Is developer money behind MZOs touching environmentally sensitive areas in Vaughan?

The politicians are responsible, and if they don't have the guts to do what's needed, they shouldn't be in public office’

Yorkregion.com
Dec. 24
Dina Al-Shibeeb

Mario Racco, a Vaughan resident and president of the Brownridge Ratepayers Association, expressed alarm over the Doug Ford government’s amendments of Bill 229, which is seen as “overriding” municipal powers through its Minister’s Zoning Orders (MZO).

Vaughan councillors themselves have vowed to “repeal” Bill 229 during the Dec. 8 meeting, the same day the bill received a Royal Assent. They fully rejected Section 6, which won’t allow municipalities or the conservation authorities to appeal a decision to the LPAT as the minister is “going to overturn it.”

“Not only (are) developers (behind MZO), but they are visibly behind it,” said Racco. “If you look at the money that they were given in the last provincial election, (it all) went to the Conservatives, with a few pennies here and there to (a few) Liberals, and potentially (a few) NDPs.”

In an email, Environment Defence said an MZO in early November has enabled development on greenfields at the southeast corner of Rutherford Road and Jane Street, located on an area part of the Provincially Significant East Humber River Wetland Complex, and it contains valley and stream features as well as a woodland.

Another MZO in April last year has enabled the relocation of a Walmart distribution facility and other zoning changes to be at the new emerging downtown Vaughan Metropolitan Centre (VMC). The MZO proposed by SmartCentres has touched Provincially Significant Wetlands (PSW) on agriculturally zoned land.

Environmental Defence says both developers behind the two MZOs have political influence.

“This (Rutherford and Jane) MZO was requested three weeks earlier on Oct. 13, 2020, by the Cortel Group, whose president is a top PC and Ford fundraiser and donor Mario Cortellucci,” the group said, adding how the City of Vaughan “admittedly expressed” that the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF) has already identified Provincially Significant Wetlands (PSW) there.

As for the Walmart relocation, Environmental Defence described SmartCentres’s executive chair Mitchell Goldhar and its other brands as also making “large donations” to the PC Party and the Liberals.

“SmartCentres/Penguin/Goldhar’s request for an MZO was endorsed by Vaughan council in Feb. 2018. SmartCentres’ lobbyist is Tory insider William Pristanski, who was (former) PM Brian Mulroney’s chief of staff.”

Racco even recalled how one developer told him “a long time ago” that, “I gotta keep myself in everybody's good corner. So when I donate money, I invest.”

Despite the availability of zoned land for both residential and commercial use in Vaughan, MZOs of such sort are more profitable to the developers.

“The politicians are responsible, and if they don't have the guts to do what's needed, they shouldn't be in public office,” Racco continued. “The office is not a job. It is standing up for the people, and if it means making enemies of your best friends, that’s what you do,” he added, citing how it should be done with “professionalism and fairness.”

The two MZOs backed by city

While Vaughan Councillors want to repeal Bill 229 changes, they backed the two MZOs.

Sandra Kaiser, vice-president of corporate affairs for SmartCentres, told the Vaughan Citizen that, “Both the City of Vaughan Council and York Region Council passed unanimous Resolutions in 2018 in support of an MZO to permit the relocation of the Walmart store from the VMC to its new location on Hwy. 400.”

“The MZO was issued in April 2019. The relocation was in support of the objectives of the VMC Secondary Plan to encourage intensification and a mix of uses in proximity to the transit infrastructure.”

Breaking ground for the Walmart distribution centre was big news, especially when Ford himself attended the ceremony.

While the Cortel Group, whose family generously donated $40 million for the city's new hospital, didn’t respond to the Citizen's inquiry about its choice of an MZO. On Oct. 21, Vaughan Councillors passed a motion in support of the MZO, since Cortel promised a minimum of 10 per cent of the total number of its residential units to be affordable housing.