Jonathan Minnes

About Jonathan Minnes

Expropriation, land use planning and municipal law make up Jonathan Minnes's work as a partner in Gowling WLG's Waterloo Region office. Clients include private landowners, resident groups and municipalities. Minnes regularly argues before municipal councils, Committees of Adjustment and the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (formerly the Ontario Municipal Board), and takes related matters such as property disputes and Building Code Act appeals to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

Called to the Ontario bar in 2016, Minnes earlier worked in the same office as an associate whose practice combined municipal law and civil litigation, with real estate disputes and commercial litigation in the mix. Today Minnes belongs to the firm's Canadian Expropriation Law and Municipal Law groups and serves as Secretary of the Ontario Expropriation Association.

History came first. After a BA and an MA in the subject at Wilfrid Laurier University, Minnes spent four years at the Centre for International Governance Innovation assisting historian John English with research, a stretch in which English produced a two-volume biography of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Law school followed in London at Queen Mary, where Minnes ran the Queen Mary Law Journal as managing editor and then editor-in-chief and gave two years to the Queen Mary Legal Advice Centre, including pro bono help for military members and their families. A Master of Laws from the University of Victoria came later, with a thesis on administrative law and Charter questions in a well-known class action over Canadian military pensions, supported by the Law Foundation of British Columbia's Graduate Fellowship.

Minnes also helps the public make sense of expropriation. Speaking with Farmtario, the partner pointed out that Ontario's Expropriation Act is mostly about compensation, and that an inquiry gives owners a process rather than a promised result. With colleagues in the firm's expropriation group, Minnes has walked through notable cases in annual video reviews and co-written the Ontario chapter of a Chambers and Partners guide to zoning and land use.