Michelle Cicchino

About Michelle Cicchino

Michelle Cicchino is a partner in Gowling WLG's Ottawa office who helps public and private clients with land, development and property tax problems. The work runs from getting a redevelopment approved, starting before the application's even filed, through to fights over development charges, assessments, easements and expropriation. Cicchino belongs to the firm's national Municipal Law Group and its national Expropriation Law Group.

Much of that work happens in the hearing room. Cicchino is a regular at the Ontario Land Tribunal, the Assessment Review Board and the Landlord and Tenant Board, and argues in every level of Ontario court, mostly on appeals, municipal powers and by-laws, property tax exemptions and private property disputes. Not every file ends in a ruling, though: plenty of appeals have settled through mediation or private talks. On a contested project, Cicchino brings in specialists such as land use planners, appraisers, traffic engineers, economists and business valuators.

Property tax exemptions for affordable housing are a recurring thread. Cicchino wrote about these exemptions in 2020, and in 2022 was one of the associates supporting a Superior Court application for Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corporation (CCOC), which asked for Assessment Act exemptions on upward of 45 of the provider's housing properties.

After a commerce degree at McMaster University and a JD from Dalhousie University, Cicchino was called to the Ontario bar in 2017. Today the Ottawa partner also co-teaches Municipal and Planning Law as a part-time professor at the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Law, serves as Treasurer of the Canadian Property Tax Association's Ontario Chapter, and gave the Ontario legal update at that association's 2023 national workshop.