The Ontario Court of Appeal has upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss a developer’s constitutional challenge against a 2023 law that restored 15 parcels of land to the Greenbelt. The legislation in question overturned Premier Doug Ford’s previous initiative to open protected land for development. Despite arguments from Minotar Holdings Inc.’s legal team claiming the law infringed on superior court authority and unwritten constitutional principles, the Appeal Court ruled that such assertions would disrupt the constitutional balance and were therefore unfounded.
Minotar Holdings Inc. initiated legal action against the province in 2017, contending that its 210-acre land was wrongly included in the Greenbelt. Although a settlement was reached in 2022 to remove 37 acres from the protected reserve, the province revoked this agreement in the aftermath of a scandal surrounding Ford’s decision to permit development on Greenbelt land. Following critical assessments by the auditor general and integrity commissioner, all 15 parcels of land, including Minotar’s 37-acre tract, were returned to the Greenbelt under the new law.
The legislation not only reinstated the land but also mandated that any future alterations to the Greenbelt boundaries must be made through legislation rather than regulation. This provision, argued Minotar’s lawyer Paul Fruitman in 2023, shielded the government from judicial scrutiny of Greenbelt changes. Nevertheless, in a 2-1 ruling, the Appeal Court concurred with the lower court’s judgment that the province’s actions did not infringe upon superior court jurisdiction.
According to the court’s decision, the legislative modifications affected legal rights by altering substantive law, falling within established regulatory frameworks rather than impinging on inherent judicial powers.