Practice Profile
Municipal, Planning & Environmental
The Municipal, Planning & Environmental Law Group at Cassels Brock has been repeatedly ranked within the top municipal law groups in Toronto by Novae Res Urbis. This independent ranking is based on volume and diversity of work, and success rate.
We have advised and represented a wide variety of clients, including municipalities; developers; ratepayer groups; individual property owners; private, public and crown corporations; and municipal agencies.
Our areas of expertise include:
Municipal Law
- Drafting and interpreting by-laws and agreements
- Advising on restructuring and amalgamations
- Initiating and opposing judicial review applications
- Advising on development charges
- Advising on municipal jurisdiction
- Representing clients on assessment appeals before the Assessment Review Board, the Ontario Municipal Board and the courts
- Providing expropriation advice to both land owners and expropriating authorities, representing clients before the Board of Negotiation, the Ontario Municipal Board and the Ontario courts
Planning Law
- Advising on real estate purchases and development
- Advising on permitted uses of lands
- Advising on restrictions such as special policy areas, holding provisions and environmental limitations
- Obtaining development approvals
- Representing clients before courts and tribunals such as the Ontario Municipal Board, the Niagara Escarpment Commission, and the Lands and Mining Commission
Environmental Law
- Advising on purchase, sale and development, and decommissioning of property
- Advising on landfill site selection
- Advising on spill cleanup
- Representing clients in environmental appeals
Our experience includes:
- Successfully representing a member of the film industry in obtaining approvals for a new major film studio complex
- Successfully defending a southern Ontario region’s no-smoking by-law, which regulates smoking in workplaces and public areas, at the Ontario Court of Appeal
- Representing members of the circus industry in a landmark municipal law decision which overturned a Windsor by-law prohibiting entertainment involving exotic animals
- Representing a circus in an Ontario Court of Appeal ruling which struck down a Toronto by-law that effectively banned exotic-animal circuses
- Acting for a southern Ontario township in upholding a zoning by-law protecting rural land for industrial use, and in showing that a cement-mixing company had not obtained a building permit for its new plant
- Acting for the same township in successfully defending a by-law banning industrial use of rural land, in relation to several depleted aggregate pits in the area, before the Ontario Municipal Board
- Negotiating with an Ontario township after it enacted a by-law creating a special tax on waste disposal sites, and, after appealing to the Ontario Superior Court, succeeding in having the by-law struck down
- Advancing the timeframe for a developer wanting to construct a condominium apartment tower on top of a downtown Toronto hotel, by taking the approval to the Committee of Adjustment and avoiding zoning and official plan amendments
- Obtaining approval for a five star luxury hotel and condominium in the prestigious Yorkville area