More cracks in Ford’s Greenbelt narrative as new evidence comes to light

By Staff

January 29^th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

 

It was not a good week for Premier Ford.

The Greenbelt scandal is the kind of thing that defeats a government.  It is complex – when the matter has $7.8 billion attached to it – you can bet that it is complex.

The more complex the facts are the harder it becomes for people to understand just how bad the issue is.

Behind all the revelations is the RCMP investigation.  If they decide that there was criminal behaviour and charges are laid – it doesn’t really do very much other than make the mess smell even worse.  The Conservatives have a clear majority in the Legislature – and the next election is not until 2026 – plenty of time for the public to forget what is admittedly very complex.

Bonnie Crombie is expected to be an MPP in the not too distant future which will mean Ford will have to women hammering away at him every day.

Marit Stiles, the NDP leader of the Opposition dropped another clutch of email traffic that she obtained through a Freedom of Information application related to email that was sent on computer servers that were not part of those that are operated by the government.  Politicians and government staff are required to use the equipment the government provides.

Stiles made what she found public and the Toronto Star was all over the material – that was more than revealing.

Stiles maintained that the Premier was not truthful when he met with the Integrity Commissioner.  Recall that it was the Integrity Commissioners’’ report that led to the resignation of the then Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing and the decision on the part of the government to roll back the decision it made to approve development on land that was within the Greenbelt boundaries.

Emails obtained in response to a Freedom of Information request suggest a timeline that is inconsistent with the testimonies provided by Ryan Amato and Patrick Sackville under oath, and that the Premier’s office knew about the land swaps much earlier than they claimed.

“This e-mail shows that the Premier’s office was far more involved in the Greenbelt land removals than Mr. Ford claimed” said Stiles. “The Conservatives are trying desperately to make this scandal go away, but it is becoming increasingly clear that they cannot hide from their corruption.

“With each new piece of evidence, we are seeing more cracks in the narrative that the Premier and his insiders have been trying to spin. But the truth is becoming clearer every day – Mr. Ford was not in the dark about his government’s corrupt Greenbelt decisions.

“It’s time for the Conservatives to come clean about how they deceived Ontarians with this Greenbelt fiasco. If they don’t, I’m confident the RCMP will.”

At issue is an Oct. 17, 2022 email exchange — on their private accounts instead of on government servers — between Patrick Sackville, then the premier’s principal secretary and now his chief of staff, and Ryan Amato, at the time the top aide to then-municipal affairs minister Steve Clark.

In a message from Amato to Sackville that day, (October 17th) the ministerial chief of staff shared a “list of criteria for removals” of 7,400 acres from the two-million-acre environmentally sensitive Greenbelt around the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.

These include “infrastructure services,” such as nearby roads, gas and water mains, hydro lines, police and fire services, among other things.

It also listed “potential offsets” such as the Paris Galt Moraine “green space our government has decided not to move on” and “options to go larger depending on executive interest.”

The timing of the email is at odds with testimony made under oath to J. David Wake, the Integrity Commissioner, for his August 30 report on the Greenbelt land swap.

“Members of the premier’s staff also told us they were not involved in the selection of properties,” wrote Wake.

“Mr. Sackville said he did not discuss specific properties to be removed or removal criteria with Mr. Amato until the briefing that occurred on October 27, 2022,” the ethics watchdog continued.

“Mr. Sackville recalled being first briefed about the Greenbelt project at a meeting facilitated by the cabinet office on October 27, 2022. He told me that he recalled the intentions of the policy were discussed and that it should be ‘programmatic,’ meaning that it should be something that could be repeated and made standard.”

But that was 10 days after the Oct. 17 email in which criteria for removal of the lands from the Greenbelt was addressed. Clark announced the changes on Nov. 4, 2022.

“This email … shows that the premier’s office was far more involved than Mr. Ford claims in the selection of Greenbelt lands for removal,” said NDP Leader Marit Stiles.

“Conservatives very much want their Greenbelt scandal to go away, but it is glaringly clear they can’t hide from what they’ve done,” said Stiles, who has asked Wake to “provide an opinion on whether it is consistent with Mr. Sackville’s testimony to your office under oath.”

“With each new piece of evidence, we are seeing more cracks in the narrative Mr. Ford and his insiders have been trying desperately to get people to believe — that Ford was in the dark about this scheme to carve up prime farmland and green space for land speculators,” she said.

Last week, the integrity commissioner advised Stiles he would “need some time to review the evidence, not only of Mr. Sackville, but other witnesses to determine whether there was an inconsistency in the evidence.”

“If I determine that there was an inconsistency, I will provide you with my opinion as to what, if any, significance might attach to it. I will get back to you as soon as I have had an opportunity to review the matter,” Wake wrote her on Jan. 15.

But the email was shared with the NDP by cabinet office lawyers as soon as the now-chief of staff, who receives hundreds of messages daily, found and forwarded it.

“This record was just discovered upon deeper review,” Sackville wrote Dec. 20 to cabinet office general counsel Don Fawcett.

Two days later, it was handed over to the New Democrats, who had filed a freedom of information request months earlier.

“To ensure all necessary due diligence was exercised, Patrick Sackville … conducted additional searches within his personal email account,” wrote Janet Dadufalza, senior freedom of information manager in cabinet office.

“From this search, an email that is considered to be responsive to your request was found. Partial access is granted,” she wrote the NDP on Dec. 22.

But “access to the remaining record continues to be denied” because of cabinet privilege.

It is unclear why personal email accounts were being used to conduct official government business.

Amato Ford- government staffer at the centre of greenbelt controversy resigned on August 22. Clark, who remains the MPP for Leeds-Grenville-Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, quit Ford’s cabinet on Sept. 4.

Through his lawyer, Kathryn Marshall, Amato declined to comment.

Ford has insisted he was out of the loop about the removal of 15 parcels of land from the Greenbelt that the auditor general estimated would be worth $8.28 billion to property owners.

“I had nothing to do with the changes in the Greenbelt … the auditor general cleared us, cleared my office, and the integrity commissioner cleared me and my office,” he premier said October. 31.

In separate reports last summer, the Auditor General and Integrity Commissioner found certain developers with Tory connections were “favoured” in an unusual process supposedly led by Amato.

On Sept. 21, an embattled Ford finally cancelled the land swap, which is now being investigated by the RCMP.

“It was a mistake to open the Greenbelt. I’m very, very sorry,” the premier said that day.

“I made a promise to you that I wouldn’t touch the Greenbelt. I broke that promise. As a first step to earning back your trust, I’ll be reversing the changes. We moved too quickly and we made the wrong decision … it caused people to question our motives.”

Other casualties of the imbroglio were Kaleed Rasheed, who was forced out as Ford’s business minister and turfed from the Progressive Conservative caucus last September, and Jae Truesdell, who was Ford’s housing adviser.

Rasheed and Truesdell were on a controversial 2020 trip to Las Vegas with Greenbelt developer Shakir Rehmatullah and Amin Massoudi, who was the Premier’s principal secretary at the time.

Last week Cabinet Minister Park Gill resigned to run as a federal Conservative.

The Legislature will return to Queen’s Park February 24th.

Who did what and when:

Patrick Sackville (former principal secretary and current chief of staff to the Premier) and Ryan Amato (former chief of staff to the former Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing) exchanged information including “list of criteria for removals” of 7,400 acres of the Greenbelt

These emails were exchanged 10 days before the dates that Amato and Sackville provided to the Office of the Integrity Commissioner in a testimony made under oath

Amato and Sackville used their personal emails to exchange information about public policy instead of their government emails

Using personal email for conducting government business does not exempt one from the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, as outlined in the Auditor General’s special report on the Greenbelt land removals which saw recurring use of personal emails by government staff