Former Ontario mayor dubbed 'Mr. X' banned from lobbying province for 2 years

The former mayor of Clarington, Ont. — who Ontario's integrity commissioner identified as "Mr. X" in a scathing report about the removal of land from the Greenbelt — has been banned from lobbying the provincial government for two years.

The Integrity Commissioner' office said in a statement issued Thursday that due to multiple transgressions over a period of several years, it was banning John Mutton from lobbying the province until April of 2027.

"Mr. Mutton's several failures to register, use of contingency fees, and disregard of the conflict of interest prohibition undermine the Act's purpose of transparency and public confidence in the independence of public sector decision making," the report reads.

"Given the significant number of serious contraventions going back several years, the Registrar decided to prohibit Mr. Mutton from lobbying Ontario public office holders, as defined in the Act, for a period of two years, in addition to publishing his name and a summary of his non-compliance."

CBC News has reached out to Mutton, but did not immediately receive a response. 

The integrity commissioner's ruling outlines several contraventions, like in 2022, when Mutton didn't register after he lobbied two public office holders in an effort to get a client's lands removed from the Greenbelt.

"In the course of his work for this same client, Mr. Mutton also contravened the Act by knowingly placing these public office holders in a position of real or potential conflict of interest by offering them gifts of a round of golf at a private golf course and tickets to a Toronto Raptors basketball game," the report reads.

Asked about the issue Thursday at an unrelated news conference, Premier Doug Ford said he was only just hearing about this, but offered a "clear message" that people who lobby government have to follow the rules to do so.

"If you don't follow the rules, you deserve a punishment. Simple as that," Ford said.

In a statement, Opposition NDP Leader Marit Stiles said Mutton had repeatedly broken the law for almost a decade.

"Our province is facing a lot of uncertainty right now — people are worried about their future, their livelihoods," she said. "People need a government they can trust to put their best interests first. 

"The Premier needs to clean up the culture of cash-for-access and preferential treatment that continues to plague his government so we can get to work strengthening Ontario." 

Mutton served as mayor of Clarington, a municipality with a 2021 population of about 101,000, from 1997 to 2006, according to his LinkedIn profile. The profile says he has been president and CEO of the development firm Municipal Solutions since 2006.

The ban marks the latest twist in a controversy that erupted after successive reports from two independent legislative watchdogs revealed major flaws with the province's now-reversed decision to build homes on the Greenbelt — a vast 810,000-hectare area of protected farmland, forest and wetlands stretching from Niagara Falls to Peterborough meant to be permanently off-limits to development.