The political staffer who played a key role in the Ontario government’s controversial move to open up thousands of hectares of protected Greenbelt land for housing development has resigned.
The Premier’s office said Tuesday it had accepted Ryan Amato’s resignation as chief of staff to Housing Minister Steve Clark “effective immediately.”
The resignation comes less than two weeks after Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk issued a scathing report into the government’s removal of land from southern Ontario’s Greenbelt in December — a vast 810,000-hectare area of farmland, forest and wetland stretching from Niagara Falls to Peterborough meant to be off-limits to development.
While the province added more protected land elsewhere, the removals are meant to lead to the construction of 50,000 homes in service of the province’s goal of building 1.5 million new homes in the next decade.
Lysyk’s investigation found the government’s process for choosing which sites to remove was influenced by a small number of well-connected real estate developers with access to Amato
The report said Amato — not non-partisan public servants — selected 14 of the 15 sites that were ultimately removed from the Greenbelt and the majority were chosen after suggestions from developers who lobbied him personally through encounters at an industry event or in emails sent by their lawyers.
CBC Toronto reached out to Amato for comment by email but didn’t immediately receive a response.
Both Ford and Clark have said they were unaware that the land chosen for removal was brought forward by Amato via the developers. Ford has said he was only briefed on the sites the day before cabinet approved the changes, while Clark has said he learned of the plan the week prior.
Liberals, Greens, NDP call for Clark to resign
Amato’s resignation wasn’t enough to put an end to calls from opposition leaders for more accountability .
Interim Liberal Leader John Fraser said Amato’s resignation doesn’t resolve the situation and he called for the housing minister himself to resign.
“It is simply not believable that one political staffer was behind this $8.3-billion cash-for-your-land-scheme,” Fraser said in a statement.
“The truth of the matter is that the minister and the premier brought forward and supported this scheme at cabinet with the full knowledge of what they were doing.”
The leaders of Ontario’s Liberal and Green parties continue to say Housing Minister Steve Clark should resign. ( The Canadian Press/Cole Burston)
Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner agreed that Clark should resign, adding Ford should reverse the decision to “pave over the Greenbelt.”.
“The resignation of Minister Clark’s chief of staff is the first step in the long process to restore public trust,” Schreiner said.
“But if the premier believes this is the end of the story, he’s mistaken.”
Ford has said no one received preferential treatment and that his government would accept and implement 14 of 15 total recommendations Lysyk made in her report. The single recommendation it will not accept is to revisit the land swaps and possibly reverse those decisions.
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles, for her part, said in a statement the resignation is the “bare minimum of accountability for one of the most serious breaches of public trust” in provincial history.
“The auditor general’s report was very clear—this staffer obviously didn’t act independently,” Stiles said.
“Now it’s time that the Minister take responsibility, do the right thing, and step down; time that the government recall the Legislature so we can restore these lands to the Greenbelt for protection; and time for the Conservatives to start providing Ontarians with the transparency and accountability they deserve. Mr. Ford needs to face the music.”
92% of land removed by developers with access
Lysyk found Amato directed a small team of housing ministry bureaucrats in October 2022 that decided which sites would be removed.
Instead of finding that developers were tipped off in advance, Lysyk found it was the developers themselves who, in many cases, successfully lobbied to have specific sites they owned opened up for housing development.
“Many of these individuals had advocated for the removal in emails and in-person meetings within a few months prior to their removal,” according to the report.
According to a timeline of key events, two prominent housing developers approached Clark’s chief of staff in September 2022 at a building industry event and provided him with information on two sites in the Greenbelt — an area in the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve (DRAP) in Pickering and a site in the Township of King purchased that very month for $80 million.
As CBC Toronto has reported, Silvio De Gasperis, president of the Tacc Group of companies, owns more than two dozen properties in the DRAP. Michael Rice, CEO of Rice Group, owns the King property. Both De Gasperis and Rice — who were not named in the report — fought the auditor general’s summons‘ to answer questions about the land swap.
Shortly after the September event, one of the developers provided Amato with information related to three other sites.
“About 92 per cent of the land that was ultimately removed from the Greenbelt was requested to be removed by the developers the chief of staff dined with at [the event],” the report said.
Citing the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation, which is responsible for calculating property values in Ontario, Lysyk estimates the landowners of the 15 sites removed from the Greenbelt could see their land’s value increase by $8.3 billion.
Ontario’s integrity commissioner is considering a request to investigate if Amato broke any ethics rules after a referral from the Ford. That request is in addition to a separate investigation the office is conducting related to the Greenbelt land swaps at the request of NDP Leader Marit Stiles.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
