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

Adam Carter · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 17, 2025 12:34 PM EDT | Last Updated: 2 minutes ago

The erstwhile politician of Clarington, Ont. — who Ontario's integrity commissioner identified arsenic "Mr. X" successful a scathing study astir the removal of onshore from the Greenbelt — has been banned from lobbying the provincial authorities for 2 years.

Integrity Commissioner J. David Wake's bureau said successful a connection issued Thursday that owed to aggregate transgressions implicit a play of respective years, it was banning John Mutton from lobbying the state until April of 2027.

"Mr. Mutton's respective failures to register, usage of contingency fees, and disregard of the struggle of involvement prohibition undermine the Act's intent of transparency and nationalist assurance successful the independency of nationalist assemblage determination making," the study reads.

"Given the important fig of superior contraventions going backmost respective years, the Registrar decided to prohibit Mr. Mutton from lobbying Ontario nationalist bureau holders, arsenic defined successful the Act, for a play of 2 years, successful summation to publishing his sanction and a summary of his non-compliance."

CBC News has reached retired to Mutton, but did not instantly person a response. 

The integrity commissioner's ruling outlines respective contraventions, similar successful 2022, erstwhile Mutton didn't registry aft helium lobbied 2 nationalist bureau holders successful an effort to get a client's lands removed from the Greenbelt.

"In the people of his enactment for this aforesaid client, Mr. Mutton besides contravened the Act by knowingly placing these nationalist bureau holders successful a presumption of existent oregon imaginable struggle of involvement by offering them gifts of a circular of play astatine a backstage play people and tickets to a Toronto Raptors hoops game," the study reads.

Asked astir the contented Thursday astatine an unrelated quality conference, Premier Doug Ford said helium was lone conscionable proceeding astir this, but offered a "clear message" that radical who lobby authorities person to travel the rules to bash so.

"If you don't travel the rules, you merit a punishment. Simple arsenic that," Ford said.

In a statement, Opposition NDP Leader Marit Stiles said Mutton had repeatedly breached the instrumentality for astir a decade.

"Our state is facing a batch of uncertainty close present — people are disquieted astir their future, their livelihoods," she said. "People request a authorities they tin spot to enactment their champion interests first. 

"The Premier needs to cleanable up the civilization of cash-for-access and preferential attraction that continues to plague his authorities truthful we tin get to enactment strengthening Ontario." 

Mutton served arsenic politician of Clarington, a municipality with a 2021 colonisation of astir 101,000, from 1997 to 2006, according to his LinkedIn profile. The illustration says helium has been president and CEO of the improvement firm Municipal Solutions since 2006.

The prohibition marks the latest twist successful a contention that erupted aft successive reports from 2 independent legislative watchdogs revealed large flaws with the province's now-reversed determination to physique homes connected the Greenbelt — a immense 810,000-hectare country of protected farmland, wood and wetlands stretching from Niagara Falls to Peterborough meant to beryllium permanently off-limits to development.