The former mayor of a Toronto bedroom community claims Winnipeg mayoral candidate Glenn Murray promised to file a complaint for her “departure” if he approved a large-scale housing development.
However, Murray says he has no recollection of engaging in arm-twisting during a 2013 meeting that took place at Queen’s Park, Ontario’s legislature, when he was infrastructure minister in Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government.
Marolyn Morrison, who was mayor of Caledon, Ontario. from 2003 to 2014, says Murray called her into his Queen’s Park office and instructed her to reverse a land use decision.
Morrison claims Murray told her to drop her long-standing opposition to a proposal to build homes for 21,000 people south-west of Bolton, the biggest residential and commercial center in largely rural Caledon.
The owner of the land, Solmar Development Corp., wants Caledon to rezone the agricultural fields for residential use.
Morrison claims Murray told her to change the name without mentioning Solmar by name.
“He just told me there’s a complaint against me and it’s pretty serious and it might drop or go away if I rezone this area,” Morrison said in a July interview, clarifying the allegations first reported by the Globe & Mail in 2018
“I refused. I said “Over my dead body.”
“He wasn’t even the responsible minister,” says the former mayor
Solmar first proposed building residential homes on its land next to Bolton in 2004. There was high demand for new housing in the greater Toronto area, and sparsely populated Caledon had far more land available than Brampton, its Peel region neighbor to the south .
Morrison opposed the plan, initially opposing the expansion and later insisting that the land be reserved for industrial development. The nine-member Caledon City Council effectively voted against Solmar’s proposal in 2008.
However, the ongoing conflict between the mayor and the developer ended up in the pages of the Toronto Star and Toronto Life, as Morrison used a column in the weekly Caledon newspaper to argue against rapid development and the owner of Solmar invested in another weekly newspaper to plead for his own you’re a case.
Former Caledon, Ont., mayor Marolyn Morrison, seen here in 2009, claims Murray promised to fix the problem if he changed his mind about housing. (CBC News Archive)
Morrison said Caledon was waiting for Ontario’s Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing to approve a zoning change to allow a Canadian Tire distribution center to go ahead near Bolton when Murray requested her presence.
She said she drove to Queen’s Park with Caledon’s chief administrative officer and director of planning to meet with Murray and his aides, who she said did not speak while Murray berated her staff for doing a poor job in development management.
“He wasn’t even the minister in charge of these things. It was in infrastructure and so it really had nothing to do with that portfolio,” Morrison said in a telephone interview from his new home in the Kootenay region of British Columbia.
“He never, ever mentioned the developer, but he pointed out these lands on our maps and said these lands would be residential.”
Morrison said her administrators have tried to argue that Caledon bases its land-use decisions on Ontario guidelines. She claims Murray responded by ordering all aides out of his office, leaving him and Morrison alone.
“If I had any brains in my head, I probably should have gotten up and left too,” she said, adding that’s when Murray promised to drop an unspecified complaint. “He basically told me that these lands are better off being residential.”
“It wasn’t a particularly important meeting,” says Murray
Murray said his recollections of the meeting are very different.
“It wasn’t a particularly important meeting at the time,” Murray said Wednesday in a phone interview, claiming the city of Caledon called the meeting, not him.
“The basic facts are that there was never another follow-up meeting. There was no decision I made. I definitely didn’t expect her to make any decisions.”
Murray also said he had no recollection of discussing the Solmar development with Morrison.
“It was almost 10 years ago. I really don’t remember much of it,” he said.
The former MPP said he remembers talking to Morrison about the Go Train service, rapid transit lines, new roads, the effect of transportation on population density and the Canadian Tire project that eventually went ahead.
“It’s really sad that she may have walked away from this feeling that it was a less than positive experience,” Murray said, adding that he has held many meetings over the course of his 32-year career as a city councilor, mayor , MPP and business person.
“In all of these, I would literally say, thousands of meetings, the only objection I’ve heard — and it came after the fact — was from a mayor.”
Glenn Murray, seen here in Toronto in 2014 with former Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne, was the province’s infrastructure minister when he met Morrison. (Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press)
Solmar declined to comment on Morrison’s claims, saying he was unaware of her claim.
The development company donated $20,000 to Wynne’s Liberal leadership campaign in 2012, according to Ontario election donation records.
A Solmar spokesman told the Globe & Mail in 2018 that the firm had also donated to other political parties.
Morrison said she complained to Winn about Murray, but to no avail. He resigned as an MPP in 2017 to work for the Pembina Institute, an environmental think tank, and returned to Winnipeg a year later.
The Caledon story will not torpedo Murray, says the professor
Aaron Moore, who chairs the University of Winnipeg’s political science department, said he doesn’t believe the Caledon story will affect Murray’s renewed campaign to become Winnipeg mayor.
Most voters, he said, won’t pay much attention.
“The fact that it happened in Ontario while he was away, and the fact that it happened in a municipality that most Winnipeggers have never heard of, may not resonate with them as a result,” said Moore.
Paul Thomas, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Manitoba, said that while it’s important for municipalities to make independent decisions about land-use planning, Morrison’s claims remain unproven.
“If there was more solid evidence, the story probably would have continued and he could have been forced to resign,” Thomas said.
The professor said Murray was so confident he could convince others of his point of view, he could be “aggressive and dismissive of others’ points of view” when locked in a disagreement.
“History will bear out the impression of a portion of the voting population — I don’t know what percentage — that Murray is self-centered, self-important, opportunistic and not entirely honest,” Thomas said.
“This will not torpedo his candidacy.
Morrison said her advice to Winnipeg voters is to scrutinize all mayoral candidates.
“Look at the history of the people who are running and choose wisely because you want people who have integrity and are honest,” she said. “If you find a man of integrity and honesty, you can turn your city around.”
Murray is among 14 registered candidates for mayor of Winnipeg. The elections are on October 26.
More from CBC on the Winnipeg election
Add Comment