EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted exclusively to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.
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 found.
In a damning report echoing the revelations of its 2023 Greenbelt investigation, the Office of the Auditor General’s probe of minister’s zoning orders (MZOs) validated many of the longstanding criticisms of the Ford government’s use of the tool.
Auditor General Shelley Spence found some orders issued by former housing minister Steve Clark raised “the appearance of preferential treatment” for certain developers. His office also often leveraged the development-permitting trump card without considering local and environmental contexts, sometimes spiking properties’ values before projects were even possible, according to the provincial auditor.
MZOs are a powerful provincial land-use planning tool most commonly issued by Ontario’s housing minister. They override requirements for development set by municipal bylaws and don’t have to conform to other provincial planning frameworks. By issuing an MZO, Ontario’s housing minister can allow building on previously undevelopable lands and significantly simplify the construction approvals process for a property.
“With their increased use, the public wants to know how and why MZOs are being made, and how this way of zoning land is likely to impact their communities and agricultural and natural spaces,” said Spence’s office’s report of why it conducted its audit.
The Ford government issued 114 MZOs from 2019 to 2023, a 17-fold increase compared to previous governments’ use of the tool over the past two decades. The PCs have also passed laws widening the scope and authority of minister-granted zoning orders.
As a result of the auditor’s examination of the process leading to how they were granted — including an “in-depth review of 25” as a sample — its office described the Ford government’s approach to granting MZOs during its five-year spree as being, in many ways, haphazard.
Consistently inconsistent
Developers sometimes ask the provincial government to issue an MZO, as do municipalities — often after builders ask for their endorsement.
Municipalities the auditor’s office heard from said it typically took them three to 18 months to make zoning amendments. Of the 114 MZOs it granted in the period examined by the auditor’s office, it took the Ford government an average of three-and-a-half months from receiving a request to issue an order. Its quickest were issued within a few weeks, while the longest it took to grant one was 19 months.
Of the preliminary information packages that Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing staff prepared for the minister’s office for each of the 114 MZOs granted from 2019 to 2023, “none of them contained an assessment as to whether the MZO was necessary,” the auditor found.
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,” and in most cases, did not assess “whether the sites for re-zoning had access to servicing,” the report said.
A property's infrastructure servicing accessing water and wastewater systems is considered a basic need for building and a "key consideration for any development" going through the municipal approvals process, Spence's report explained.
"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 the ministry “did not consistently engage” with environmental experts, nor affected Indigenous communities.
One consistent impact the auditor’s office noted that MZOs had was increasing the value of the land. “According to (Municipal Property Assessment Corporation) estimates, that re-zoning increased its value by 46 per cent,” the report said. “Land already zoned for non-agricultural uses increased in value by 18 per cent.”
Déjà vu
While the housing minister’s office elected to prioritize some MZO requests, it had “no protocol” for deeming certain ones urgent, the report said. Of the 25 MZOs the auditor’s office closely scrutinized, the housing minister’s office prioritized nine, issuing seven within a month of receiving the request.
In four of the closely examined cases, the auditor’s office also “found documentation that a high-ranking member of the (housing) minister’s office staff … directed ministry staff to prioritize an MZO request for which (they) had been directly lobbied.”
In one of these cases, the staffer, Clark’s then-deputy chief of staff, told public servants in the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing “that the minister and premier were asking for that MZO, specifically, to be finalized,” said the auditor’s report. Spence said the then-deputy chief of staff — Kirsten Jensen, as other publicly available information confirms — gave the direction in an email. The AG’s office “did not have … other evidence” to determine whether or not Clark or Ford personally insisted on this MZO, Spence told reporters.
Spence’s report did note, “Actions such as this give the appearance of preferential treatment for some proponents of MZOs over others.”
It also mentioned that deliberations around this MZO overlapped with the events leading to the Ford government’s Greenbelt changes.
On Dec. 6, 2021, the Township of Cavan Monaghan’s council passed a resolution supporting an MZO for the project, known as Kawartha Downs, which included a horse-racing track, a casino and a residential development. Four months later, a consultant working for the developer asked Jensen to tweak the proposed MZO to remove more environmental protections. These changes were reflected in the finalized MZO filed two days later, according to the auditor’s report.
Information from Spence’s MZOs report, her predecessor’s Greenbelt report, plus the parallel one released by the integrity commissioner, confirm this consultant was the unregistered lobbyist dubbed “Mr. X” by the commissioner. The Trillium and other news outlets have confirmed this to be Municipal Solutions’ John Mutton, a former mayor of Clarington.
Three months after the Kawartha Downs MZO was filed, according to Spence’s report, Cavan Monaghan’s then-mayor emailed Jensen and a “political party email” asking for the MZO to be tweaked to allow the land to host concert venues and music festivals. Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing officials reviewed this request for three months before Sept. 20, 2022, when Jensen and Mutton met for lunch. Three days later, the MZO was amended.
For another two MZOs for properties in Cavan Monaghan, issued within months of the Kawartha Downs order, Jensen also “directed Ministry staff to prioritize these MZOs after communicating directly with developers or their consultants, whether by email or in meetings,” the auditor found.
Jensen left the provincial government in the fall of 2023.
Clark resigned as housing minister a few weeks before, amid the heat of the Greenbelt scandal last September. Ford appointed him government house leader this summer. “Talk to Paul Calandra. He’s the minister of housing,” Clark said when The Trillium tried asking him about the auditor’s report on Tuesday.
When Ford replaced Clark with Calandra in early September 2023, one of his first actions as municipal affairs and housing minister was to launch an internal review of his predecessor’s MZOs.
The ministry closely scrutinized the 61 granted before December 2022, finding by late last year that 22 were for projects that “did not demonstrate reasonable or sufficient progress on the project.” A year less a week ago, Calandra threatened to revoke or amend each of these MZOs, following through with seven of the eight that weren’t for primarily housing projects this spring. The other 14 MZOs for housing-focused projects remain under “enhanced monitoring.”
Spence’s audit said her office examined a 10-MZO sample of the 53 that the ministry didn’t review late last year, finding that half “have made limited progress.”
“I can’t say this more strongly, if we provide an MZO, it’s my expectation that that results in a shovel in the ground,” Calandra said on Tuesday. “And if it does not result in a shovel in the ground, then I will not hesitate to revoke an MZO.”
Calandra has also introduced a new framework for accepting and issuing MZOs. A couple of weeks ago, he said as well that any newly issued MZOs will be revoked if projects don’t make progress within the first year.
By June, when Spence’s office had “completed (its) fieldwork” for its MZOs report, none had been granted via Calandra’s new process, the report said, which still determined that the new framework wasn’t expected to address several of the “significant issues” her office found.