Somehow, the Ford government continues to survive. After six years in power, after countless shortcomings and scandals of varying levels of notoriety, the government is hanging on. Better than that, in fact: it’s ahead in the polls and may even be preparing for an early election. But the Greenbelt affair hangs over the heads of the Tories nonetheless — and it may someday come crashing down on them, once and for all. One hopes it does.
In the latest development in the scandal that keeps on giving, the Ontario’s information and privacy commissioner is preparing a special report on how the government handled communications and documents related to its land-swap plans. The report, which doesn’t yet have a release date, will contain a look into deleted Greenbelt emails and alleged codewords in internal communications that might have been used to circumvent freedom-of-information laws and public access to details about the plan.
Once the report drops, we’ll have another round of head-scratching and finger-wagging. Perhaps some more resignations, too. But then what?
NDP leader Marit Stiles, whose party asked the commissioner to look into the issue, was quick to remind Ontarians that, just over a decade ago, a potentially similar report into the gas-plant scandal under the Liberal government produced a police investigation and jail time for a top staffer who deleted emails. The implication is clear.
As the report prepares to make its way to the public, the Toronto Starreported last week that a member of the premier’s office held a private meeting with a developer who, it just so happens, subsequently had his land swapped from the protected Greenbelt. As Sheila Wang and Noor Javed write, this raises questions “about how directly involved the premier’s staff were in the ill-fated housing development plan.”
Now Global News reports that Ford’s chief of staff, Patrick Sackville, “appears to have not disclosed text messages to privacy officials in a freedom of information request.” This is the same staffer who used his private email account for government work.
This is serious stuff, and we aren’t done learning the extent to which it’s scandalous and, one would think, disqualifying for a government to maintain the public trust it requires to govern. But as much as it’s good and right for us to learn more, haven’t we already reached the important conclusions?
As I’ve written before, the Greenbelt scandal is further proof positive that the Ford government is corrupt and unfit to govern. And as I’ve also written before, Ford should resign. Anyone paying the least bit of attention to the details of just how atrocious the land-swap deal is and acting in good faith ought to reach the same conclusion.
The Greenbelt issue always looked to be, at the very least, a little off — more likely a lot off. Then came the auditor general’s report that found the plan was run improperly and led to preferential treatment for “certain prominent developers.” A little less than a month later, Housing Minister Steve Clark resigned, but not before his chief of staff had bowed out.
In case anyone had forgotten, the RCMP is investigating the Greenbelt scandal, too. In a recent letter to the force’s commissioner and assistant commissioner, Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie referred to the latest news and asked for “an update on the progress of your investigation, in light of these most recent revelations.”
Crombie’s letter was politicking at its finest, but she’s not wrong to wonder about the status of the investigation — even though the RCMP is, as a rule, likely to say that the investigation is ongoing and that it can’t get into specifics on the fly. Nonetheless, the results of that work will shape Ontario politics, and in due course we’ll be more than a little interested to see what the police come up with. But, again, we already know what needs to happen.
The broader takeaway from all this new information is the same as it was from the initial Greenbelt information. The more we learn about the affair, the more we can be sure that those of us who called the Ford government crooked and unfit for purpose from the start were right. New information is good and necessary, but it simply supports the conclusion that Ford and his lot are unfit to govern and ought to go.
The details of this mess continue to matter, and Ontarians deserve accountability: politician by politician, staffer by staffer. But, ultimately, it’s Ford who bears responsibility for this mess, and it’s Ford and his government that ought to pay the political price. The Greenbelt scandal won’t be truly over until the province has a new government and, one hopes, at least for a time, a break from the weekly nonsense and semi-regular jaw-dropping scandals.
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