Doug Ford tries to save the furniture

OTTAWA—As the Ontario legislature met for the first time since the Greenbelt scandal peaked last week, one of the first questions for Ontario Premier Doug Ford was whether he has spoken to the RCMP about the land swap debacle engulfing his government. Ford ignored the question from opposition leader Marit Stiles as he sought to dampen the uproar over the Greenbelt by repeatedly stressing how committed the Progressive Conservative government is to building more highways, hospitals, and homes. Stiles’ question was, in any case, speculative, as the RCMP was still considering whether to open a criminal investigation into the Greenbelt land carve-up. But, with questions mounting by the day about how well-connected developers got preferential treatment by Ford’s team in land transactions that put billions of dollars in quick profits in play, the premier decided last week to clear the deck in advance of more possible scrutiny. In a stunning Sept. 21 about-face, Ford said: “I made a promise to you that I wouldn’t touch the Greenbelt. I broke that promise. And for that, I’m very, very sorry." He said it was a mistake to open the Greenbelt in a hurry-up process. It left “too much room for some people to benefit over others,” Ford acknowledged. It was clearly a rear-guard action in the face of the fast-growing shambles overtaking his government regarding land dealings. His Greenbelt flip-flop emerged a day after a second cabinet minister was forced to resign in this affair. MPP Kaleed Rasheed, Ontario’s minister of public and business service delivery, quit cabinet and the PC caucus after it was revealed that he might have misled Ontario Integrity Commissioner David Wake during the commissioner’s probe of Greenbelt decision-making. The matter concerned the involvement of Rasheed, Amin Massoudi (principal secretary to Ford at the time), and Jae Truesdell (at the time in the private sector but he was most recently Ford’s director of housing policy) with developer Shakir Rehmatullah during a trip to Las Vegas. Rehmatullah’s company owns land that was among the parcels removed from the Greenbelt in November. Rasheed has said he accidentally gave Wake incorrect information about the Las Vegas trip, and that he would work to clear his name. Rasheed’s resignation from cabinet followed the Sept. 4 resignation of Steve Clark from his job as Ontario’s housing minister after Wake’s report saying Clark broke ethics rules in his role overseeing decisions on Greenbelt land removals, a process spearheaded by Clark’s former chief of staff Ryan Amato (who has also quit). Notwithstanding the high-level resignations and Ford’s decision to scrap the Greenbelt carve-up, the furor over the questionable land deal is only likely to get louder. The government will be confronting ongoing demands from the opposition for more disclosures. “Who tipped them off,” NDP leader Stiles demanded to know in the legislature on Sept. 25. She was referring to the fact that, several months before the government revealed it was divvying-up Greenbelt plots for development, several property developers began privately providing information to Amato and others in the government concerning which land they would like to see removed from the Greenbelt. (The Ontario auditor general said in a separate report that, of the 7,400 acres of land removed from the Greenbelt by the province, 92 per cent could be tied to three developers with direct access to the housing ministry.) Ontario Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner called on Sept. 25 for Wake to exercise his power to trigger a public inquiry into this affair. “It’s clear that this trail of Greenbelt destruction leads to the premier and his cabinet,” Schreiner said. “It doesn’t matter how many times Ford half-heartedly apologizes. The people of this province put their trust in him, and he chose deals for Ford-connected developers over everyday Ontarians.” Ford and everyone involved in his government claim they did not tip off anyone in advance of the Greenbelt decisions. But it’s obvious from watchdog reports that developers at the very least knew something was going on. Amato, for instance, told Wake he had let developers know on various occasions that altering the Greenbelt boundaries was under consideration. Then there are the related questions about the Ford government’s expanded use of Minister’s Zoning Orders to allow developers to bypass the usual regulatory processes, and the role of consultants, such as the well-connected PC supporter Wake called “Mr. X,” in helping secure approvals from the top at Queen’s Park. The threshold for a criminal investigation is much higher than for an ethics violation, but RCMP investigators must at the very least be curious about the close relations with key Ford staffers enjoyed by developers and their representatives who wound up with parcels of previously protected property in the land carve-up. Wake spent the bulk of his 165-page report trying to find out what was going on in this very tangled web in the months leading up to the Greenbelt decision. Les Whittington is a regular columnist for The Hill Times. The Hill Times