Amazon pull-out from protected wetlands construction reflects badly on everyone involved

This is not the way it's supposed to work.

Both embattled Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Pickering Mayor Steve Ryan have been desperately courting the construction of a huge Amazon "fulfillment centre" (i.e. warehouse and distribution centre) on a provincially-significant protected wetland. At the 11th hour, it was the online behemoth itself that pulled out of the deal, leaving Ford and Ryan commiserating and whining about what might have been.

The 4 million square foot warehouse would have been the largest in Canada, and the Ford government had bent over backwards to attract Amazon to the Duffins Creek site, fast-tracking a special ministerial zoning order despite the area's protected status, reducing the power of local conservation authorities to block development, introducing a bill to retroactively remove a law that disallowed construction on a protected wetland, and pressuring the TRCA conservation authority to issue a construction permit with unheard-of haste. 

Ford's Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Steve Clarke, who was instrumental in this whole process, is fast earning a reputation for employing obscure and suspect legal means to expedite development project at any cost, and there are some claims that he is doing so in order to reward major Conservative donors.

For their part, Amazon issued a terse statement: "We were already considering multiple sites for our expansion and we take environmental issues very seriously". 

Now, I don't for one minute believe that Amazon pulled out because it thought it was doing the right thing for the environment - that's just the expedient and politically correct response - but it's certainly left Ford with egg on his face. 

Not that he cares about such things. Ford will continue to choose business over the environment every time, such as his plan to open up the existing southern Ontario Green Belt to more development. 

So, this was neither "brave government opposing rapacious big business", nor was it "environmentally-woke company overcoming the blandishments of lax laissez-faire government".  It was not as commendable as either of those narratives suggest.