Greenbelt intrigue deepens with account of Raptors tickets, $1 million payday and “Mr. X”

It's a name that sounds like it's borrowed from a spy thriller — but an unregistered lobbyist known as "Mr. X" is a very real part of the integrity commissioner's report into how lands were selected to be removed from the Greenbelt.

It's a name that sounds like it's borrowed from a spy thriller — but an unregistered lobbyist known as "Mr. X" is a very real part of the report released by Ontario's integrity commissioner into how lands were selected to be removed from the province's Greenbelt.

Mr. X's name is kept out of the report, but it describes his outsized role in offering Raptors tickets and golf games to senior figures in the housing ministry while negotiating a $1 million "Greenbelt fee" contingent on getting a parcel of land developed in Clarington.

"It seems like a cheap spy novel, in a way. You've got someone named Mr. X," said Lloyd Rang, a Clarington councillor, in an interview with CTV News. "It just seems too salacious for Ontario politics."

In the report, Integrity Commissioner J. David Wake found that Housing Minister Steve Clark broke ethics rules in a process to remove land from the protected Greenbelt that was marked by "unnecessary hastiness and deception."

His former chief of staff, Ryan Amato, resigned, and Clark has apologized but vowed to stay on despite calls for him to step down too. Premier Doug Ford also stood by the embattled minister on Thursday, admitting there were flaws in the process but said they were in the effort of the larger goal of building new homes in a housing crisis.

According to the report, Mr. X was contracted to work on getting 86 acres of land north of Nash Road out of the Greenbelt by its owner, Peter Tanenbaum, who had owned the property since before the creation of the protected green space.

Records show Tanenbaum purchased the property for about $2.7 million about 20 years ago. The land value would sharply escalate with the legal ability to develop it for homes.