The controversial native injunction case heads back to court Monday morning, almost two years after it first began and a year since the parties were ordered to sit down and negotiate.
"Unfortunately, there's been no resolution through the process and the protests st fall," said Coun. Jennifer Kinneman, who is acting mayor while Mayor Mike Hancock is on vacation.
"The mediation is finished."
Kinneman said she thought there had been about nine meetings over the course of the years. The negotiations are confidential, so details aren't available.
On March 20 2009, Justice Harrison Arrell issued an interim order telling natives to stop protesting, and Brantford to not enforce its anti-protesting bylaws for two months.
Two months became four months which became a year, as the groups talk.
During that time, Floyd and Ruby Montour and a handful of other protesters stopped work on Erie Avenue and, twice, everyone returned to court for clarifications.
"Protests occurred whenever we attempted to do any work," said city solicitor Larry Tansley. While private development is working on a large housing project just off Erie Avenue, the city is responsible for ensuring the water and sewer connections are made to the area.
With the negotiations having failed, the court case will be back in the judge's lap to make decisions on a permanent injunction which the city requested two years ago.
The judge will also address the three more or less identical applications by natives that demand the city's bylaws be set aside.
"The natives believe the bylaws discriminate against Six Nations people and were wrongly passed in camera," said Kinneman.
"Which they weren't," added Tansley. "They were passed in open session."
The two-year battle has taken a huge toll on the city, both agreed.
The cost of hiring outside counsel to fight the case hit $275,000 more than a year ago, but the far greater cost has been in damage to the city's ongoing development and reputation.
"Certainly there's been a significant cost but really, in my view, there was no choice," said Kinneman.
"The decision to go for the injunction was passed unanimously by council because we had to consider the interests of the municipality."
Tansley noted that the alternative costs --failed development, halted construction work and a nasty reputation as a protest site --can't be calculated.
One of those costs relates to Kingspan Insulated Products which not only left the city in a huff, moving 200 jobs to Bolton, Ontario, but slapped a $10-million lawsuit on Brantford as it went.
Now that an out-of-court settlement seems undoable, Kinneman said the city can only hope the judge will resolve things quickly in court, agreeing that Brantford can't refuse to authorize development as long as all the legal niceties have been met.
"We're hopeful the court will allow the municipality to carry on as it has in the past with respect to development and that people will be able to develop their land.
"It's not within our power to give (the natives) what they're asking for."
Brantford's representatives at the court-ordered negotiations have been Tansley, Mayor Mike Hancock, outside counsel Neal Smitheman and Councillors John Bradford and Richard Carpenter.
Five days have been allotted for the case which resumes in Superior Court on Monday at 10 a.m.