This is how 2 Greenbelt deals went down, according to developers

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.

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 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.