Detectives are now publicly connecting a series of violent attacks that have centred around one of the top waste-management firms in the country and its high-profile billionaire CEO.
Gunshots this week at a Weston Road office marked the latest of several reported arsons and shootings at property linked to GFL Environmental and CEO Patrick Dovigi.
In a brief statement Friday, Dovigi said he still doesn’t know what to make of the situation.
“I wish I knew,” Dovigi said in a text message.
On Friday, much of the damage from this week’s shooting at GFL’s Weston Road office appeared to have been fixed — except for two indents in a door and its frame, which looked like covered-up bullet holes. Otherwise, nothing seemed out of sorts — the lawn around the property was freshly cut and lime-green GFL trucks were filing in and out.
Investigators with the Toronto Police Guns and Gangs unit are looking at the incident as part of a larger case, a spokesperson confirmed to the Star. That case also involves a late September shooting at Dovigi’s home on an exclusive cul-de-sac in Rosedale.
Near midnight on Sept. 29, gunshots struck Dovigi’s home. Shortly afterward, in the early hours of Sept. 30, more shots were fired into another home in Toronto, reportedly owned by one of Dovigi’s associates at GFL.
Initially, Dovigi suggested the Sept. 29 attack was a random robbery, not an attempt to intimidate him.
In an interview with the National Post, he said: “I’ve been in business for 20 years. Who’s going to scare me? This is not the Sopranos.”
But police have maintained that the two residential shootings are linked, not random. And on Friday, police spokesperson Stephanie Sayer said investigators believe this week’s shooting at the Weston Road office is connected to the previous two.
“We are working closely with other police services on this case,” Sayer said in an email.
Other police services around the province are also investigating attacks on industrial properties linked to GFL.
The Star has confirmed that, on July 1, a suspect set fire to six large trucks at a Vaughan industrial yard operated by Green Infrastructure Partners — a construction firm owned in part by GFL. No one has been charged and York Regional Police are still investigating, Const. James Dickson said in an email. “Our investigators routinely share information with our partner agencies, however we can’t comment on investigations being conducted by other services,” he said.
Last week, the Globe and Mail also reported two additional arsons at properties linked to GFL, one at another site in Vaughan and one at site in Windsor.
And last month, Toronto police reported that evidence of gunfire was found on Oct. 20 at a home that was under construction near Spadina Road and Eglinton Avenue West.
Roughly 600 metres from the intersection, a 1935 Arts and Crafts manor is currently under construction in Forest Hill. Property and business records show that in 2022, a company Dovigi controls bought the house for roughly $17 million. But both Dovigi and a worker at the site denied any knowledge of a shooting.
“That’s not true,” Dovigi said in a text Friday when asked about the possibility of a shooting at the site. “News to me.”
Sayer, the police spokesperson, said she couldn’t confirm whether there was a connection between the shooting near Spadina and Eglinton and the two September shootings.
“This is an ongoing investigation,” she said in an email last week.
