Toyota and Ford

In Ontario, the Greenbelt may stand as Doug Ford’s biggest and most scandalous attack on protected land, but it’s far from the only one. Over a year ago, the government told municipalities to assemble shovel-ready land for industry if they want to attract jobs. Wilmot, a township home to about 21,000 people in southwestern Ontario, gathered hundreds of acres of farmland, and some landowners say they were threatened with expropriation if they didn’t sell. The process has been mired in controversy and secrecy.

Since last March, I’d been hearing trickles of rumours about what’s going on in Wilmot. I started chatting with Terry Pender, a longtime reporter with Waterloo Region Record, the area’s award-winning local paper. We broke the news together this week: the land assembly is meant for a future Toyota site — an attempt by the government to keep the automaker in Ontario amid Donald Trump’s tariff threats. 

This late-breaking news is unlikely to sway today’s election results; a historic Doug Ford three-peat is all but inevitable. Stay tuned for my story later tonight about what the election’s outcome means for the environment — and catch up on what’s up in Wilmot here. We’ll be watching what a third Ford government means for the land specifically. So if something similar is happening in your area, drop us a note.

— Fatima Syed, Ontario reporter