Please see the attached…

Please see the attached RioCan letter regarding the Approval of a municipality’s official plan - New Vaughan Official Plan (VOP) 2025 (Inclusive of the New Weston 7 Secondary Plan and the New Vaughan Metropolitan Centre Secondary Plan) and City of Vaughan request to modify transition provisions in the adopted VOP 2025.

Thank you.

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January 30, 2026

The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing
Community Planning & Development (Central-Urban) Unit
College Park, 16th Floor
777 Bay Street, Toronto, Ontario M7A 2J3

Re: Approval of a municipality’s official plan - New Vaughan Official Plan (VOP) 2025 (Inclusive of the New Weston 7 Secondary Plan and the New Vaughan Metropolitan Centre Secondary Plan) and City of Vaughan request to modify transition provisions in the adopted VOP 2025

We are writing regarding the adopted Vaughan Official Plan 2025 (“VOP 2025”) and the included new Weston 7 Secondary Plan. We understand that By-law 241-2025, which adopted the VOP 2025 and Weston 7 Secondary Plan, was passed by Council on October 28, 2025, and has been submitted to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing (“MMAH”) for approval under Section 17(34) of the Planning Act. We appreciate the opportunity to provide comments on the proposed modifications to the VOP 2025, currently posted on the Environmental Registry of Ontario (ERO Posting No. 025 1420).

We are also writing in regard to the recent City of Vaughan (the “City”) request to modify the VOP 2025 transition language to allow complete development applications that pre-date the VOP 2025 (and its new secondary plans) to be assessed and reviewed under policies that were not in force when those applications were made, running directly contrary to key principles of procedural fairness and the long established “Clergy Principle”.

Various RioCan entities (“RioCan”) is the owner of the lands located at 7501-7621 Weston Road, also known as the Colossus Centre, a 25-hectare site south and east of Highway 7 and Weston Road (the “Colossus Centre Site”). The Colossus Centre Site is currently the subject of complete, active Official Plan amendment applications (OP.22.002 and OP.22.005) submitted March 1, 2022 and deemed complete on July 23, 2022 (the “Colossus Applications”). The Colossus Applications were submitted and deemed complete while the 2010 Vaughan Official Plan was in force and years prior to the adoption of the VOP 2025 and its associated secondary plans, including the new Weston 7 Secondary Plan.

We have been closely following the VOP 2025 review process and have provided comments on the draft of the VOP 2025 to the City. Further, as the Colossus Centre Site falls within the area of land subject to the new Weston 7 Secondary Plan we have been closely following and participating in the Weston 7 Secondary Plan process both prior to and after Vaughan incorporated the Weston 7 Secondary Plan into the VOP 2025 process. The most recent letter submitted to the City and to the Ministry is dated January 12, 2026, and is attached as Appendix A to this letter.

As the Colossus Centre Site is located within the proposed Weston 7 Secondary Plan, an “all-new” Secondary Plan that did not exist in the 2010 Vaughan Official Plan, we are specifically concerned with the City’s recent request to modify Policy 1.3.2, the transition provision adopted by City Council that protects complete development applications submitted prior to the approval of VOP 2025.

The existing transition language in Policy 1.3.2 appropriately recognizes applicants’ reliance on the policy framework in effect at the time of submission and ensures procedural fairness. The City’s stated intention as set out in the Report Dated January 27, 2026 from the Deputy Manager, Planning and Infrastructure Development (the “Staff Report”) is to modify Policy 1.3.2 of the VOP 2025 to allow “complete development applications that pre-date an all-new secondary plan, to be assessed and reviewed under the VOP 2025 and the all-new secondary plan”. This modification, if approved, would allow the City to assess and review the Colossus Applications against the policies of the VOP 2025 and the Weston 7 Secondary Plan despite that those policies and specifically the Weston 7 Secondary Plan were not adopted until years after the Colossus Applications were deemed complete.

RioCan respectfully requests that the Minister reject the requested modification to Policy 1.3.2 and retain the transition provisions as originally adopted by City Council. Removing the transition language is inappropriate and undermines long standing principles of procedural fairness in the planning process. In particular, the well-established Clergy Principle. Under this principle of procedural fairness, a planning application is to be evaluated based on the policy framework in effect at the time the application was submitted. Policies that are enacted after an application is deemed complete, such as the policies of the Weston 7 Secondary Plan in the case of the Colossus Applications, may in certain circumstances inform the review, but these policies are not to be determinative on the application. Further, applying newly adopted policies to complete applications for lands within “all-new” secondary plans while complete applications outside those secondary plan areas continue to benefit from the Clergy Principle is inconsistent and unfair. Preserving the original Council-adopted transition policy ensures that applicants who relied on the existing policy regime when making their complete applications are treated fairly and consistently.

Further, on September 29, 2020, Vaughan City Council adopted an effective moratorium on new applications being processed within the Weston 7 Secondary Plan area in advance of Council considering the Weston 7 Secondary Plan. While applications outside of the Weston 7 Secondary Plan area were able to proceed to Council approval prior to the adoption of VOP 2025, applications within the Secondary Plan area, such as the Colossus Applications, were barred from advancing to Council approval. Many applicants, RioCan included, may have otherwise secured Council approval prior to the adoption of VOP 2025. To then exclude applicants within Weston 7 from the transition policies is inconsistent and unfair.

It should also be noted that the manner in which the proposed modification to the transition policies of VOP 2025 has come forward is not consistent with the level of procedural rigour that the Council-adopted VOP 2025 policies were subject to. For example, members of the public who had signed up for project updates related to VOP 2025 were not notified of this after-the-fact request for modification. In RioCan’s case, we were fortunately made aware of the request by our legal counsel, but not all affected landowners or members of the public may be aware of this requested change.

We would be pleased to discuss these comments further or provide additional information as required.

Please kindly ensure that the undersigned is provided with all future notice related to VOP 2025 and Weston 7 Secondary Plan.

Yours truly,
Melissa Bruzzese
AVP, Development, RioCan

cc:
Thais Osso, Senior Manager, Development, RioCan;
Anton Katipunan, VP, Development, RioCan;
Anne Benedetti, Goodmans;
Leigh McGrath, Urban Strategies.