Ontario’s former auditor general Bonnie Lysyk believes Premier Doug Ford is “ultimately responsible” for the controversial decision to open protected Greenbelt land for development, as she reflects on the release of her bombshell report one year later.
The government’s decision in the fall of 2022 to allow development on 15 parcels of Greenbelt land triggered a tidal wave of controversy after two independent investigations revealed how events unfolded and determined the haphazard, hasty process dealt in “deception” and gave certain developers “preferential treatment.”
Reports from the auditor general and integrity commissioner led to the resignation of then-housing minister Steve Clark, several senior staff in the Ford government and triggered an RCMP investigation that continues to this day.
While the premier fiercely defended the decision to remove 7,400 acres of land from the Greenbelt, replacing it with 9,400 acres elsewhere, Ford eventually caved to political pressure, reversed the decision and apologized to Ontarians.
Lysyk told Global News that while “scope limitations” prevented her office from determining who masterminded the scheme, she believes political decision-makers — including the premier — shoulder the responsibility.
“Ultimately, responsibility for any action or any decision falls with the government, cabinet, the premier, and the ministers,” Lysyk said in a one-on-one interview with Global News. “At the end of the day, if you’re the leader of an organization and something goes amiss you’re ultimately responsible.”
Lysyk’s report, which put the government’s developer-friendly decision-making in the spotlight, was released on Aug. 9, 2023.
Ahead of the one-year anniversary, Global News sat down with the former auditor general to talk about the report and its impact.
Initial Suspicions
In the days after the initial announcement that the government was ready to remove the legal protections from 15 parcels of Greenbelt land to build up to 50,000 new homes, suspicion was ignored at Queen’s Park.
The government faced immediate pushback from environmental groups which called it a “death sentence” for the Greenbelt, journalists began filing freedom-of-information requests and researching land ownership records, and opposition political parties questioned the government’s motives.
“We’ve always believed that he intended to carve up the Greenbelt and that there were going to be people who were going to make a lot of money off of that [decision,]” said NDP Leader Marit Stiles.
“Many of them very close to the premier. And it was becoming increasingly clear that this is where this was all headed.”
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The Ontario NDP, along with the Liberals and Green Party, decided to file a joint request to the auditor general’s office for an official value-for-money review of the government’s Greenbelt decision.
At the same time, unbeknownst to the political parties, Lysyk’s office was flooded with complaints from members of the public and had “already decided” that an audit was necessary.
“There were a lot of relationships, coincidental timing issues that made us think we should be looking at this,” Lysyk said.
The auditor had also wrapped up a detailed review of land-use planning in Ontario with a specific focus on Minister’s Zoning Orders which led her to believe that the process created a “backdoor” and that the government was making decisions that “weren’t based on good information.”
The investigation
Lysyk’s team was primarily comprised of specialists within her office, including environmental experts to look into the impact of land removal on the Greenbelt, financial analysts to dig into the land value assessments and long-time auditors to scrutinize emails and documents from the government and the civil service.
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While political parties wanted the auditor to cast as wide a net as possible, Lysyk was working with limited time: her term was set to expire at the end of the summer, giving her mere months to uncover as much information about the decision-making and process as possible.
Lysyk narrowed down her focus to the legislative and regulatory changes, the timing of the announcement, relationships of those involved and what information was presented to voters ahead of the Greenbelt alteration.
“The concern really was the removal of land from the Greenbelt that came about suddenly,” Lysyk said.
“We just had an election in June 2022. There was nothing in an election platform around removing land from the Greenbelt,” the former auditor added. “The information … came to everybody’s attention as a shock, so we tried to understand what drove that.”
Soon after, Lysyk began requesting information from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing and immediately encountered her first obstacle.
“We had some difficulty at the beginning obtaining access,” Lysyk told Global News. “I would say it was delayed and it was coming from the political staffer side.”
The logjam, however, was brief and after a personal interjection, Lysyk’s team received large volumes of government email and documents typically shielded from the public’s view.
The most compelling information that appeared to draw a direct line to Premier Doug Ford was the 2022 mandate letter given to then-Housing Minister Steve Clark which outlined specific instructions to alter the boundaries of the Greenbelt.
“In fall 2022, complete work to codify processes for swaps, expansions, contractions and policy updates for the Greenbelt,” the mandate letter said.
“In addition, conduct a comprehensive review of the mandate of the Greenbelt Council and Greenbelt Foundation. This should include a comprehensive plan to expand and protect the Greenbelt.”
Clark later told the integrity commissioner that he considered the direction from Premier Ford to be a “significant change” for the government’s previous promises on the Greenbelt.
“Obviously he [Premier Ford] wrote the mandate letter,” Clark told the integrity commissioner. “So he was very interested in me moving forward on the items that there were in the letter, which I did.”
The integrity commissioner’s office declined an interview request from Global News.
Clark stated that the premier’s directions did not include specific site selection within the Greenbelt.
For Lysyk, the “wording in that letter was key” because it referred to the creation of a process that never materialized, leading her to haul in the main players including Clark and Premier Ford, as well as senior political staff and civil servants for interviews
“Some people interviewed with lawyers, some people did not have their lawyers present when they were interviewed. But, I would say the public service and the political staff were cooperating,” Lysyk said.
The findings
Over the course of roughly six months, Lysyk’s team uncovered what critics believe was evidence of corruption.
Lysyk told Global News decisions related to the Greenbelt land removal were being made in a “non-transparent” manner, were “unfair to the general public” and were “not objective.”
Lysyk’s investigation determined that the three-week process was rushed and carried out under a cloak of secrecy.
The auditor general also discovered that certain developers advocated for their land to be removed by providing site-specific information in paper envelopes to senior staff in the Ford government while others handed over files on USB keys, long before the public was made aware.
Ultimately, Lysyk calculated that the 15 parcels of land removed from the Greenbelt would see their value rise by $8.3 billion once they were cleared for development.
“I think the circumstances create a perception that certain developers were more in the know than perhaps other developers in the province of Ontario,” Lysyk said.
“I’m sure all developers who own land throughout Ontario if they had Greenbelt land, would love it to be open so that the market value of their land would increase,” Lysyk added. “So it just seemed it was an unfair process.”
For NDP Leader Stiles, who pushed for the investigation in the first place, the findings were “shocking.”
“It was, I would say, a bit overwhelming because I think even though we had suspicions that the government was connected to these developers and that somehow this all came back to the minister and the premier’s office, we hadn’t been able to connect the dots in quite the way that the Auditor General was,” Stiles said.
The reaction
The publication of the report, on Aug. 9, 2023, touched off a scandal that would rock the Ford government to its core, sparking protests, leading to resignations and fuelling an RCMP investigation.
Ryan Amato, who served as the chief of staff in the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, resigned, as did housing minister Steve Clark after the integrity commissioner published similar findings.
What came as a surprise to Lysyk’s office, however, was the government’s reluctance to revisit the decision — a key recommendation outlined in her 93-page report.
“That was a stumbling block, there was no agreement on that,” Lysyk told Global News.
“When I saw the media and the public involvement in the issue, I thought the government will probably be watching the temperature and perhaps watching the polling and what that meant.”
But the premier repeatedly defended the need for the additional land to achieve the government’s goal of building 1.5 million homes by 2031, even as Greenbelt decision engulfed his government in scandal.
Six weeks later, Ford offered an apology and promised to return the removed land to the Greenbelt.
Lysyk told Global News that while the reversal demonstrated the importance of transparency in government decision-making, she felt the government “dragged out” the inevitable.
“I think that’s maybe something the government probably regrets, that they didn’t make the decision sooner,” Lysyk said.
“But at the end of the day, the decision was made.”