A judge has ordered Brampton officials to answer most of the remaining questions in a developer’s $28.5-million lawsuit, after they refused to respond to 198 of 221 original queries.

For two years, the Inzola Group’s lawyers have sought answers from city officials in their fight to prove the company was unfairly disqualified from bidding on the city’s $500-million downtown redevelopment project.

Following a series of successful motions by Inzola to get replies to most of its questions, 48 remain unanswered. On March 3, Superior Court Justice E. Ria Tzimas ordered the city to answer 46 of those by April 27.

Tzimas’s ruling, obtained by the Star this week, also requires city staff to evaluate Inzola’s disqualified bid and submit their findings to the court by June 30.

Among the major questions the city must now answer are:

Whether Inzola’s bid was better than Dominus’s. Brampton staff will have to analyze Inzola’s bid to learn whether or not it was superior to the winning one. In its statement of defence, the city states that Inzola’s bid would not have won the bid competition.

Dominus’s bid for the first of three phases of the project was $205 million. Inzola’s bid for the first phase was $110 million. The city had not released Inzola’s bid amount prior to the lawsuit, and during the bidding had asked Inzola to sign a secrecy agreement that would have prevented Inzola from ever revealing its cost. Council was never told of the cost of Inzola’s bid.

Whether Dominus influenced former mayor Susan Fennell. The decision states: “Inzola pleads that the successful bidder, Dominus, gave targeted financial contributions to the mayor, the mayor’s gala and the mayor’s golf tournament in an effort to gain favour for its proposal.” The city must respond to Inzola’s request for information and documents related to the alleged contributions to Fennell and her private fundraising events.

Whether city councillors received advice or instructions not to communicate with Inzola.

Inzola claims senior Brampton staff and former mayor Susan Fennell were biased in favour of Dominus Construction, the developer that won the redevelopment contract. The city denies all the allegations in the lawsuit. Dominus has said it followed all the rules in the bidding process.

In setting out a timetable for providing answers to the outstanding questions, Tzimas said the city’s request for 90 days to respond to them “suggests that the city fails to appreciate that time is of the essence in the completion of its obligations. The city’s explanation regarding its difficulties with the reassembling of the staff is far from convincing.”

She cited in her decision Inzola’s argument that it was unacceptable for the city to further delay answering questions “because it concerns the transparency of government actions.”

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“The questions and the corresponding obligations do not come as a surprise to the city, and the city has already had ample time to pull in whatever resources could be required to meet its obligations,” Tzimas wrote.

Hearings for the case have not yet begun, and it’s unclear when they will start.

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