A year after the Greenbelt scandal, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has been trying to move on.
“We made that decision not to move forward with it, and we’re going to keep moving forward and building homes everywhere other than the Greenbelt,” Ford told reporters last month. “So that’s it.”
But is it? Controversial projects are still being considered for Greenbelt lands, both by private developers and the Ontario government itself. And while the decisions to open parcels of protected land have been reversed and many of the key players have moved on, what happened with the Greenbelt last year continues to reverberate in Ontario.
The affair became public in November 2022, when the Ford government announced it would be carving land out of the Greenbelt — a ring of protected farmland, forests and waterways surrounding the Greater Toronto Area — to allow for housing development. At the time, the province argued the move was necessary to tackle Ontario’s housing crisis.
Soon after, an investigation by The Narwhal and the Toronto Star revealed that much of the Greenbelt land slated for housing development was owned by a small group of well-connected developers. The findings prompted investigations by Ontario’s auditor general and integrity commissioner. And when reports from those probes came out in August 2023, detailing how the government granted developers’ requests for Greenbelt carveouts, which stood to enrich them by billions of dollars, public backlash over the situation spiralled into a full-blown crisis for the government.
The revelations prompted a series of high-profile resignations, and resulted in Ford walking back the decision to cut into the Greenbelt on Sept. 21, 2023. They also sparked an ongoing investigation by the RCMP.
Here’s what you need to know about what’s changed in Ontario since the scandal, the status of the ongoing investigations and reforms that followed — and whether any of it has made the Greenbelt any safer in the long run.
With all of the hubbub that followed, it’s easy to forget the Greenbelt scandal revolved around green space that was supposed to be left undeveloped. At its core, the controversy was about a land swap. The Ford government removed 7,400 acres (about 3,000 hectares) from the Greenbelt, and added 9,400 acres, which have lesser conservation value and were already protected from development through other measures.
The green spaces in the protected zone absorb rainwater and snowmelt, a natural function that prevents flooding and would have been diminished if that land was developed.
The loss of that land would also have turned it from a carbon sink to a source of emissions that contribute to climate change — the equivalent of 85,000 gasoline-burning cars over five years, according to a University of Toronto study released earlier this year. The figure is an estimate based on a data-driven model, which can come with some uncertainties and limitations. Still, its conclusions are clear, lead author Sabrina Madsen said in an interview: building housing on the Greenbelt will increase carbon emissions. The study also looked at how much carbon the Greenbelt as a whole absorbs per year, and concluded the protected zone absorbs about a fifth of the carbon emissions reported annually in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.
“It just made me realize how important the Greenbelt really is,” Madsen, a PhD candidate in the University of Toronto’s physics department, said.
In the end, Ford undid the changes to the Greenbelt while the study was being reviewed — and he left in those additional 9,400 acres. Some Greenbelt landowners are still arguing for their properties to be taken out of the protected zone, with one even taking the issue to court. But those efforts haven’t worked so far. The legislation the province used to restore the Greenbelt actually made it slightly harder for future politicians to change the legal boundaries of the protected land again — whether growing or constraining them.
However, the Greenbelt’s protections have always had loopholes that have allowed pieces to be chipped away, and the new legislation didn’t close them. The legal boundaries aren’t a guarantee that the land within them will remain protected.
“The Greenbelt policies don’t always meet the vision of what people expect that promise to be, which is permanent, protected land,” Margaret Prophet, the coordinator of the Ontario Greenbelt Alliance, said in an interview. The alliance is a network of local and environmental groups who advocate for the protected zone to stay intact.
“There’s just been a lot of wasted time where we haven’t improved upon the Greenbelt, really at all,” Prophet added.
One major exception in the Greenbelt’s protections allows governments to build infrastructure through it — like Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass, two highways the Ford government is seeking to build across the protected farmland, forests and waterways north of Toronto. Both projects have major environmental impacts, from worsening air pollution and harming the habitats of species at risk, protected wetlands and prime farmland.
The province began constructing a bridge for the Bradford Bypass in 2022. Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria has said the province will start issuing early construction contracts for Highway 413 in 2025.
Other loopholes exist along the Niagara Escarpment — an iconic, rocky ridge arching from the Niagara region up to Lake Huron and beyond. A portion of it, from Lake Ontario to the Bruce Peninsula, has been protected provincially since 1973 and was integrated into the Greenbelt when it was created in 2005. But the rules meant to safeguard the escarpment, also a UNESCO biosphere reserve, are different from those in other areas of the Greenbelt.
Quarries are permitted, leading to many tensions over the years between locals and industry. One debate is playing out now in Burlington, Ont., where Nelson Aggregate is proposing to expand an existing quarry on the escarpment, over opposition from local governments. Nelson Aggregate didn’t respond to a request for comment by deadline, but in the past it has said the project would have no adverse impact on the environment.
Other loopholes have left an opening for large projects to be built along the brow of the escarpment.
One of them, called Castle Glen, would occupy 1,500 acres (about 600 hectares) of forest, meadows, wetlands and the headwaters of two rivers in the municipality of The Blue Mountains, about two and a half hours north of Toronto. Plans to build 1,600 residential units, a hotel, spa, three golf courses and more have been on the books for decades. Its previous owner received some of its permissions for development before many of Ontario’s environmental laws, including the ones governing the Greenbelt and the Niagara Escarpment, were written, and they still stand. But no one ever built anything, and the original owner sold it to developer Great Gulf Homes in 2021.
Great Gulf Homes hasn’t submitted any applications to move forward with a project at the site, but environmental non-profits like the Escarpment Corridor Alliance have called on governments to revisit its permissions to block the possibility in the future, arguing that a big development on the escarpment wouldn’t be approved with today’s environmental standards. Great Gulf Homes didn’t answer questions from The Narwhal by deadline, but in June it told CityNews it’s in the “early stages of planning” and “working with local officials to advance the project.”
About 10 kilometres away, on the west side of the escarpment, another battle is underway over the fate of the former Talisman Mountain Resort in Beaver Valley. The ski lodge, which closed in 2011, was opened before there were rules protecting the escarpment. Under the land use plan, Talisman and sites like it were given a type of zoning that allows some development on the escarpment in areas set aside for recreational use. Now, a company called Beaver Valley Development Group owns parts of the site. Its plans include proposals for a housing project of 280 townhomes and 90 apartments, plus a new resort and Nordic spa.
The Escarpment Corridor Alliance has argued that if the projects there go ahead, it would set a precedent that would allow large developments on 34 other recreational sites on the protected ridge. Those lands amount to 6,600 hectares, more than double the amount of land at stake in the Greenbelt scandal.
The housing portion, at least, will need approval from the Niagara Escarpment Commission, an Ontario government agency that oversees and issues permits for development in the protected area. While the commission mulls it over, the local municipalities of Grey County and Grey Highlands are also reviewing the application.
Antonio Piazza, the vice-president of real estate for Beaver Valley Development Group, didn’t answer questions about the environmental impacts of building at the Talisman site. But in an email, he contested that the development is in the Greenbelt, despite the fact that it’s within the legal boundaries of the Niagara Escarpment, which is a component of the Greenbelt. He didn’t immediately answer when asked to clarify. “Our site has a longstanding development designation,” he wrote in the email.
In the suburbs north of Toronto, an exception in the rules for the Oak Ridges Moraine section of the Greenbelt has allowed a plan for a long-term care home at a site called Marylake to move ahead. Development is allowed on the Oak Ridges Moraine if the land has already been used for the same purpose. A monastery already exists at the site, and its representatives say there has also been a long-term care facility there for more than 50 years — paving the way for a new three-storey facility in an area that badly needs more beds for seniors. Construction started last fall.
Save the Oak Ridges Moraine, a local environmental group, has questioned whether a long-term care home ever existed at the site and argued permission to build on the environmentally sensitive area shouldn’t be granted.
Quinto Annibale, a prominent development lawyer who is the secretary for the Augustinian Fathers, which owns the site, said the issues are settled. Local officials have confirmed that a long-term care home did exist at the site, and “all agencies are satisfied that there are absolutely no environmental impacts (let alone adverse ones) that will result from this development,” Annibale said in an email.
“What will result from this development is that 160 elderly persons in dire need of care will be [receiving] that care in a beautiful environment,” Annibale wrote. “I am not sure what the controversy is or who is alleging it. I am baffled.”
Ontario’s Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing didn’t answer questions about whether it has plans to intervene on existing proposals in the Greenbelt, or whether it plans to close any loopholes in the rules.
Since the Greenbelt scandal unfolded in 2023, prompting public backlash and protests, there seems to be more public awareness that the protected area isn’t completely protected, Prophet, with the Ontario Greenbelt Alliance, said.
“I think people recognize now that the Greenbelt is only as safe as the stewards who are running the government, and as much as the public is going to be concerned about it,” she said.
“I think that the people that we talk to on the ground love the Greenbelt, support the Greenbelt, recognize that it hasn’t been as protected as it should have been, and are looking for leadership on how we can capitalize on the Greenbelt to make it exactly what was promised, and to strengthen, protect and expand it.”
By the time the Greenbelt scandal burst into the public consciousness in August 2023, many of the key people involved in the contentious changes to the protected area had already departed their jobs with the provincial government or shuffled to different ones.
More made their exits as the drama engulfed Ontario politics, including a trio of high-profile departures from the ministry. First was Ryan Amato, the chief of staff to the minister responsible for the Greenbelt changes, Steve Clark. A few weeks after the province’s auditor general concluded he led the Greenbelt changes, Amato resigned with a letter saying he was “unfairly depicted” in the report (the letter was reported by several news outlets but not independently verified by The Narwhal). Amato later told The Narwhal and the Trillium he expects to “provide a more fulsome response once I am fully exonerated.” He didn’t respond to an interview request from The Narwhal for this story.
Clark himself stepped down about a week later, though he stayed in the Progressive Conservative caucus as an MPP. In June 2024, Ford promoted him again and made him government house leader, a role that often involves speaking on the government’s behalf during question period. In the past, the government house leader has been a minister in the premier’s cabinet, but this time, Ford’s office said Clark’s new job would take place “outside of cabinet.” Clark didn’t answer a request for an interview reflecting on the Greenbelt scandal.
Another pair of people resigned right before Ford announced he would reverse the Greenbelt changes: MPP Kaleed Rasheed, who had been the minister of public and business service delivery, and Ford’s former director of housing policy, Jae Truesdell. Both resigned amid questions about the timing of a 2019 trip to Las Vegas, taken at the same time as one would-be Greenbelt developer, and allegations that they gave the integrity commissioner incorrect information about it.
Rasheed, who is still an MPP but is no longer in the Progressive Conservative caucus, has said he accidentally gave the wrong dates to the integrity commissioner, but has now handed over the correct information. He has also vowed to clear his name.
Truesdell hasn’t publicly commented on the situation, or answered requests from The Narwhal. Both he and Amato received a full year’s salary in 2023 despite resigning about two-thirds of the way through the year, The Narwhal and the Trillium reported in March.
Amato’s deputy, Kirstin Jensen, later left her job at the ministry in October 2023. She’s now working adjacent to politics again: the Ontario Home Builders’ Association, a lobby group representing developers and other companies involved in housing construction, announced on Aug. 15 that it had hired her as its new vice-president of policy, advocacy and relationships. The role involves leading a team that engages with governments. She had already been serving as an “external advisor” since February, the association’s announcement said. Jensen didn’t answer questions from The Narwhal about whether her job will involve lobbying her former colleagues in the Ontario government, and whether she intends to eventually register as a lobbyist.
In spring 2023, The Narwhal published a series of articles about documents, also known as the “Greenbelt files,” that challenged the story Ontario Premier Doug Ford told the public about his knowledge of the Greenbelt changes. Back then — before the auditor general and integrity commissioner reports on the situation had come out — there were still many open questions about how the Greenbelt changes had come to be. Ford and Clark had said they only saw the final proposal to cut into the protected area a few days before it was made public in fall 2022. They also said the plan was devised by bureaucrats.
But some heavily redacted documents obtained by The Narwhal through freedom of information legislation indicated senior staff in the premier’s office had been discussing changes to the Greenbelt months earlier, in summer 2022. The records at issue included an email with an attached slide deck, though the government withheld most of its contents, saying they were related to confidential cabinet deliberations. They did, though, clearly contain feedback from Ford himself.
Ford’s office contested that reporting, and the premier himself denied his office had talked about the plan to remove land from the Greenbelt in summer 2022, saying: “I want to categorically say, no. It wasn’t discussed.”
The Narwhal’s reporting has since been proven correct.
The Narwhal appealed the redactions in the Greenbelt files to the province’s Information and Privacy Commissioner. The commissioner’s office sided with the government and upheld the decision to not release the documents, but confirmed the slide deck contained a mandate letter from Ford to Clark. That mandate letter, according to the auditor general’s report, instructed Clark to look at changes to the Greenbelt, ranging from land swaps to “expansions” and “contractions.” It was signed by Ford and delivered to Clark in late June 2022, kicking off the process that eventually led to the contentious land swap.
Ford’s office did not respond to questions from The Narwhal about why it initially denied the reporting.
The RCMP launched an investigation into the Greenbelt scandal last October, a few weeks after Ford announced he’d reverse the controversial changes. It hasn’t given any updates or answered questions about the process since.
The detectives looking into the scandal work for the Mounties’ Sensitive and International Investigations Unit, which looks into cases involving corruption and politics. The RCMP hasn’t said what the scope of the investigation is — one press release referred to “irregularities” in the Greenbelt land swap, and another referred to unspecified “allegations,” but it’s not clear what alleged crimes might be under investigation.
“While we recognize that this investigation is of significant interest to Canadians, the RCMP has a duty to protect the integrity of the investigations that it carries out, in order to ensure that the process leads to a fair and proper outcome,” the RCMP said in a statement to The Narwhal in mid-September, the same response it has given to questions about the Greenbelt investigation since last fall.
“Therefore, no further updates will be provided at this time.”
Last month, Ford’s office confirmed the RCMP have started interviewing aides and former staff members in the Greater Toronto Area, according to the Toronto Star. “We’ve always said we would co-operate,” the premier’s office told the Star. “That co-operation would include the premier and current or former staff conducting interviews as witnesses, which are currently underway.”
It’s not clear how much longer the investigation might go on. It took two years for charges to be filed in the former Liberal government’s gas plants scandal, the last major Ontario politics boondoggle to end up at the centre of a police probe.
The lingering RCMP investigation also has consequences for at least one other probe related to the Greenbelt scandal, which is currently in the hands of the province’s integrity commissioner, J. David Wake. The Ontario NDP had asked Wake to investigate MPP Rasheed and the Las Vegas trip, but the commissioner’s office said it’s required by law to stand down now that the Mounties are involved.
Last August, the commissioner also said it was considering a request from Ford’s office — made in response to a recommendation from the auditor general — to investigate Amato’s role in the affair. When The Narwhal asked if that request might also be impacted by the RCMP investigation, the commissioner’s office said it can’t legally release information about the process.
The integrity commissioner’s report on the Greenbelt scandal from last summer also made reference to several alleged ethical breaches among various players in the scandal — including an unnamed development consultant referred to as “Mr. X,” who Wake alleged to have violated lobbying rules. But confidentiality rules also apply to any potential investigations into lobbying breaches, and Wake’s office can’t disclose whether it’s probing any allegations of that type unless it decides to enforce a penalty.
So far, Wake’s office has announced such a penalty against one person: Katarzyna Sliwa, a lawyer who represented two would-be Greenbelt developers. The commissioner found Sliwa violated lobbying rules by requesting Greenbelt carveouts from the government on behalf of her clients without registering as a lobbyist. Sliwa didn’t answer a request for comment from The Narwhal.
In his main Greenbelt report, Wake flagged concerns about a “lack of teeth” in Ontario’s lobbying rules, writing that he lacks the ability to give serious penalties to people who break ethics rules. For lobbyists who don’t abide by the law, all Wake can do is name them and bar them from lobbying for up to two years. Former auditor general Bonnie Lysyk raised the same issue and suggested the government tighten the rule. It was one of 15 recommendations she delivered during the scandal — the list also included the request to investigate Amato, and a suggestion that the government reverse the Greenbelt changes.
The Ford government eventually pledged to fulfill all 15. Of those, it has completed 14: the province shared a document outlining its work with Global News. It declined to give a copy to The Narwhal, but the list includes ethics training and a central system for tracking requests from lobbyists, among other things. While lobbying continues under the current system, with dozens and dozens of organizations registering to do so weekly, the government has punted the recommendation to review those rules to a legislative committee. Ford’s office didn’t answer when asked when the work will be done.
Prophet said the Greenbelt scandal raised questions not just about environmental law, but also about trust in government — and that those issues are unlikely to go away before the next election, no matter when that may happen.
“People are going to be thinking about who they trust in the upcoming election,” she said. “I think the Greenbelt will be a part of that decision.”
Get the inside scoop on The Narwhal’s environment and climate reporting by signing up for our free newsletter. In April 2024, at just 35 years old,...
Continue reading
Take a walk down memory lane with our Ontario bureau — looking at the biggest...
The RCMP is investigating and key players have changed roles, but is the Greenbelt any...
With multiple elections on the horizon, federal and provincial parties are battling it out over...