As the Greenbelt scandal threatens to infect more of Ontario’s housing policies, opposition politicians are turning their attention to a controversial zoning tool heavily used by the Ford government.
NDP Leader Marit Stiles is set to unveil a lengthy list of favourable development decisions granted to builders who attended the wedding of Ontario Premier Doug Ford‘s daughter in August 2022.
As first reported by Global News, developers were also present at a stag and doe in the backyard of the Ford family home, just days before the wedding, that saw cash donations being made directly to members of the premier’s family.
The NDP unveiled a list of 18 Minister’s Zoning Orders (MZOs) across the province that went to developers who attended Ford’s daughter’s wedding, arguing that the controversial tool was used to sidestep municipal officials and speed up building projects to benefit friends of the premier and the party.
Shakir Rehmatullah, who sat at Table 12 at the wedding, was granted nine zoning orders between 2020 and 2022, according to the NDP.
Mario Cortellicci sat with Doug Ford at the wedding, at Table 10, and received six MZOs, the NDP said, and Nico Fidani-Diker’s development enterprises received two.
The NDP also said Carmine Nigro, who also sat with the premier at the wedding, received one zoning order from Queen’s Park in 2020.
The Ontario NDP pointed out that the Ford government had issued as many MZOs to guests at the premier’s daughter’s wedding as the previous Liberal government did during 15 years of government.
Ford has previously admitted he is personally close to several developers and told the integrity commissioner that some guests at his daughter’s wedding fundraiser were “personal friends.”
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing said a review of all MZOs was underway and that they were used to push “critical” home-building projects.
“As Minister Calandra has stated, we are undergoing a review of Minister’s Zoning Orders to ensure that they support the province’s goals of getting shovels in the ground faster and building 1.5 million homes by 2031,” the spokesperson said.
What is a MZO?
An MZO, or Minister’s Zoning Order, is a powerful planning tool in the province’s playbook. It allows the housing minister to overrule decisions or zoning from local municipalities, which are usually in charge of the planning process.
If an MZO is issued, provincial rules essentially overwrite or replace existing local planning requirements. For example, an MZO could be used to let a developer build housing that is taller than a local city allows or convert farmland into an industrial space for a warehouse.
Experts say the decision entirely cuts municipalities out of the planning process, giving developers a direct route to getting their desired projects approved on a quicker timeline.
“What the MZO does is circumvent and speed up the usual approval process,” Zack Taylor, an associate professor at Western University, previously told Global News. “Once the municipal zoning applying to the project is changed by an MZO and the project is deemed approved, it proceeds as it would (have if) the municipality followed the normal process.”
The tool was rarely used under the previous Ontario Liberal government but has been relied on time and again by the Ford administration. Between March 2019 and March 2021, the PC government issued 44 zoning orders, compared with an average of one per year under the Liberals.
In 2021, Ontario’s auditor general found the province was routinely using MZOs to skip the standard planning process and pointed out there were questions about conflict of interest and transparency.
“We found that there is no formal process that interested parties are required to follow to request an MZO. We also found that there are no established criteria according to which the Minister assesses requests for MZOs,” the auditor general wrote in her annual report.
The report found 39 per cent of the MZOs issued at that point went to the same seven development groups.
The auditor general recently announced a new investigation specifically into the use of MZOs under the Ford government, following a request from the NDP. The auditor general said in a letter that its “normal audit selection process” had picked up MZOs as an issue to investigate as part of its annual reports.
Why are MZOs controversial?
Many of the zoning orders have been controversial, with some taking local politicians completely by surprise.
In May, the province issued a massive zoning order for an entire planned community on Mississauga’s waterfront. The MZO almost doubled the size of a development application city planning staff had been working on in some form for more than a decade, pushing the plan from just over 8,000 units to 16,000.
“We don’t have the road network in that area,” Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie, currently campaigning to be Liberal leader, said at the time. “We don’t have the commitment for the schools, the paramedic stations, the police stations, the fire stations … to build out a complete community. So we have a lot of concerns.”
The zoning order was granted to a development group called Argo, which the NDP’s research shows is a client of Nico Fidani-Diker’s lobbying company. Fidani-Diker sat at Table 1 during Ford’s daughter’s wedding.
Other MZOs that have raised eyebrows include a warehouse in Caledon bordering Ontario’s Greenbelt, a development in an area of Whitchurch-Stouffville with a flood hazard and a separate warehouse on farmland in Vaughan.
The Ford government has, so far, resisted criticism of its reliance on the zoning orders. In 2020, it included policies to increase the power of MZOs in post-COVID-19 economic recovery legislation and has continued to grant them to developers.
“With co-operation of the municipalities, we’ll issue as many (Minister’s) Zoning Orders as we possibly can,” Premier Ford said at an event in June, discussing his concerns with the pace of the local planning process.
The Greenbelt 3.0?
Under fire from advocates and opposition politicians, while facing a police investigation, the Ford government was forced in September to reverse its controversial decision to swap land out of Ontario’s Greenbelt.
In October, the government unexpectedly announced it would also be cancelling its decision to force some cities to expand their boundaries for housing.
The NDP hopes zoning orders will be the government’s next U-turn.
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