Ontario's Premier Accountability Dashboard · Queen's Park Watch
Cathryn Motherwell
Office of the Integrity Commissioner of Ontario
Ontario Integrity Commissioner. On August 20, 2025, Motherwell issued her report declining to investigate the complaint filed by Liberal MPP Ted Hsu alleging improper conduct by Premier Ford and Ministers Khanjin, McCarthy, and Lecce in connection with the York1 landfill EA reversal. She found the "reasonable and probable grounds" threshold was not met. Her report explicitly stated she made "no findings about the underlying facts" and had "no information about why the government found it important to advance this particular landfill at this time" — meaning the non-investigation left the underlying question of donor influence unexamined.
Connected Scandals
The Ford government promised a comprehensive environmental assessment for a proposed landfill directly upstream from Canada's only population of the salamander mussel — then buried the reversal inside omnibus Bill 5 after winning a byelection on the promise, exempting a company whose owners donated $200,000 to the PCs from all provincial environmental review, leaving 33 species at risk in one of Canada's most biodiverse rivers with no provincial protection.
Declined to investigate the Integrity Commissioner complaint over the York1 landfill EA reversal in August 2025, explicitly stating she made "no findings about the underlying facts" — leaving the donor-to-decision question unexamined.