Mysterious consultant known as 'Mr. X' in Greenbelt report ID'd as former Clarington mayor: sources
CBC
The mysterious development consultant who Ontario's integrity commissioner identified only as "Mr. X" in a scathing report about the removal of land from the Greenbelt has been identified to CBC News as former Clarington, Ont., mayor John Mutton.
In a report released on Wednesday, Integrity Commissioner J. David Wake said Mr. X was one of two consultants hired by landowner Peter Tanenbaum to work on getting about 34 hectares of land on Nash Road in that community, approximately 83 kilometres east of Toronto, removed from the Greenbelt and rezoned to permit development.
Wake found that Mr. X may have engaged in unregistered lobbying and other potential lobbying violations while doing that work.
Nico Fidani-Diker, principal at the lobbying firm OnPoint Strategy Group, confirmed to CBC News that he worked with Mutton as a consultant on the Nash Road project.
"I had no interactions with Mr. Mutton other than this one file," said Fidani-Diker, who previously worked as an executive assistant to Premier Doug Ford.
"I am unaware of the details of Mr. Mutton's contract with Mr.Tanenbaum."
Two other sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, who are close to the province's Progressive Conservative government, identified Mutton as Mr. X on Friday.
CBC News was unable to reach Mutton for comment Friday.
However, The Toronto Star, which was first to identify Mutton as Mr. X, reported that Mutton said he had worked for Tanenbaum for "over 17 years," but stressed that it wasn't as a lobbyist.
"I'm not a lobbyist. I have a development services company where we provide planning, engineering, and everything," the Star quoted him as saying.
"I've never been contracted to do any type of lobbying to get any lands out of the Greenbelt."
The revelation is the latest twist in a controversy that erupted after successive reports from two independent legislative watchdogs revealed major flaws with the province's 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.
Wake found Mr. X interacted with senior political staffers in the office of Housing Minister Steve Clark, arranged golf with them that apparently didn't happen and a paid lunch that did, and offered them tickets to a Toronto Raptors basketball game.
He was also promised a million-dollar payout if he succeeded in influencing governments to allow housing to be built on his client's land.
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