Andrew Rawnsley, the Chief Political Commentator of the UK's Observer newspaper, wrote this weekend:
"If a government looks bad from the outside, it will be twice as rotten on the inside. I've found this a reliable rule of thumb over the years."
He was writing about the damagingly incompetent and chaotic premiership of Boris Johnson.
But his words could equally apply to Doug Ford, a master of sophistry, who has thrown all the rules of good governance overboard.
Ford says with a straight face that he has been cleared by the Auditor General and the Integrity Commissioner.
He conveniently forgets what he said at important meetings.
Scandalously, he refuses to put to the vote in the Legislature the Integrity Commissioner's recommendation to reprimand the disgraced ex Minister Steve Clark.
When did that ever become OK?
Here is the Toronto Star editorial of 3 November 2023 commenting on Ford's press conference on 31 October 2023.
It is Ford at his most shameless.
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Premier Doug Ford claims ignorance in land use debacle. Documents seem to tell a different story
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has put himself in a disgraceful position.
But with numerous comments in the emails and other internal communications to the wishes and orders of the “PO,” a reference to the premier’s office, the documents appear to take the scandal for the first time into Ford’s office.
“PO wants this done,” said one. “po has asked me for a picture to make sure (a certain property is) captured,” said another. Last-minute changes to Peel Region’s official plan came “from someone at PO,” said another.
NDP Leader Marit Stiles said the documents released by the advocacy groups Ecojustice and Environmental Defence suggest Ford was clearly “looped in” on the decision-making.
Interim Liberal leader John Fraser said it’s “abundantly clear that all roads lead to the premier’s office.”
“The Ford government has given developers the inside track to decision making,” he said. “There are deals taking place behind closed doors designed to benefit a handful of wealthy, well-connected insiders.”
Just as the Greenbelt changes stood to hand some developers billions of dollars in profits, the municipal changes last November favoured some developers and made their land more valuable because housing could be built on it.
Ford continues to maintain that he had no knowledge of what was going on. “I don’t even know which lands you’re talking about,” he told reporters this week.
That despite the fact this is the most critical issue facing his government and the document release had received wide coverage.
He insisted he couldn’t recall the “thousands of changes” made to cities’ official plans to free up more land for housing. “There’s no one person that can review every single change.”
To date, the botched initiative has been written off as staffers running amok under an inattentive minister.
Ford’s office appears to hope that reversing the egregious decisions and the departure of a few ministers and political staff involved will be enough to let them ride out the controversy.
But this issue will not be going away any time soon.
Fraser properly said that the premier needs to waive cabinet privilege — which saw great portions of the documents released Tuesday blacked out — and that the RCMP Greenbelt investigation must be expanded to cover the changes to municipal boundaries.
At a rambling news conference Tuesday in Etobicoke, the premier indulged in a carnival of deflection, distraction, evasion, offering up a veritable caricature of political stone-walling.
He talked about the double-double and egg sandwich he had at Tim’s. He announced an extended gas tax cuts. He denounced the federal carbon tax. He demanded the end of bike lanes on Bloor Street West. Some of his comments would have been laughable if they weren’t so palpably hypocritical.
“Every dollar counts,” Ford said with a straight face, even as his land-use chaos promises to end up costing plenty.
For instance, Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Paul Calandra has already said municipalities would be compensated for any costs incurred as a result of the previous amendments to their official plans.
Ford needs to understand that while the serious matter of land use abuses remains unresolved, the folksy everyman act won’t cut it.
Until this reeking matter is explained, nothing he says on anything will have much credibility.
The developer Michael Rice commissioned GEI Consultants Ltd. to provide an environmental and servicing feasibility assessment for the Greenbelt lands at Bathurst in King which he purchased on 15 September 2022.
Rice passed the information on to Ryan Amato, the then Chief of Staff to Steve Clark, at a meeting in Rice’s office in Markham on either 27 or 28 September 2022.
The consultants say they have outlined a high-level overview strategy…
“for assessing properties currently within the Greenbelt Plan Area, to identify those properties where opportunities to refine and/or remove the existing Greenbelt Planning Area designations.”
They talk about having access to full municipal water and wastewater services “in the 1 to 3 year time horizon” which sounds rather optimistic to me. I am sure the Town of Newmarket will have something to say about that.
Newmarket has been wrestling with servicing and capacity issues for as long as I can remember. These issues are not of the Town’s own making.
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Click “read more” below to read the Feasibility assessment.
The latest tranche of Freedom of Information files from EcoJustice exposes the internal wiring of Government as never before.
Astonishing as it may seem, as late as 15 November 2022, senior officials in the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing were completely unaware that parts of the Bathurst lands in King, owned by the developer Michael Rice, were to be gifted to Southlake for a new acute hospital. (Photo: Ford blusters in Legislature this morning)
A package of materials relating to the proposed development of the Bathurst lands was given to Ryan Amato by Michael Rice on 27 or 28 September 2022. It made no mention of the hospital. Why not? Was Rice planning to gift land to Southlake elsewhere? If so, where was this other site?
First anniversary
Tomorrow (1 November 2023) is the first anniversary of the meeting at King Municipal Centre when developer Michael Rice offered land to Southlake Chief Executive Arden Krystal for a new hospital in the protected countryside of the Greenbelt in King at Bathurst.
King’s Mayor Steve Pellegrini - who cannot be relied upon to tell the truth - says he has been searching for a suitable site for a new Southlake for years.
“ I have been moving this idea forward since 2019—on different lands, with different landowners.”
Two simple questions. Where are these different lands? Who are these different landowners? I am hoping to get the answers from the Township Clerk, Denny Timm, by 6 November 2023.
Knock on the door
The Toronto Star tells us the RCMP are now starting to interview people in connection with their criminal investigation into the Greenbelt Scandal.
Those involved in this drama should tell us what they know now rather than wait for the inevitable knock on the door.
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Click "read more" for email exchanges between senior officials concerning the second Southlake in King, released yesterday by Environmental Defence and EcoJustice. Access the EcoJustice FoI material here.
The release of hundreds of Government documents earlier today following Freedom of Information requests by the environmental group EcoJustice sheds new light on the chaotic way in which lands were selected for removal from the Greenbelt.
The report of the Integrity Commissioner revealed that on 27 September 2022 the developer Michael Rice handed over to Ryan Amato, the former Chief of Staff to former Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark, a bundle of documents calling for the removal of the Bathurst lands in King from the protected countryside in the Greenbelt.
We now have these documents.
Rationale for removal of lands from the Greenbelt
The material includes a map showing the lands Rice wanted to see removed from the Greenbelt, the rationale supporting the removal, a summary confirming that consultants had been retained to do environmental and servicing assessments and an explanation of the various servicing options for the site.
The documents from Michael Rice make no mention of the Bathurst lands accommodating a second Southlake.
I admit this leaves me baffled.
Other lands
Rice could, of course, have offered other lands that he owns in the vicinity as a site for a second Southlake but all the evidence to date points to the Bathurst lands being the preferred location.
Instead of a second Southlake Rice makes the case for:
"a range and mix of housing options including additional residential units and affordable/attainable housing".
The servicing arrangements make no provision for a major hospital.
Ryan Amato
Elsewhere... I wrote to the Integrity Commissioner on 1 October 2023 asking if he could establish if Ryan Amato knew that Rice was proposing a hospital on the Bathurst lands. (See below and scroll to email)
More to follow.
(click “read more” below for documents).
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Update on 31 October 2023: Access the EcoJustice FoI material here.
Southlake has no records of the consequential meeting on 1 November 2022 – other than an undated invitation – in which developer Michael Rice offered land for a new hospital in protected countryside in the Greenbelt in King for a nominal fee, reportedly $5.
This has always perplexed me.
I now know why.
It was an initial conversation. No more no less.
Southlake's Chief Executive, Arden Krystal, says she was not particularly invested in the Bathurst site. It was just one of a number of possibilities.
In material released to me last week following my appeal to the Information and Privacy Commissioner she explains:
“At an initial meeting such as this, we listen to ideas, but do not conduct any form of negotiations or even get into specifics. As such, it isn’t customary to take notes - it is essentially just a conversation.
If opportunities appear to have some merit, we would then begin more intentional or formal meetings in such cases, where minutes or notes could or would be taken.
However, because we were about to embark on a formal land acquisition process, we opted to consider this opportunity along with the other potential lands available, which resulted in fair evaluations of all lands in question.”
Arden Krystal says that neither she nor the Vice President of Capital, Facilities and Business Development, John Marshman, (who was also present at the 1 November 2022 meeting) had ever met Michael Rice before. She insists that she and John Marshman
“shared any and all records, and do not have any further records to share pertaining to this meeting.”
Southlake and the Rice Group
We know the hospital had been in contact with the Rice Group at least ten months previously. In January 2022 Jordan Holt, the Rice Group’s manager of acquisitions and finance, asked for a meeting about the hospital’s expansion plans. In an email he told John Marshman that he would:
“prepare a preliminary overview of our company/land holdings that may be of interest to you.”
On 26 January 2022 John Marshman had a follow-up meeting with Holt.
In his report at paragraph 289, the Integrity Commissioner noted that Michael Rice had been in communication with hospital officials about other possible hospital sites – not just the Bathurst Greenbelt lands.
So, when Arden Krystal said the 1 November 2022 meeting was just an initial meeting and the conversation didn’t go into specifics it was against a backdrop of previous communications between Southlake and the Rice Group.
I am left wondering if, at any stage, either of them asked if the Bathurst lands – prime agricultural lands in the protected countryside of the Greenbelt – could be developed. It is inconceivable to me that this core issue was never addressed head-on.
This is one of the key questions at issue. According to King’s Official Plan (2019) and York Region’s Official Plan the Bathurst Greenbelt lands were out-of-bounds for development.
Unprotected Countryside
Despite this, key players believed the land was developable.
Four term Mayor, Steve Pellegrini, insists a new hospital can be built anywhere if the Province so decides. Following that logic, even in the middle of the Holland Marsh, Canada’s most productive farmland.
Stephen Naylor, the Director of Growth Management at King, who was responsible for King’s Official Plan, would not express a view. When I asked for his opinion as a professional planner he referred me to the Province.
Michael Rice, the developer, believed the Greenbelt’s protected countryside was going to be opened-up for development to some extent because of the shortage of land for new housing. He believed it was an open secret in the development community that things were going to change. He was just sharper and quicker off the mark than other developers. After meeting Steve Clark’s Chief of Staff, Ryan Amato, at the BILD dinner on 14 September 2022 and again on 27 September 2022 he had worked out for himself that the Government was “looking at the Greenbelt”.
We have never been told if Arden Krystal or John Marshman took advice from professional planners on matters which might constrain development.
Bathurst ticked all the boxes
I do not know if Michael Rice shared with them on 1 November 2022 the material he gave to Amato on 27 September 2022. This bundle showed the area Rice would like to see removed from the Greenbelt, the rationale supporting the removal, a summary confirming that consultants had been retained to do environmental and servicing assessments and an explanation of the various servicing options for the site. (Photo right: the Bathurst lands)
In any event, it seems the Bathurst lands ticked all the boxes for Arden Krystal who told Mayor Pellegrini on 7 November 2022 that she was “truly excited” about the awesome offer of Greenbelt land at Bathurst for a peppercorn.
Criteria for site selection
From August 2021, if not before, it was public knowledge that Southlake was looking for a second site. Arden Krystal said it should be within 5km – 10km of the existing site “and the closer the better”. She hoped some land could be gifted by benefactors.
Did she just assume that a new hospital could be located anywhere?
Last month, Southlake told Newmarket Today its search for a new site remains ongoing.
“While we have evaluated more than 25 properties against criteria such as size, proximity to the communities we serve, and transit accessibility, we have not yet secured a site and are continuing our efforts to find land to build a new Southlake...”
When did Southlake first learn that the gifted Bathurst lands were in a prime agricultural area in the Greenbelt's protected countryside? And what were the implications of this?
Did Arden Krystal or John Marshman take advice on whether this land could be developed?
If so, who did they ask?
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