Ex-mayor of Ontario town claims Glen Murray promised to make complaint 'go away' if she approved new homes

The former mayor of a Toronto bedroom community alleges Winnipeg mayoral candidate Glen Murray promised to make a complaint about her "go away" if she approved a large-scale residential development.

Murray, however, says he has no recollection of engaging in any arm-twisting during a 2013 meeting that took place at Queen's Park, Ontario's legislative building, when he was the minister of infrastructure in Kathleen Wynne's Liberal government.

Marolyn Morrison, who served as the mayor of Caledon, Ont. from 2003 until 2014, says Murray summoned her to his office at Queen's Park and instructed her to reverse a land-use decision.

Morrison claims Murray told her to drop her longtime opposition to a proposal to build housing for 21,000 people southwest of Bolton, the largest residential and commercial centre in mostly rural Caledon.

The owner of the land, Solmar Development Corp., wanted Caledon to rezone agricultural fields for residential use.

Morrison claims Murray told her to change the designation, without mentioning Solmar by name.

"He just told me that he had a complaint against me, and it was pretty serious and that it could be dropped or it could go away if I made that area residential," Morrison said in an interview in July, elaborating on allegations first reported by the Globe & Mail in 2018.

"I refused. I said, 'Over my dead body.'"

Solmar first proposed to build residential homes on its land alongside Bolton in 2004. There was a high demand for new homes in the greater Toronto area, and sparsely populated Caledon had far more available land than Brampton, its Peel Region neighbour to the south.

Morrison opposed the plan, initially arguing against sprawl and later insisting the land should be reserved for industrial development. Caledon's nine-member town council effectively voted against Solmar's proposal in 2008. 

Continuing conflict between the mayor and developer, however, wound up in the pages of the Toronto Star and Toronto Life, as Morrison used a column in a weekly Caledon newspaper to argue against rapid development and Solmar's owner invested in another weekly paper to plead its own case.

Morrison said Caledon was waiting for Ontario's municipal affairs and housing minister to approve a zoning change to allow a Canadian Tire distribution centre to proceed near Bolton when Murray requested her presence.

She said she drove to Queen's Park with Caledon's chief administrative officer and planning director to meet Murray and his aides, whom she said did not speak as Murray admonished her staff for doing a poor job at managing development.

"He wasn't even the minister in charge of this stuff. He was over in infrastructure and so he really had nothing to do with this portfolio," said Morrison in a phone interview from her new home in B.C.'s Kootenay region.