The Auditor General’s report shows how information about land got to a key member of the government
One of the most shocking things that Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk’s report showed wasexplosive reportIn Ontario’s controversial Greenbelt land swap, a small number of real estate developers were able to use their access to a high-level government employee to get protected land, some of which had just been bought, opened up for housing development.
Through meetings at an industry event and emails sent by their lawyers, developers were able to get environmental protections removed from land they own in the Greenbelt. The Greenbelt is an 810,000-hectare area of farmland, forest, and wetland that is supposed to be off-limits to development forever. It stretches from Niagara Falls to Peterborough.
Lysyk’s report showed that decisions about which sites would be taken away were made over the course of three weeks in October by Ryan Amato, who is the chief of staff for Housing Minister Steve Clark, and a small group of bureaucrats he led on the Greenbelt Project Team.She found that certain criteria were not taken into account when some of the chosen sites didn’t meet them.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Lysyk said, “The process was skewed in favor of certain developers and landowners who had quick access to the housing minister’s chief of staff.”
Lysyk found that Amato brought up 21 of the 22 sites that the team thought should be taken down. The non-political public servants who signed 93 confidentiality agreements as part of their jobs were only able to find one person.
WATCH | Was the process of cutting up the Ontario Greenbelt rigged?
Lysyk says that 12 of the 15 sites that were chosen and opened up for housing development were chosen because developers or their representatives suggested them.
So how did the list of proposed properties get from the developers to Amato and then to the cabinet table?To find out, CBC Toronto looked into the auditor general’s report more.
Packages at a dinner for business peopl
Lysyk’s audit found that in the first week of October, Amato gave the project team “hardcopy information from packages he received” from developers about eight sites that could be taken out of the Greenbelt.
Later that month, he gave the Greenbelt Project Team five USB drives with more information about the proposed removal sites.
Amato told the auditor general’s team that he “regularly attends industry events and meets with housing developers and their representatives.” These people sometimes tell him about land that they think the ministry should think about taking out of the Greenbelt.
One of these meetings happened at a chair’s dinner for the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) on September 14, 2022.
Lysyk’s report says that Amato and Clark’s deputy chief of staff were at the same table with a number of housing developers and a registered lobbyist.
At the event, two developers who were not named in the auditor general’s report gave Amato “packages” with information about two sites: the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve (DRAP) in Pickering, Ontario, and a site in King Township, York Region.
As CBC Toronto has reportedSilvio De Gasperis of the Tacc Group of companies and his brothers Carlo and Michael own more than two dozen properties in the DRAP. Michael Rice of the Rice Group bought the King site on September 15 for $80 million. (Both Silvio De Gasperis and Rice did not want to answer the auditor general’s questions about the land swaps.)
Amato said that after the BILD event, while the project team was still working, the “developer for the DRAP site” asked to remove three more sites from the protected Greenbelt. These were a Hamilton, Ont., site owned by Fieldgate Homes, a Richmond Hill, Ont., site owned by Tacc Developments, and a Vaughan, Ont., site owned by Tacc Developments.
The report said, “These five sites will make up 92% of all land taken out of the Greenbelt in 2022.”
Lawyers sent emails to the staff chief
Lysyk’s audit also found that a law firm that worked for three unnamed housing developers asked Amato to take their land out of the Greenbelt.
The law firm sent emails to Amato on September 27 and 29 asking that sites in Markham, Ontario, and Whitchurch-Stouffville, Ontario, be taken down. According to the report and CBC Toronto’s reporting, Flato Developments, whose CEO is Shakir Rehmatullah (again, Lysyk’s report doesn’t list names), owns land in both areas. One of the people who built the Stouffville site is Torca Inc.
On September 29 and October 7, the law firm sent separate emails to Amato asking that another Markham site be taken out of the Greenbelt. According to the report and CBC’s reporting, the main landowner of that site is Wyview Group, which is based in Markham and works on both residential and industrial projects.
Ford and Clark both told Lysyk that they didn’t know that Amato was putting forward the land to be taken away through the developers. Ford told Lysyk that he didn’t know about the sites until the day before the changes were approved by the cabinet on November 2, while Clark said he knew about the plan a week earlier.
When asked by a reporter at an unrelated news conference on Friday if Amato will be the “fall guy” and take all the blame for what the premier has called a “flawed process,” Ford said, “First of all, we’re going to follow the recommendations.
“One of the suggestions was to have the commissioner of integrity look into it. I know he’s been working on that for at least a month, and probably longer. And we will do what he tells us to do. So, let’s see what happens when the report from the integrity commissioner comes out.”
The report from the auditor general said that the Greenbelt proposal given to cabinet didn’t explain how the land sites were found, evaluated, and chosen to be taken away.
Report raises questions about lobbyin
Lysyk said that her investigation also found that lobbyists who worked for developers sent emails to political staff with the wording of proposed changes to the law. These emails were then sent to deputy ministers so that the changes could be added to the law.
“The private interests that lobbyists are paid to promote may not be in the best interest of the public. So, lobbying could cause the government to make decisions that aren’t in the best interests of the majority,” Lysyk wrote in her report.
WATCH | Ford says that ‘no one’ got special treatment:
Duff Conacher, one of the people who started the advocacy group Democracy Watch, said that the way the Greenbelt was taken away was against the public interest.
Conacher said, “The process was definitely messed up because the government rigged it in favor of a few developers and gave them special treatment.” “This is against the law, so the laws need to be looked at and made stronger.”
The Ford government asked Ontario’s integrity commissioner to look into whether or not Amato broke any ethics or conflict of interest rules a day after Lysyk released her report.
That was one of Lysyk’s 15 suggestions. The government agreed with 14 of them. Ford has said that the only suggestion they won’t take is to look at the land swaps again and maybe change their minds.
Friday, CBC Toronto asked Amato for a comment, but he said he was out of the office.
Even if it turns out that Amato broke the rules, Conacher said that his boss, Clark, is the only one who can punish him because the commissioner doesn’t have the power to punish staffers.
At the news conference on Friday, Ford and Clark made it clear that they won’t change their minds about building on the land that was once protected, even though they both agreed that the way the land was chosen was flawed.
Clark said, “We moved too fast, and the process was very flawed.”
Clark didn’t answer directly when asked how developers were able to talk to his chief of staff so easily.
Ford, on the other hand, disagreed with the auditor general’s main conclusion, which was that developers got special treatment.
“No one was treated better than anyone else,” he said.
Ford said, “We are trying to build 50,000 homes for people who need them.”