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Ontario housing minister’s chief of staff has resigned following a scathing Greenbelt report that alleges he and the government favoured certain developers when opening up the protected land for development.
The Premier’s Office confirmed the resignation in a statement Tuesday, saying they have accepted Ryan Amato’s resignation “effective immediately.”
Amato was the staffer primarily responsible for choosing which sites on the Greenbelt would be opened up for development. On Aug. 10, Ontario’s integrity commissioner confirmed the Premier’s Office had requested an investigation into his handling of the file, which was one of 15 recommendations made in a bombshell auditor general report released earlier this month.
The report, among other things, heavily criticized the process in which decisions regarding the Greenbelt’s development were made, indicating that it “favoured certain developers,” lacked transparency and failed to take factors such as environmental, agricultural and financial impacts into consideration.
The process for determining which sites would be cut from the Greenbelt took place within a strict three-week timeline, which the auditor general says was implemented by Amato.
The report suggested that certain criteria for the sites were altered when it was determined that most of the sites would not fit the set parameters.
Fourteen of the 15 final Greenbelt sites proposed for removal were directly proposed by Amato. The owners of the 15 land sites, the report indicated, could see more than an $8.3 billion increase to the value of their properties.
For weeks since the report went public Housing Minister Steve Clark has repeatedly said the premier remains confident in both him and his staff.
This is a breaking news story. More to come.