Ontario's Premier Accountability Dashboard · Queen's Park Watch
Frank Klees
Estimated cost to Ontario
>$18.3B
Former Ontario PC Cabinet Minister (including Transportation Minister 2003) under Mike Harris and Ernie Eves. Later became a registered lobbyist. Retained by both the Rice Group (Greenbelt) and DeGasperis-controlled companies (Bradford Bypass/Highway 413), making him a key connector across multiple Ford-era development scandals.
Connected Scandals
Premier Doug Ford secretly handed 15 parcels of protected Greenbelt farmland to well-connected developers through a three-week backroom process — a windfall worth $8.3 billion to those developers — and only reversed it after the Auditor General publicly exposed the scheme.
Retained by the Rice Group as a lobbyist in 2019–2020. His prior ties to the Ontario PC establishment made him a well-positioned advocate ahead of the Greenbelt removals that substantially increased the value of Rice's King Township holdings.
Ford revived two cancelled highway megaprojects — the $8.6–12 billion Highway 413 and the $2–4 billion Bradford Bypass — despite independent studies showing negligible traffic benefits. Developers who own thousands of acres along both routes donated over $800,000 to Ford's PCs. Both projects were shielded from meaningful federal environmental review.
Registered lobbyist for DeGasperis-controlled DG Group and Condor Properties, targeting Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney's ministry. His lobbying on "highways" began in March 2020 — one month before the Ford government publicly announced its intent to revive the Bradford Bypass. The DeGasperis consortium held hundreds of acres along the Bradford Bypass corridor.