How Premier Doug Ford's self-described friend got land removed from the Greenbelt

Over 11 days last fall, lawyers from Dentons law firm emailed the Ontario housing minister's most senior political staffer to request that protected land owned by three separate developers northeast of Toronto be opened up for development.

Dentons sent letters on behalf of Flato Developments, Orca Equity, and Wyview Group, which owned Greenbelt land in Markham, Ont., and Whitchurch-Stouffville, Ont.

The letters arrived right when Ryan Amato chief of staff to housing minister Steve Clark before the Greenbelt scandal prompted both to resign began identifying specific sites to build new housing on the 810,000-hectare area of farmland, forest and wetland that surrounds the Greater Toronto Area, created to protect ecologically-sensitive land from disappearing to urban sprawl.

All three of those removal requests came from Shakir Rehmatullah, a self-described friend of Premier Doug Ford, Integrity Commissioner J. David Wake's Aug. 30 report found. The letters arrived weeks after Rehmatullah was a guest at Ford's daughter's stag-and-doe and wedding last summer.

Rehmatullah also owns Flato Developments, which builds single family homes, lowrises and condos. According to his company website, Rehmatullah learned architectural engineering from the University of Miami, while his passion for building houses comes from his family. "I learned from my father and grandfather that building homes isn't just about creating shelter, but about creating vibrant communities," he is quoted as saying.

Rehmatullah didn't respond to an interview request or a list of questions sent to Flato Developments.

That leaves one question the primary question the integrity commissioner was seeking to answer unanswered: how did a Ford-connected developer know to submit his removal requests at such an opportune time?

"We still don't know how the information got from Amato to Rehmatullah," said Ian Stedman, a former employee of the integrity commissioner's office.

"That signals that there's still potential for preferential treatment somewhere here that just hasn't been located yet," said Stedman, an assistant professor of public policy and administration at York University who worked in the integrity commissioner's office from 2011 to 2014.

In the weeks since Wake released his report, both Amato and Clark have resigned and Ford has announced plans for a full Greenbelt review. But the government's reputation appears to have taken a hit. An Angus Reid Institute poll released last week put Ford's approval rating at 28 per cent down five points since June and the lowest since Ford was first elected in 2018.

Stedman said he's watching to see whether the answer might come from a subsequent integrity commissioner investigation.

"It hasn't been located yet, as far as I can tell, because Commissioner Wake doesn't have jurisdiction to dig in the places he thinks he needs to dig in the context of this report," Stedman said.

NDP Leader Marit Stiles requested an investigation into whether Ford violated ethics rules when developers reportedly attended his daughter's "stag-and-doe" and wedding. The commissioner's office said "this request remains under consideration" but that it will issue a report, regardless, as is legally required.

"I am. hopeful that when we get the wedding report there will be more information about Rehmatullah and, you know, conversations had at the wedding," Stedman said.

Developers wanted to 'shoot their shot'

The integrity commissioner's report paints a picture of a situation where word was spreading throughout the development community that the province was considering making changes to the Greenbelt's boundary, prompting developers to "shoot their shot," in the words of Amato.

Katarzyna Sliwa, a partner at the Dentons law firm, sent a letter on Sept. 27 requesting land owned by Rehmatullah at the northeast corner of 19th Avenue and McCowan Road in Markham be removed from the Greenbelt.The site is part of a larger 42-hectare property for which the housing ministry previously issued two ministerial zoning orders to fast track the development of new subdivisions.

Sliwa's associate, Diana Betlej, sent Amato another letter two days later requesting the removal of landat McCowan Road in Whitchurch-Stouffville, which is part of the same block as the Flato lands. The integrity commissioner's report said she made this request on behalf of Berardino Quinto, owner of Orca Equity and a director of various Torca Inc. companies.Orca Equity benefitted from a ministerial zoning order authorizing the development of more than 1,000 homes in the area.

Quinto told the commissioner he doesn't have a formal relationship with Rehmatullah though the two are part of the same landowners association and have made agreements in the past.

A lawyer for Quinto declined to comment other than to say "any request to have land removed from the Greenbelt was to facilitate the development of desperately needed housing."

In a third letter dated Oct. 7, the integrity commissioner said Betlej highlighted areas of Wyview Group's land near Highway 48 in Markham that could be removed from Greenbelt.

In each of the three cases, Sliwa or Betlej followed up via emails with digital maps and a legal description of the lands, which would be necessary if they were to be considered for removal from the Greenbelt.

The follow-up emails contained the identical phrase, "We understand that this information was requested by the Ministry," however, the commissioner didn't locate any emails requesting that information, "suggesting [Amato] was communicating with someone else about this property."

Amato told the integrity commissioner he got unsolicited developer requests "all the time" and denied speaking with lawyers at Dentons or any of the three developers Dentons represented. His lawyer didn't respond to a request for comment.

Others pointed the finger back to Rehmatullah: report

Amato wasn't the only one who couldn't say clearly why these requests were made, and why they were made at the time that they were.

In his first interview, Rehmatullah told the integrity commissioner he didn't know why Sliwa chose to send the removal request in September 2022, but he believed his lawyers identified the opportunity. He said he trusted the law firm to keep an eye on anything happening provincially or municipally that might impact his developments.

But that explanation didn't line up with what others told the commissioner.

For instance, when Sliwa spoke with the integrity commissioner, she said it was Rehmatullah who gave her explicit instructions to file the Flato Developments request to Amato, and the firm "subsequently filed" the Orca Equity and Wyview Group requests.

Quinto, whose companies also benefited from the well-timed emails, told the integrity commissioner he found out the province was considering changes to the Greenbelt from a planner during a video conference call a couple weeks before the request was made.

When the commissioner tracked that planner down, she also pointed the finger at Rehmatullah. The planner said Rehmatullah asked her in September 2022 to prepare a drawing of lands owned by companies tied to Quinto, including Torca I and Torca II Inc., and Wyview Group, and that she believed the drawing was included in a Greenbelt removal request.

The commissioner requested a second interview with Rehmatullah, during which he "finally admitted" that he had instructed his lawyers to make the removal requests to Amato in September, "since he was a contact," and that he "may have assisted [Orca and Wyview] because they were part of the same landowners group."

"It appears from the evidence that Mr. Rehmatullah had his hand in all three removal requests," Wake wrote.

Rehmatullah denied that anyone connected to the government tipped him off and he denied being in contact with Amato about his land, per the report. He said it is just the "normal course of business" for his consultants to make removal requests and that the 2022 request was simply following up on a previous request he made in 2017.

"I find that Mr. Rehmatullah's position strains credulity," Wake wrote in the report.

"On the evidence, I am unable to make a definitive finding as to what or who prompted Mr. Rehmatullah in the fall of 2022 to take the steps he did to request that his small piece of land and the land of two of his fellow members of a landowners group be removed from the Greenbelt. But I find it is more likely than not that someone did."

Since the Flato lands were removed from the Greenbelt in December, property records show Flato Developments subdivided the larger property and sold 29.5 hectares to Torca UMV Inc. for $62 million in April more than four times the $15 million the company originally paid for the land in 2017. Property records also show Flato Developments transferred the remaining land to a company run by Weixiang Wang, chairman of Wyview Group, for $2. The sales were first reported by the Toronto Star.

Local councillor calls for public inquiry

The integrity commissioner found Ford was "kept in the dark" by Amato about the selection process, and that he learned which sites would be removed for the first time on Nov. 2, 2022, shortly before cabinet met to discuss it.

"The integrity commissioner clearly stated in his report that the premier, and the premier's office, had no involvement in the process or of specific site selection,"said Caitlin Clark, a spokesperson for premier.

Markham city councillor Karen Rea said the integrity commissioner's report has created a perception that those involved, particularly Rehmatullah, have not been "forthright" with their answers.

"I don't understand why it took a second interview for that information to come out," she said.

Rea is calling for a public inquiry to cut through the "speculation and accusations."

"I think if we have a public inquiry that will, you know, lay out what happened, who knew what or or who didn't know what, maybe then we can all move on from this,"she said.