Mount Pleasant Group of Cemeteries

Regular not-for-profit Corporation?  Or runaway Crown Corporation?

 

Just before Christmas 2008, 71 trees were removed from one acre of Mt. Pleasant Cemetery in downtown Toronto for a 22,000 square foot Visitation Centre and a 75-car parking lot to be built.

A local ratepayers’ group, the Moore Park Residents’ Association (MPRA), had objections to covering the acre of Toronto’s urban forest with cement and asphalt and did a little ‘digging’ into the cemetery planning the development.  To their surprise the MPRA uncovered that Mount Pleasant Group of Cemeteries (MPGC) is a public institution rather than a “commercial privately owned cemetery” as advertised in their flyer for the Visitation Centre.

The MPRA discovered MPGC is a public cemetery created in the early 1800s, paid for by the citizens of Toronto. In early pioneer days there were numerous epidemics which necessitated sanitary burials so that remaining residents would be kept safe from disease. ‘The Trustees of the York General Burying Grounds,’ as MPGC was originally known, was created by the legislature of Upper Canada in 1826, so that ‘hygienic’ burials could be secured for those who were ‘indigent’ or not members of either the Protestant or Catholic Churches.  In 1871 the Province of Ontario ‘vested’ the public trust into a corporation of the Crown through a piece of legislation.

The public’s original investment has now grown into 10 cemeteries comprising 1,200 acres of land in and around the Toronto area worth $1.37 billion, according to Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) land valuations. According to an MPGC insider, the organization grossed $98 million last year.

 When currently asked about their status, MPGC now denies they are (or ever were) a Public Trust or a Crown Corporation, stating that they operate outside of the purview of the Provincial government. The MPRA learned that MPGC has escaped financial oversight by the Provincial Government for many years – at least dating back to the late 1970s. It appears that a Crown Corporation is now essentially controlled by a board of three self-appointed private individuals. The sheer size and value of prime GTA real estate acreage involved and the nearly $100 million per year in revenues means that this is a serious matter to the people of Ontario. 

There is no financial transparency or accountability to the public. Initially it appeared that the government had simply lost track of a Crown Corporation as the legislation governing it is so old. In February 2006 MPGC sold $5 million of cemetery land to Invar Development Corporation. Where did the $5 million of the public’s money go? In 2006, at the prodding of the MPRA, the Province asked MPGC for their financial statements. MPGC refused to disclose them. Why did MPGC not disclose their finances to the Province that created them? And perhaps even more curious, why did the Province choose not to exercise its right to compel them?

After several  years of community members publicly hounding MPGC and attempting to publicly expose MPGC for the Crown Corporation/Public Trust that they are, it was found from a freedom of information (FOI) request that MPGC had applied to the Ontario government to ‘convert’ the Crown Corporation into a regular corporation. Through this scheme taxpayers would not receive any financial compensation for the 1,200 acres of public land because ‘converting’ is different from ‘selling.’ Instead, a small group of private individuals would quietly acquire 1,200 acres and Ontario would lose possession of a $1.37 billion public asset.

Why hasn’t the government done anything about it?

Why does the public not know where the millions of dollars from the sale of public lands have gone? Where are the audited financial reports for year to year operations? Other Crown corporations must produce them. Why not this one? And why, unlike Ontario Lottery and Gaming (OLG) and the LCBO, does MPGC not return their profits to the Ministry of Finance?

In spite of the Moore Park community’s commissioning of a legal brief from McCarthy Tetrault outlining the legal issues involved and its submission to the Ontario government, Premier McGuinty has done little to correct the situation.  The Ontario Integrity website that logs visits by lobbyists to the Province indicates that MPGC lobbyists have accessed the Premier and Cabinet Office as well as the Attorney General. The citizens have been unable to access the government at this level. In fact an invitation to meet the Premier sent by the Cemetery Committee of the MPRA by registered mail received no response.

What does it take to get the Province of Ontario to return a Public Asset back to the citizenry?

Has obeying the law in Ontario become negotiable?

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