Group fighting spa plan scores legal victory

Ford government tried to quash request for review of decision to skip environmental assessment

A citizens’ group trying to stop a private spa from being built at Ontario Place has scored a small legal victory against Doug Ford’s government.

The Ford government had sought to prevent Ontario Place for All (OP4A) from seeking a judicial review of the decision to redevelop the site without a full environmental assessment of the area, including the West Island where the spa is to be built.

In a ruling released March 27, Ontario Divisional Court Justice Nancy Backhouse declined to let the government quash OP4A’s application for judicial review.

“It cannot be said that OP4A’s concerns about governance in defiance of environmental legislation are frivolous or unworthy of argument,” Blackhouse wrote.

OP4A is alleging that the West Island redevelopment will destroy its naturalized ecosystem, including 840 trees, all vegetation and an internationally recognized landscape, as well as alleging that it will contour and fill the lagoons and small waterways, destroying 36,000 square metres of aquatic habitat.

One week after the citizens’ group applied for the judicial review late last year, the government tabled the Rebuilding Ontario Place Act in an effort to exempt the redevelopment of the West Island at Ontario Place from the Environmental Assessment Act.

The act received royal assent in December.

Backhouse ruled that the extent of the EAA’s application to a public redevelopment project is “an important question of public interest.” She referred the matter to a full panel of the Divisional Court.

No date has been set, said Norm Di Pasquale, co-chair of Ontario Place for All Inc., a not-for-profit organization with 30,000 supporters.

“We’re very pleased with the outcome,” said Di Pasquale, adding that the decision seems to call into question the validity of the Rebuilding Ontario Place Act.

“It feels like a win.”

The Austria-based company Therme has plans to create a $350million water spa on the West Island; as part of the project, provincial taxpayers would pay for the construction of a 2,100-space underground parking garage.

The plan, as reiterated last month by Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma, also involves an expanded Live Nation concert theatre but would require the Ontario Science Centre to relocate.

Ontario Place for All is alleging that the West Island redevelopment will destroy its naturalized ecosystem