Province puts Markham developer's MZO housing projects on watch

newmarkettoday.ca
Dec. 14, 2023
Charlie Pinkerton and Jessica Smith Cross

The Ford government is proposing to revoke or amend eight minister’s zoning orders and has put 14 more on notice.

The eight minister's zoning orders (MZOs) on the chopping block are for employment and cultural projects.

The 14 others the government is monitoring and may revoke or change in the future are all housing-related.

Half of those 14 were given to projects of a developer whose connections with the Ford government became a significant part of the Greenbelt scandal.

Shakir Rehmatullah’s Flato Developments is one of the companies that had land removed from and later returned to the Greenbelt.

Rehmatullah, founder and president of Flato, made headlines for a trip he took with multiple Ford government insiders. He also attended the pre-marriage fundraiser Premier Doug Ford hosted ahead of his daughter’s 2022 wedding, along with the wedding itself.

MZOs are a tool the provincial government can issue to overrule local planning decisions and bylaws, often to fast-track developments. Up until the heat of the Greenbelt and Vegas-trip scandal, the Ford government had utilized MZOs at an unprecedented rate, issuing more than 100 from 2019 until this year.

The “use it or lose it” MZO policy that Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Paul Calandra announced on Wednesday has been a few months in the making.

Calandra has been reviewing the MZOs issued under his predecessor since he took over his latest ministerial portfolio in September. Steve Clark, the previous housing minister, resigned on Labour Day amid the Greenbelt scandal.

“If we do not see the results in respect to a minister’s zoning order, our government will not hesitate to amend or revoke it,” Calandra told reporters at Queen’s Park on Wednesday. “It sends a clear message that when we issue a zoning order to support priorities like housing, long-term care that we expect to see results.”

The provincial government has set a deadline of Jan. 27 for “interested parties” to give it feedback on revoking or changing the eight MZOs that don't directly impact housing projects.

They include an MZO granted to the Triple Group that was initially for a warehouse distribution centre -- reportedly for Amazon -- and a film studio that is part of the Durham Live development on the protected Lower Duffins Creek wetland. The MZO has already been amended to remove the warehouse component.

Another is for a proposed medical innovation park in Oro-Medonte, where the land was later put up for sale for an inflated price, prompting former minister Clark to promise to revoke the MZO.

One of the postings Calandra’s ministry made to the Environmental Registry of Ontario (ERO) said the 14 MZOs to housing-related developments that it’s monitoring will be tracked over the next 18 months and revoked or amended “if there is a lack of significant progress.”

Of those, seven are for projects of Rehmatullah's company, Flato, in Southgate, Kawartha Lakes, New Tecumseth, and Whitchurch-Stouffville.

Two involve proposed long-term care homes -- the Tollendale Village 2 project in Innisfil and the Niwaas Campus of Care in Brampton.

One of the non-Flato MZOs being monitored was given to a mixed-use residential and commercial project planned by SmartCentres REIT, a major real estate investment company, in Cambridge. When the MZO was issued in October 2020, another of the individuals -- Jae Truesdell -- who was involved in the Las Vegas trip that later became a controversy was SmartCentres’ director of corporate affairs.

Truesdell later became director of housing policy in Ford’s office. He resigned from the premier’s office over the Las Vegas controversy around when Ford promised to reverse his government’s Greenbelt removals.

One other memorable character from the larger Greenbelt scandal is connected to another of the 14 housing-related MZOs that are being monitored. An MZO was originally granted on March 4 to enable a major development, including new homes, around the Kawartha Downs Raceway in Cavan Monaghan.

John Mutton, referred to by Ontario’s integrity commissioner as “Mr. X” before later being confirmed as the anonymous success fee-charging lobbyist, was working with Romspen Investment Corp., owner of Kawartha Downs Raceway, around when the MZO was granted.

In a move pre-empting the potential reversals, Ford’s PCs passed a bill last week to shield the government from legal ramifications for cancelling or changing MZOs. As Bill 150 was nearing passage, 18 executives from development industry associations sent a letter addressed to Calandra and the committee of MPPs reviewing the legislation harshly criticizing this law change.

“This level of immunity is not consistent with a fair and democratic society,” executives of the Ontario Home Builders’ Association and eight of its regional affiliates wrote. “It suggests that government (and those who work in government) are above the law.”

Calandra’s MZO review was focused on whether the project they were given to have made “substantial progress” toward being approved, and whether necessary water and sewage upgrades could be completed “within a reasonable timeframe,” a government news release said.

Some MZOs were excluded, including any requested by provincial ministries to move forward transit-oriented communities, long-term care facilities and hospitals, and those the government is under “contractual obligations” not to change. The 10 MZOs issued since Dec. 1, 2022, just over a year ago were also not reviewed -- which includes the contentious Lakeview Village MZO.

In May 2023, the provincial government announced it issued an MZO for the waterfront Lakeview Village project in Mississauga that would effectively double the allowed size of the multi-use development, which was long intended to include up to 8,050 new housing units.

The developers’ conglomerate behind the Lakeview Village project includes some who were also set to benefit from the province’s changes to municipalities’ official plans and its Greenbelt removals, before the Ford government’s earlier reversal of each.

The province’s decision to grant the Lakeview Village infuriated Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie at the time. She’s since called on the provincial government to revoke it, warning that nearby infrastructure can’t facilitate as many new homes as are now allowed.

On Wednesday, Crombie, who was elected the new leader of the Ontario Liberal Party earlier this month and plans to resign as Mississauga’s mayor in January, said she thinks the Lakeview Village MZO should be given a “sober second thought.”

The Ford government is also promising to launch consultations on how requests for MZOs are received and considered going forward, says a government news release.

“The intention is to develop a new process that is more open and transparent while maintaining this important tool to cut through red tape to get shovels in the ground sooner,” the news release says.

Excluding three new MZOs the provincial government plans to soon issue, no others will be approved until it wraps up its consultations, according to the government.

The three impending MZOs are for projects meant to protect helicopters’ flight paths to downtown Toronto hospitals, to ensure the advancement of construction of a new electric vehicle battery plant in St. Thomas, and for a new location of a Halal grocery store in Toronto’s Thorncliffe Park neighbourhood.

The Municipal Affairs and Housing Ministry also intends on “enhancing how it monitors the implementation of all zoning orders on a quarterly basis,” one new ERO posting says, to ensure projects make the progress they’re supposed to.

The Ford government’s use of MZOs is also being investigated by the Office of the Auditor General of Ontario. In an audit on land-use planning that the office released near the end of 2021, then-auditor general Bonnie Lysyk determined that the frequent use of MZOs had undermined municipalities’ planning processes.

Calandra’s announcement about potentially walking back MZOs was coupled with his sharing that the government was cancelling the dissolution of Peel Region, along with audits of six municipal governments’ finances. Collectively, they mark the third time since the explosion of the Greenbelt scandal late this past summer that the Ford government has announced significant U-turns on previous development-related policies.

The PCs completed the reversals of its Greenbelt removals and most of its changes to a dozen municipalities’ official plans by passing laws to those effects last week before adjourning the legislature for the winter holiday break.