The provincial auditor general’s report on the use of Minister’s Zoning Orders (MZO) released on Tuesday says the province made backroom deals without doing their due diligence when requests come across their desks.
And in a case study on Collingwood’s Poplar Village project used in the report as an example, Collingwood’s current council may have been right in asking the province to pump the brakes in 2022 on finalizing the MZO, although the report notes the province didn’t heed that advice.
“It is well known how I felt about the early MZO process for the proposed Poplar Health and Wellness Village,” said Mayor Yvonne Hamlin in a statement sent to CollingwoodToday in response to the report’s findings.
A two-page case study in the 120-page report completed by provincial auditor general Shelley Spence’s office covers the timeline of the Poplar Village project MZO based on internal provincial government communications.
The Poplar Regional Health and Wellness Village proposal for 130 acres on the northeast corner of Poplar Sideroad and Raglan Street was first brought forward to Collingwood council in March 2022 by proponents Di Poce Management Ltd. and Live Work Learn Play Inc.
According to the initial vision for the project presented to council, there would be seven key areas incorporated into the design of the village, including a regional health and wellness campus, a market district, long-term care/assisted living facilities, bioscience and medical research facilities, an eco-wellness centre, a regional transit hub, student and workforce housing, and sports medicine clinics.
The developers intended to seek an MZO — a controversial provincial tool to fast-track a change of zoning on a piece of land with provincial authority bypassing the municipal zoning process — to change the zoning of the property from industrial to mixed use to allow for the community hub-style development.
On Aug. 18, 2022, council endorsed the MZO “in principle,” with the caveat that the developers must work with town staff, the mayor and deputy mayor and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing to prepare a final MZO for endorsement.
On Nov. 10, the previous council voted in favour of supporting the MZO application, even though a development agreement between the town and the developer had not yet been signed. It was one of the last major decisions of the 2018-2022 council before the newly elected council took their seats.
The decision didn’t come without controversy, with then-new mayor Hamlin quickly calling a meeting of the newly inaugurated council on Nov. 16 to revert back to an “in-principle” endorsement of an MZO for the Poplar project until the town and the developer had a signed agreement in place to ensure that what the developer was promising is what would be built.
“I don’t feel this was handled in an open and transparent fashion, which is going to be the hallmark of how I govern this town,” said Hamlin at the time of her intention to hit the brakes.
But it was too late.
An MZO for the project had already been drafted by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing as of Oct. 31, 2022, according to the province’s internal documentation referenced in the auditor general's report.
“Then, on Nov. 14, 2022, Ministry staff received an email from the Deputy Minister’s office stating that the direction from the Premier’s Office was to move forward on the Collingwood MZO immediately,” notes Spence in the report.
She writes that although the town had requested a minimum of 10 per cent of the new housing units be a mix of affordable and attainable housing, the final version of the MZO has no wording to that effect.
“Staff noted in the accompanying MZO information package to the Minister: ‘in order to meet desired timelines, the Ministry and [Legislative] Counsel were unable to complete the normal due diligence. As a result, there may be errors that result in the MZO not achieving the intended outcomes and a need to amend this MZO post-filing,’” reads the AG report.
The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing approved the MZO application on Nov. 16, the same day Collingwood council had voted to press pause. It was announced publicly on Nov. 17 – merely one week after Collingwood council had voted to endorse it.
Spence notes the Poplar Village proposal will require significant upgrades to municipal servicing capacity before becoming a reality, through the expansion of the Raymond A. Barker Water Treatment Plant. She concluded that the town was not asked whether it was still supportive of the MZO without the affordable housing component before it was approved by the province.
It is one of three examples in the report of MZOs where municipalities asked for affordable housing to be included as a condition of supporting an MZO application, however the province did not include it in the final approved MZO.
In December 2023 — more than one year later — shortly after the town finally signed a development agreement with the developer which included the 10 per cent affordable/attainable housing number, the province announced the Poplar MZO was among 14 projects across Ontario marked for enhanced monitoring due to limited progress.
Spence points out in her report that the proponents behind the Poplar Village project suggested their proposal includes the creation of about 16,000 construction jobs and between 3,500 and 6,500 permanent jobs.
“No evidence or due diligence were completed or provided to or by the Ministry to substantiate these claims,” she wrote, adding that a 2023 labour report by the town done in 2023 noted that 13,757 people are estimated to be in the town’s labour force.
“Ministry staff did not report to the Minister’s Office on whether the proponent’s claims appeared unrealistic, given the potential impact on the size of the labour force,” she wrote.
No go, MZOs
The annual auditor general’s report covered nine performance audits on various topics including the Ontario Place redevelopment, the implementation and oversight of the province’s opioid strategy and safety, and financial management and capital at the Toronto District School Board.
The audit on MZOs examined whether MZOs were being made based on timely and complete information and in accordance with the Planning Act and whether mechanisms had been established to measure whether MZOs were achieving their intended objectives.
The AG’s report released on Tuesday found that the Ford government issued 114 MZOs from 2019 to 2023, representing a 17-fold increase compared to previous governments’ use of the tool over the past two decades.
While unleashing an unprecedented number of municipality-overriding zoning orders, Premier Doug Ford’s government tended to ignore vital information and prioritize requests “with no protocol and no apparent rationale,” the province’s auditor general concluded.
Spence’s office found the housing minister’s office under former minister Steve Clark often leveraged MZOs without considering local and environmental contexts, in some cases spiking properties’ values before projects were even possible, along with suggesting “the appearance of preferential treatment” for some developers.
Spence’s office conducted an “in-depth review of 25” of the MZOs issued over the past five years.
Although the housing minister is required by Ontario law to “have regard for matters of provincial interest” when making planning decisions, the auditor’s office found “neither the need for MZOs, nor how they advance provincial interests, were consistently assessed.”
The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing also “did not accommodate conditions asked for by municipalities,” in most cases did not assess “whether the sites for re-zoning had access to servicing,” and “did not consistently engage” with environmental experts, the report said.
"As of April 2024, 18 per cent of projects relating to MZOs were still facing significant delays related to servicing," said the auditor general's report.
It added, "These delays beg the question why an MZO was used instead of the municipal planning process."
The auditor’s office also found within its MZOs sample that the housing minister’s office had insisted on prioritizing certain requests over others, issuing some orders in as little as a few weeks after receiving a request. The Poplar Village MZO was included in that list.
Spence’s office also found that of four of the 25 MZOs it sampled, a former senior political staffer in the housing minister’s office told public servants “that the minister and premier were asking for that MZO, specifically, to be finalized.”
Where does it stand?
According to an update on the project provided by Armando Lopes, vice-president of development for Di Poce Management Ltd. to CollingwoodToday in October, the vision for the project is currently still in-line with what was presented to the public in 2022.
Work is continuing by Di Poce Management Ltd. to hammer out an agreement with Collingwood General and Marine Hospital to finalize details on the land donation as part of the development for a future hospital build on the Poplar site.
In the AG’s report, she notes the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks informed the MMAH during their review of the MZO that the site is a potential habitat for endangered or threatened species such as butternut trees, barn swallow, bobolink, chimney swift and the eastern meadowlark.
Lopes said in October that ecologists have been at the 130-acre site, along with officials from the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority, to delineate where the sensitive natural environmental areas exist.
Provincial monitoring of the Poplar Village MZO is still underway, and the projects on that monitoring list are planned to be tracked until mid-2025.
Hamlin said on Tuesday she’s optimistic about the project moving forward.
“We have successfully concluded an agreement with the developer containing significant community benefits including the land for a new regional hospital on Poplar Sideroad,” she said. “I look forward to continuing to work with the ministry, the developer and the hospital as this project moves forward.”
Lopes did not return a request for comment for this story by publication time.
- With files from Charlie Pinkerton, The Trillium
