Greenbelt Reversal: Unearthing Ontario’s Real Estate Controversy

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has reversed his decision to open up the Greenbelt for development, following backlash from opposition parties, media investigations, and findings by the province's auditor general and Ethics commissioner. The report suggests developers had inside information about the lifting of restrictions on the Greenbelt and could make up to $8.5 billion by redeveloping it. As a result, two cabinet ministers have resigned.

This isn’t going away, especially with ongoing accusations of corruption. The reversal comes as part of Ford's More Homes Built Faster legislation, which aims to build 150,000 new homes a year over the next 10 years to address the housing crisis.

In this episode Des connects with Toronto Star Queen’s Park reporter Rob Benzie 

Guest: Robert Benzie, Queen’s Park Bureau Chief, Toronto Star
Email | X   

Thanks to Feedspot for recognizing Sold in the 6ix as one of the Top Ten Real Estate podcasts in Toronto.

Desmond can be reached at: Website | Email | X | Instagram | Facebook   

Recorded in Sep 2023

Transcript

Desmond Brown (00:00):

The big news in Ontario is all about the green belt. All of those acres of land that were supposed to be protected against development. But despite saying he would never let anyone build on it, our premier, Doug Ford opened it up for developers. Ford said he opened it up because of our housing crisis. And you may remember he brought in new legislation not so long ago. It's called More Homes Built Faster, an Act to build 150,000 new homes a year over the next 10 years. This caused a huge backlash from opposition parties, investigations by the media and findings by the province's, auditor, general and Ethics commissioner, where the report said these developers had inside information about the restrictions being lifted on those parcels of the green belt and that they could make up to $8.5 billion by redeveloping it. As a result, that's billion with a B. So now with all this pressure, two cabinet ministers have resigned and Premier Doug Ford has now reversed a decision and has gone back to protecting the Green Belt. But this issue is not going to simply disappear, especially with all the accusations of corruption today on Soul. In the sixth, we dig deeper into the controversy and we've tracked down the Queens Park Bureau chief of the Toronto Star, Rob Benzie during his busy workday down at Queens Park.

(01:38):

So Robert, welcome back to Sold in the 6ix.

Robert Benzie (01:40):

Always nice to be here with you.

Desmond Brown (01:42):

Oh, I just love having you. So anyway, when I spoke to you in August just after the auditor General, Bonnie Lysyk released a report, I wanted to get you on the podcast immediately, but I shut down the podcast for the summer and you said, don't worry, this story's not going to go away. And were you ever, right, I mean you were on vacation when a lot of the big stuff started breaking, and then I texted you last week when Doug Ford did the flip flop, and I said, I guess he was waiting for you to come back from Europe.

Robert Benzie (02:14):

I really appreciate the premier taking his time, Des, because this is a story and it's going to continue for a while. Yes, the Premier did his flip-flop last week. And just for listeners who haven't been following you as closely as you and I in 2022, so in November, 2022, the Premier announced that they were going to open up 15 parcels of land on the green belt to development. And this is part of the government's housing push. And as you know more about this than most people, there is a housing shortage all over Ontario and there's not enough supply and it's caused prices to rise, and it's been a concern for people for a roof over their head. So the premier thought that by opening up this land that would add another 50,000 homes to the housing supply, it hasn't of course worked out like that. It has in turn been a huge problem for him.

(03:15):

This whole issue has been a problem for him because it turns out that some people may have profited. There was Bonnie Lysyk's report that you and I talked about in early August, and then there was the second report the day before I went on vacation. August 30th, the Integrity Commissioner released his report saying that he had problems, and that report led to Steve Clark resigning following Monday, labor Day Monday as housing minister. And a few weeks after that, Khalid Rashid resigned as business services minister after some of the things that were in J David Wake's report on August 30th about a trip to Las Vegas with a developer who had land on the green belt. So this thing has cascaded, it has now cost the premier two cabinet ministers, two senior staff and a lot of political capital in September. He's now poll at 34% according to Abacus Data, which polls for the Toronto Star. And in August he was at 38%, and in July he was at 41%. So they're dropping. The trend line is not good.

Desmond Brown (04:29):

Yeah, sure. Since November, there have been, I guess the media got ahold of this and started doing investigations on this and came up with obviously what ended up biting 'em. In the end, what they figured was some type of insider trading, as I like to call it, with these developers. We've had people like Mike Schreiner, the leader of the Green Party, who's just dug right in and has not let go of this. And the same with Maritz styles with the N D P. It was just a matter of time, I think just based on all of this evidence pointing towards, you can almost call it corruption.

Robert Benzie (05:10):

Well, I mean, yeah, in fairness to the premier, the Integrity Commissioner has not pointed the finger at him. And the police, while the police have been contacted, the R C M P have not as of yet announced their intention. So today is Thursday, September what, 28th. So as of today they haven't, but who knows what the future holds.

Desmond Brown (05:40):

So Rob, I'm going to go back to one of the things I learned from you when you were my editor at the National Post Charlie Lewis as well, to never assume that our readers or our viewers know exactly what we're talking about. So let's take a look at the Green Belt and I mean, people are throwing this term out there. Everybody knows everything about it. But let's go over the background of the Green Belt and just explain to people exactly what it's all about, where it is. And does this have anything to do with, remember when Premier McGuinty set hands off on the Oak Ridges Marine? Is this all part of it?

Robert Benzie (06:20):

This is what came out of that, and that was speaking about you and I, the National Post back when it launched 25 years ago in October des. So in 1998 and 1999, the Harris government was reelected in 1999, and in the period after that, they allowed development on environmentally sensitive land. The Oak, Ridges Moraine, Dalton McGuinty then as opposition leader, said that he would stop that kind of development. Now, they tried to stop some housing being built on the Oak Ridges, Maine, but they couldn't. So instead, when they won power in 2003, so 20 years ago on October 2nd that they won, they started the route towards a green belt. And this green belt came into existence in 2005, and it's a 2 million acre swath of land around the greater Tron on Hamilton area. And it's not the Amazon rainforest, it's kind of arbitrary. There are plots of land and in fairness to some of the developers momentarily had their land out of the green belt.

(07:31):

So that under Mr. Ford's plan that he since backed off of their land is right beside Highway 4 0 7. It is not farmland right now. Some of it is ready to be developed. Some of it there are fields right across, or there are subdivisions right across the street. So there is a misnomer that it is this sacred preserve of land and it's not quite that way. Some of it is for sure environmentally sensitive. There are water basins and things like that that environmentalists have concerns about. But under the Green Belt, even under the way that it was created under Dalton McGuinty, you were still allowed to develop critical infrastructure pipelines, hydro lines, highways. So it was really mostly about housing. It was designed to prevent urban sprawl. And it has been largely successful except what happened is you get sort of a leapfrogging impact, and you've seen this when you drive up to your cottage or whatever, there's that thing on Highway 400 where all of a sudden you're in Greenlands and then all of a sudden there's subdivisions again.

Desmond Brown (08:37):

Yeah, exactly. I grew up Highway 10 actually towards Lake Huron. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So the land that we're talking about right now, we're talking about 15 parcels that were released that forwarded released like 15 parcels. And let's go over where these parcels are. I know there's about 1900 acres they call the Duffin Rouge area in Pickering. We've got another number of acres up in Vaughn, king Township, where else are they?

Robert Benzie (09:08):

And Hamilton, there's some land in the Hamilton area. It's really spread out. And the problem is the process for picking those 15 plots was overseen by, according to the auditor general overseen by Steve Clark's, then chief of staff of a fellow called Ryan Amato. And developers were approaching Amato and saying, look, we want our land out of the greenbelt. And this is not a new phenomenon. Some of the land has been owned for a long time by developers who wanted it out of the G Belt since created the green belt. But my colleagues at the Star have found that eight of the 15 parcels switched hands since Mr. Ford's government took power in 2018. So we don't know if that's because they were tipped off that something was eventually going to happen because remember in March, 2018 before he was Tory leader, but while he was running for the Tory leadership, Mr. Ford assured developers behind closed doors that he would open up the green belt. He got caught on iPhone camera saying

Desmond Brown (10:10):

That. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Robert Benzie (10:12):

The video was very damaging to him. He went public and said, look, I will never do that. And he kept his word until 2022, late 2022. So all through his first term, they were preserving the green belt, and then in after reelection in June, 2022, they decided that they needed this land or housing, even though their own land task force had said housing task force had found they don't need extra land. I mean, the problem isn't land as much as it is approvals according to the housing task force.

Desmond Brown (10:44):

Yeah, and I'm going to talk about that a little later because I know Ford, even last week when he was apologizing and groveling away there, he was saying, you know what? Oh, there's a housing crisis, there's a housing crisis. We have to build these houses, but ra, we drive around this city, in this province, we see a lot of vacant properties. We see plazas that are derelict, they're not even being used. We see lots of infill around, and I know the city of Toronto is doing their best. Then you can now have multi-units like up to four or five units in a house and so on. So there are alternatives to this. The Green Belt thing does not smell good. First of all, you've got decisions being made by not the Minister of Housing. So Clark still, Stephen Clark still had to walk the plank over this, but Ryan Abbassi making these, sorry, did I get the name

Robert Benzie (11:48):

Right? Amato. Amato, yeah,

Desmond Brown (11:50):

Yeah, sorry, Ryan making these decisions, some of these developers being seen at Ford's Daughter's stag, or sorry, stag and doe. Yeah, the Las Vegas. The Las Vegas encounter for the massages with a couple of other developers with the minister, and he's not even Minister of Housing. I'm sorry, that's the other one who resigned.

Robert Benzie (12:18):

I'm sorry, Lee Rashid. He was the Minister Rashid of business services. Yeah.

Desmond Brown (12:24):

So all of these things point towards, Hey, you guys, we're going to be lifting this for you. So it's time to either, like I said, purchase the land, like you said, there were those eight parcels purchase the land, and then those of you who already had the land for such a long period of time, don't worry about it. We're going to be lifting the restrictions on this. And this is what's led to the Premier completely flipping on it and now saying that it'll never ever be developed,

Robert Benzie (13:00):

And they're going to introduce legislation in the coming weeks that will formalize that Des. So what you're going to have is a future government will never be able to develop on it unless it changes the law. I am surprised that the Tories feel they have to create a law to prevent a future government from trying to do what they tried to do. It's very strange thing.

Desmond Brown (13:21):

Yeah. So what do you think about what I had said about alternatives to the green, to the green belt? Well, I think you're out, Darren. You look around too,

Robert Benzie (13:28):

Desmond, you're bang on, I mean the city better than anyone I know, and you and I have talked about this before, there are lots of Brownfield, there's lots of surface parking lots and density is the problem. There's not enough density, especially in the 4 0 1 6. I mean this. And one thing I think Steve Clark does deserve credit for is that in his housing legislation, he tried to fight against Nimbyism and what he calls bananas build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything. And I think that's a very important point because it crosses the political spectrum where I live by Trinity Bellwoods Park, I have neighbors who have stopped the four 13 signs on their lawns and they're big environmentalists and all of that, except that they also are the one same people who didn't want six story apartment buildings on Ossington Avenue, which is service with transit and so on. And you kind of thinking, well, where should people live? All of these folks are against urban sprawl, but they don't want apartment buildings in their own neighborhoods.

Desmond Brown (14:29):

Exactly. We can't have it both ways. Exactly. I have these conversations all the time with people, my friends here in the city all the time, like, oh, we've got this housing crisis, housing crisis. But no, don't build over there. Forget it. It's going to take away the character of our neighborhood.

Robert Benzie (14:46):

That's the old sod Desmond and the beaches is one of the neighborhoods in the city, but there is Nimbyism there, nimbyism, where I am in North Toronto in Eco, I mean, you name it, everyone wants density. They just don't want it on their street or on the main street. Two blocks from their street.

Desmond Brown (15:09):

Yeah. Do you think Ford just started to panic a little bit? He brings in this act, the more homes build faster act, very ambitious. We talked about this before with you on the podcast, 150,000 houses a year over the next 10 years, very ambitious. Then we run into material increases in prices for materials, labor shortages, and even projects being canceled and

Robert Benzie (15:37):

Higher interest

Desmond Brown (15:39):

And higher interest rates seems

Robert Benzie (15:41):

Really slow down. It was a perfect storm of everything. You've got labor shortages and higher borrowing costs, so all of a sudden who's building or who's buying? And you're right. I think that's a very good way to characterize it. I think the Premier did panic a little bit because they made this promise to build 150 on average, 150,000 homes a year for a decade. But to put that in context, the best year of housing starts they'd had since 1987 was 100,000. So they had to do 50% better than their best year on average every single year to reach this target of 1.5 million by 2031. There's nowhere they won't get close to a million by 2031.

Desmond Brown (16:20):

Yeah, I'm not sure of the latest housing start numbers, but I know just from driving around for Kingston Road and Scarborough for example, that's my route. If I want to go out to the Durham region, and you'll see all of these vacant lots that were already bought for development. The signs are up coming soon. They've been coming soon for a long time, nothing being built, no shovels in the ground at all along there. So there are some major, major problems from when it comes to starting a development from scratch. There really are. Well,

Robert Benzie (16:56):

Isn't it that the case that when you're building a condo or a townhouse development, something infill housing, you have to sell a certain percentage of the units before you can get your financing to actually start building them, right?

Desmond Brown (17:09):

That's right. Somewhere around, depending on lenders, 70 to 80%. Wow.

Robert Benzie (17:16):

And if people aren't buying condos because of high interest rates or they can't even get in the market, it's going to be hard for the condo developers to get their financing. And I think this is part of the problem for the government, and this is why they're moving on this modular housing. So they're looking at parcels of land that they already own the Ontario government already owns and try to put modular housing on it and sell that or use it as low for low income or affordable housing, rental housing, things like that. I mean, they know they need to show results. They got an election in two and a half years. If they don't show results two and a half years, they're going to be packing up boxes and moving to a new location, not in government anymore.

Desmond Brown (17:55):

And I think that's the way we have to go. We need more government involvement because it is nice to say that the private sector can pick it up, but they haven't been able to. They're just the economics too. It just is not working right now. When you take a look at a project like Region Park, it's looking very, very successful. And that is a joint private public sector project that's been going up. And it's beautiful because it has the rental elements of it, it has the retail elements of it, and it also has the private ownership elements of it, which for private condo owners and so on. And that neighborhood now is just starting to really, really blossom. It's beautiful to walk down there or to drive down there and see how much it's changed and just how vibrant it is, and just to have everybody, the people who are under lower income are shoulder to shoulder with the people that are more middle class and so on, which gives from somebody like me who came out of a very lower income home, I knew that just being, luckily I was living in a neighborhood where I could watch the people going to work every day.

(19:18):

I could see that work ethic and what it took to get ahead, staying in school, getting an education and so on, and having those influences on me and my brother we're incredible. It's helped us get to where we are today. So I think we need a lot more of

Robert Benzie (19:34):

That. Exactly. You're exactly right. You need to have a community, a city as a community, and the community can't be cut off from one another. That's why it's so important to have good transit so that people can get around so that they're not stuck in one part of the city. That's why it's important to have good schools in the city, throughout the city so that people can get good education and can lift themselves up. I guess you could say. It's just that aspirational aspect to a city is really, really important. And the thing that I worry about is these suburban gated communities or whatever, where people aren't really living in a city where they're part of a community where there's rich people, poor people, middle income people. Do you know what I mean? And I think if you look at all great cities of the world at their best, they are places where you can move up the property ladder

Desmond Brown (20:30):

For sure. When it comes back to getting back to the green belt, I don't oppose development in all of it. There are definitely some areas of it that are better to develop than others. Obviously the ones that have good proximity to some of the small communities, obviously cities or small towns out there, the ones that have good proximity to transportation and so on. So I think that's okay with me. That's okay with me. But we can't be always thinking about urban sprawl, like you said, to go in there and develop these because a lot more has to come into play after that. The infrastructure, the schools, the hospitals, the road, all of that stuff. And was there any plan with these developers to develop any things like that? Any of the infrastructure that comes with the community?

Robert Benzie (21:29):

Yeah, under the plan, they were going to be on the hook for a lot of sunk costs, like infrastructure costs, but there's still going to have to be schools and shops and everything like that built. So hospitals and transit, the government. One of the other things that they've been pushing right now is what they call transit oriented communities. And that's what you see on the new Ontario line. The subway line's going to go from Ontario place up to the Ontario Science Center in Don Mills, and that's where

Desmond Brown (22:00):

It stands now.

Robert Benzie (22:01):

Where it stands. Now, you may be down in Ontario place the way the government's going, but who knows? They might back off that too. I'm not sure. They want to have at a transit hub community, and some are already under construction now. You'll see they're going to have dense towers above the subway stations. That's a brilliant bit of urban planning, I think. But remember, there had been resistance to this. It is still striking to me, Desmond, you and I talked to this before. I think just privately, when you go along the Danforth, there's still two story buildings above subway stations, past Pap or heading out towards Scarborough more. That's just not sustainable. If you have a subway station, you can have a 40 story building right above it. I think most people would agree that that is not unreasonable.

Desmond Brown (22:51):

No, it isn't. It isn't. But if we had the opposition to that, the young Eglinton area, remember?

Robert Benzie (22:57):

Oh yeah, look at that. Yeah, those big towers at Young and Edmonton. Now young and Edon is a mess right now. But that's about the crosstown. That's about building more transits. That's not about those towers though. Those towers didn't make it a mess.

Desmond Brown (23:08):

Yeah. So you talked about the modular housing. Are there any other solutions right now? And without going into the panic that we're going to be put back for years because we can't develop the green belt and we've taken these projects away from these developers, there have to be other solutions. Like I talked about some of the things that I'm seeing within the city of Toronto. They said more density, some of these projects that are already ready to go, but art for starters, for whatever reason.

Robert Benzie (23:36):

 Well, one thing that the federal government, it was the provincial government that asked for it, and it's the federal government that has actually followed through. They've removed the H S T from rental housing construction, and that was just something that federal government announced this week. They're very excited about that here at Queens Park. They know that is going to make it. I was speaking to someone this week who was saying it could mean 25 million less on the construction of a 400 unit apartment building. So that makes it really lucrative for a developer to build a tower for rental apartments. So you have 1, 2, 3 bedroom units. I mean, this is the other thing too, is that we have to get out of this mindset, and Toronto has changed since you and I were kids. It's not a single family home white picket fence kind of place anymore. Getting to be more like London, like New York, like Paris global cities where people, families do live in apartments. And there's nothing wrong with that, but you have to have the units that can accommodate a family with more than one kid.

Desmond Brown (24:39):

But the Canadian way, that Canadian mindset is that we all have this right to own a home. So I always say Toronto has always wanted to be this world-class city. As you know, we've wanted to be a London or a Paris or in New York or Los Angeles. Well, growing pains come with that. We are the economic engine, but part of the growing pains are number one, it attracts a lot of people. It attracts a lot of immigration. And when people come to Canada, they want to settle in a place like Toronto, which of course puts a lot of stress on the availability for housing and so on. So these are some of the growing pains that we have to go through if we want to be that world-class city. And actually, when you take a look, now we're in a city and a province that looks like it's being reconstructed from scratch. Like, oh my gosh, you take a look at all of the construction that's going on in this city. It's frustrating to get around and all that. And I complain crazy about it, but in the long run's, it's going to be just amazing. It will be. If we can live through it, we're not going to see it.

Robert Benzie (25:55):

Yeah, we're

Desmond Brown (25:57):

Not going to see the Eglinton line finished.

Robert Benzie (25:58):

Well, yeah, we'll see the crosstown finished. I would expect to be finished next year, which would be great. The Ontario line, the subway is many years away, at least a decade or more away. So our kids will enjoy it. We may not, but I think the city for sure, its character has changed. It's not the Whiteread single family dwelling place that it was 50, 60, 70 years ago. That's not sustainable. I think people have to get their heads around politicians. I think the public's got their heads around this. I think politicians have to get their heads around the fact that the place has changed, demographics have changed. There are people who are not necessarily going to want to own a house. They don't mind renting for their whole lives. That's been the case in Europe forever.

Desmond Brown (26:48):

Yeah, yeah, true. But Rob, I'm going to correct you a little bit here. Like 50 years ago when a lot of the immigrants were coming to this city, a lot of them would, when they were ready to buy homes, they would buy a home, but then they would put two families in it. Their extended family would be upstairs. I know that's what we did. They would rent out portions of it. So I think if anything, when we start talking about affordability and a lot of people saying that my children will never ever be able to buy a home in this city in a lot of cases, but I always say there is a sacrifice that can be made. Well, bingo, if you're willing. Yeah. If you're willing to do that for a few years until you're able to move on, you're in a better financial situation, move on.

Robert Benzie (27:32):

Also when we came from Jamaica, or my mom came from Jamaica, we had cousins from Jamaica coming and staying with us to get on their feet. And then they had their own homes and other cousins were coming and staying with them. And it was kind of like this relay race of help. And I think that's something that I think a lot of people who are from Canada endeavor aren't immigrants like you and me. They may not know that that's how it has worked. And you look when you go to Brampton, you see very good examples of that right now in Brampton where, and it's a thriving, fast growing place where families are helping families and everyone is coming. They're contributing. They're building their own houses, they're bringing other family, and they're all doing a better, making Ontario a better place, a more thriving place. And we've got 15 million people here, as Doug Ford likes to tell people, we're the fastest growing region anywhere in North America, a thousand people arriving every single day. We need more, but we need to have somewhere for all those folks to live.

Desmond Brown (28:34):

Yeah, exactly. And he says, folks, he ever, I'm going to just touch on the green belt one more time before we move on here, before we close up, but there were a lot of people saying, what type of housing was going to be developed on this green? Was it going to be affordable or was it going to be more enclaves for the middle class? Were they going to be gated communities?

Robert Benzie (28:59):

Exactly. And this was the problem from this thing, from the get-go. It's not like you can't force a private developer who owns a thousand acres of some land by highway 4 0 7 or whatever. You can't say you're going to be building affordable housing units, 40 story buildings, blah, blah, blah. Right here. A lot of these developments, I think were going to be McMansions. You'd get a $3 million house, big huge places, swimming pools. And look, that's nice if you can afford it, but that's not going to alleviate the housing crisis. You need places. You need townhouses, you need condos. You need places that can accommodate a lot of people in a relatively small area. You need density. So I think that's been part of the problem. And mean, people who are opponents of urban sprawl, they are suburban. They don't like suburbs, but they're the same people who don't want apartment buildings on Dundas Street at the corner of Dundas on Ossington. Do you know what I mean? This is the thing you said earlier on the show, you got to pick a lane.

Desmond Brown (30:01):

Yep, yep. You really do. Okay, now as we're wrapping up Ford, his apology, will this reversal really help? And do you think that he's done this early enough in his mandate that people will forget in two years when it comes time to cast their ballot for the next provincial election? I think it's more than two years away, isn't it?

Robert Benzie (30:29):

Two and a half years away? Yeah. I mean, he is wounded for sure. Is he mortally wounded? I don't know. I think it's too soon to say that because Harold Wilson said, A week is a long time in politics. Well, he's got a hundred weeks till the next election, no more. So he's got a lot of lifetimes yet to live. The problem for Mr. Ford is this is not in his control. If there is a police investigation, if there are criminal charges, if there are other related controversies that emerged from this scandal, it's not going to go away. So I mean, one reelection in June, 2022 with more seats than he had, which is really, really rare in Ontario. And I think maybe they were seduced by that last year, and they kind of thought, well, we could do no wrong. And the problem is, what is it Ray Crock used to say about from McDonald's? Nothing recedes like success. Well, this is what it looks like could be happening. I would never count them out. But boy, it's not looking good for them right now. But they don't face voters until June, 2026.

Desmond Brown (31:44):

Yeah. And what are your conservative insiders saying to you?

Robert Benzie (31:48):

They're worried. They're worried because it's, they know the optics on this stink, it looks bad, and it's a drip, drip, drip scandal. It's not like they're not getting beaten up by the opposition parties as much as the opposition parties used to. When the Tories were in opposition, they were very effective at beating up the liberals over the gas plants affair over the Sudbury by-election affair, things like that. The opposition parties now are a little, I don't want to say they're tamer, but they don't seem to be going for the jugular the way that the Torres did in opposition. But that could change. The liberals are getting a new leader on December 2nd. They've won two by elections this summer. They feel emboldened. Who knows, by the time 2026 rolls around, both the liberals and N D P could be in the stronger positions.

Desmond Brown (32:39):

Yeah, true. Okay. And one more thing. These developers who had this land, well not taken away from them, but their ability to develop on this land taken away from them, what's going to happen to them? Are they going to take this to court? Are they going to challenge the government on this, do you think?

Robert Benzie (32:57):

So they haven't said yet. I mean, there's a group of them, right? And now I am told by the Torys that they don't believe there will be litigation because these developers are all doing other projects across Ontario that need government cooperation and government approval. But if I had a big parcel of land that I bought for $90 million or whatever, and then I was suddenly it was worth billions. And then the government told me, oh, by the way, that land that you bought, you borrowed money to buy. It's now only worth what you paid for it, not the billions you thought it would be. I would be pretty ticked off. So will there be litigation? I won't be surprised that there is, but we haven't heard any yet.

Desmond Brown (33:43):

Well, only time will tell. Like said, said, will there be an R C M P investigation? What else will come from this? Is there going to be more fallout? Robert, thank you so much for joining me. It's always great to see you.

Robert Benzie (33:54):

Nice to see you, Desmond.

Desmond Brown (33:56):

And that's Rob Benzie, the Queen Park Bureau chief of the Toronto Star. Thanks very much

Robert Benzie (34:01):

See ya Des.

Desmond Brown (34:03):

And that's our latest episode of Sold in the 6ix. And like Rob Benzie says, it's just a matter of time to see if any of this is really going to affect the Premier. It's two and a half years away to the next election. So will the voters turf them out? Well, we'll have to wait and see. I want to thank my producer, Doug Downs of Stories and Strategies for this latest podcast. And if you like this podcast, please subscribe, leave a rating, and of course send it to a friend. To get in touch with me, please email me at desmondbrown.ca and you can also follow me on all of the social media platforms. And my handle is Des in the 6ix, and the six is spelled number 6 ix. And if you're a realtor outside of Toronto and you need someone to look after your clients if they're moving to or from the G T A, please keep me in mind. I promise that your clients will be well looked after. Next time. I'm Desmond Brown.