RCMP now interviewing current and former government staff in Greenbelt investigation

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted exclusively to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park. 

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have begun to interview current and former government staff in the Greenbelt investigation, Premier Doug Ford's office confirmed on Friday.

The Toronto Star was first to report on Friday that the interviews were now taking place. 

"We’ve always said we would cooperate," a spokesperson for Ford's office said in an email. "That cooperation would include the premier and current or former staff conducting interviews as witnesses, which are currently underway."

Asked about the investigation at an unrelated news conference in Thunder Bay, Ford said, “We have nothing to hide.”

“Come in, do whatever you have to do, and we’re moving on,” Ford added.

Ford’s Progressive Conservatives’ Greenbelt changes erupted into a scandal last year that shook the government.

During the 2018 election campaign, after a video surfaced of Ford telling a private gathering that he planned to open up the Greenbelt for development, he and the PCs promised instead they “won’t touch the Greenbelt.” Work toward the contrary got underway in the months after their 2022 re-election.

In the fall of 2022, the Ford government carried out its Greenbelt land swap: it removed 15 land parcels totalling 7,400 acres from the protected area and added 9,400 acres of land to it from elsewhere. Its objective, the government said, was for developers to build 50,000 new homes on the land it removed. 

The plan was immediately controversial. A couple of weeks after it was proposed, the Narwhal and Star reported that several developers bought properties that were removed in the years since Ford’s PCs were elected, or had been major PC Party donors, or both.

Opposition — both at Queen’s Park and among the public — mounted over the months afterwards as the media uncovered connections between developers and the PC government. Revelations reported about developers attending the premier’s daughter’s wedding and pre-wedding fundraiser hosted by Ford weeks before the land swap was proposed breathed new life into the controversy in early 2023.

The Trillium first reported on a Las Vegas trip involving one developer owning Greenbelt land and three senior Ford government officials, leading to the eventual resignation of a cabinet minister and the premier’s housing policy director.

One year ago, then-auditor general Bonnie Lysyk released her landmark Greenbelt investigation. She found that developers who had access to the political staffer responsible for overseeing the selection of land to remove from the Greenbelt were advantaged and that those owning unprotected properties stood to gain by upwards of $8 billion

Three weeks later, Integrity Commissioner J. David Wake released a report resulting from his own parallel Greenbelt investigation, substantiating and expanding upon many of Lysyk’s findings. 

By a few weeks later, two cabinet ministers and two senior staff involved in the scandal had stepped down from their positions or the government entirely. The PCs’ standing in public opinion polls sharply declined last summer as well.

Last Sep. 21, Ford announced his government was abandoning the plan and would return land it removed to the Greenbelt. “I made a promise to you that I wouldn’t touch the Greenbelt. I broke that promise, and for that, I’m very, very sorry,” the premier said.

The RCMP first confirmed its sensitive and international investigations unit was officially investigating whether there was a criminal element behind the land removals. Since then, the Mounties have kept details of the investigation under wraps.

Over the last year, The Trillium has reported based on various documents and sources that the RCMP expects a “special prosecutor” to play a role in its investigation, and that various claims certain officials made in interviews with the integrity commissioner were inaccurate. 

The Ford government has reversed course on a number of other housing-related policies since the Greenbelt scandal erupted, including many of its municipal boundary changes, revoking several minister’s zoning orders, and undoing previously passed laws impacting development.

In reaction to the news that the RCMP had begun conducting interviews with current and former government staff, NDP and official Opposition Leader Marit Stiles said in a statement that, “You deserve a government that tells the truth… cares about regular people and does right by them… (and) isn't under criminal investigation.”

Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie said in her own statement that Friday marked a “sad day for the people of Ontario, who deserve and need so much more than a government embroiled in criminal investigation.”