Documents reveal stress behind the scenes as Ford government ignored experts to change municipal boundaries

Thousands of internal government documents linked to Premier Doug Ford’s $8.28-billion Greenbelt land swap scandal reveal political staff directed bureaucrats on municipal boundary changes -- often ignoring expert advice.

Thestar.com
Oct. 31, 2023
Robert Benzie, Rob Ferguson, Sheila Wang, Brendan Kennedy

Thousands of internal government documents linked to Premier Doug Ford’s $8.28-billion Greenbelt land swap scandal reveal political staff directed bureaucrats on municipal boundary changes -- often ignoring expert advice.

They also lift a veil on the stress and strain behind the scenes as the Progressive Conservatives scrambled to make more land available for housing development -- both on the Greenbelt and by extending urban boundaries in many cities.

“Everybody keep your mouth shut,” Ryan Amato, former chief of staff to ex-housing minister Steve Clark, apparently told colleagues, according to minutes of a meeting last Nov. 17, one of the documents released Monday.

Amato was unhappy about how opening up the Greenbelt to development two weeks earlier was being portrayed in the media.

The documents were made public the same day the Star reported RCMP investigators have begun interviewing people as part of their criminal probe.

Ford will be asked about these developments at a news conference Tuesday morning in Etobicoke.

The RCMP’s Sensitive and International Investigations unit, the branch that probes corruption and political crime, is looking into “allegations associated to the decision from the province of Ontario to open parts of the Greenbelt for development.”

Sources, speaking confidentially in order to discuss internal deliberations, said the RCMP has begun making appointments to question past and current officials involved with the Greenbelt changes.

One who is expected to be interviewed is Amato, who, like Clark, resigned in the summer.

According to an email Amato sent Oct. 31, 2022 to bureaucrats, he appeared to have a say in which properties would be added to Hamilton’s official plan, essentially rezoning them for development.

“I would like all these changes made. Thank you,” the aide wrote, according to the documents released.

In a surprise move last week, new housing minister Paul Calandra cancelled Clark’s changes to official city plans in Hamilton, Barrie, Ottawa, Peel, York and Durham regions, among other municipalities.

As first disclosed by the Star last week, the new minister has been moving quickly to clean up the mess he inherited.

Those boundary amendments -- made despite opposition from local councils -- were designed to increase the amount of urban land zoned for housing development.

NDP Leader Marit Stiles said the Amato email is “the first really direct connection” between political staff and the edict to change the boundaries.

Ecojustice and Environmental Defence obtained the email in a trove of documents released to the public at 1 p.m. Monday.

Interim Liberal leader John Fraser said they “show that the Ford government has given developers the inside track to decision-making … and all roads lead to the premier’s office in this ongoing scandal.”

The heavily redacted documents were ordered released by the Information and Privacy Commissioner earlier this year after the province delayed for months.

They depict the inner workings of the ministry under Clark’s leadership.

On Sept. 12, 2022, he sent 16 letters to municipalities, including to the city of Toronto, notifying them he was using a new authority granted through the Planning Act changes to suspend the 120-day time period to make a decision on official plans and amendments to them. Officials plans set out the urban boundaries for municipalities and how land within them should be used.

Paul Freeman, York’s chief planner, wrote back, saying, “this is a surprise, and the letter does not provide rationale.”

Freeman worried that the move would in fact lead to “delays” because it would “constrain our ability for faster municipal approvals to implement the growth plan.”

The environmental groups that released the documents contend it was “partisan minister’s office staff -- not civil service experts -- who directed changes to municipal official plans in ways that favoured select landowners and sprawl developers.”

“The documents also show that their lands were designated for development despite being rejected by both municipal planners and provincial municipal affairs planning experts,” the groups said.

In another email, sent after the changes to Hamilton’s urban boundary, a senior planner with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing wrote to a supervisor that she was directed by Clark’s staff to make “a number of last-minute modifications” to the official plan.

“The exact policies and wording were provided by the (minister’s office) and there was no time to do a thorough review and cross-referencing of the modifications,” wrote Erika Ivanic, who according to her LinkedIn profile now works for the city of Toronto.

As a result, Ivanic wrote, some of the changes -- including removing height restrictions for residential buildings -- contravened other policies and wouldn’t take effect.

While many pages are redacted due to cabinet confidentiality, they paint a picture of a ministry under siege.

Amato complained about an unspecified Star “hit piece” and implored his colleagues to remain focused and disciplined.

“Everybody keep your mouth shut and stick to it. MESSAGING: IF YOU THINK YOU WERE MISSED PLEASE REACH OUT,” the Nov. 17 minute says cryptically.

That may refer to the message to other developers, whose land wasn’t removed from the Greenbelt, that there could be other changes in the future.

At a Nov. 2 meeting on a request to expand the urban boundaries in York region, Amato was quoted as saying “PO wants this done,” in reference to the premier’s office.

The internal emails also show planning staff growing frustrated with edicts from Clark’s office to include certain properties in Halton region’s official growth plan -- changes, in some cases, that “were made in the absence of any planning analysis.”

“As such, there may be unintended consequences as a result of these changes,” wrote the ministry’s manager of community planning and development.

In another email, planning staff warned against the direction to include two parcels of land owned by developers north of Aldershot, in an area a government document describes as largely “not suitable for urban development due to the prevalence of natural heritage features.”

“Just wanted to reiterate again that throwing in the North Aldershot areas at this point will be very contentious and counter to the region’s planning,” one planning staffer wrote. “However, as directed by (the minister’s office), I will proceed with these mods. Just sending this email as a written record.”

The 7,000 pages released are related to official plans for Hamilton, Halton, Niagara, Waterloo, Peel, York and Durham regions.

Since August, the Tories have been trying to undo the damage caused by the Greenbelt affair.

That month, separate reports from the auditor general and the integrity commissioner concluded “certain developers” were “favoured” when Ford decided to open up 7,400 acres of the two-million-acre protected Greenbelt for housing construction.

The legislative watchdogs exposed a flawed process in which Amato, who declined to comment Monday, personally selected the properties chosen to be removed after meetings with developers.

He resigned two weeks before his boss finally stepped down on Labour Day.

Another minister, Kaleed Rasheed, and a top aide, Ford’s housing policy adviser Jae Truesdell, have also been forced to quit.

While Rasheed was defenestrated from the PC caucus, Clark still sits as a Tory MPP.

On Sept. 21, in a major policy flip-flop, a chastened premier finally axed the land swap scheme.

“It was a mistake to open the Greenbelt. I’m very, very sorry. I made a promise to you that I wouldn’t touch the Greenbelt. I broke that promise,” a sombre Ford said.

“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.”

Adding insult to injury, Stiles on Monday morning outlined how some developers who attended the wedding of one of Ford’s daughter last year received minister’s zoning orders (MZOs) that made their land more valuable.

“From the Greenbelt grab to forced urban boundary expansions to MZOs, Ford has a deeply troubling pattern of putting his friends ahead of everyone else,” Stiles told reporters.

“The Ford Conservatives are already under RCMP criminal investigation for the Greenbelt. This is yet more evidence of sketchy land deals that show just how deep this corruption goes,” she said, noting Ford issued 18 MZOs to wedding guests.

That’s equal to the amount of MZOs former Liberal premiers Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne issued between 2003 and 2018.

At his news conference last week cancelling the municipal boundary changes, Calandra confirmed he was reviewing all of the MZOs, but stressed “the vast majority I’m not concerned with.”

Since taking office five years ago, Ford has used the orders that override local planning authorities more times than the previous Liberal, Progressive Conservative and NDP governments did in three decades.