The minister of municipal affairs and housing, Rob Flack, has posted the County’s MZO application for Picton Terminals to a public comment page.

He is, he says, wondering if he should consider the request. He is asking the people who live here to tell him what they think. We have till July 10 to weigh in.

That’s interesting. The Ford government in general is not exactly keen on public consultation. Never mind the secret MZO regime, a process cloaked in a Kafkaesque obscurity that means a lot of waiting in darkness.

The hard part is where to start. The rock quarry? That Picton Bay is the town water supply? The history of and continued potential for oil, gas, and other toxic spills there? The wackiness of the idea that Picton Bay, which has no rail link and is far, far away from the 401, is a good spot for an international container shipping port?

Or how about the fact that the MZO is being used to settle the court case the County brought against the Terminals to settle the question of its jurisdiction, or the meaning of County bylaws?

An MZO, by its very nature, removes municipal jurisdiction. It overrides municipal zoning. If granted, it would establish a Special Economic Zone right on Picton Bay, where the Terminals can do what it likes.

Of course, the Terminals has always pretty much done what it likes. 

In 2022, Council decided it had no option but to take ABNA Investments, owner of the Terminals, to court over its failure to follow municipal zoning bylaws that prohibit the use of its port for container shipping.

In a unanimous vote in 2020, Council had rejected its application to open a container shipping port.

But the Doornekamps said that as a port, the Terminals came under federal, not municipal or provincial, jurisdiction. They said they didn’t have to abide by County bylaws. They started stacking containers on the property, and promoting their plans to begin an international shipping regime on Picton Bay. They began to acquire container ships, meant to sail out from Picton Bay, up the St. Lawrence, and out to sea to points around the globe.

That’s when the County issued an injunction to stop the container stacking and filed the motions to take the Terminals to court. The case was due to be heard in October 2024.

But before that day could come, County Council suddenly reversed course, decided going to court would be too expensive and risky, and offered an MZO in a settlement package that gave the Terminals everything it could ever have wanted. That dizzying series of decisions was made entirely behind closed doors, in a series of secret meetings, with no public or Indigenous consultation.

That settlement is now hanging in the balance; it depends on the Minister deciding to issue a zoning order.

If the Minister declines the MZO request, the County will finally get its day in court.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, as the years since the 2020 Regent Theatre decision have ticked by, the Doornekamps discovered that quarrying and selling limestone was highly lucrative. They seem to have turned the port into a massive rock quarry. There is at least $50 million in contracts on the public record for aggregate sold by ABNA Investments to harbourfront projects in Toronto and along the St. Lawrence waterway over the past eight or so years.

In January of this year, four County residents brought a suit against Picton Terminals, alleging it was operating an unlicensed rock quarry. An Ontario Superior Court judge agreed there was enough evidence to proceed. A court date was set, and a charge of operating an unlicensed quarry was to be brought.

But the Ministry of Natural Resources and Fisheries, which is tasked with regulating rock quarries, intervened in the case to stay the charge, saying it had more or less allowed the quarrying, as PT had always claimed it was in the service of projects related to shipping.

The MNRF, in other words, would not allow that claim to be tested in court.

It is pretty tough to get Picton Terminals into court, the one place where its claims can be challenged, the one place it can prove the truth of what it keeps saying.

The key issue in the quarrying of the cliff is the lack of oversight. While the Terminals now says it is preparing the site for Parrish and Heimbecker, a grain shipping company that plans to build 8 concrete grain silos at the port for bulk cargo shipping — an activity for which the Terminals has grandfathered zoning and which is a perfectly legal and historically approved use of the site —  the County has no jurisdiction over site preparations, an omission in its bylaws it has for years failed to rectify. 

Quinte Conservation oversees major excavations within 30m of the waterline, but the Terminals failed even to apply for a permit before it started blasting the cliffs.

When Quinte Conservation advised them they could apply after the fact, they did so. And QC, which could have levied a fine of up to a million dollars for the offense, declined, because enforcing its regulations to that extent would have required a court case.

Sound familiar? The County, too, found out that to enforce its by-laws when it came to Picton Terminals would mean a protracted and expensive legal battle.

And our four residents, who incurred enormous legal expenses and gathered copious amounts of evidence to demonstrate the sheer extent of what looks like near-ceaseless rock quarrying on the top of the cliff over the past 8 years, were simply told to go away by the provincial government.

An MZO gives Picton Terminals yet another way of avoiding a legal judgment. Don’t let that happen. Register your dismay at the Minister’s portal, which can be found here: https://ero.ontario.ca/notice/025-0578.

If you are wondering what exactly to say, consult with the County Conservancy. They have assembled plenty of talking points. All of the Picton Gazette’s articles on the subject are online, along with those of The Toronto Star, InQuinte, Quinte News, and other local media. In a pinch, if you must, ChatGPT will reproduce in more or less serviceable prose much of what has been thought, said, and published online on the subject. Perhaps a place to start to get human — passionate, original, convincing, and principled — thoughts flowing.