Municipal Law – Zoning - Judicial interpretation of zoning bylaws
Applicant company owned parcel of vacant land in town adjacent to highway. Parcel was designated as highway commercial Zone 9 by Zoning By-Law. Bylaw imposed cap on gross leasable commercial floor area of community shopping centre of 4,645 square meters. Community shopping centre was not defined in bylaw, however shopping centre was defined as building or group of buildings designed, developed, owned and managed as unit containing six or more separated spaces for lease or occupancy. Applicant sought declaration that bylaw did not prohibit development for permitted uses greater than 4,645 square metres where development consisted of five or fewer separate spaces for lease or occupancy. Application judge rejected applicant’s argument that community shopping centre must be type of shopping centre and dismissed application. Applicant appealed. Appeal dismissed. There was no error in application judge’s conclusion that some meaning must be ascribed to word “community” when associated with “shopping centre”. Application judge cited applicable case law concerning interrelationship between zoning bylaws and official plans and interpretation. It would have made no sense to read bylaw as imposing relatively small size limit on structure with six or more units but no size limit other than 40 per cent lot coverage cap on structure with five or fewer units. Applicant did not demonstrate how bylaw met requirements of void for vagueness test. There was no requirement that every term in zoning bylaw be precisely defined.
Southside Construction Management Limited v. Ingersoll (Town) (2019), 2019 CarswellOnt 8813, 2019 ONCA 459, K. Feldman J.A., J.C. MacPherson J.A., and Janet Simmons J.A. (Ont. C.A.); affirmed (2018), 2018 CarswellOnt 18245, 2018 ONSC 6561, A.D. Grace J. (Ont. S.C.J.).
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