The former Ford government staffer at the heart of the Greenbelt scandal is refusing to hand over any emails he may have sent from his personal account about the ill-fated plan to develop the protected area.
Ryan Amato used his personal email in at least three interactions with lobbyists or a fellow government staffer regarding the Greenbelt project, according to records obtained by the Star.
These emails are only known about because they were forwarded to Amato’s or another political staffer’s government email account.
It’s not known how many other times Amato used his personal email to discuss Greenbelt matters.
Ontario’s auditor general denounced staffers’ use of personal emails to conduct Greenbelt business, saying it “creates the perception of preferential access,” and noted that any emails Amato or others sent from their personal accounts should still be subject to Freedom of Information (FOI) laws as they concern government business.
So in August 2023, shortly after the auditor general’s report was published, the Star filed an FOI request for Amato’s personal emails related to the Greenbelt.
Ryan Amato, the former chief of staff to Ontario Minister of Municipal Affairs, is at the centre of the Greenbelt scandal.
LinkedIn.comThe Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing said its staff asked Amato to hand over any records but he has repeatedly refused to cooperate. The ministry says it has no “legal mechanism” to compel him.
What Amato wrote — and to whom — from his personal email while he was selecting which lands would be removed from the Greenbelt is one of the unanswered questions from the scandal, which is under RCMP investigation and continues to dog the Ford government.
The fact it remains unanswered also illustrates how outdated and toothless access-to-information laws are in Canada, said Matt Malone, a Balsillie Scholar at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo who researches government secrecy.
Government work on personal devices is ‘an enormous problem’
Government officials using personal devices is “a huge weak point in the (access-to-information) system,” Malone said. “It’s an enormous problem when it comes to transparency and accountability.”
Amato, who resigned in the wake of the auditor general’s report, did not respond to the Star’s requests for comment, and neither did his lawyer.
Ford himself has come under fire for using his personal cell phone for government business. For nearly two years Global News has been to call logs for Ford’s personal phone, arguing the Premier regularly uses it for work. (Records obtained by Global show Ford’s government-issued phone went unused for months at a time.)
Initially, according to Global, the government said Ford’s personal phone should not be subject to Freedom of Information laws. They subsequently argued his call logs should be kept confidential to protect the privacy rights of those who call him.
Ford, who often gives out his personal cell phone number to large audiences and encourages people to contact him directly with their problems, said those who call him need to be assured of confidentiality.
“Just imagine if every single politician made their personal conversations with their constituents public. It’d be a disaster. There’d be zero trust. They’d never call an elected official for help because they know the whole world would know their conversation,” he said at a news conference earlier this year.
The case is currently before the province’s Information and Privacy Commissioner (IPC).
In her 2023 report, then Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk denounced Ford government staffers’ use of personal emails to conduct Greenbelt business, saying it “creates the perception of preferential access.”
Steve Russell/pc28StarAmato has twice refused government’s requests for emails, province says
When the province disclosed to the Star only emails Amato had forwarded to his government account, the Star appealed to the IPC, arguing that additional records exist.
That appeal is under consideration and no decision has been made.
As part of the adjudication process, government lawyers wrote in their submissions that the ministry has sent letters to Amato — who is not named in the documents and referred to only as “the former employee” — formally requesting access to his personal email and that Amato has “twice refused to provide copies of any responsive records that may exist on [his] personal email account.”
They said the only emails within their “custody and control” are those he forwarded to his government account.
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Those emails include one from Ford-connected lobbyist Nico Fidani-Diker, in which he simply forwarded a Microsoft Teams meeting link, and four from lobbyist Peter Van Loan, a former federal Conservative cabinet minister who sent Amato examples of municipal councils that had passed resolutions to request Greenbelt removals in recent years.
Contacted by the Star in January about the emails, Van Loan said he shared the information with Amato “in an effort to be helpful.” He said the council resolutions were not connected to any of his clients and he was not lobbying for their removal.
Van Loan said there was “no particular reason” why he used Amato’s personal rather than government email address. “I did not take note at the time of the e-mail used,” he said in an email to the Star. “It was not part of any file on which I was lobbying.”
Lawyers for Amato provided a brief submission to the IPC, describing the Star’s contention that additional records exist as “merely speculation.”
The Star’s submissions include evidence that at least one of Amato’s personal emails related to the Greenbelt was not disclosed. Amato sent an email from his personal account to Patrick Sackville, Ford’s chief of staff, which Sackville later forwarded to his own government account. The email was disclosed to the provincial NDP as part of a separate FOI request.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing said it could not answer specific questions about the Star’s FOI request or the ministry’s submissions to the IPC. In a short statement, the spokesperson said the ministry is committed to its obligations under FOI laws.
“We have zero tolerance for any wrongdoing and expect anyone involved in the decision-making about the Greenbelt lands to have followed the letter of the law.”
