As pressure mounts over the Ford government’s handling of Ontario’s Greenbelt, the insurance industry is quietly reassessing the risks of getting too close to controversy.
Ontario’s privacy watchdog recently ordered Ryan Amato, the former chief of staff to Housing Minister Steve Clark, to surrender personal emails tied to the province’s failed attempt to open protected Greenbelt land for development.
The 2022 plan—now reversed—sparked public backlash and two scathing watchdog reports, both accusing the government of favouring select developers through a rushed, opaque process. The scandal prompted resignations, an ongoing RCMP investigation, and renewed debate around transparency in public-private partnerships.
For insurance professionals evaluating construction and development risks, the implications are real.
“The answer is yes,” said Carrie Bernardo, Managing Director at We Talk Insurance & On Parle Assurance, when asked if reputational and regulatory concerns now play a larger role in underwriting. “It’s a slippery slope of how deep you can get into something, but I Google every risk that comes in, just to make sure what they're saying is what they're saying.”
Bernardo said her brokerage hasn’t encountered government land deals directly but emphasized how cautious underwriters have become, even outside the political sphere. “We always look at how long [the business] has been around, what their background is. We Google them to make sure they haven’t been in the news for anything nefarious,” she says. “We’re strict on compliance and making sure we’re dealing with reputable people.”
Still, she stressed that brokers can’t shoulder that burden alone.
“We’re supposed to be working together on these types of things,” Bernardo says. “Insurers have much more widespread access than we do. If we send in a quote and they know it’s not on the up and up, I feel like they should be telling us. We need to be working together—not just, ‘you’re a broker, you’re an insurer.’ That’s where sometimes there’s no middle.”
