Ojibway big-box store foes must pay legal fees
Two of the citizens who fought construction of a big-box store near Windsor’s Ojibway Park and Prairie Complex have been ordered to pay thousands of dollars of the developer’s legal fees.
As a result of a decision earlier this month by a panel of the Ontario Municipal Board, environmental activists Nancy Pancheshan and Anna Lynn Meloche must pay $4,500 and $6,500, respectively, to the lawyer representing the Coco Group.
“It’s hard to look at my flag these days,” said Pancheshan in a public statement about the decision.
Pancheshan — who leads the advocacy group Save Ojibway — and Meloche have wrangled with the Coco Group for years via public hearing processes in order to block commercial development of private lands at Sprucewood Avenue and Matchette Road.
Acting through Toronto lawyer Mary Bull, the Coco Group was seeking more than $750,000 in total compensation from Pancheshan and Meloche — plus interest.
But the OMB decided against awarding such amounts, noting that doing so would have “a direct and chilling impact on citizen participation in Planning Act matters.”
Indeed, the OMB agreed with Pancheshan “that the public interest must be considered when an award of costs is requested.”
“Ratepayers and other members of the public should not be fearful of participating in the Board’s proceedings and costs should not be used as a threat or reason to dissuade public participation,” the board stated.
However, the OMB did not agree with Pancheshan and Meloche that the developer’s motion seeking costs should be dismissed entirely.
According to the OMB, awarding some costs is “appropriate and necessary” because not doing so would give parties free license to re-introduce settled issues, trespass on private lands, and circumvent the objective of a fair and transparent hearing through witness tactics and stalling.
For example, the board found that Pancheshan’s motion to reintroduce market impact issues on the development matter was “frivolous and vexatious.”
As for Meloche, the OMB pointed out that she had been warned seven years previously to proceed with caution, and that it was made clear to her that her evidence in the hearing would need to be pre-filed.
According to the OMB, Meloche did not do so, and her course of conduct “was an abuse of process, was patently unreasonable, and did not satisfy the standard of a fair and transparent hearing.”
The board also noted Meloche trespassed on the subject lands.
Meloche declined to comment on the OMB’s decision.
In Pancheshan’s statement on the decision, she described herself as “trying to protect Ojibway.”
According to Pancheshan, she’s being made to pay because she questioned the need for a big-box store.
Meanwhile, she fears that nothing has been done to address the traffic impacts on the nature reserve and its threatened species.
“Matchette Road needs to close and it causes great sadness people continue to drive through the heart of Ojibway,” Pancheshan lamented.
“Windsor is losing its globally endangered ecosystem under current traffic volumes,” she wrote. “Recently, a female Blanding’s (turtle) was killed in front of the future development, two metres from Coco Paving’s newly constructed fence to protect the species.”