Former mayor, banned lobbyist calls out Ontario cabinet minister, ex Housing staffer for Greenbelt leak

A former mayor who was banned from lobbying for two years in the fallout from the Greenbelt scandal has spilled the tea on some the players involved in the 2022 political fiasco in an explosive podcast called the ‘Mr. X Files,’ calling out then-Environment Minister David Piccini and former Housing Chief-of-Staff Ryan Amato for their involvement in the political nightmare that nearly brought down the provincial government in 2022.

John Mutton, who served as mayor of Clarington from 2000 to 2006, also alleges on the podcast the “same players” are involved in the Skills Development Fund scandal now dogging Piccini in his new role as Labour Minister.

Mutton said he was working as a consultant for an 86-acre sliver of land on Nash Road in Clarington when he was tipped off – in October 2021, prior to the June 2022 election – from then-environment minister Piccini that the government would be “looking at” removing some lands from the Greenbelt.

A year later the Greenbelt land swap was announced, a deal that benefitted a few select developers in immediate land value increases to the tune of $8.3 billion. Amato was the first to take the fall in the aftermath and his boss, Housing Minister Steve Clark, resigned after a scathing report from then-Ontario Integrity Commissioner David Wake found he violated ethics rules when the province opened parts of the protected Greenbelt to development.

The fallout was gold for the media in the fall of 2022, serving up new tidbits of subterfuge and alleged corruption every day, but not so much for the premier, who nonetheless delivered another majority government 27 months later.

Mutton, who was slapped with a two-year lobbying ban for “multiple transgressions” by Wake’s successor earlier this year (even though he insists he was never a lobbyist) absolved Ford of any guilt in the land swap, saying the Premier “was never involved in the scandal part.”

He chose instead to put the blame on Amato – “he was without a doubt behind everything,” he said on the podcast – and Ford insider Nico Fidani-Fiker for “orchestrating” the Greenbelt land swap.

“There should have been a lot more people feeling repercussions for the Greenbelt scandal instead of John Mutton serving a two-year ban,” he said on the first episode of his podcast, adding that he did “nothing criminal, nothing illegal.”

Three years after the scandal broke and two years after the RCMP opened its criminal investigation into the Greenbelt affair, Mutton released the first episode of ‘The Mr. X Files,’ a code name given to him by Wake and one Mutton has since embraced.

After the June 2022 election Mutton said he got a call from Fidani-Diker, a lobbyist with deep connections to Ford’s family, who told him he was “spearheading” the Greenbelt file and that Mutton and his client (Peter Tanenbaum) would have to work with him if he wanted the land removed from the Greenbelt.

(Mutton, through his contract with Tanenbaum, stood to earn more than $1 million in development incentives if the land swap was ultimately successful and, perhaps coincidently, purchased a $300,000 Maserati days after meeting with Ford in the fall of 2022.)

Tanenbaum agreed to sign Fidani-Diker – who had had previously worked for Ford’s brother Rob when the younger Ford served as mayor of Toronto and is a long-time family friend of the Fords – as an official lobbyist.

Mutton also said he received some advice at that time from a prominent community builder in Clarington who advised him on who he should be rewarding at Queen’s Park but declined because he believed he already had the municipality’s backing and that the property – hard on Highway 418 where the Clarington communities of Bowmanville and Courtice meet – “had the technical merit to get taken out.”

But Mutton still had some ‘consulting’ on the Nash Road site to do and searched out Amato, who was Clark’s right-hand man at the Ministry of Housing.

The two didn’t hit it off – “I didn’t like him and he didn’t like me,” Mutton said – and they had limited personal dealings, with Mutton preferring to deal with Amato’s personal assistant, Kirstin Jensen, as chronicled in the Ontario Integrity Commisioner’s report.

Former Housing ministry Chief-of-Staff Ryan Amato

When asked by Wake about his dealings with Mr. X, Amato described the former mayor as “one of those guys that you just ‘yes them to death’ and then you cancel, or you don’t show up, or you just say no, right?”

“Then they get the message that you really don’t want to spend any time with them and they stop inviting you to stuff.”

But Amato also declared in his interview that when the circumstances were right, he was “happy” to work with Mr. X.

Amato’s strategy of ignoring Mutton in the hopes he would go away failed, however, and the two were seated together at the Ontario Municipal Solutions table at the BILD dinner on September 14, 2022 – two months before the now infamous land swap where Ford and Clark removed 15 parcels of land that were supposed to be permanently protected from development. Thirteen of the 15 land blocks were directly proposed by Amato, with many of those blocks failing to meet established criteria for removal.

Wake asked Amato how he got his hands on the Nash Road shapefile:

That I don’t recall, maybe Mr. X.

How would you know to reach out to Mr. X?

I don’t know. I think maybe Kirstin. Kirstin got the deck for the Nash Road site.

How do you think she got it?

Well, I am just piecing…like, you are asking me to piece things together in my head. I think there was a meeting that she went to with Mr. X on something else, and I didn’t show up to. And that is really the only track I could say of how this would have come in.

Why do you remember that meeting if you didn’t show up?

Because she yells at me when I don’t show up to stuff I say I am going to show up to.

That lunch took place on Sept. 27, 2022 at Joey Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto and shortly after that meeting Amato provided the Greenbelt Project Team five USB keys with information on proposed sites for removal.

The Nash Road site

Amato, who admitted he has had dozens of contacts with Mr. X since the Greenbelt land swap was announced, chalked up his poor recollection of his relationship with Mutton as the product of his job.

“You don’t just pull names out of a hat. Like, I am trying to build a million-and-a-half homes, and if Mr. X comes with something viable that makes sense, that the government can stand behind and support, I am happy to work with him.”

Wake noted in his report that Amato’s attempt to downplay his relationship with Mr. X “strains credulity somewhat.”

Mutton believed at the time the other lands removed from the Greenbelt had “legitimate” reasons for exclusion.

“But they didn’t have the technical merits to be excluded. They were just making money for other developers. So of course there’s going to be a scandal.”

Mutton had a generally favourable opinion on Wake, who retired this past April and was replaced by Cathryn Mothwerwell – “he was very good when dealing with me” – but said he often veered into “sensationalism” in his report.

Mutton also said some of the same players – “exactly the same players” – are now involved in the Skills Development Funds scandal that has Piccini scrambling to save his job in daily legislature sessions.

Piccini has not returned requests for comment but has denied Mutton’s allegations in other media, calling them “categorically untrue and patently false.”

Mutton, a Bowmanville born-and-raised body builder and ju-jitsu practitioner with an intimidating presence, continues to run Oshawa-based Municipal Solutions, a company specializing in development services with special expertise in the building trades and “deep connections” in government, as well as the nuclear, energy, manufacturing and infrastructure sectors.

He was the youngest elected mayor in Clarington’s history when he took over in 2000 at the age of 34. He focused on greater accountability in government and nuclear expansion at the Darlington nuclear station and is credited with pioneering a method to finance new construction or major additions of buildings through the issue of debentures by municipal government, which he used to fund the South Courtice Arena and Recreation Complex in 2001.

https://x.com/TDotResident/status/1979562515442049486

John Mutton with Ontario Premier Doug Ford