he needs it? You know, Ontario was this unique situation where we've got four different types of publicly funded school boards. So he says he needs to speed up building new schools and he needs to stop the hoarding of assets. He accuses like some school boards of hoarding assets, not being willing to sell a school they no longer need to another school board. Okay. It sounds like he wants to centralize power in a way. Absolutely. That is what it's all about, centralizing power.

Yes. But, I mean, isn't there a reason we have school boards in the first place? Like we have different levels of government for a reason because you can get more specific kind of at different levels, right? So isn't there a purpose to them? So the trustees in each school board, they act as stewards for students, parents, and the local community. They're their advocates. They know the community.

They know where the pressures are, where the need is for a new school. So that's their job, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, so has Ontario ever done anything like this before, I guess, where they're pulling power in a way? I don't know, away from trustees? This is particularly why trustees are so alarmed by Bill 98,

because they see this as just a further step in eroding their powers. So if you go back, say, 25 years with the Harris era, Mike Harris's progressive conservative government. So he basically drastically cut the number of trustees in Ontario, and he also cut their pay. So that was one big way that they saw their power being eroded. And then he also brought in legislation that no longer allowed school boards to impose taxes on like housing developers

and others, so that they could raise money to build new schools. He took away that power. So they see this as, you know, yet another step in limiting their ability to act as stewards. Okay, so I guess it's fair to say that maybe, well, maybe you can tell me, school trustees, like how are they responding to these proposals by the government? So they had no advance warning that this legislation was coming. There was no consultation with educators, trustees. And then once the bill was out, the government set up only two days for public comment at a legislative committee. Is that pretty quick?

Oh, yes. That's what you can do when you have a majority. You can just use your majority to set a time, what they call a time allocation motion on debate on a piece of legislation. So what does all of this tell you, Karen? I mean, you've been following this closely, but all of those actions by the government, what does that tell you about this legislation and how they're approaching this situation? I think what's really interesting is we know that the Ford government's big mandate is to build 1.5 million new houses over 10 years. But what's really interesting is to see that priority captured in a piece of legislation that's supposed to be about education. So it's really interesting to see the education minister talking about how some of these school lands could be used maybe

to build new housing or long term care. He's supposed to be all about education, and yet here he is talking about meeting that goal to build new housing. Wow. So, Karen, we've been focused on Ontario here, but I wonder, like, are other provinces doing similar things where they can kind of, I guess, circumvent school boards? So there are two provinces that have basically gotten rid of school boards, Quebec and Nova Scotia, and two others, Manitoba and New Brunswick, have looked at it, but then

backed off in the face of opposition. And just to be clear, the Ontario government's not saying it's getting rid of school boards with this? No, it isn't. No. I guess I'm trying to get my head around the big picture of this still, because this is about building more housing. But in order to do so, the government is getting rid of school lands. And these are schools that could one day potentially be reopened, like the examples you mentioned, right, like Bannockburn Public School that did need to be reopened when demographics change. So if they get rid of schools like that, they build houses, people move in. I mean, there's going to be kids living there. They're going to need schools nearby, right?

So how are they going to make sure those kids have a place to go? Well, that's a really interesting question. And I think, you know, with all of these pledges by the Ford government to build more housing, I don't know if we're getting enough of that big picture. Okay, so when you build housing, you need other public services, you need hospitals, you need schools. So I think that there are questions about the broader planning. Karen, thank you so much for your work here and for being on the podcast. You're welcome. That's it for today.

I'm Mainika Raman-Wilts. Our summer producer is Nagui Nia. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrienne Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening and I'll talk to you tomorrow.