TORONTO — The RCMP has started to look into a potential investigation related to the Progressive Conservative government's removal of some areas from Ontario's protected Greenbelt for housing development, the police force said Wednesday.
A day after the resignation of the Municipal Affairs and Housing minister's chief of staff, who was at the centre of a damning Ontario auditor general's report into the Greenbelt land swap, the Ontario Provincial Police said it had referred the matter to the Mounties.
"The OPP has received a number of inquiries regarding an investigation into the Greenbelt," the provincial police wrote in a statement Wednesday.
"To avoid any potential perceived conflict of interest, the OPP referred this matter to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police."
The RCMP was similarly tight lipped, but confirmed the police are looking into it.
"At this time, RCMP O Division is beginning our evaluation of the available information as referred by the Ontario Provincial Police," the Mounties wrote.
"After we have conducted a full assessment, we will determine whether to launch an investigation."
News of the potential police probe came a day after Ryan Amato resigned as chief of staff to Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark. Amato wrote in his resignation letter that he does not want to be a distraction from the government's work to get housing built.
"The public statements about me in recent weeks have unfairly depicted me and my role regarding the Greenbelt," he wrote in the letter obtained by The Canadian Press.
"I am confident that I have acted appropriately, and that a fair and complete investigation would reach the same conclusion. However, these public statements have made it impossible, as a practical matter, for me to continue in my present role."
Ontario created the Greenbelt in 2005 to protect agricultural and environmentally sensitive lands in the Greater Golden Horseshoe area from development.
Last year, the province took 7,400 acres of land out of the Greenbelt to build 50,000 homes and replaced it with about 9,400 acres elsewhere, citing an urgent need to build more homes for a growing population.
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.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, speaking at an unrelated news conference Wednesday, declined to comment on the probe and directed questions to RCMP.
While Trudeau recognized a need for more affordable homes across the country, he said “we don’t think that the only solution is to build on protected lands.”
Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk found earlier this month that all but one of the 15 sites ultimately removed from the Greenbelt last year were suggested not by civil servants, but by Amato, who was given packages at an industry event by two key developers.
Developers who had access to Amato wound up with 92 per cent of the land that was removed from the protected Greenbelt, Lysyk found.
Premier Doug Ford has said no one received preferential treatment.
Both Clark and Ford have said they were unaware the process was being controlled by Amato, but opposition politicians have said that is not credible and are still calling for Clark himself to resign.
"I talk to my chief of staff as much as I talk to my kids and my partner these days," NDP Leader Marit Stiles said Wednesday.
"Do they really want us to believe the housing minister and the premier knew nothing? We are not fools. The people of this province are not fools and we will not let this government take us for a ride."
Lysyk found Amato 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.
Lysyk also found that political staff received emails from lobbyists on their personal accounts, sometimes forwarded emails from their government accounts to personal ones, contrary to public service guidelines, and were regularly deleting emails, contrary to the rules.
The premier has said he accepts Lysyk's recommendations on process changes, but not the recommendation that he reconsider the removal of those lands from the Greenbelt.
- with files from Jordan Omstead.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 23, 2023.
Allison Jones, The Canadian Press
