Several well-established developers are among the owners of the 15 parcels of land the Ford government is proposing to open up for housing in the protected Greenbelt in the Greater Toronto Area, a CBC Toronto analysis of dozens of land registry and corporate records has found.

The Ontario government announced a 30-day consultation last week on removing approximately 2,995 hectares across 10 municipalities from the Greenbelt, which was created in 2005 to permanently protect agricultural and environmentally sensitive lands in the Greater Golden Horseshoe area from development.

Corporations run by the DeGasperis family, longtime builders based in Vaughan, Ont. north of Toronto, who founded Tacc Developments and Tacc Construction, own 20 properties in three locations within the Greenbelt the government is proposing to open up.

The list of landowners also includes a company run by Michael Rice, president and CEO of Rice Group, and one run by Shakir Rehmatullah, president of Flato Developments.

The province said last Friday the move will facilitate the building of at least 50,000 homes and that the plan is to add more land elsewhere to the Greenbelt than is being taken out. The lands considered for removal were chosen because they have the potential for homes to be built in the near future and because they are adjacent to existing urban areas, the government of Premier Doug Ford said. 

Here’s what CBC News learned about some of the largest landowners who stand to benefit from the so-called Greenbelt land swap.

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