Peter McCallion, son of Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion, waits for the City of Mississauga Judicial inquiry to begin, July 27, 2010.J.P. Moczulski for The Globe and Mail
Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion helped convince a pension fund to grant concessions to her son's company on a land deal, an inquiry heard Thursday.
The pension fund, Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, had a conditional agreement to sell land near the Square One shopping mall to Peter McCallion's company, World Class Developments, which wanted to build a hotel and convention centre on the site. The deal hinged on World Class meeting deadlines for getting the project off the ground.
In a series of phone calls and meetings in 2008, Ms. McCallion asked OMERS officials to ease the conditions on the deal, which World Class was struggling to fulfill, said Michael Kitt, a vice-president at OMERS's real estate subsidiary.
On one occasion in May of that year, both the mayor and her son showed up to a meeting with Mr. Kitt where Mr. McCallion asked for more time to make the project happen. That fall, Mr. McCallion's business partner, Tony DeCicco, called the mayor repeatedly, asking for her help in salvaging the deal.
"It seemed pretty clear Tony was using the mayor to buy some time," Mr. Kitt told the inquiry. "I could feel the pressure directly and indirectly increasing on the mayor's side."
In November, a call from Ms. McCallion prompted OMERS to grant World Class an extension on a payment; the following month, the pension fund agreed to delay cancelling the agreement at her request, even though Mr. Kitt doubted World Class could build the hotel. OMERS eventually backed out of the deal in January of 2009.
Mr. Kitt said he was unclear whether Mr. McCallion was an owner of World Class or its real estate agent, but that the involvement of the mayor's son in the project made him uneasy.
Under cross-examination from Ms. McCallion's barrister, Mr. Kitt said the mayor was "hands on" about other developments as well. Ms. McCallion's lawyers have consistently held that she backed the deal only because it was a good project for the city.
Despite her intervention with OMERS, a Mississauga planning official said the mayor never pressed city staff to approve the project.
Marilyn Ball, director of development and design in the city's planning department, said World Class's development stalled when it failed to make improvements to its designs that staff had asked for. The company also never paid its application fees.