The Ontario NDP is calling on the RCMP to widen the scope of its criminal investigation into the Ford government’s Greenbelt dealings after a provincial watchdog determined that relevant documents were allegedly “permanently deleted” contrary to provincial law.

NDP Leader Marit Stiles is also acknowledging that the opposition parties at Queen’s Park may have “run out” of options to use official legislative channels to hold the government to account, even as more questions arise.

After a months-long battle with the Ford government over Greenbelt-related records, Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner (IPC) determined the Progressive Conservative party violated “legal record-keeping obligations” by using “opaque codewords” to discuss the controversial policy.

Patricia Kosseim also said her office was concerned enough about government documents that the IPC was forced to issue an order to retain them in full. Despite that, some records remain unaccounted for.

“We were pre-emptorily ordering the government to preserve all records and to recover emails that had been deleted, which they were able to and did and have since preserved all the records, except — as I said — those that were permanently deleted,” Kosseim told Global News.

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“We have no way of knowing the circumstances around that.”

It’s unclear, however, what, if any, consequences could arise from the permanent deletion of records.

While the RCMP has remained tight-lipped on its years-long investigation into the government’s decision-making, there have been few public signs of progress.

Meanwhile, the independent investigative bodies at Queens Park — the Integrity Commissioner, the Auditor General, and the Information and Privacy Commissioner — have all completed their Greenbelt investigations with varied impact.

“We’ve had a scathing report from the Auditor General. We’ve had a scathing report from the Integrity Commissioner. Now we have this report and these findings from the Information and Privacy Commissioner,” Stiles said.

“So to some extent, the tools here … we’ve run out.”

Stiles said the opposition is now looking to the RCMP’s Sensitive and International Investigations unit — which typically investigates allegations of financial crimes like fraud, corruption and procurement as well as complaints related to illegal lobbying activities and elected officials — to look deeper into the IPC’s findings.

“The commissioner is very clear, laws were broken here,” Stiles said. “The last time a government was found to be permanently deleting emails like this around an issue that is contentious … somebody went to jail.”

In 2018, the former chief of staff to then-Premier Dalton McGuinty was sentenced to four months in jail after an Ontario judge found he directed the indiscriminate wiping of hard drives in the premier’s office in a deliberate effort to protect the office after the Liberal government decided to scrap two gas plants ahead of the 2011 provincial election.

Stiles is also calling for a public inquiry into the scandal.

“I certainly think that a matter like this, just like with the gas plant scandal, would merit a public inquiry,” Stiles said, but acknowledged that the chances of a majority government calling an inquiry into its own actions is unlikely.

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The provincial and federal governments quietly signed a fresh Ontario affordable housing deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars after months of tense back-and-forth and threats to scrap the funding altogether.

Shortly after Doug Ford’s new cabinet was sworn in March and with Mark Carney installed in the Prime Minister’s Office, Ottawa and Queen’s Park signed off on a deal to work together on new housing.

Details of the need to sign the new agreement were contained in a handover binder prepared for Ontario’s new housing minister in March and recently obtained by Global News using freedom of information laws.

The same agreement had caused months of grief the previous year as two housing ministers traded barbs, accusations and threats.

Last year, the federal and provincial housing ministers clashed repeatedly over the National Housing Strategy – a bilateral, long-term agreement to build affordable housing.

The fund provides money to provinces for their affordable housing strategies. It is designed to run for 10 years, with milestones to renew the funds.

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Then-Canadian Housing Minister Sean Fraser wrote to his Ontario counterpart, Paul Calandra, in March 2024 to demand “urgent” action on his affordable housing plan, accusing Ontario of failing to deliver thousands of new units.

The letter kicked off back-and-forth jabs, where Ottawa rejected Ontario’s various affordable housing plans, claiming it was refurbishing old units and not building new ones. The federal government said it would withhold $357 million in fresh funding until it was satisfied.

The federal government eventually said it would sidestep Ontario and give the money straight to local service managers in the province instead. At the time, Calandra said that was exactly what he wanted.

“For weeks, we’ve been saying, ‘It is distributed through our service managers,’” he said in May 2024.

“Now, the big, bad federal Minister of Housing is going to punish Ontario. Do you know how? By distributing the money the same way we have done it for the last 35 years: through our service managers.”

After the snap winter election, Calandra was shuffled from housing to education, while Fraser is now the justice minister.

A briefing binder prepared for incoming Ontario Housing Minister Rob Flack in March 2025 said one of the first decisions he would have to make would be to sign off on a new federal-provincial agreement to ensure affordable housing dollars continue to flow.

“Ministry staff are reviewing federal input and will bring forward options for the Action Plan for Minister’s decision following the election,” the briefing binder, accessed via freedom of information laws, said.

Sometime in March, the two governments came to an agreement.

“The National Housing Strategy (NHS) bilateral agreement signed with Ontario runs from 2019/20 to 2027/28,” a federal spokesperson said.

“The targets and outcomes for funding available under the agreement were mutually agreed upon in March 2025 through a three-year Action Plan for 2025/26 to 2027/28. This ensures the continued availability of federal funding for Ontario.”

Flack’s office indicated he wanted to reset the relationship with his federal counterpart after a tense year. The latest agreement will prioritize rent-assisted units, according to the Ontario government.

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A lakeview cottage with cosy rooms, a sandy beach nearby and a dock to gaze into the sunset was the dream for Corrine Evanoff.

“For years, I’ve been on this journey of trying to find a cottage that would work for us,” she said.

But Evanoff and her husband didn’t want to incur the burden of constant cottage maintenance — spending vacation days fixing decks and pruning trees. They opted instead to rent over the years, still hoping to one day buy.

Then, it happened. They found a cottage not too far from home — for a fraction of the price they thought they’d have to pay, thanks to fractional ownership.

Also called co-ownership, it allows people to buy a share of a property with others, whether it’s family, friends or even strangers.

Affordability sits at the heart of fractionally owned cottages. Many Canadians still find themselves priced out of the market, even as cottage prices have declined from peaks seen during the pandemic.

Re/Max brokers and agents anticipate a national average price increase of about 1.8 per cent across the Canadian recreational market in 2025, a May report by the real estate firm, showed.

On their first visit to check out a prospective cottage last fall, Evanoff recalled walking into a lake-facing cottage with large windows at Frontenac Shores in Cloyne, Ont., about 300 kilometres northeast of Toronto, and was sold.

“We sat in these Muskoka chairs on the beach and our feet are in the water, and I just felt the stress shredding off me,” she said.

“This is the dream that I’ve been dreaming for all these years … and this is within reach.”

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Hosting and entertaining in Muskoka

Evanoff and her husband now own one-tenth of a million-dollar cottage, costing them less than $100,000 for their share — and affording them five weeks a year at the property.

Fractional ownership of a cottage is not like a timeshare, said Realtor Mike Lange, who has been dealing with co-owned cottages for about seven years in Kawartha Lakes, Ont.

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“With a timeshare, you put your name in requesting a location, you have no guarantee that that’s going to be available,” he said. “There’s been a lot of heartaches over them over the years.”

Timeshare properties can be owned by for-profit corporations, leaving less autonomy for those staying there.

Don Smith, who co-owns a property in Kawartha Lakes, bought into a cottage in the mid-2000s after he saw a newspaper ad about fractional cottage ownership.

“I was in the staff room reading the newspaper as a mathematics and computer studies teacher,” he recalled. “As a math teacher, that caught my eye: What’s this fraction all about, this cottage, this idea?”

For the Smiths, fractional ownership wasn’t a financial investment but a lifestyle investment that has paid off over the past two decades.

“This is where my daughter learned to swim, that’s where my daughter learned to kayak, that is when my daughter had learned to appreciate animals.”

But it may not be for everyone.

Smith said fractionally owned cottages are usually 100 per cent debt-free. That means new co-owners typically can’t secure a mortgage against the property from traditional banks and will have to rely on personal loans or a line of credit to buy their share.

Personal touches to the cottage can also be missing with fractional ownership and people can’t just show up at any time, he said.

“It’s not like you can personally put all your favourite pictures and put all of the junk that you don’t want in your home garage and take it up there and leave it,” Smith said.

Real estate developer John Puffer has years of experience building cottages and selling them in fractional ownership arrangements in Ontario’s cottage country regions.

When he first got into the business, Puffer assumed the buyers would mostly be people in their 30s with young families. Instead, they happened to be people in their 50s and 60s, buying cottage shares for their adult children and grandchildren, or people who don’t want to commit the dollars and worry about maintenance.

“That is part of the Canadian cottage experience in Ontario … that’s where families congregate at the cottage and (it’s) multi-generations,” said Puffer, president of Chandler Point Corp.

Tanya Walker, litigation lawyer and managing partner at Walker Law, suggests potential buyers should get a good contract lawyer and treat the contract “as if it’s a pre-nuptial agreement” before signing on to be a co-owner.

She said buyers going into fractional ownership should ask questions about who the other co-owners are, the voting rights people get for their share and what happens when they want to sell their stake.

Walker added it’s also important to look into who manages the property, the financials of the property as well as how much time you’ll get to use the cottage and when.

Puffer said people really have to understand what they’re buying into. He suggested people read the contract and find out who’s in control, what their obligations are, and talk to people who already own.

For Evanoff and her husband, it will be their third time heading up to the Frontenac Shores cottage next month.

“It’s like, wow! That just seems like a gift,” she said.

“This (fractional ownership) seems like the best-kept secret but I think it’s going to catch on … and you’re going to see a lot of people tap into this market.”