RCMP detectives investigating the $8.28-billion Greenbelt land swap scandal are interviewing witnesses linked to Premier Doug Ford’s government.
As first disclosed by the Star, current and former Progressive Conservative aides are sitting down with the Mounties to discuss Ford’s controversial 2022 decision to open up 7,400 acres of the two-million-acre Greenbelt to housing development.
“We have nothing to hide,” the premier told reporters in Thunder Bay on Friday, three hours after the Star broke the news.
“Come in and do whatever you have to do … but I want full co-operation — they know that — because there’s nothing to hide there. Let’s get on with it,” said Ford.
Interviews with members of the RCMP “O” Division’s Sensitive and International Investigations unit, the elite Ottawa-based branch that probes political crimes and corruption, are being held at the force’s Greater Toronto Area detachment.
In a statement Friday, Ford’s office confirmed that aides and former staffers were being interviewed.
“We’ve always said we would co-operate. That co-operation would include the premier and current or former staff conducting interviews as witnesses, which are currently underway,” the premier’s office said.
“Any further questions should be directed to the RCMP.”
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police would only “confirm that the investigation is ongoing.”
But officials close to Ford said the premier has not yet been approached by the RCMP.
The Star is not identifying anyone who has been contacted by the Mounties because they are not authorized to discuss what they are telling — or will tell — detectives.
But sources say the RCMP appears to be currently focusing on potential witnesses rather than anyone actually suspected of wrongdoing.
The revelation came on the first anniversary of the auditor general’s explosive report into the land swap that ultimately triggered the police investigation.
Ford scrapped his Greenbelt land-swap scheme last Sept. 21 in the wake of an Aug. 9 report by then-auditor general Bonnie Lysyk that found developers connected to his Progressive Conservatives had been “favoured” in the government’s surprise move to allow houses to be built on the environmentally sensitive land.
Lysyk, who told the Star this week she has not been contacted by the Mounties, said the rezoning ballooned the value of the 15 properties in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area to $8.28 billion.
Her 97-page report — and a subsequent review by integrity commissioner J. David Wake released on Aug. 30, 2023 — appear to be serving as guidebooks for the RCMP investigation.
Some of the witnesses now being interviewed were named by Wake in his 166-page report.
He interviewed 62 people — most of whom were in the presence of their legal counsel — during the course of his review.
News that the RCMP investigation is heating up comes as Ford, whose Tories have a large lead in public opinion polls, has been considering an early election call next year instead of waiting for the scheduled June 2026 vote.
Last month’s Abacus Data tracking poll found his PCs at 44 per cent — their highest level of support in more than two years — with Bonnie Crombie’s Liberals at 26 per cent, Marit Stiles’s New Democrats at 19 per cent and Mike Schreiner’s Greens at seven per cent.
Abacus surveyed 1,000 Ontarians July 16-21 using online panels based on the Lucid exchange platform. While opt-in polls cannot be assigned a margin of error, for comparison purposes, a random sample of this size would have one of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
Two of Ford’s ministers and two senior political aides resigned last summer after the Lysyk and Wake reports.
With his popularity plummeting last September, the premier reversed course on his Greenbelt scheme.
“It was a mistake to open the Greenbelt. I’m very, very sorry. I made a promise to you that I wouldn’t touch the Greenbelt. I broke that promise,” Ford said on Sept. 21.
“As a first step to earning back your trust, I’ll be reversing the changes. We moved too quickly and we made the wrong decision … it caused people to question our motives,” he said.
But Stiles said “one year after the auditor general’s revelations about Ford’s Greenbelt grab, he hasn’t learned a thing.”
“You deserve a government that tells the truth. That cares about regular people and does right by them. A government that isn’t under criminal investigation,” the NDP leader said.
Crombie said Friday was “a sad day for the people of Ontario, who deserve and need so much more than a government embroiled in criminal investigation.”
“The people of this province need to know exactly how Doug Ford was involved in this scandal. Ontario deserves better,” the Liberal leader said.
Schreiner, for his part, maintained “the premier has not learned from the Greenbelt scandal.”
