Ethics watchdog says probe on hold while he investigates whether developers were tipped off about Greenbelt decision
Ontario’s Integrity Commissioner has put on hold a request from NDP Leader Marit Stiles to probe whether Premier Doug Ford broke any rules last year attending a pre-wedding fundraising party and his daughter’s wedding, to which wealthy developer friends who have benefited from his policies were also invited.on Thursday saying he had put the issue of whether to pursue Ms. Stiles’s complaint “in abeyance,” but said he was “not prepared to dismiss it at this point.
The Premier’s Office did not respond to a request for comment. Both Mr. Ford and Mr. Clark have previously denied tipping off developers about last November’s move to break previous promises and allow housing on parts of the protected Greenbelt lands that arc around the Greater Toronto Area. Her complaint says developers who attended the subsequent wedding have received special ministerial zoning orders from the government to fast-track development projects, and one owns Greenbelt land the government recently freed up for development. Mr. Ford has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
His report says the fact that some wedding guests were developers or government stakeholders was not “altogether surprising or at all determinative of the issue before me” - namely, whether Mr. Ford or government officials influenced government policy to help friends or donors with land in the Greenbelt, and did so “improperly.”
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