A version of this story was first published by TorontoToday, a Village Media publication.
A new bill before Queen’s Park aims to substantially alter the governance of Mount Pleasant Group, a not-for-profit corporation that operates 10 public cemeteries across the Greater Toronto Area.
First established as a statutory trust in the 1820s when Toronto’s fledgling settlers were in dire need of burial space, Mount Pleasant Group’s inaugural cemetery was funded by one dollar contributions from the public.
Later incorporated as a not-for-profit, Mount Pleasant Group’s operations remain directly governed by a suite of provincial laws.
This fall, Lorne Coe, the PC MPP for Whitby, tabled a private bill that would repeal 12 of those laws.
The proposed bill would clear the way for Mount Pleasant Group to operate solely as a standard not-for-profit organization and nullify the statutes that have long defined its role as the administrator of a statutory trust.
Private bills only relate to one corporation and are usually low-profile affairs that fly through the legislature without debate.
But local NDP MPPs and concerned Torontonians flagged Coe’s Bill Pr55, warning its changes would reduce accountability on the organization and could see Mount Pleasant Group limit public access to its cemeteries or sell its assets.
In an interview with TorontoToday, Toronto Centre NDP MPP Kristyn Wong-Tam suggested the private bill was an attempt by Coe to overhaul the laws overseeing Mount Pleasant Group while avoiding public scrutiny.
The organization’s CEO John Monahan was scheduled to deputize at a Queen’s Park committee about the bill on Wednesday, but the meeting was cut short by its Progressive Conservative members before either Monahan or the bill’s critics got a chance to speak.
From humble beginnings to the big time
By any metric, Mount Pleasant Group is a very wealthy entity.
The organization owns over 1,400 acres of land, including its 205-acre namesake Mount Pleasant Cemetery in midtown, the Toronto Necropolis in Cabbagetown, Prospect Cemetery on St. Clair West and seven others spread across North York, Scarborough, and York and Durham Regions.
Its 2023 financial statements show nearly $1.3 billion in assets, including a $581-million perpetual trust fund designated for the long-term maintenance of its cemeteries.
In recent decades, there has been an effort by critics of Mount Pleasant Group’s operations to clarify its role as the trustee of funds initially raised by the public, particularly as the organization expanded into other bereavement sector operations like cremation and funeral services.
In 2013, a group called Friends of Toronto Public Cemeteries filed for a judicial review at the Ontario Superior Court seeking a declaration that the non-profit was created for the benefit of the public and should operate as a public trust.
The judge’s ruling and a subsequent appeal wrangled with the challenge of interpreting a series of archaic provincial laws from 1826, 1849 and 1871.
The final ruling determined the provincial legislature has the authority to decide Mount Pleasant Group’s future but until a new law is passed it remains tied to its roots as a statutory trust.
“Absent a subsequent statute that explicitly or by necessary implication terminated the perpetual statutory trust created in 1826, that trust continues to this day,” Justice Sean F. Dunphy wrote in the 2018 Superior Court ruling.
University—Rosedale NDP MPP Jessica Bell later used that ruling to urge Premier Doug Ford’s government to pass legislation renewing Mount Pleasant Group’s obligations to the public in modern law.
"The Ford government should enact its power and restore this valuable public asset to the citizens who paid for it,” Bell said in 2021. “It's not in our province’s best interest to permit a private corporation to take away these precious cemeteries that operate on public land, founded by citizens.”
In a statement to TorontoToday, Mount Pleasant Group said it “remains committed to providing compassionate care to families and communities across the Greater Toronto Area, now and for generations to come.”
The cemetery group’s push
Mount Pleasant Group also wants the law clarified by the province.
The preamble in Coe’s bill states that the organization “has applied for special legislation to clarify its objects and governance structure” and “modernize the legislation governing the corporation.”
Mount Pleasant Group has also retained lobbyists from McMillan Vantage in recent years to engage MPPs on this goal.
Should Bill Pr55 pass, Mount Pleasant Group maintains that its mission to provide public burial grounds would remain unchanged. The bill would not alter its role as a not-for-profit corporation that oversees the statutory trust.
"We look forward to discussing our Private Bill at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs when the committee meets on it again. The bill reinforces the decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal and consolidates 13 pieces of legislation, some dating back to 1826, into one modern bill,” the organization said in its statement.
In legal documents related to the judicial review case, Mount Pleasant Group described itself as a growing organization with 450 employees that has not relied on public support in nearly two centuries.
“Other than the original $300 raised in 1826 to acquire (its first and since-demolished cemetery) Potters Field, there has been no recourse to government funding or public fundraising in the course of MPGC’s extensive expansion,” the filing stated.
The critics
Among the witnesses slated to speak to the Queen’s Park committee this week was Margot Boyd, former director of the Friends of Toronto Public Cemeteries — which spearheaded the 2013 legal challenge — and current co-chair of the Council for Consumer and Industry Fairness in Bereavement.
According to Boyd, her great-great-great-grandfather was the former attorney general of Upper Canada who wrote the original statute that created the Mount Pleasant Group.
Like MPP Bell, she wants the legislature to enshrine Mount Pleasant Group’s beginnings as a public trust into updated legislation.
The organization is asking the legislature to repeal “public acts which go back nearly 200 years, and obliterate the existence of these public cemeteries paid for by the people of Toronto/Upper Canada at the time,” she wrote in her submission.
“Mount Pleasant Cemetery functions as Toronto’s ‘Central Park’ does for New Yorkers. Would the public still have open access? … Should we have to just trust them?” she wrote.
Her fellow co-chair Pamela Taylor was pleased the meeting this week got cut off, suggesting that means higher-level government officials caught wind of the bill and know it is “not appropriate.”
“It was intended to be a public cemetery. The trustees didn’t buy the land for themselves … they held those lands for the benefit of the public. That was the whole point,” Taylor said. “A law never ends until it’s taken off the books.”
Members of bereavement industry groups also filed submissions that raise concerns about Mount Pleasant Group’s dominance in Toronto’s funeral and cemetery sector.
All intervenors agreed with Wong-Tam that a private bill like Coe’s is the wrong mechanism for making a decision of these stakes.
Neither Coe nor the premier’s office responded to a TorontoToday request for comment on this story. The committee studying the bill does not currently have another hearing scheduled on the matter.
CORRECTION: This story was updated to correct a reference to the bill number and clarify Mount Pleasant Group's statement concerning its mission.
