This is a story from CanoeFM’s Local Journalism Reporter, Elizabeth Oakley - dated October 30th, 2026.
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Styles is sounding the alarm about Laurie Scott, MPP for Haliburton/Kawartha/Brock, regarding text exchanges with a now-banned lobbyist identified in the Greenbelt scandal as Mr. X. In them, Styles points to potentially illegal acts.
In a social media post yesterday, Styles said, quote “No matter how you slice it, this looks a look like bribery and the rot starts at the top,” end quote. The text messages between MPP Scott and Mr. X, whose real name is John Mutton, were documented in a secret report produced by Ontario’s integrity commissioner’s office in 2025.
At the time of the text exchanges that began with MPP Scott in 2021, Mutton was working with a developer awaiting approval to secure an MZO, or Minister’s Zoning Order, for Kawartha Downs located in Cavan-Monoghan in MPP Scott’s riding. Mutton, a former mayor of Clarington, was dubbed Mr. X by the late J. David Wake, the integrity commissioner at the time. When the investigation had concluded, Wake slapped Mutton with a two-year ban after he had found a dozen different ways Mutton had broken lobbying laws.
The Trillium reported that the texts between MPP Scott and Mutton began within days of meeting at the site in question in 2021.
Wake’s report said MPP Scott and Mutton texted on 19 different occasions during and after the fundraiser Mutton offered to host for MPP Scott. They texted each other about the event, the Kawartha Downs MZO request, and, eventually, another MZO he was pursuing for another
client on Brown Line Road. Three days after the fundraising event for MPP Scott, which raised $25K for her riding association, then-housing minister Steve Clark granted an MZO for the Kawartha Downs
project.
In December 2022, when Mutton became frustrated with the delay of the MZO approval process, he reached out to MPP Scott asking her whether he should call Ontario Premier Doug Ford. According to the report, she encouraged him to do so, but there is no evidence that the call took place. Steve Clark, the then provincial housing minister, approved the Brown Line Road
MZO a month later, in January of 2023. The MZO was subsequently revoked after the owner of the property tried to sell it for 15 times its value.

When Mutton once again offered to host another fundraiser for MPP Scott, she texted him that the date would have to be after the annual PC fundraising event, saying quote “I was trying to do the first of March for funder, but the party is having a huge one then. So, I will have to plot for after. Don’t use all the money up”. End quote. In his report, the integrity commissioner found Mutton should have registered to lobby when working toward each MZO, and that he contravened the law by placing Scott “in a position of potential conflict of interest.” Canoe FM reached out to MPP Scott earlier today who provided this statement. It reads: "My office received an MZO request that had endorsement from the municipality. The MZO followed the process established by MMAH and was subsequently approved. All information on donations and donors is publicly available."; While Wake gave Mutton the harshest penalty allowed under the province’s lobbying law: a two-year ban from lobbying Ontario government officials, he did not make any formal rulings about Scott’s conduct or that of any other government officials mentioned in the report.
The commissioner also didn’t make any definitive determinations about whether Scott played a meaningful part in either MZO getting approved, but the opposition leader Styles is calling the interactions between MPP Scott and Mutton bribery.
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