Greenbelt-gate continues to be a pain for the Government of Ontario, and the opposition parties are twisting the knife. Today, Guelph MPP and Green Party of Ontario leader Mike Schreiner took things up a notch by calling for an independent public inquiry into the scandal. It’s another pressure point in a week full of renewed pressure on Doug Ford and company about the deal to sell Greenbelt land to developers.

“Ontarians deserve accountability from the Ford government for their $8.3 billion Greenbelt scandal, but ever since the Auditor General’s report was released, the Premier has repeatedly failed the accountability test,” Schreiner said in a statement after delivering remarks in the Queen’s Park media studio.

“Public trust in the government has reached an all-time-low. Under the Premier’s watch, accountability and transparency have gone out the window in the name of favours to wealthy, well-connected elites. Meanwhile, precious farmland and forests and wetlands are still being removed from the Greenbelt, and wealthy land speculators are still cashing in,” he added.

“It has become clear to me that the only way we’re going to find out what really happened between this government and those land speculators is to bring this investigation into broad daylight.”

Harsh words from Schreiner, but he’s hardly alone in the call for more action. In their own statement, the NDP once again called for the resignation of the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing himself noting that Steve Clark’s now-former chief of staff Ryan Amato was hardly alone in meeting with developers and then deciding which portions of the Greenbelt to divest.

“The fact that a second Clark staff member was selecting Greenbelt sites to hand over to developers makes it even more implausible that the Minister was unaware of what was going on in his own office,” said NDP Critic for Municipal Affairs Jeff Burch in a statement. “We need more information about such an important matter of public interest.”

“Mr. Ford needs to demand Mr. Clark’s immediate resignation from Cabinet. The resignation of Clark’s Chief of Staff – apparently against the wishes of Ford – is not nearly enough. This corruption starts at the top, and we need to get to the bottom of how far down it really goes,” he added.

This renewed pressure from opposition parties comes after a couple of major events this week including the formal resignation or Amato on Tuesday afternoon, and the announcement that the OPP handed any further investigation into the Greenbelt deal to the RCMP. “At this time, RCMP [Ontario] Division is beginning our evaluation of the available information,” an RCMP spokesperson told the CBC in an email. “After we have conducted a full assessment, we will determine whether to launch an investigation.”

The Ontario integrity commissioner is also making a determination if any ethical rules were broken in the process of determining what Greenbelt lands should be removed and sold to make available for housing development. A report published by Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk earlier this month concluded that there political staff, and not non-partisan public servants, determined what portions of the Greenbelt to remove after being personally lobbied by developers.

The Ontario government has repeatedly said that they are enacting 14 out of the auditor general’s 15 recommendations, with the notable exception being the cancellation of the land deals.