The City of Calgary’s contentious blanket zoning bylaw was in the Alberta Court of King’s Bench on Wednesday, facing a legal challenge to have it overthrown. The bylaw, approved in May after a two-week public hearing, removed all areas of the city zoned for only single-family homes (also known as exclusionary zoning), allowing multi-plex homes to be built in those areas without the need of attending a public hearing to get a permit. Council’s decision was an attack on democracy, as more than 6,100 Calgarians attended the public hearing, either in person, on the phone or by way of written submissions, with 75.6% saying they were against the bylaw being approved. The bylaw passed by a vote of 9 to 6, with those in favour being Mayor Gondek and Cllrs. Penner, Walcott, Carra, Pootmans, Dhaliwal, Spencer, Mian and Wyness. Those against were Cllrs. Sharp, Chabot, McLean, Chu, Wong, and Demong. The application to overthrow the bylaw was signed by close to 300 Calgarians, who also contributed to a GoFundMe page to cover the legal costs of the action. Most of those signatories were at court on Wednesday, so many that an extra courtroom had to be allocated to seat the crowd. The group’s legal team, led by Robert Lehodey KC, argued the bylaw should be made invalid on the grounds comments made before the public hearings by Cllr. Carra indicated a lack of impartiality, contravening a section of the Municipal Government Act (MGA.) An independent affidavit accompanying the application said Carra had called those against the bylaw ‘racists’ and ‘blowhards’ at a meeting last spring. The lawyers also argued the length of the public hearing process in the spring did not provide fairness to those who spoke about the bylaw and that council exceeded its power under the MGA when it comes to zoning regulations. “I would say easily 99 percent of the people in the courtrooms were on our side,” says Lehodey. “We presented what I thought was a very good oral presentation for about two-and-a-half hours and the city’s lawyers responded for about 90 minutes.” As with some members of council, the city’s legal team displayed a sense of entitlement. “My personal view is that their arguments were shallow, they just basically took the view that (the bylaw) is in the public interest and that's the rationale for them to do whatever they want, carte blanche, all for the greater public interest.” “However, the city failed time and again to demonstrate that the public interest was more important than the individual property rights of Calgarians who own residential properties (and) it’s consistent with the fact that those on city council that voted in favour of blanket zoning have a blatant disregard for the rights of property owners.” The city says the blanket zoning bylaw addresses the ‘housing crisis’ in the city by adding more homes. “And they believe that?” says Lehodey. “That it will solve the housing crisis? The housing crisis is one of affordable homes, not of more housing because more will not necessarily make it affordable.” “I think they don’t care, I think that they’re driven by a philosophy that is ‘we think we know better than the rest of you Calgarians.' ” “And this noise about (single-family) zoning being exclusionary. That word is designed to tar people who own homes in those areas. You could also say that zoning of a commercial area precludes people from living in a single-family residence in that area. It's just a word and it’s a bad adjective.” Lehodey shed some light on the letter sent to Mayor Gondek by federal Liberal Housing Minister, Sean Fraser, who wrote the city would not receive $228.5 million from the federal Housing Accelerator Fund if the blanket zoning bylaw was not approved. “Gondek represented at the public hearing that it was required and a number of people presented contrary information,” he says. “On the specific request of one of the councillors to administration which was ‘do we or do we not get the money if we vote against blanket zoning, yes or no?' It took them awhile to get around to answer and the answer was no, we do not lose the money if we don’t pass blanket zoning.” “So given that, the record got corrected, so, there wasn’t much point in us fighting that fight because they didn’t actually fetter their discretion, in the context they actually had the information from administration that no, they don’t lose the money.” The presiding justice at the hearing on Wednesday, Judge Michael Lema, reserved his opinion. “He's going to try and render his decision expeditiously,” says Lehodey. “He did suggest it could be before Christmas but it will probably be the first little bit in January, which is fast actually. We’re happy with that, I think it’s an indication of how important he sees it in closing,” Councillors with a sense of entitlement have taken the position they are the city and can do whatever they want, regardless of the implications, as long as they put lipstick on it as being in the public interest. “The real test is much more focussed,” says Lehodey. “You need to consider the issues, look to make sure what the implications are and are taken into account in the context of passing a bylaw like this.”
