MPP Kaleed Rasheed, Ontario’s minister of public and business service delivery, resigned from his cabinet post and the PC caucus on Wednesday after records revealed contradicting accounts of a Las Vegas trip that was investigated as part of the integrity commissioner’s probe into the Greenbelt land deals.
According to the integrity commissioner, Rasheed and Amin Massoudi, the then-principal secretary to the premier, said they took a trip to Las Vegas in December 2019 and “exchanged pleasantries” with developer Shakir Rehmantullah in the lobby of a hotel. The former minister confirmed that he is friends with the developer, whose company FLATO Development is listed as the owner of two of the sites removed from the Greenbelt, but said he did not know Rehmantullah was going to be in the area at that time.
Records now show that the minister actually took the trip in February 2020 and multiple hotel employees also confirmed to CTV News Toronto that the three individuals got massages at the same time(opens in a new tab).
The trip, the minister’s office said, was originally planned for December 2019 but had to be moved due to scheduling conflicts. The original date was mistakenly shared with the integrity commissioner, staff claimed.
Rasheed has said he resigned to avoid being a distraction to the “important work of the government” and added that he is looking forward to “taking the steps required” to clear his name.
The premier’s office said if the integrity commissioner clears Rasheed, he will be “provided an opportunity to return to caucus.” He will sit as an independent until that time.
Rasheed's resignation comes weeks after Ontario Housing Minister Steve Clark stepped down after Ontario’s integrity commissioner found he violated ethics rules in his role overseeing the Greenbelt land removals.
When asked whether he should face any consequences for his decisions surrounding the Greenbelt, Ford said he has admitted his mistake.
“Leadership shows if you make a mistake, you come out and admit it, you tell the people what you are going to correct it and make sure it happens. That’s what I’ve done,” Ford said.
“I’m the first to admit, I’m not perfect but every intention I have… is the right intention.”
As for a possible RCMP investigation on his government’s handling of Greenbelt land removals, Ford said he doesn’t “get involved in any police investigation at all.”
The RCMP has previously said that it is looking into whether or not to launch a formal investigation into the Ford government’s handling of the Greenbelt file.
“They have a job to do. I’m going to continue moving forward to build homes for the people of Ontario,” he added.
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles called the reversal “a victory for Ontarians.”
“It was clear from the beginning that this was the wrong decision, and yet Ford’s Conservatives pressed on. It was a calculated attempt by this government to benefit a select few of their insiders at the expense of everyone else,” Stiles said in a written statement.
This was echoed by Interim Liberal Leader John Fraser, who also released a statement following Ford’s announcement.
"The decision to return all lands to the Greenbelt is a good one, and one that Ontario Liberals have called for since the Conservatives chose to sell off our protected lands to a group of PC Party insiders. But Ontarians still need to get to the bottom of this $8.3 billion backroom deal. The questions we had this morning are still the same questions we have now,” Fraser said.
"How much will this flip flop cost taxpayers when the landowners ask for compensation, and how were a handful of rich insiders, and Doug Ford's personal friends and fundraisers, able to direct the government to give them an $8.3 billion payday?”
At Thursday’s news conference, the premier said he could not yet provide any details about the price tag associated with the reversal, saying only that the housing minister is “working through those details.” He promised to make that information public when it is available.
Asked if legal action could be pending from developers, Ford said he “can’t predict the future.”
“My main goal is to work with the builders, because they are part of the solution,” he said.
“I can’t determine what the builders are going to do.”
-With files from CTV News Toronto’s Katherine DeClerq and Jon Woodward
Two Ontario municipalities are asking the provincial government to reimburse them for more than $400,000 in costs they incurred while working on the now-reversed Greenbelt land removals in their communities.
Premier Doug Ford admitted last month that his government’s November 2022 decision to remove 15 parcels from the protected Greenbelt for housing development — a move now the subject of an RCMP investigation — was a mistake, and his new housing minister has now started the process to return them.
But Pickering, Ont., the site of the largest parcel of land by far, and Grimsby, Ont., where two other sites had been slated for removal, say they spent a lot of money and staff time working on those plans, and they want to be compensated.
“While we appreciate the province’s reconsideration and commitment to preserving the integrity of the Greenbelt, we cannot overlook the significant amount of resources that have already been expended by our municipality in anticipation of housing development, sometimes at the direction of the province itself,” Pickering Mayor Kevin Ashe wrote in a letter to Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Paul Calandra.
City of Pickering staff have tallied up $360,135 in direct and indirect costs that they say Pickering taxpayers are now on the hook for.
About $90,000 of that is due to staff time, while the largest line item in direct costs came in the form of more than $178,000 paid to an economic consulting firm for a financial impact analysis of the proposed Cherrywood development.
The Cherrywood site in the Greenbelt is owned by Silvio De Gasperis’ TACC Group and at 4,262 acres it is nearly two and a half times as big as the next largest of the 15 sites the government wanted to remove.
Pickering also spent $90,000 on outside legal services and $930 in recruiting costs for a new Cherrywood principal planner position.
In Grimsby, the town council unanimously passed a motion recently to call on the province to reimburse their municipality for about $82,000.
Those costs were incurred in spending on legal and consulting services, as well as staff time, “as a direct result of the pressure placed upon the town by the provincial government to reach agreements with developers and make decisions related to changes in the Greenbelt Act,” the town said in its motion.
“This pressure included deadlines set by the Minister of Housing, which, if not met, would have resulted in decisions being made without the municipality’s involvement,” the town said in its motion.
“The Town of Grimsby had initially anticipated that all costs incurred would be offset by fees associated with the developments affected by the changes to the Greenbelt.”
The government did not immediately say how it would respond to the municipalities’ requests.
Calandra has said the province will not be compensating developers for any costs they incurred.
Jeff Paikin, whose company owns one of the Grimsby parcels of land, has said his company has put in a “huge amount of work,” with signed contracts, completed designs and negotiations with the municipality.
Ford announced last month that he was backing away from his plan to develop parts of the Greenbelt, after months of public outcry and after reports from both the auditor general and the integrity commissioner that found the process favoured certain developers.
The auditor general found that more than 90 per cent of the land removed from the Greenbelt was in five sites passed on to the then-housing minister’s chief of staff by two developers he met at an industry event. The property owners stood to see their land value rise by $8.3 billion, the auditor found.
The integrity commissioner said he had no evidence of developers being specifically tipped off that the government was considering Greenbelt removals, though “it is more likely than not” that someone gave one developer a heads-up. Largely, the actions of the housing minister’s chief of staff had the effect of alerting developers that a policy change was afoot, the commissioner found.
