Contrition may not quite be what it once was.
With Friday marking the first anniversary of the explosive auditor general’s report into the Greenbelt land swap, Premier Doug Ford was asked about the lessons learned from a scandal that still looms over his Progressive Conservative government.
Ford shrugged at the reporter’s question.
“We made that decision not to move forward with it — and we’re going keep moving forward and building homes everywhere other than the Greenbelt,” he said Wednesday in Mississauga.
“So that’s it.”
While the premier conceded his government was still in the process of implementing all 15 recommendations from then-auditor general Bonnie Lysyk’s report, his tone was a far cry from the plaintive plea when he cancelled the land deal at the end of last summer.
“It was a mistake to open the Greenbelt. I’m very, very sorry. I made a promise to you that I wouldn’t touch the Greenbelt. I broke that promise,” Ford said on Sept. 21, 2023.
That was when he announced 7,400 acres of environmentally sensitive land would no longer be removed from the two-million-acre Greenbelt around the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.
“As a first step to earning back your trust, I’ll be reversing the changes. We moved too quickly and we made the wrong decision … it caused people to question our motives,” he said at the time.
It was Lysyk’s report — and a separate review by integrity commissioner J. David Wake released on Aug. 30, 2023 — that set in motion events that dog Ford’s government to this day.
The RCMP “O” Division’s Sensitive and International Investigations unit, the branch that investigates corruption and political crimes, has an ongoing probe of the affair.
Lysyk, who retired last September after a 10-year term as the financial watchdog, told the Star this week she has not been contacted by the RCMP.
The reports by her and Wake are widely viewed as potential road maps for police investigators because the independent legislative watchdogs had access to people who do not necessarily have to play ball with the Mounties.
She found developers with ties to Ford’s Tories were “favoured” in the process led by then-housing minister Steve Clark’s chief of staff, Ryan Amato, and said land they owned that was selected to be opened for housing construction could have soared in value to $8.28 billion as a result.
Amato, who resigned last August, has always denied any wrongdoing and his supporters at Queen’s Park — including some past and present PC cabinet ministers — believe he has been unfairly scapegoated.
Clark, who has also insisted he did nothing wrong and has promised to co-operate with the Mounties, stepped down from cabinet last September, languishing as a backbencher for nine months until Ford promoted him to government house leader in the June 6 shuffle.
“He’s one of the most experienced and qualified members we have — he knows Queen’s Park inside and out. A very credible individual and I support him 1,000 per cent,” the unrepentant premier said earlier this week.
Others seen as collateral damage remain politically sidelined.
Kaleed Rasheed resigned as Ford’s business minister last September.
Rasheed no longer sits as a Tory MPP after misleading Wake about a 2020 Las Vegas trip with Shakir Rehmatullah, a developer who attended Ford’s daughter’s wedding and who had a stake in about 23 acres of land removed from the Greenbelt near Markham and Whitchurch-Stouffville.
The affable Mississauga East-Cooksville Independent MPP maintains he made ”an honest mistake” on the date of the Vegas jaunt and is trying to return to the PC fold.
Jae Truesdell, who was also on that trip, quit as Ford’s housing adviser after Rasheed’s defenestration.
The imbroglio has remained in the headlines — eight weeks ago, the Star and the Narwhal shared the Michener Award, Canada’s most prestigious journalism prize, for their work examining the Greenbelt affair.
A joint Star and Narwhal investigation found eight of the 15 parcels of land affected had been bought up by developers after Ford’s election in 2018 — when the properties were still protected.
NDP Leader Marit Stiles said Thursday that “people power, investigative journalism and a strong NDP opposition helped thwart Ford’s plan to carve up the Greenbelt, but he hasn’t learned a thing.”
“A year later, the minister who took the fall is back … and Ford is still making backroom deals that benefit wealthy developers over everyone else,” she said.
Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie said, “Doug Ford isn’t sorry for trying to give the Greenbelt away to his rich friends, he’s only sorry he got caught.”Â
“He even brought his friend, Steve Clark, the Greenbelt fall guy, back,” said Crombie.
Green Leader Mike Schreiner expressed concern Thursday that “the premier has not learned from the Greenbelt scandal.”
“He is still refusing to legalize gentle density to build homes people can afford in the communities they love,” said Schreiner.
“And he is destroying farmland by imposing urban boundary expansions in places like Waterloo region that threaten the land that feeds us.”
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