AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
Yes - he was recorded as such in 2017 IIRC, after then walking back that promise when it backfired on him during the 2018 election.
Opening up the greenbelt is also not in itself a criminal act. It's a policy choice. Ford had been very anti-opening the greenbelt publicly for 4 years in advance of the decision and most people in the industry did not believe that was going to change.
In 2022, Ford changed his mind. This is not criminal. Or even a scandal. It's politics. He provided direction to the MMAH to identify parcels for removal.
The problem with the Greenbelt Scandal was that the selection process of which parcels to remove was not thorough and was open to influence from outside parties. Ryan Amato was given the task of figuring out what parcels to remove by the upper levels (i.e. Ford) who decided to move forward with it. Given the time pressures, the evidence suggests that instead of relying on preliminary reviews by staffers or opening a general request line for any landowner to ask, he simply removed any parcels which were requested for removal by any developer who managed to figure out what was happening.
And even on that front, it only happened because Amato didn't tell a developer "no" at an industry dinner when asked if they were considering removing parcels, and instead dodged the question. That developer then went and told his other developer friends.. and that's pretty much the group that got removed.
There is no evidence (so far) that anyone in the PC party even officially told any developers what was happening, yet alone Ford.
What went wrong is an incompetent staffer didn't think through his actions, and the minister failed to question the staffer on how they made the removal selections when presented. Ford's direct involvement was unlikely to be more than providing direction to remove parcels from the greenbelt (a policy direction), and agreeing to the parcels selected in Cabinet on the basis of trust of his Minister.
The blame lies with Clark and really primarily Amato, and even then, I'm not sure it's really a criminal matter.
Again, assuming there isn't more to the story than what has come to light.
That's certainly what the government wants us to believe - incompetence and rogue actors, and not calculated maleficence. Odd then that everyone seems to be using their private phones.
AoD