A memo The Trillium obtained shows a 'renewed commitment' Doug Ford made to his caucus amid the decision-making leading to the Greenbelt reversal
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a new Village Media website devoted exclusively to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.
Soon afterwards, on that same day, Ford held a press conference in Niagara Falls with most of his cabinet serving as a backdrop. He apologized to Ontarians, promising to undo the government's removal of 7,400 acres of land from the Greenbelt. Each oversight officer's report was highly critical of the process that the former housing minister's then-chief of staff Ryan Amato led to select lands for removal from the Greenbelt. To much success in many of the cases, the landowning developers — including some with personal ties to the premier or long donation histories to the PCs — directly asked for their acreages to be unprotected.
In his investigation, Integrity Commissioner J. David Wake traced the beginnings of the process to remove land from the Greenbelt to the mandate letter assigned to now-former housing minister Steve Clark by Ford in summer 2022. "In fall 2022, complete work to codify processes for swaps, expansions, contractions and policy updates for the Greenbelt," it said.
The Greenbelt affair hasn't been the first time closely controlled decision-making within the Ford government has brought it trouble. There was also the Speaker vote. Last year, at least 20 MPPs in Ford's PC caucus chose in a secret ballot vote to re-elect Ted Arnott as Speaker of the House over the premier's preferred pick, PC MPP Nina Tangri.
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