2 Articles: AG Finding: Developers Tied To Housing Ministry “Favoured” In Greenbelt Decision and Ford Asks Integrity Commissioner to Review Aide’s Role In Decision
Developers Tied To Housing Ministry “Favoured” In Greenbelt Decision: Auditor General
PREMIER FORD ACKNOWLEDGES SOME PARTS OF THE PROCESS WERE FLAWED BUT NO INTENTION TO REVERSE COURSE
Courtesy of Barrie360.com and Canadian PressPublished: Aug 9th, 2023
By Liam Casey
The province’s decision to open up the protected Greenbelt to housing construction favoured “certain developers” with ties to the housing minister, and failed to consider the potential consequences of the move, an investigation by the auditor general has found.
Premier Doug Ford acknowledged that the process of determining which parts of the Greenbelt surrounding much of the Golden Horseshoe to develop “should have been better,” but said his government would not reverse course, insisting that building in the area was crucial to achieving its housing targets.
Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk said the Ontario government “proceeded with little input from experts,” and did not weigh the environmental, agricultural and financial risks and impacts of the 2022 decision to remove some lands from the Greenbelt for development, while adding others.
She said the owners of the 15 sites removed from Greenbelt protection could see an $8.3 billion increase to the value of those lands and that 14 of those sites “were brought into the exercise” by the housing minister’s chief of staff, who was appointed to his role by the premier’s office in July 2022.
One of the groups that benefited from the process was TACC Developments, which is owned by the De Gasparis family. Silvio De Gasparis, who was not named in the auditor general’s report, has close ties to Premier Doug Ford. Another developer was Michael Rice, owner of the Rice Group.
Both TACC and the Rice Group have land on the Greenbelt that was opened up to development and both fought the auditor general’s summons to answer questions about the land swap. Lysyk said she has abandoned attempts to get them to talk.
TACC’s legal counsel said in a statement to The Canadian Press that there’s “no way of knowing the value of the land at this point in time, as there are significant costs to develop the land, which will be paid by the developers.”
“The TACC Group is one of the few developers with the breadth of experience, knowledge, and resources, as well as the land, to build complete and environmentally responsible communities to meet Ontario’s housing needs,” the statement added.
Lysyk said “the exercise to change the Greenbelt boundaries in fall 2022 cannot be described as a standard or defensible process.”
“The truncated and highly restricted land selection exercise excluded substantive input from land-use planning experts in provincial ministries, municipalities, conservation authorities, First Nations leaders, and the public, while giving preferential treatment to certain developers with direct access to the chief of staff to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing,” she added.
Lysyk also found that when some of the selected sites did not meet certain criteria, those criteria were disregarded.
“For instance, when the ministry identified that 19 of the 22 proposed sites did not meet the one environmental criteria, that criterion was dropped,” Lysyk said.
She also found that 83 per cent of the land removed was of the highest quality agricultural land.
“As premier, the buck stops with me and I take full responsibility for the need for a better process,” Ford said.
Ford said he only learned of the land swap the day it went to cabinet for approval, while Housing Minister Steve Clark said he learned of it the week prior. Both have previously said they did not tip off developers about the moves beforehand and denied having benefited personally from any Greenbelt policy decisions.
Lysyk said she had “no reason not to believe” Ford and Clark.
But, she added, “the housing minister ought to have known the key details of such a high profile, politically sensitive government exercise and ensure that cabinet and the premier were also made fully aware of its details.”
“The actions to amend the Greenbelt boundary also call into question why the government needed to make such a significant decision so quickly.”
Ford and Clark said they accept much of what the auditor general found and pledged to do better going forward.
Reacting to the report, NDP Leader Marit Stiles called for Clark’s “immediate resignation” and for the land in question to be returned to the Greenbelt.
“Let’s call this what it is: corruption. Ontarians deserve better than a government that enriches a select number of party donors at the expense of hard-working Ontarians,” Stiles said.
Interim Liberal Leader John Fraser took issue with Ford and Clark saying they did not know what Clark’s chief of staff was up to.
“There is no way on God’s green earth that the minister’s chief of staff did anything without the minister’s expressed direction and full knowledge,” he said. “That’s not the way government works.”
Asked about his future in government and whether his chief of staff would be dismissed, Clark thanked Ford for having confidence in the housing ministry’s team.
“I recognize the changes that are recommended in this report and I acknowledged that we need to implement them as soon as possible,” Clark told reporters.
Lysyk said the entire process to unlock portions of the Greenbelt was conducted in three weeks and was co-ordinated by Clark’s chief of staff, Ryan Amato, who was not named in the report. She said the process was “biased” and lacked transparency.
Ford and Clark both told Lysyk that they were unaware that the process was being controlled by Amato.
The auditor general provided 15 recommendations to the province, including a call for the “re-evaluation of (the) 2022 decision to change the Greenbelt boundaries.”
The Ford government has agreed to implement 14 of the recommendations, but rejected Lysyk’s advice to review the boundary decision.
Ford also said he had “no plans right now” to open up more of the Greenbelt in the future.
Among Lysyk’s other recommendations was a call for “records retention” specifically regarding emails, as some were missing when she looked for them. Personal emails were also used, she found.
After the Conservatives won the June 2022 election in a landslide, Ford directed Clark in a mandated letter to “complete work to codify processes for swaps, expansions, contractions and policy updates for the Greenbelt,” the report said.
The housing ministry provided Amato with two options: an overall review of the Greenbelt or the selection of specific sites, Lysyk wrote.
Last October, Amato directed the ministry to form a small team of six to 10 public servants to assess specific sites rather than an overall review.
Amato then instructed the “Greenbelt Project Team” to not disclose any information and had them sign non-disclosure agreements.
The work was to be done quickly as part of the province’s sweeping reforms on housing development, with its goal of building 1.5 million homes over 10 years.
Amato then provided the Greenbelt team with 21 of the 22 sites to be assessed for removal.
Amato told the auditor general that he selected those sites, in part, after talking to a few developers at the Building Industry and Land Development Association’s Chair’s Dinner on Sept. 14, the report said.
“Two prominent housing developers approached him and gave him packages containing information to remove two land sites from the Greenbelt,” Lysyk wrote.
Amato told the auditor general that he did not open the packages immediately, but kept them in a stack in his office and added to them as more packages rolled in.
“Altogether, those who had access to the Chief of Staff at the September BILD event ended up with land removals that accounted for 6,784 acres, or 92 per cent, of the 7,412.64 acres ultimately removed from the Greenbelt in December 2022,” Lysyk wrote.
One of the sites recommended for removal was part of the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve.
Lysyk launched a value-for-money probe on the Greenbelt decision in January after a joint request from all three opposition leaders.
Ford Asks Integrity Commissioner To Review Senior Aide’s Role In Greenbelt Decision
AG SAID DEVELOPERS WHO HAD ACCESS TO HOUSING MINISTER’S CHIEF OF STAFF AT A DINNER ENDED UP WITH MOST OF THE LAND REMOVED FROM THE GREENBELT
Ian MacLennanPublished: Aug 10th, 2023 12:29pmLast Updated: Aug 10th, 2023 8:10pm
By Liam Casey in Toronto
The Ontario Integrity Commissioner said it has begun reviewing a request from Premier Doug Ford’s office to investigate a senior aide about his role in selecting which lands in the protected Greenbelt would be approved for housing development.
Ontario’s auditor general found the province’s decision to open up the Greenbelt favoured certain developers with ties to the housing minister in a process that disregarded or ignored possible environmental, agricultural and financial risks and impacts.
Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk recommended the province ask the integrity commissioner to determine if Housing Minister Steve Clark’s chief of staff, Ryan Amato, acted contrary to the Public Service of Ontario Act.
Last year, the province took 7,400 acres of land out of the Greenbelt and replaced it with about 9,400 acres elsewhere. About 83 per cent of the removed land is considered the highest quality farmland in Ontario.
Ford admitted that the process of selecting which lands would be removed from the Greenbelt for development was flawed and pledged that his government would act on 14 of Lysyk’s 15 recommendations. But, he said, his government had not accepted Lysyk’s recommendations to re-evaluate the entire process of modifying the Greenbelt’s boundaries.
Amato told the auditor general he received packages from two prominent developers at a conference dinner last September that included proposals to build homes on protected Greenbelt land owned by those developers.
Amato told the auditor general he did not disclose to the developers that the province would open up the Greenbelt.
Lysyk said the developers who had access to Amato at the dinner ended up with 92 per cent of the land that was removed from the Greenbelt.
Amato did not immediately respond to a request for comment and an automatic return email said he is out of the office until next week.
Ford’s office appointed Amato as Clark’s chief of staff in July of 2022.
Both Ford and Clark said this week they were unaware of the details of the Greenbelt land swap.
Ford said he learned of the land swap the day it went to cabinet for approval, while Housing Minister Steve Clark said he learned of it the week prior.
Lysyk said Clark should have known about the details of the land swap.
Myer Siemiatycki, a professor emeritus of politics at Toronto Metropolitan University, said the notion that the premier and Clark had no knowledge of how Amato was handling the Greenbelt land development process strains belief.
“It’s inconceivable that such a key issue as the future of the Greenbelt would have simply been assigned to someone as low down the scale in the power or pay grade of the Ontario government as a chief of staff,” he said.
“It strains credulity to believe that a chief of staff was given full reign on which of the thousands of acres of Greenbelt land should be converted into residential housing.”
Lysyk found Amato had formed a small team of public servants to look at specific sites and if some of those did not meet the criteria for selection, such as for environmental reasons, the criterion was simply dropped, rather than selecting a different site.
In selecting the areas where development would ultimately be approved, Amato used the packages he received from developers, the auditor general found.
“The housing minister’s chief of staff provided hard-copy information from packages he received on eight sites to the Greenbelt Project Team on October 6, 2022,” Lysyk wrote.
The province’s housing task force had previously said in a report that the Greenbelt land was not needed to achieve the province’s goal of building 1.5 million homes over 10 years.
“Land is available, both inside the existing built-up areas and on undeveloped lands outside the Greenbelt,” the task force found in February 2022.
Lysyk and her team spoke to the chief planners in the three regions, Hamilton, Durham and York, where all 15 sites in the Greenbelt were removed.
“They informed us that sufficiently serviced (or more easily serviceable) land is already available to meet the housing targets assigned to them by the housing minister,” the auditor’s report said.
“The Chief Planners we spoke to also highlighted that the land sites removed from the Greenbelt in December 2022 were largely not serviced, were not in their servicing plans, and that many of the land sites would be challenging to prioritize and service in the near future, with some taking potentially 10 or more years to accomplish.”
The Ontario Provincial Police is aware of the auditor general’s report, a spokesman for the force said.
“At this time, there is no change in status in terms of the ongoing review of the matter by the OPP Anti-Rackets Branch,” Bill Dickson said.
Patricia is the Business Mentor and owner of Grow Vantage and a Past President of the Barrie Chamber of Commerce. She applies over 30 years of business experience (from start-up to corporate) to mentor entrepreneurs. Since 2011, she has held over 6,500 coaching and training sessions in-person and online. Through Ask For Directions Training, her entrepreneurial training program (and parent company Grow Vantage), and as a business coach, she works with start-ups who are new (or who have lost traction) to design, launch and grow their businesses. Along with 20 other expert instructors she teaches strategies in marketing, sales, communications, and finance, as well as practical techniques to increase productivity, and manage their businesses. In other words, everything entrepreneurs need to learn to grow and run their businesses successfully, and avoid the costly mistakes they can't even see coming - that lead to delays in growth and getting stuck.
- Thinking of no gifts this Christmas? Here’s how to talk about it - December 7, 2024
- Health Canada says daily cannabis use hasn’t changed much since legalization - December 7, 2024
- Climate: Canada’s Arctic policy draws on international collaboration to face emerging threats - December 7, 2024