An Ontario developer is advancing a years-old legal battle against the province over a parcel of protected land, seeking compensation for how the Ford government handled its Greenbelt reversal.
Minotar Holdings, a development company that owns land in Markham, recently filed a fresh statement of claim against the provincial government, demanding $300 million for what it says is a breach of contract.
The latest claim stems from the law introduced in 2023, after the premier reversed his decision to remove protected land from the Greenbelt. For years before that, Minotar had been fighting a legal case against the government, trying to force it to remove its land.
The land the company owns was purchased in 2003, before the creation of the Greenbelt. When the protected area was created in 2005, the Minotar property was locked to future development.
It insists it was included in the Greenbelt by mistake and took the previous Liberal government to court in 2017 to try and force them to unlock it. That lawsuit was set to head to a trial in 2023, according to a new statement of claim from the company.
Then, in October 2022, days before the Ford government announced it would remove 7,400 acres of land from the Greenbelt, officials approached the developer and offered to settle, the lawsuit alleges. They said the Minotar land would be removed from the Greenbelt, along with other parcels, if the company dropped its legal claim.
Paul Fruitman, who is representing the developer in its latest claim, said they agreed and dropped their action.
With a plan to finally have its land removed, the developer said it then went into overdrive to develop the land. The new statement of claim said it spent roughly $500,000 to prepare for its development and applied for a zoning order.
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Then, in September 2023, the government reversed its decision.
Facing a full-blown scandal over how it had gone about selecting land to remove from the Greenbelt, the resignation of two ministers and two scathing watchdog reports, Premier Doug Ford apologized for removing land from the Greenbelt and cancelled the plan.
The premier’s office did not respond to a request for comment regarding Minotar’s statement of claim. The allegations have not been proven in court and a statement of defence does not appear to have been filed yet.
The auditor general suggested in the summer of 2023 that the removal of all parcels of land from the Greenbelt would benefit select developers by more than $8 billion. She found developers had direct influence over the process, handing packages to a senior staffer.
“What followed cannot be described as a standard or defensible process,” the auditor general said when she released her report.
Minotar argues its case was different from the examples cited by the auditor general and integrity commissioner, which precipitated the Greenbelt scandal.
“The findings regarding the 14 non-Minotar sites were damning,” its statement of claim acknowledged.
It included quotations from both the auditor general and the integrity commissioner, suggesting civil servants had backed the idea of removing Minotar land from the Greenbelt.
After reversing its decision to remove the land, the government tabled a law to return the protected land to the Greenbelt, ensure it could not be removed through regulation in the future and to indemnify itself from legal action over the decision.
The law effectively stopped Minotar — and other developers — from seeking compensation and protected the government from any attempts to do so. Fruitman argues it is a relatively unprecedented move.
“It’s a remarkable proposition that the government will propose a contract, it will come to you to do a contract… to get you to do something, i.e. to drop the lawsuit,” he said. “And then turn around and say, ‘Just kidding, now you don’t have a case, and now we’re taking away your rights anyway, thanks for doing the deal with us.'”
Shortly after the law was passed, Minotar applied for a review of the law by the courts, arguing it was unconstitutional. The request was dismissed and is now being appealed by the developer.
Fruitman said he believed the provincial government was increasingly looking to protect itself when it made decisions by default, a trend which could leave those who have had contracts broken without recourse.
“You look at it as a contract here with a developer, a settlement, but this could be for snow removal, it could be for daycare services, it could be for anything,” he said.
“It’s the same principle. It sets a very bad precedent and a very bad message if anybody is considering doing business with the province or even in the province.”
The latest statement of claim, which is effectively a backstop for receiving compensation if the appeal is granted, asks a court to order various remedies, including removing its land from the Greenbelt and damages of $300 million.
It says Minotar is entitled to damages for breach of contract, arguing its land is worth roughly $4 million per acre if it can be developed, but is “worthless” in the Greenbelt.
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