Davies Howe Partners LLP

Michael is a partner who joined the firm’s land use planning and development group in February of 1997, after completing a three-year term as a Member of the Ontario Municipal Board.  While on the Board, Michael heard and decided over three hundred land use planning, expropriation and tax assessment cases.

Michael is a graduate of Osgoode Hall Law School, and studied law at the post-graduate level at Oxford University.  He is formerly of counsel to the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney-General, where he served in the Policy Development Division. Called to the Bar of Ontario in 1987, Michael has extensive experience in administrative and civil litigation.

Recognized by the National Post as a “respected municipal affairs lawyer” (Feb. 9, 2004), Michael has represented clients in the Superior Court of Justice, the Divisional Court, the Ontario Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of Canada, as well as before a number of administrative tribunals other than the Ontario Municipal Board, including Joint Boards under the Consolidated Hearings Act, the Ontario Mining and Lands Commissioner, the Assessment Review Board, the Social Assistance Review Board, the Unemployment Insurance Board of Referees, the Mental Health Review Board, the Ontario Human Rights Commission and the Rent Review Hearings Board.

Michael is married to Diana Kolpak , a clown, theatre director and producer, and published writer of plays and stories, whose children’s book Starfall, a collaboration with photographer Kathleen Finlay, has just recently been published by Red Deer Press.

A lifelong fashion victim, Michael wears bespoke by Don Fabien Lee at Trend Custom Tailors while working, and custom by Tyler Scherer at SD+R when not.