Finance Minister says government is ‘open book’ on RCMP Green Belt investigation
Ontario’s finance minister says he has not been contacted by the RCMP as part of its ongoing investigation. Green belt investigation but insists he is an “open book” if detectives want to sit down with him.
Last week, Premier Doug Ford’s office said current and former employees were being interviewed by the RCMP “as witnesses” as the force’s investigation into the government’s decision to remove 7,400 acres of protected land from the Greenbelt gathers pace.
The Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement Friday that it intends to assist the RCMP in its investigation from the outset.
“We have always said that we would cooperate,” the statement read. “That cooperation would include the Prime Minister and current and former staff members conducting witness interviews, which are currently underway.”
Later in the day, Ford said his government had “nothing to hide” and I was trying to move on from the scandal.
“Come in, do what you have to do – we move on, but I want full cooperation,” he said of the RCMP investigation.
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Ford has already committed to waive Cabinet confidentiality if requested by the RCMP.
On Tuesday, Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy echoed those sentiments and said he had not yet been contacted by the RCMP.
“I’m an open book, as the prime minister said, I have nothing to hide,” he told reporters. “They have to do their job, do your job, and we’re going to continue to execute the plan that we promised, but no, I haven’t been contacted.”
Premier Ford was also not interviewed by the RCMP, which a former investigator said is potentially part of a standard process.
“It’s not good practice to go into an interview with a subject where they might say something and if you haven’t done the ‘small talk’ you may not detect a discrepancy or incontinence,” Bruce Pitt-Payne, a former RCMP major crimes investigator, told Global News.
“You want to have all the (small interviews) behind you, and then you go and ask the bigger players for their information.”
The inquiry was launched after separate investigations by Ontario’s auditor general and integrity commissioner revealed a rushed and chaotic process to remove land from the greenbelt that appeared to benefit some developers.
The auditor general’s investigation found that people whose land was removed from the green belt could see its value increase by more than $8 billion, also citing widespread use of personal emails for government business and direct requests to the government to remove land.
The integrity commissioner found that then-housing minister Steve Clark had breached ethics rules and said the Greenbelt process was “marked by misinterpretation, unnecessary haste and deception”.
The Ontario Provincial Police initially considered reviewing the Green Belt process before handing it over to the RCMP, which announced an investigation in October 2023. Since then, the force has remained silent on its progress until Ford’s office announced that discussions had begun last week.
Hank Idsinga, a Global News crime commentator and former Toronto police detective, said it’s not unusual for investigations like this to begin far from the public eye.
“An investigation like this will be driven largely by documents and records. So it’s important to gather those documents and records before we embark on these witness interviews,” he said.
© 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
