A court date set for next Monday (December 16, 2013) has been abandoned by the Mount Pleasant Group of Cemeteries in the game of legal chess that goes on between it and the citizen’s group known as Friends of Mount Pleasant Cemetery (Friends). The occasion was intended to set a date to challenge the Friends right to “standing” in their claim that the cemeteries are a public trust owned by the province. The citizen’s group claims the cemeteries have been essentially appropriated by MPGC. A move by the Friends seems to have dodged the possibility of such a challenge when they moved their case under the The Charities Accounting Act. That act permits legal standing, stating that two people (in this case. Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam and Friends of Toronto Public Cemeteries) may bring such an action forward. The Friends want a public inquiry into the ownership of the cemeteries. At the last minute MPGC said it was not going to bring the motion forward so it let the court date go. Now MPGC wants the Friends to put up $20,000 for the cost of the cancelled motion plus an additional $50,000 for security. Friends has already placed $70,000 with the court. All of this is the type of rear-guard action to be expected in a battle of this kind. It does raise the question however as to why a review cannot be done in a timely way.
