The proprietor of one of many 15 properties faraway from — then returned to — the Greenbelt has launched a constitutional problem of a legislation that reversed Premier Doug Ford’s plan to open up the protected land for growth.
Lawyers for Minotar Holdings Inc. filed the applying Thursday in Ontario’s Divisional Court, arguing that the way in which the legislation is written violates “the constitutional principle of the rule of law.”
His authorities had eliminated them final 12 months, however scathing auditor common and integrity commissioner stories discovered the method unfairly favoured sure builders and Ford was pressured to reverse course.
Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Paul Calandra has boasted that the legislation additionally enhances safety of the Greenbelt “to an unprecedented degree” by requiring any future boundary adjustments to be achieved via laws quite than regulation.
The authentic Greenbelt Act and subsequent adjustments have set and amended the protected space’s boundaries via regulation, a course of that permits for judicial evaluation of the federal government’s actions, Minotar lawyer Paul Fruitman stated.
This authorities’s change truly immunizes it from judicial oversight, he fees.
“They’ve taken this step to try to prevent any review of what they’ve done with the Greenbelt,” Paul Fruitman stated in an interview. “What makes it, in my view, in my submission, quite egregious is that it’s being done to save their political fortunes.”
Minotar desires the courtroom to judicially evaluation how its land has been handled. The builders have lengthy held that their property in Markham, Ont., was incorrectly included within the Greenbelt within the first place when the protected swath of land was established in 2005.
But whereas there’s language within the Greenbelt Statute Law Amendment Act saying the proper for judicial evaluation is preserved, Fruitman stated statutes can’t be judicially reviewed. Regulations may be, he stated.
“They have to, as a matter of law, preserve that right, but what they’ve done here is made that right illusive because by putting it in legislation as opposed to regulation, you can’t say, ‘I want to judicially review the statute.’”
Minotar sued the province in 2017 for $120 million over the land’s inclusion within the Greenbelt.
When the federal government set about eradicating land from the Greenbelt final 12 months for the aim of housing growth, civil servants recognized the Minotar property as one candidate. A political staffer serving on the time as chief of employees to the then-housing minister recognized the opposite 14, stories from the auditor common and integrity commissioner have discovered.
Minotar and the federal government agreed late final 12 months that eradicating 37 acres of their 210-acre property from the Greenbelt would settle the lawsuit, which had been set to go to trial within the spring of this 12 months.
But then the laws from this 12 months returning all the 15 parcels of land to the Greenbelt prevented affected builders from looking for cures for the reversal —
Minotar says it spent $400,000 on pre-development work earlier than the reversal was introduced — and incorporates a clause retroactively voiding their settlement.
“The province is ripping up a contract, effectively, in order to save itself politically,” Fruitman stated.
A spokesperson for the housing minister didn’t reply to a request for remark.
© 2023 The Canadian Press
Developer launches constitutional challenge of law returning Greenbelt lands