The government says it will ask several former top staff of Premier Doug Ford to hand over Greenbelt-related records they may have in their personal accounts, for potential release.
The move would be in response to an order by the province’s transparency oversight office.
The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (IPC) used its power to compel the Cabinet Office to ask various former premier’s office staff “to search their personal accounts and provide Cabinet Office with any records” relating to the 2022 Greenbelt removals, from the 20 months beforehand.
“We will comply with the order,” the premier’s office said in a statement to The Trillium.
The IPC made the order to the Cabinet Office, the provincial ministry reporting to the premier’s office, on April 10. Around the same date, the IPC also reportedly ordered the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing to more forcefully track down Greenbelt-related records that the former political staffer at the centre of the scandal may have in his possession.
Each case presents the possibility for new information about how the Ford government’s Greenbelt removal plan, which collapsed in scandal the next year, came about. The IPC’s orders also come as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police continue to investigate whether any criminal activity factored into the Greenbelt removals.
The IPC adjudicator who issued the order did so as part of an appeal for Greenbelt records, launched by the Ontario NDP. Using the freedom-of-information system, the NDP sought “all documents, reports, notes, emails or other records that discuss or refer to a proposed removal from the Greenbelt” in the premier’s office from Jan. 1, 2021, to Oct. 24, 2022.
The Ford government proposed removing 7,400 acres of land from the Greenbelt on Nov. 4, 2022. Its plan was for developers to build 50,000 homes on the land. It was immediately controversial. Investigations released by the integrity commissioner’s and auditor general’s offices in August 2023 followed reporting by journalists on the various links between Ford and others in his government and developers who had been set to benefit.
In September 2023, Ford apologized for removing the land from the Greenbelt. His government returned the land to the protected area a few months later. The RCMP revealed that fall that it was investigating what led to the Greenbelt removals — which the auditor general’s office had estimated could have enriched the landowning developers by upwards of $8.3 billion.
Ford has always maintained he played no part in selecting which properties to remove from the Greenbelt.
From its months-long investigation, the earliest evidence the integrity commissioner’s office found indicating senior premier’s office staffers’ significant involvement in the plan was after Oct. 17, 2022.
A few records have come to light since suggesting that certain premier’s office officials may have been involved earlier.
So, despite Ford’s position, questions about the extent of the roles the premier and his staff had in the lead-up to the Greenbelt removals have persisted. They’ve been fuelled by the absence, to date, of records that form a clear picture of how many of the specific Greenbelt removals came to be — an issue highlighted by both the integrity commissioner’s and auditor general’s offices.
The IPC is responsible for handling appeals to freedom-of-information request decisions.
Freedom-of-information requests for premier’s office records are processed by the Cabinet Office. It originally told the NDP it found a single record — Ford’s 2022 mandate letter to his then-housing minister — when the party requested “all” records relating to Greenbelt removals from 2021 and most of 2022.
The NDP appealed to the IPC, leading to an already year-and-a-half-long back-and-forth. To date, including as a result of multiple searches of the government accounts of 29 former and current premier’s office staffers, Cabinet Office has identified “a total of six responsive records,” according to the April 10 IPC order.
Justine Wai, the IPC adjudicator handling the NDP’s records appeal, wrote in her order that she has been satisfied by Cabinet Office’s “reasonable effort to locate records responsive to the (NDP’s) request.” Wai also acknowledged that “it is not usual for the IPC to require government staff to search their personal accounts or records for government information.”
However, the adjudicator wrote that “there is clear evidence … indicating that personal accounts were used to conduct business or, at a minimum, as a conduit through which government records were transferred.”
Wai made her April 10 order after considering submissions from Cabinet Office and the NDP appellant. She also cited a few previous orders issued by the IPC, plus the Greenbelt reports the integrity commissioner’s and auditor general’s offices released in August 2023.
“In light of the auditor general’s findings, there is sufficient reason to be concerned about personal emails being used to conduct government business,” said the order from Wai.
She is only ordering Cabinet Office to attempt to retrieve Greenbelt records from the personal accounts of former premier’s office staffers who didn’t sign an attestation about the use of personal accounts in March 2024. The government created the new attestation process in response to the auditor general’s Greenbelt report.
Staffers signing it swear to “using only government systems and accounts for government business” and to transfer any government records “inadvertently received on a personal email account … into the government system,” according to Wai’s order.
Breaking an attestation can, in serious cases, lead to criminal penalties.
Cabinet Office told the IPC that all staff working in Ford’s office in March 2024 signed the new attestation. By then, at least several senior staff who worked in the premier’s office from January 2021 to October 2022 — the period the NDP is seeking records from — had left. They include Ford’s former chief of staff, principal secretary, multiple deputy chiefs of staff, director of policy, housing policy director and more.
One former staffer singled out in the IPC order is the former executive director of stakeholder relations in the premier’s office, Carlo Oliviero. He worked in Ford’s office from partway through 2020 until early 2023.
As the order made by Wai, the IPC adjudicator, explained, evidence the NDP submitted to her office made it “clear” that Oliviero “did not forward all of their government-related correspondence from their personal account to their government account.”
This evidence included a Microsoft Teams meeting invitation on “Greenbelt matters” sent to Oliviero and the then-housing minister’s chief of staff in July 2022, from a lobbyist for a developer whose land, a few months later, was removed from the protected area.
Oliviero had not responded to questions The Trillium emailed him about the IPC order before this story’s publication.
“This isn’t a one-off — it’s part of a pattern of behaviour from the premier’s office and this government of treating transparency as optional,” Ontario NDP and official Opposition Leader Marit Stiles said in a statement. “Sooner or later, the premier has to answer for this — whether through public pressure or the ongoing RCMP criminal investigation.”
“As Ontario grapples with real economic uncertainty — from rising costs to the impact of Trump’s tariffs — people need their government to be steady, honest, and accountable. Hiding the truth is not how you protect Ontario,” Stiles added.
Last Thursday, Global News and the Toronto Star reported that the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing had also been ordered to get access to potential Greenbelt records that the minister’s chief of staff at the time of the Greenbelt removals may have in his personal accounts. To the Housing Ministry, the IPC stated it could “summon and examine on oath any individual who may have information relating to an inquiry,” according to the articles by Global and the Star.
“In accordance with the order of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, we will write to the affected party to provide the ministry with any emails relevant to this matter that may exist in the affected party’s personal email account,” a Housing Ministry spokesperson said in a statement.
The IPC’s April 10 order to the Cabinet Office didn’t explicitly mention its summons power.
Over the last 11 months, Information and Privacy Commissioner Patricia Kosseim’s office has been working on a “special report” on Greenbelt-related access-to-information and record-keeping issues.
The IPC’s special report will be based on the IPC’s “conclusions and insights” from 19 Greenbelt-related freedom-of-information request appeals, Kosseim said in the letter confirming it. Some of the appeals the report will be based on remain ongoing, meaning its release date is yet to be determined.
The RCMP has been investigating the Greenbelt removals since fall 2023. It hasn’t led to charges against anyone.
The integrity commissioner’s office has found that five people — former housing minister Steve Clark and four consultants or affiliates of developers — broke non-criminal provincial laws in the course of the Greenbelt scandal.
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