The Ontario Green Party has asked the integrity commissioner to investigate whether the premier or housing minister tipped off developers about their plans to open up the Greenbelt.
Leader Mike Schreiner told reporters he filed an affidavit on Monday asking for an opinion on whether Premier Doug Ford and MPP Steve Clark breached Section 2 or Section 3 of theSection 2 covers conflict of interest and ensures that a member of the Legislature does not knowingly make a decision that could further their own private interests or those of another individual. Section 3 prohibits a member from providing insider information that is not publicly available for private gain.
“Our initial search of registered lobbyists indicate that some of the individuals that have been reported by the media to have recently purchased land in the Greenbelt are not being registered as having done any lobbying, or hired any lobbyists to lobby on their behalf,” Schreiner said. The government says that once the land is removed, it is expected that construction will begin no later than 2025., multiple large developers have purchased Greenbelt land since the Ford government was elected in 2018, including an investment made as late as September of 2022.
The NDP has written to the Auditor General to request an investigation into how much property owners stand to benefit from changes to the Greenbelt, and whether it is in the public interest. “I'm the housing minister. I meet with people who want to build housing, whether they’re Habitat for Humanity, whether they're Ontario Aboriginal Housing Services, whether they're a private home builder that builds one home a year or 1,000 homes. That's what I do,” Clark said.
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