On Monday, Aug 17, 2026 at 2:42pm Doug Ford's Ontario Land Tribunal handed down its ruling forcing Hamilton to move ahead with a massive 3953 acre Urban Boundary Expansion (UBE) onto rural farmland owned mostly by land speculators and developers. The ruling means three development consortiums have succeeded in forcing Hamilton to include their rural land holdings, into Hamilton's urban area. The OLT ruling in fact grants a larger expansion than what the developers themselves were asking for.

Brace yourselves for massive, fiscally crippling and environmentally and agriculturally devastating, low density McMansion sprawl on these thousands of acres of prime Hamilton farmland.

To hell with what our own City Planners, City Council and especially the citizens of Hamilton want. This is Ford's Provincial Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT) meddling in democracy and local planning, plain and simple. In 2022 the Ford government forced the expansion of our urban boundary and stole our Greenbelt on the same day, before public outcry forced him to backtrack and reverse those decisions in 2023. Since then, Ford did a work-around and simply changed the Provincial Planning rules:

Prior to Ford, municipalities had the power to say yes or no to UBE applications and developers had no OLT appeal rights on those local Council decisions. Ford took that away- allowing developers to apply for UBEs whenever and wherever they feel like it (rather than during prescribed periods when growth was considered), and they can now appeal municipal denials on UBEs to the OLT which was not previously allowed, and which rarely go in our favour. Sept, 2022 Hamilton Spectator: Ontario Land Tribunal decisions have favoured developers 97 per cent of the time.

It seems that local councils can vote to approve or deny applications, but the final land use decision-making power has been transferred away from municipalities and placed straight into the arms of hand-picked-by-Ford OLT members and wealthy, connected developers, donors and land speculators close to Ford.

Yesterday's forced mega boundary-buster decision is a prime example of that meddling. In case you're new or you've forgotten, a mail-out survey was distributed to all households in Hamilton in the summer of 2021 to ask for opinions about how the City of Hamilton should grow to the year 2051. A record total of 18,387 survey responses were submitted to the City - never before or since have so many people responded to a City survey. The result:

- Option 1 - Expand the urban boundary = 1,088 responses (5.9%)

- Option 2 - No Urban Boundary Expansion = 16,636 responses (90.4 %)

- Option 3 - Other Suggestions = 663 responses (3.6%)

Over 90% of respondents chose NO URBAN BOUNDARY EXPANSION. Council of the time listened and voted 12-3 to stop sprawl and focus housing intensification inside existing neighbourhoods, close to jobs, transit and amenities. After 2022, the new term of Council continued voting against sprawl and voting for zoning changes that would allow for more intensification city-wide, and the plan was working - Hamilton has achieved an average of 80% intensification over the last few years, even though urban expansion developers claimed that level was "aspirational" and that even 50% (low density) would be hard to achieve. But with the no urban expansion policy change, Hamilton did achieve an average of 80% intensification and in 2023, eclipsed that goal and reached 90%. (Page 4 here). Unfortunately for Hamiltonians the OLT was persuaded by the developers' lawyers and ruled that "The Tribunal finds....that the City’s 80% intensification rate is aspirational and is not reasonable or attainable as required by the PPS 2024." A ruling copied straight from the arguments of the developers.

Doug Ford's government has overridden local democracy again and again and this OLT decision is the pinnacle of it all. His government controls Land Use and Planning decisions in Hamilton, not us.

There's a by-election on September 2 in Stoney Creek to replace the Conservative MPP that retired. Get involved and help campaign and canvas for a candidate that represents Hamiltonians, not well-connected developers. Let's vote wisely and take back control of our local decisions.