How 2 developers got the Greenbelt land they wanted

While no one explicitly told developers that Ontario planned to open up the protected Greenbelt for housing last year, the government telegraphed that message to builders through actions — and silence, the province's integrity commissioner found.

Central to that indirect communication was a conference where certain developers had access to the housing minister's chief of staff — two investigations found those builders ended up with 92 per cent of the sites taken out of the Greenbelt.

What took place at that conference, and some of what followed, is laid out in the report issued last week by commissioner J. David Wake, offering insight into the world of Ontario's developers and how they interact with the government.

"Communication ... can take many forms. It is not confined to the spoken word," Wake wrote in the report that described the housing minister's chief-of-staff, Ryan Amato, receiving packages from developers and later seeking further information.

"I find that these actions were tantamount to Mr. Amato saying the words he had been careful not to say."

Wake found that then-housing minister Steve Clark violated ethics rules during the province's process of removing 15 sites from the Greenbelt to build 50,000 homes and adding land to the protected area elsewhere. Clark resigned days after the report while Amato resigned in mid-August, but denied wrongdoing.

Wake's investigation featured interviews with two prominent developers, Silvio De Gasperis and Michael Rice — neither responded to a request for comment from The Canadian Press. Amato's lawyer also did not respond to a request for comment.

De Gasperis, the CEO of TACC Group of Companies, had for decades wanted to develop homes on one of his properties — known as Cherrywood — but it was in the Greenbelt, Wake wrote.

De Gasperis owned the land in the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve in Pickering, Ont., even prior to the creation of the Greenbelt in 2005 and felt it had improperly been made part of the protected area. He took the province to court over the designation, but ultimately lost.

The developer brought up the property with Premier Doug Ford after the Progressive Conservatives won the June 2018 election, "telling him Cherrywood is the perfect land for housing."

Ford told De Gasperis he couldn't do it.

The premier did not touch the Greenbelt in his first term — he initially told developers in February 2018 that he planned to open up the area but backtracked during the election campaign.

De Gasperis nonetheless took note of the Progressive Conservatives' pledge to build Highway 413 north of Toronto, a route running through Greenbelt land.

"This suggested to him there might be an opportunity to revisit the government's Greenbelt policy," Wake wrote.