Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles filed a complaint with the provincial integrity commissioner on Thursday, citing concerns over developers and lobbyists attending Premier Doug Ford's family events.
"Over the last several weeks, concerning details have come to light about developers and lobbyists with donor and political ties to Premier Doug Ford and the Ontario PC Party being invited to participate in two Ford family events," Stiles wrote in her letter to Commissioner David Wake.
"Given this, I am requesting an opinion on whether the Premier has acted improperly with respect to these events."
Stiles points to Ford's daughter's stag-and-doe, held at the Premier's home in August of last year. Tickets to the fundraising event were sold for $150 a pop, with Stiles noting that invitees were "later telling journalists they felt 'browbeaten' into purchasing tickets."
"Several of the individuals and developers who attended the subsequent wedding have received favourable Minister's Zoning Orders and at least one has benefitted from the recent policy changes related to the Greenbelt land removals," Stiles wrote, referring to developers with ties to Ford who not-so-coincidentally purchased protected Greenbelt land over the past few years before Ford announced plans to remove protections and open the land up for development.
Stiles called this part of "a troubling pattern of ongoing government policy decisions benefitting particular private interest of individuals and developers with ties to the Premier."
When previously questioned, both in press conferences by reporters and in the legislature by colleagues, Ford dismissed any enquiries about the the stag-and-doe and wedding as "ridiculous," saying it's a personal family matter.
“I know the difference of what we should and shouldn’t do,” Ford said during a press conference earlier this month. “Our family's been in politics for 30 years, we know tens of thousands of people, and I went to the integrity commissioner -- he cleared it 1,000% -- not 999 -- 1,000%”
At the time, the integrity commissioner determined that since Ford had “no knowledge of gifts” and there was “no discussion of government business,” the events were in the clear.
