The chief of staff at the centre of an explosive investigation into the Ford government’s Greenbelt land swap controversy has resigned.
In a brief statement Tuesday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s office confirmed that Ryan Amato, chief of staff to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, had resigned.
Ford accepted Amato’s resignation “effective immediately,” the premier’s office said.
Amato was at the centre of the auditor general’s recent Greenbelt investigation which found that a few developers with connections to the Ford government benefitted from its decision to remove land from the Greenbelt.
On Monday, at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) conference in London, Regional Chief Glen Hare called on the premier to sever ties with those connected to the controversy.
“As a result of the auditor general’s findings, we ask that Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Steve Clark, either resign or be removed from his title. We are also asking that his Chief of Staff immediately resign as well,” Hare said, to applause from a room filled with mayors and municipal representatives from across the province.
Opposition parties at Queen’s Park used the news of Amato’s resignation to call for his boss, the housing minister, to resign.
“The resignation of Minister Clark’s chief of staff is the first step in the long process to restore public trust – one that Ontario Greens have called for,” Green Leader Mike Schreiner said in a statement, repeating calls for Clark to step down.
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said it was time for Clark to “take responsibility, do the right thing, and step down.”
Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk said in her scathing report that all but one of the sites removed from the Greenbelt were suggested by Amato.
The report also said Amato had been given packages containing requests to remove land from the Greenbelt by developers at a building industry event in September 2022.
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Amato was appointed by the premier’s office to be housing minister Steve Clark’s chief of staff in 2022 after the Progressive Conservatives won re-election. He was handed the role just days after Clark was instructed to review changes to the Greenbelt as part of his mandate letter, the auditor general said.
The report then detailed how a rushed process over just three weeks involving six staff was used to decide which parcels of land would be removed from the Greenbelt.
In her report, Lysyk explained how two prominent developers gave Amato packages at a building industry dinner with information on the lands they wanted to be removed from the Greenbelt.
Amato told the auditor general he regularly goes to development events where stakeholders “at times” pass along requests for land they would like to see removed from the Greenbelt.
At an event on Sept. 14, 2022, for example, two “prominent developers” gave Amato packages containing information about two Greenbelt sites they wanted to see removed, the report said.
“The Chief of Staff sat at the same dinner table with one of these two developers,” the audit general wrote.
The developers at the event ended up with 92 per cent of the land removed from the Greenbelt, Lysyk wrote.
Amato told the auditor general he did not immediately open the envelope but “kept them in a stack in his office” along with other similar requests. He said he did not tell the developers the government was considering removing land from the Greenbelt.
“The process was biased in favour of certain developers and landowners who had timely access to the housing minister’s chief of staff,” the auditor general told reporters.
Speaking on the day the report was released, Ford said mistakes were made and took responsibility. He said there were no plans to reverse the Greenbelt changes.
The premier admitted the province “could have had a better process.”
He said he took responsibility for the decision and the process but said he was not informed about the details of what land would be removed until a cabinet was held to approve the changes.
“The buck stops with me and I take full responsibility for the need for a better process,” Ford said.
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