Paydirt E2: Bees, stags, does and Vegas

Emma McIntosh: That’s all right? We’re good to get into it?

Charlie Pinkerton: Yeah, a hundred percent.

Emma McIntosh: Okay, so tell me about August 12th, 2022, a very memorable day in your career.

Charlie Pinkerton: Indeed. So August 12th, 2022 was the date where I was first told of what at the time was described to me as a developers’ party at the Premier’s house.

Emma McIntosh: Was that a memorable day for you and also for maybe anyone else who watched that weird press conference?

Charlie Pinkerton: Yes. This is a particularly memorable press conference because it is the press conference where Premier Doug Ford swallowed a bee live on television.

Premier Doug Ford: Holy Christ, I just swallowed a bee. Holy, holy Christ. I knew that little bugger around. Okay, I’m good. He’s down here buzzing around right now. Holy Christ. He’s wedged to my throat. Sorry guys.

Emma McIntosh: I’m Emma McIntosh. I’m a reporter with The Narwhal usually, but today I’m taking over The Big Story with a mini series called Paydirt, looking at the inside story of Ontario’s Greenbelt Scandal. If you haven’t heard episode one, you should go back and start there. This is episode two. So Okay. Doug Ford swallowing the bee aside, this press conference was important for another reason. It was the morning after a pivotal party at the Premier’s house. This happened in August, 2022. A few months before the Ontario government announced it would cut into the protected Greenbelt, a move that would allow some well-connected land developers to build houses there and get a few billion dollars richer. In late 2022, I’d worked on an investigation into the Greenbelt cuts with my friends at The Toronto Star, and in the fallout of that, we started to hear whispers about a party that took place a few months earlier. We got these weird anonymous emails about it saying a bunch of big developers were there, nothing we could confirm, but by the time we had the tiniest whiff of it, a few other journalists were way, way ahead of us. That voice you heard at the top there is Charlie Pinkerton. He was one of them. He heard about the developer party the morning of the bee press conference. He works for an outlet called The Trillium now, but back then he was a reporter at Queen’s Park Briefing. The other journalist chasing this story was Colin D’Mello, who was tipped off about the party while it was happening.

Colin D’Mello: I am the Queen’s Park Bureau chief for Global News in Toronto.

Emma McIntosh: And?

Colin D’Mello: And the president of the Queen’s Park Press Gallery.

Emma McIntosh: The party Colin and Charlie heard about became known as The Stag and Doe because that’s what it was, a stag and doe. This is a uniquely Canadian thing, mostly in Ontario. It’s a pre-wedding party, basically a fundraiser for the happy couple. Friends and family usually pay for tickets to go. A lot of the time, there are raffles too. The bride at this stag and doe just happened to be one of Premier Doug Ford’s daughters. So why did it matter that the Premier’s family invited developers to this stag and doe? Because even before the Greenbelt carve-outs, people were asking questions about Doug Ford’s relationship with the development industry. Some of that came from stories Toronto Star reporter Noor Javed and I wrote about Highway 413. If you remember, Highway 413 is a Ford government project that’s supposed to be built through the Greenbelt. Those questions were definitely coming not just from us, but loudly and publicly from the premier’s critics. Colin was also hearing from Conservative sources who said that given those questions, they were not comfortable with the stag and dough.

Colin D’Mello: I think this relationship with developers has been one that’s been a constant for a very long time. The Premier seems to have an interesting relationship with a few developers. There are people who have development ties or their own development companies that have been given a lot of appointments by the Premier. In fact, one developer who owns a development company who owns a lot of land in the City of Toronto and air rights in the City of Toronto has been made the chair of the LCBO, has been given the Order of Canada, has been made the chair of Ontario Place. And some within the Conservative realm have questioned whether all of these ideas about how the Greenbelt should be treated come from the development industry to Doug Ford or from Doug Ford to the development industry. But that video in 2018 is actually very important because if you go back and listen to the entire thing, at one point the Premier says, I’ve been speaking with developers from across the province or across the country.

Premier Doug Ford: We will open up the Greenbelt, not all of it, but we’re going to open a big chunk of it up and we’re going to start building and making it more affordable and putting more houses out there. I’ve already talked to some of the biggest developers in this country, and again, I wish I could say it’s my idea, but it was their idea as well.

Colin D’Mello: He said, I wish this was my idea, but it was theirs to open up the Greenbelt for development.

Emma McIntosh: So when the Ford government announced the Greenbelt carve outs for real in 2022, all of a sudden the Premier’s relationships with developers were under a microscope. So developers being invited to a stag and doe for the Premier’s daughter, a type of party that’s normally just for friends and family, that definitely piqued the interest of reporters. What Colin and Charlie found raised more questions. First of all, one of the developers who benefited from the Greenbelt changes was at the party. Shakir Rehmatullah, who runs FLATO Developments. After part of one of his properties was taken out of the Greenbelt, he sold a big chunk of the land, making him one of the few who actually made money before the changes were reversed. Later we found out that another would be Greenbelt developer named Sergio Mangia also had a ticket but gave it to someone else. Second of all, this was no ordinary stag and doe because people who work for the Progressive Conservative party were selling tickets for $150 to not just close friends and family, but also lobbyists and developers and other people involved in Ontario politics. It’s pretty normal for people who want face time with the Premier to pay that and more to go to an official Progressive Conservative fundraiser. But this wasn’t organized by the party. It was a personal event at the Ford family home.

Colin D’Mello: This wasn’t necessarily just a party for the kids thrown by the kids as the premier had insisted. In fact, there were people who were well connected to the Progressive Conservative cause, well connected to Premier Doug Ford himself, who were actively selling tickets on behalf of the premier to a party that would’ve put money directly into the premier’s family’s pockets. What I do know is that the premier was given a lot of warnings in advance of the party to not do it, a lot of warnings, and he went ahead and did it. Anyway, I can’t go too much in depth in there without breaking a lot of confidences, but he was given some indications that this would’ve been problematic and it turned into a problem for him quite clearly.

Emma McIntosh: So in January, 2023, as I and other journalists worked to get to the bottom of what happened with the Greenbelt, this stag and doe controversy was unfolding behind the scenes. By the end of that month, Charlie felt like he had enough sources to confirm the story, so he went to the next step he needed to do to publish. He started reaching out to the premier’s office and developers to get their side of the story.

Charlie Pinkerton: Later on the same day that we reached out to all of these folks for comment that my boss, Jessica, who was the editor-in-chief of iPolitics and kept me briefed at the time that she learns that there is certain circumstances within the company at the time that prevented the story from being able to be published that set off about two weeks of intense worry and stress.

Emma McIntosh: Those circumstances Charlie’s talking about were a major split at one of Canada’s big media companies. At that point, he worked for QP Briefing, which was published by iPolitics, which had been owned by Torstar, the parent company of the Toronto Star. Torstar was run by two business partners, but their working relationship had not been going well. So they parted ways. One took The Star, the other took iPolitics, and that transition was complicated. All of that meant it was not a good time to publish a controversial investigation. Charlie had no choice but to wait. He started to worry another reporter might break the story while he was stuck in limbo. See, Charlie’s questions also prompted the Premier’s office to do something unusual. They reached out to the Integrity Commissioner to get his thoughts on whether the stag and doe complied with provincial ethics rules. The commissioner does that type of thing. His name is J. David Wake, and one of his roles is to give elected officials and political staff guidance on whether they’re in line with the rules. But it’s weird to ask when you’ve already done the thing. Usually people ask before.

Charlie Pinkerton: The Integrity Commissioner’s office takes a few days and eventually tells the Premier that based on the information that was provided, which was the bulk of which I understand to be the email that I had sent his office, that the Premier had not breached the Members Integrity Act.

Emma McIntosh: That’s because Ontario’s ethics rules are actually not that comprehensive. The Premier himself isn’t allowed to take money from lobbyists, but the rules don’t put the same restriction on his immediate family. And Ford said the proceeds of the stag and doe went to his daughter and her husband.

Charlie Pinkerton: That was relayed to me eventually by the Premier’s office. But the other sort of thing at play here with the Integrity Commissioner’s Office being involved is that they could then speak to some degree about this issue.

Emma McIntosh: So on the plus side, the Premier’s office had basically admitted that what Charlie was about to report was true. It also confirmed to the Integrity Commissioner that in Doug Ford’s view, the developers invited to the stag and doe were the premier’s personal friends. But if any other journalist reached out to the Integrity Commissioner with the same questions, the commissioner would’ve told them the exact same thing.

Charlie Pinkerton: And so that was another fire beneath us at QP Briefing at the time, still hoping to get this story out.

Emma McIntosh: Another journalist did reach out to the Integrity Commissioner and got ahold of all of that information. Colin.

Colin D’Mello: To give you a bit of the context, all of this was happening in the last week of January, the first week of February, and I had a deadline. The deadline was more personal because we and my family, we were going to fly to Mexico for a vacation for a week. So I decided, okay, I’m going to have everything written by the Friday that I leave. Friday I’m done, and we have most of it done. I speak to my bosses and they’re like, okay, well this is good, but we don’t have the It factor. And then finally we get the statement from the Integrity Commissioner in which the Integrity Commissioner says that Premier Doug Ford has told him that developers, some of whom he considers to be friends, attended a stag and doe in the Premier’s backyard. And I think I sat there and I read that sentence like four or five times, and in the midst of this we’re packing and getting det and sunscreen and everything, and I’m like, am I reading this correctly? This cannot be true. And that was for us, the moment that everything tied together, because it was a statement that confirmed more than my wildest imagination could have confirmed.

Emma McIntosh: Meanwhile, Charlie still didn’t know when his company would be ready to publish, and he still wanted to ask the premier directly about the stag and doe. That’s a lot easier said than done. Doug Ford is not always in the building. If he is, he doesn’t actually have to come out of his office much. People can bring him stuff he needs. He’s the premier. His office even has its own bathroom. He has to go to Question Period and legislative votes, but there’s actually a series of hallways and rooms the public can’t access that connect his office with the legislative chamber. Journalists call it Cowards’ Alley. Sometimes ministers who don’t want to answer our questions will exit that way. So anyway, if Doug Ford didn’t feel like a press conference and he didn’t, Charlie’s chances of asking him questions directly were low, to say the least. Which brings us to one of the wilder moments in this whole saga when tensions between the government and journalists hit one of many boiling points.

Charlie Pinkerton: I suppose it was a date in late January that I walk into the legislature. It was the start of a week. It was a Monday. Typically I’ll walk by the premier’s office and there’s all this plastic wrap just out front. It was very clear that some kind of repairs or constructions, whatever it may be, was happening within the office.

Emma McIntosh: So Charlie did what journalists do. He asked around.

Charlie Pinkerton: I learned that the Premier’s office’s washroom was under construction.

Emma McIntosh: That meant the Premier now had one big reason to be out in the hallways where it’s fair game for journalists to ask questions. So Charlie started going to a bathroom on the first floor instead of the one near his own office, thinking he might run into Doug Ford out and about. And one day as he was leaving the washroom, he did.

Charlie Pinkerton: Doug Ford is a very recognizable voice, and as I’m leaving, I sort of hear his voice and he turns around a stairwell. And of course his office and presumably him at this point know that we’re on the cusp of publishing this story. And so we have a very, I guess, polite exchange. As I leave the washroom, he walks into it. He’s just there with a security guard. I say, howdy, Premier. He says, how are you? I then walk down closer to his office because I think most people can recognize that although journalists can be rather rabid at times, that doing our job in a washroom is not appropriate.

Emma McIntosh: So Charlie went closer to the Premier’s office to wait, and Ford did not come back. Charlie called his colleague Aidan Chamandy, who was upstairs and asked him to look outside and see if the premier’s car was still parked there. If it was gone, that would probably mean Ford had left the building and Charlie had missed his window.

Charlie Pinkerton: Aidan’s looking out the window, he can’t see it. I’m kind of frustrated because I’m like, oh, I blew my shot here. I go outside. I then, as I’m outside looking around, I see his vehicle pull up, and so I’m like, oh, okay. The premier is still here. I might have another chance of this.

Emma McIntosh: Wouldn’t you know it? Doug Ford exited the building and Charlie stepped into action recording the moment on his phone.

Charlie Pinkerton: I’ve got to ask you, did you know that any developers were attending the stag ahead of your daughter’s wedding? Do you know if they gave money or paid to go to your daughter’s stag?

Emma McIntosh: In the video, you can see the premier and a staffer who was walking beside him, holding what looks like a gift basket. Neither of them say anything. They also do not look happy.

Charlie Pinkerton: He did not seem to like that question much. And then not long after that is when I received a call from the premier’s office mentioning some kind of bathroom ambush, which we don’t have a Bible in here, but I’d be happy to put my hand on it and say that there was no bathroom ambush.

Emma McIntosh: But with that accusation out there, Charlie felt like he should probably tell the president of the press gallery, and that president is none other than Colin D’Mello, and that is how they each learned they were both working on the same story.

Colin D’Mello: So I thought it was fair and honourable to say to Charlie and his team, we will not publish until after you publish. You got to the story first. Here’s the runway, break the story. We are more than happy to take the backseat. And I think to a degree, it’s somewhat well-documented. There was some issues and challenges that they were facing.

Emma McIntosh: The problems in Charlie’s newsroom had intensified. The outlet’s new management did not want to publish Charlie’s reporting on the stag and doe. QP Briefing has said then and since that it just did not feel the story met their ethical and professional standards. Charlie and his editor, Jessica Smith Cross did not agree. The premier’s office had confirmed it was true, but more importantly, they were also really concerned that their upper management could be interfering in the newsroom. QP Briefing for the record disagrees. The company has said the story just needed more editing. It took issue with the length of it, some of the personal details in it, and what they said was its broad focus. People assume the owners of media companies have a hand in shaping stories, but if a newsroom is functioning properly, they really shouldn’t. It’s very unusual for an owner to read a story before it comes out. It’s even weirder for an owner to put the brakes on a contentious investigation that’s already been approved by editors and company lawyers.

Charlie Pinkerton: They’re supposed to be a wall up between a publications, business operations and the journalism side of things. And in this case, that was very clearly kicked down quite suddenly and aggressively. And so yeah, that presented another immediate existential issue.

Emma McIntosh: Charlie, his boss Jessica and the other QP Briefing staff told their big bosses that if the company wanted to block the story, they would have to quit to protect their journalistic integrity. And in the end, that’s what Charlie and Jessica did quit and go public, followed by the company laying off all of the other QP Briefing staff, which iPolitics told other news outlets was about the split from Torstar, not the investigation. When other journalists heard about the resignations, it started a firestorm of speculation about what Charlie’s hot scoop might be. Colin meanwhile was in Mexico, ruining his family’s vacation.

Colin D’Mello: Lemme tell you the daggers I got from my wife because I was on the phone the whole time. So I called my team and I said, look, at the risk of my marriage, can we please wait until Monday? Nobody else has this story. Let’s just go with it. But then the next morning I woke up and I thought, oh, that tweet from Charlie very publicly saying that they were leaving is obviously going to lead somebody to ask the question why. And I didn’t want this to be a situation where somebody else scoops us to say there’s a story about stag and doe that the premier’s really concerned about, and that’s why this whole thing happened. And so we just made the decision on the Thursday to hit publish, and it was only after my wife told me, it was only after the story went out, that she saw me finally relax.

Emma McIntosh: Of course, the story went crazy.

Clip 1: Ontario developers were invited to a stag and doe.

Clip 2: Premier Doug Ford admitted that he threw this stag and doe party last August in his backyard in Etobicoke, and that developers who the premier counts as personal friends were among those…

Premier Doug Ford: Now this is my daughter’s wedding, and I think that’s the first time that’s ever come out in Canadian history. Someone asking about someone’s

Clip 3: People and Ontarians have a right to know what conversations took place, whether what kind of invitations were made.

Clip 4: Questions still remain and are lingering here at Queen’s Park.

Emma McIntosh: The questions on everyone’s mind were: did developers get tipped off about the Greenbelt changes at this party, or did the party somehow play a role in which pieces of land the government removed protections from? On those, I wish I could give you a straight answer. I can tell you Doug Ford and the developers have maintained that they didn’t discuss the Greenbelt or any other government business that night. I can tell you the Integrity Commissioner found no evidence to the contrary or any evidence of wrongdoing by the premier. I can also tell you that not everyone is satisfied with those explanations and that a lot of people who watch the provincial government closely see the Greenbelt and the stag and doe as two heads of the same beast. I want to pause here and say that in the scope of the whole Greenbelt scandal, the stag and doe is kind of a side plot. Like if the Greenbelt was a movie, the stag and doe would be the spinoff franchise. We could probably make an entire ten-part podcast just about this. What you need to know though, and why I’m telling you about it now is that this whole incident drew even more attention to questions about what happened with the Greenbelt. It also raised bigger questions about how this government does its business, who it listens to, who it invites to parties in the backyard.

Colin D’Mello: I think on its own, it may not have had the impact had the Greenbelt not happened. I think the Greenbelt in and of itself was the most important policy point that the government has had to deal with since it got reelected in 2022, and it will become the defining policy of this government’s second term in office. Because if you think about the Greenbelt, all of their land use policy, all of their attempts to build 1.5 million homes by 2031 now have a different context. The Greenbelt opened up the question as to whether or not the government had inappropriate ties with developers, so much so that the government was willing to go above and beyond and put their interests ahead of the interests of averages, which is what any premier, any government is primarily tasked with.

Emma McIntosh: There is one plot line I can wrap up in a nice little bow for you. Though. Charlie’s fate and the fate of his colleagues who found suddenly out of jobs in the midst of the stag and doe scandal. Charlie ended up working with Noor to publish his reporting on the stag and doe and the premier’s daughter’s wedding in The Toronto Star, and soon after that, he and all of his QP briefing colleagues found a new home at The Trillium and got right back to digging.

Charlie Pinkerton: That for me really kicked off not long after the stag and doe story and all the drama with our publication and the launch of The Trillium and whatnot with a source coming forward with me with some information that took many, many months to shore up to get to the point where we were able to publish.

Emma McIntosh: That information was about a very consequential trip to Las Vegas in early 2020, taken by a conservative MPP, one of the premier staff and one would be Greenbelt developer. The MPP is named Khaleed Rasheed. He wasn’t a minister when this trip happened, but he had become one by the time the Greenbelt scandal started unfolding. The Ford staffer was Amin Massoudi who’s often called Doug Ford’s right hand man. He worked for the premier and his late brother, former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, dating back to their City Hall days more than a decade ago. He left the government in 2022, but he still worked for the PC caucus on a contract basis until fall 2023. A third person tied to the Ford government also went on this trip. Jae Truesdell. He was working in the private sector when this happened, but he’d worked for the housing minister before that, and by 2022 he was Ford’s director of Housing Policy. One of the people who would play a role in the Greenbelt changes. The developer was someone I mentioned earlier in this episode, Shakir Rehmatullah of FLATO, the one who also went to the stag and doe. Remember, he benefited hugely from those Greenbelt changes. Two FLATO properties with bits of the Greenbelt on them saw protections removed. Thanks to some reporting from the Toronto Star, we know the company sold a chunk of one of them for $62 million a few months after the Greenbelt changes. That’s four times what FLATO originally paid for the whole property. The land’s value also got a boost because the province rezoned it for development in 2021, but hey, it’s a lot of money. Charlie reported that according to his sources, all four of these guys went on the Vegas trip together. That they’re friends. The Integrity Commissioner also looked into this but made no findings about the trip. Massoudi, Rasheed and Truesdell told the watchdog they did not go to Las Vegas with the developer and only briefly ran into Rehmatullah in the lobby of their hotel, The Wynn Las Vegas. However, media reports have raised questions about whether that was the whole truth. There’s this thing about possible massages. We’ll talk about that more in episode three For now, what you need to know is that this Vegas trip happened. It raised even more questions about the Ford government’s ties with developers, and it kept the Greenbelt scandal simmering as spring turned to summer.

Colin D’Mello: I had a source late last year who told me this is all going to end up in an RCMP investigation or some kind of a police investigation. They were so sure that something wrong had gone on here.

Emma McIntosh: The police are involved now. They are investigating the government’s decision to open the Greenbelt for development. To be clear though, nobody has been charged with a crime. Maybe most importantly, the Greenbelt changes were also affecting the people who live there.

Heather Drudge: It’s just a really idyllic, beautiful place full of plants and wildlife and big trees and an old timber frame barn.

Emma McIntosh: This is Heather Drudge. She grew up on a farm in Markham just outside of Toronto. Part of the farm was in the Greenbelt, and then it wasn’t, and now it is again.

Heather Drudge: Yeah, it’s a special spot.

Emma McIntosh: Back in the two thousands, the people in Heather’s world weren’t exactly stoked about the Greenbelt. It would put an immediate damper on the value of their land. Suburban construction was booming in Ontario. Farmland close to Toronto was and is a hot commodity.

Heather Drudge: I don’t know exactly when it would’ve begun, but I do remember even just being quite a bit younger that there was an increasing amount of interest in the property. So we would have realtors, developers, that kind of thing, basically just drive in ready to write a check if we said yes and we never did. And then in 2017, my grandfather, who was the sole owner of the property at that point, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, so some tough choices had to be made. We knew that that day was going to come. He was well into his eighties and had lived a good life, but that sort of forced the reality and because of essentially tax implications, selling the property was really the only option that we had.

Emma McIntosh: They didn’t see a lot of options, so they sold the farm in 2017 to a development company, FLATO. The company leased the land back to them so they could continue farming. It was a ten-year agreement that would have to be renegotiated at the five-year mark. In the meantime, before government gave FLATO a special order that rezoned the land for construction. Heather and her family figured they probably weren’t getting the full 10 years, and then the five-year mark passed in 2022. The Greenbelt changes? They were another nail in the coffin with development set to happen so quickly, the Drudge family felt like it was best to just leave.

Heather Drudge: So we fully had the intention of staying for those full 10 years and we were not expecting to leave as quickly as we ended up leaving.

Emma McIntosh: While the Drudge family was packing up and saying goodbye to the farm, I was doing legwork on my own investigations. But mostly I was waiting for Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk’s report on the Greenbelt. The Bonnie’s term was set to expire at the end of summer, and she told the journalists at Queen’s Park that she had no intention of leaving office without finishing this, so her report had to be done by Labour Day. I think we all kind of thought she’d be working on it down to the wire. Instead, the report came out on the Wednesday after the August long weekend.

Clip 5: Politicos across this province have Wednesday, August the ninth circled on their calendars. That’s when Ontario’s Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk is expected to release this highly anticipated report into the Greenbelt and it could shed more light on the premier’s relationship with developers.

Emma McIntosh: That morning, I happened to be at a cabin in Northern Ontario with no electricity and very bad cell service. So I biked into town where there’s some satellite wifi that allowed me to download the report. Then I biked home as fast as I could. Let’s just say it was more than I was expecting. I started recording my reaction on my phone and then I said, oh my God, a bunch like 59 times to be exact. Here is what that sounded like.

Emma McIntosh clip: We were right. Oh my God, this is a level of detail that is more than what I was hoping, and I am on page two. Holy shit. Holy shit. Oh my God. Okay. Wow, this is insane. I don’t even know what to do with myself right now.

Emma McIntosh: Journalists get a copy of reports like this a little bit before they’re made public so we can understand the findings and publish our stories all at once. It’s called an embargo. That embargo was about to lift, and the Auditor General was about to officially announce her findings.

Richard Southern: I remember calling my desk and saying, we got to go live as soon as she speaks. This is big.

Emma McIntosh: This is Richard Southern. He’s a reporter for City News and a darn good one at that. He was at the legislature that day.

Richard Southern: And I’ll never forget coming right on the air on City News six 80 and breaking this and basically saying what the Auditor General is now saying on the Greenbelt is exactly what some of the speculation was, that this could have been an inside job where the select few developers were given preferential treatment. This is really, really bad for the government. It was such a bombshell news conference. It really knocked the socks off of even some of the veteran reporters that were covering it.

Emma McIntosh: I could walk you through this report and all of its salacious details, but instead I wanted you to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.

Bonnie Lysyk: I’m Bonnie Lysyk. I was the Auditor General for Ontario between 2013 up until about September 3rd, 2023.

Emma McIntosh: And can you tell me the title of your last report?

Bonnie Lysyk: The title and the last report was Special Report on Changes to the Greenbelt.

Emma McIntosh: That’s next time on Paydirt. Paydirt is a joint production of Frequency Podcast Network and The Narwhal. This episode was produced by me, Emma McIntosh, and Joe Fish. Script edits by Stefanie Phillips from Frequency and Denise Balkissoon and Mike De Souza from The Narwhal. Sound Design by Ryan Clarke. Stefanie Phillips is the showrunner of Frequency. Mary Jubran is the digital editor. Diana Keay is their business manager, and Jordan Heath-Rawlings is the executive producer. This show also relied on reporting done by me for The Narwhal, Charlie Pinkerton, and Noor Javed for The Toronto Star, Colin D’Mello and Isaac Callan at Global News, Rachel Mendleson, Joanna Chiu, and Sara Mojtehedzadeh at The Star. And Charlie Pinkerton again for The Trillium. The sound bites you heard in this episode came from City News, the Ontario Liberal Party, Charlie Pinkerton and Global News. Special thanks to Carolyn Adolph, Andrew McIntosh and Fatima Syed. See you back here next Monday for our final episode of Paydirt.