The District of Squamish is denying allegations from Quest University that accuse the municipality of committing a breach of contract.
The District filed a statement of defence in the BC Supreme Court registry in Vancouver on May 26, outlining the District’s responses to the University’s statement of claim from March.
The statement of claim, filed by Quest, the Eden Group Foundation, the Global Charity Fund and the Timothy Foundation, alleged that the municipality unfairly backed out of an agreement to waive development cost charges for the school and its lands in exchange that the Sea to Sky Foundation, which owned the land Quest University was built on, would pay for offsite works. Development cost charges are fees that the District charges for the installation of offsite works, which in this case include pipes, bridges, roads and other infrastructure linking the school to the town.
“The District denies that it entered into a DCC [development cost charge] agreement with the plaintiffs or any of the plaintiffs whether as alleged or at all,” reads the District’s statement of defence. “The District denies making any representation to the plaintiffs or any of the plaintiffs that the lands would be permanently exempted or excluded from DCCs or a bylaw that imposes DCCs on the lands.”
The District is asking the courts to dismiss the lawsuit and order Quest to pay the municipality’s legal costs.
The municipality also denies Quest and its associated organizations suffered any loss, damage or harm. Previously, the District told The Chief it has not collected any development cost charges, and a Quest representative was previously unable to say how much money was allegedly collected by the municipality, or if anything was collected at all. No dollar figures are listed in the university’s notice of civil claim.
Both parties chose to refrain from commenting for this article.
At the heart of the matter is a March 2004 servicing agreement between the two parties that Quest said in its statement of claim was intended to bar the District from collecting development cost charges from the university. The school’s claim says the servicing agreement was created because the District wasn’t able to meet a financing agreement that would fund the university’s offsite works.
As an alternative, said Quest, the municipality chose to instead waive the university’s development cost charges in exchange that the Sea to Sky Foundation pay for the construction of offsite works.
The Sea to Sky Foundation was the charity that previously owned the lands where Quest was built, and which later gave its property to the school.
Listed in a copy of the servicing agreement the District provided to The Chief are a number of works which the foundation was expected to build.
The most expensive of these projects was the estimated $3-million university bridge connecting the school to The Boulevard across the Mashiter Creek ravine. Coming in at second most pricey was an estimated $748,000 reconstruction project for Mamquam Road from Diamond Head Road to the south end of Highlands Way. In total, the 20 projects listed in the servicing agreement were estimated to cost about $6.77 million. Included in that amount were contributions from the District amounting to about $420,000.
However, it’s unclear if the District actually spent that share on the project, as the servicing agreement describes the number only as money set aside for the construction. The agreement states the District was not obliged to spend that money. While the District acknowledges entering into the servicing agreement, it said in its statement of defence that it “did not agree to waive forever DCCs in respect of the lands, whether through the servicing agreement, or otherwise.”
Furthermore, the District said it believes the servicing agreement to be non-binding: “Nothing contained or implied in the servicing agreement prejudiced or affected the rights and powers of the District.” The municipality’s powers, the statement of defence says, could have been exercised “as if the servicing agreement had not been executed.” The District also claims in its defence that Quest failed to build offsite works according to the terms and deadlines outlined in the servicing agreement, leading to the termination of the deal in September 2009 via a mutual release.
A copy of the mutual release provided to The Chief by the District states: “The District and the foundation by these presents do hereby remise, release and forever discharge each other, their respective successors, assigns, from any and all obligations or agreements as contained in the agreement... including any obligation by the foundation to complete any of the works or make further off-site works payments.”
“The terms of this mutual release are contractual,” the document says.
The document bears the signatures of former Squamish mayor Greg Gardner, former Quest University president David Helfand, several witnesses, and a person identified as a representative from the Sea to Sky Foundation.
However, before the mutual release was signed, the servicing agreement prompted the District to pass Bylaw 1807 in January 2005, which would amend how development cost charges were collected.
Quest’s claim states that this bylaw “exempted” the land from development cost charges. On the other hand, the District’s statement of defence asserts that the bylaw “excluded, rather than exempted” Quest’s lands from those fees. Later, the District says it passed another bylaw in August 2015 as part of a regular review of development cost charges in the municipality, but the province’s inspector of municipalities did not approve a part of the motion that would exclude Quest’s lands from the charges.
Quest said it has since been demanding the District put in measures that would bar the collection of development cost charges, but to no avail.
None of the allegations have been proven in court.
