COMMISSION ON PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT REFORM IN ONTARIO
COUNTY PLANNING DIRECTORS OF ONTARIO
FEDERATION OF ONTARIO NATURALISTS
CONTENTS
Monday 29 August 1994
Planning and Municipal Statute Law Amendment Act, 1994, Bill 163, Mr Philip
Loi de 1994 modifiant des lois en ce qui concerne l'aménagement du territoire et les municipalités, projet de loi 163, M. Philip
Ministry of Municipal Affairs
Hon Ed Philip, minister
Dana Richardson, director, municipal planning policy branch
Pat Hayes, parliamentary assistant to minister
Commission on Planning and Development Reform in Ontario
John Sewell, chair
George Penfold, member
Ministry of Municipal Affairs
Philip McKinstry, acting director, municipal planning policy branch
Diana Dewar, manager, municipal planning policy branch
Glenn Johnston, manager, provincial planning policy branch
Dale Martin, Provincial Facilitator
Paul Jones, manager, local government policy
City of Etobicoke
Brenda Burns, solicitor
Laurie McPherson, director, policy and research division, planning department
County Planning Directors of Ontario
Gary Cousins, representative
Federation of Ontario Naturalists
Neida Gonzalez, environmental researcher
STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
*Chair / Président: Marchese, Rosario (Fort York ND)
*Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Harrington, Margaret H. (Niagara Falls ND)
*Acting Chair / Présidente suppléante: Haeck, Christel (St Catharines-Brock ND)
Bisson, Gilles (Cochrane South/-Sud ND)
Chiarelli, Robert (Ottawa West/-Ouest L)
*Curling, Alvin (Scarborough North/-Nord L)
Harnick, Charles (Willowdale PC)
Malkowski, Gary (York East/-Est ND)
Murphy, Tim (St George-St David L)
Tilson, David (Dufferin-Peel PC)
Wilson, Gary, (Kingston and The Islands/Kingston et Les Îles ND)
Winninger, David (London South/-Sud ND)
*In attendance / présents
Substitutions present/ Membres remplaçants présents:
Eddy, Ron (Brant-Haldimand L) for Mr Murphy
Grandmaître, Bernard (Ottawa East/-Est L) for Mr Chiarelli
Hayes, Pat (Essex-Kent ND) for Mr Malkowski
Jackson, Cameron (Burlington South/-Sud PC) for Mr Harnick
Lessard, Wayne (Windsor-Walkerville ND) for Mr Gary Wilson
McLean, Allan K. (Simcoe East/-Est PC) for Mr Tilson
White, Drummond (Durham Centre ND) for Mr Bisson
Wiseman, Jim (Durham West/-Ouest ND) for Mr Winninger
Clerk / Greffière: Bryce, Donna
Staff / Personnel: Stobo, Carolyn, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1009 in room 151.
PLANNING AND MUNICIPAL STATUTE LAW AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT DES LOIS EN CE QUI CONCERNE L'AMÉNAGEMENT DU TERRITOIRE ET DES MUNICIPALITÉS
Consideration of Bill 163, An Act to revise the Ontario Planning and Development Act and the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, to amend the Planning Act and the Municipal Act and to amend other statutes related to planning and municipal matters / Projet de loi 163, Loi révisant la Loi sur la planification et l'aménagement du territoire de l'Ontario, la Loi sur les conflits d'intérêts municipaux, et modifiant la Loi sur l'aménagement du territoire et la Loi sur les municipalités et modifiant d'autres lois touchant des questions relatives à l'aménagement et aux municipalités.
The Chair (Mr Rosario Marchese): I welcome everyone, committee members and other guests.
We are beginning the public hearings on Bill 163, An Act to revise the Ontario Planning and Development Act and the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, to amend the Planning Act and the Municipal Act and to amend other statutes related to planning and municipal matters.
MINISTRY OF MUNICIPAL AFFAIRS
The Chair: Welcome, Minister Philip, to these hearings. You might introduce the others before we begin.
Hon Ed Philip (Minister of Municipal Affairs): On my immediate right and your left, Mr Chairman, is Dana Richardson, who has worked very closely in the development of this legislation, and of course she's with my ministry. On my left is my policy adviser, Bill Freeman, and on my far left is Deputy Minister Stien Lal. I have some other staff that are behind me, and from time to time, if you have some very specific technical questions, legal questions, whatever, they'd be happy to assist.
The Chair: Wonderful. For the information of all here, we'll begin these hearings with Minister Philip after which there will be questions, I presume. Following that we'll be hearing from Mr Sewell and Mr Penfold. We'll get the statements from the various parties at the end of all of that. Mr Philip, please begin any time you're ready.
Hon Mr Philip: Thank you, Mr Chairman, and members of committee. It's a pleasure for me to be here with you. As many of you know from reading the newspapers or indeed from my being with you in your own ridings this summer, I've been very busy with my federal colleagues and particularly with Art Eggleton, as we go around the province together, and we will be continuing to do that over the next three weeks.
However, I am with you for part of this morning and I look forward to the dialogue with you over the next three weeks. My very capable parliamentary assistant, Pat Hayes, is here and he will be with the committee during the full three weeks and will be reporting, of course, to me on a very direct basis, as will be my staff who will be monitoring the various deputations and considering the recommendations that they are making.
I appreciate the opportunity to kick off these public hearings on Bill 163, our legislation to reform land use planning in Ontario. You will become intimately acquainted with Bill 163 over the next three weeks as you hold your hearings across the province. You have a busy schedule ahead of you with a very tight time frame and hearings in 11 different locations, and I wish you much success.
I believe and many people in this province whom I've talked to believe that Bill 163 is good legislation. It has had relatively smooth passage up to this point. Now it's time to give the people of Ontario a chance to voice their opinions, and I'll be most interested in the hearings and what they have to say.
You will recall that we appointed the Commission on Planning and Development Reform in Ontario in July 1991. It was chaired by John Sewell, former mayor of Ontario and a well-known figure in municipal affairs. The two other members were George Penfold, a professor of rural planning, and Toby Vigod, an environmental lawyer who is now assistant deputy minister of the Environment in British Columbia. You will have an opportunity to hear from both John Sewell and George Penfold later this morning.
Let me review for you some of the background of the appointment of the royal commission which set the stage for this legislation.
When our government took office in 1990, the planning system in Ontario was in crisis. There had been a number of scandals that shook the confidence of the public. The approval process was long and complicated with delays built into the system. In many parts of Ontario, people felt that they had no meaningful input into the process.
The government decided that it was a priority to reform the planning system in a substantive way and appointed the commission on planning reform with a mandate to review the system and restore public confidence.
The commission set out its work in two phases. Phase 1 was developing a draft set of planning goals. Phase 2 was looking at the overall planning process with a view specifically to the environment and other important issues such as heritage, energy and the economy.
The first task the commission undertook was to set up a number of volunteer working groups to help develop draft planning goals and policies. Members of these groups represented the full spectrum of Ontario society.
Next the commission held a series of forums across the province to get more public input on planning issues. Using all the public comment it had collected, the commission then drafted its first report in December 1992. This report was then circulated widely for review and comment.
After the release of the draft report, the commission held more public meetings with stakeholder groups to discuss it. Another 2,000 written submissions were received on the draft recommendations, and at the conclusion of this impressive consultation the commission submitted its final report in June 1993. The report contained 98 recommendations.
I announced the government's response to the commission's work in December 1993 and sent out a proposed comprehensive set of provincial policy statements and other proposals for change for a 90-day consultation to about 27,000 individuals and groups. We received nearly 700 written responses and met with 60 stakeholders to discuss possible changes before introducing the planning reform package in the Legislature on May 18 this year. So you will see there was an enormous amount of public involvement in this process from the start to finish.
The commission members and the major stakeholders were involved throughout, and we relied on the commission's recommendations for guidance in preparing the legislation you have before you today.
As a final step, to keep the process moving, I appointed Dale Martin, the provincial facilitator, to head up an implementation task force. Those of you who know Dale Martin will know that he is a very talented person who has the ability to help people work together. He will tell you something of the work of this task force later in the day.
Some critics have said that our reform package is a watered-down version of the commission's report, that civil servants and politicians have ruined the integrity of the commission's work. I say to you that nothing could be further from the truth. Others of course, I might add, have said that the legislation goes far too far.
Bill 163 enshrines the Sewell commission's report. The structure of our proposed new planning system is contained in the final report of the commission. The recommendations have not been diluted. They have been captured in the legislation and in the policy statements.
I am pleased to say that 72 of the commission's 98 recommendations are being acted upon in the package of the proposed reforms. I think that this is quite a feat, and I challenge any member to come up with another commission whose recommendations have been met by a government with such a percentage. In my experience of nearly 20 years sitting in the Ontario Legislature, I've never seen a royal commission enacted so quickly or so thoroughly by a provincial government.
I'll give you a few examples of how the thrust of the commission is reflected in our legislation. For instance, the commission told us that the approval process was long and cumbersome and that it needed to be expedited.
Earlier, as the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology, I was very concerned and went to Dave Cooke expressing that same concern. People were telling me that if it takes five years to get the approvals to set up a plastics company here in this province, they'd move to Texas or set it up in the United States, and that was a major problem. Therefore, it was a concern to the government and particularly a concern to the Premier.
In response, we've introduced time frames into the legislation to streamline the process and to enhance public involvement.
The commission also told us to stop spending our time doing approvals and to delegate these responsibilities to the municipal level of government.
Bill 163 provides for transfer of responsibility for development approvals, and in many cases for official plan approval, to regional governments.
The commission also made it clear that planning in the province should be led by policy and that policy development was the proper role for the government. A comprehensive set of policy statements have been adopted by cabinet, based on the commission's recommendations. Section 3 of the Planning Act has been revised to require that decisions of planning authorities under the act shall be consistent with policy statements.
Without John Sewell's and his committee's vision and his persistence, we could not have achieved nearly as much. I thank him and the other commissioners today for the excellent work that they've done on behalf of the people of this province.
I want you to know that the work that you're about to undertake is terribly important. The proposed legislative changes that will now be discussed in public hearings across the province represent a fundamental reform to the current land use planning process, the first major reworking of the planning system in Ontario since the Second World War.
There were several factors that indicated an urgent need for reforms in land use planning in the province. Perhaps the most vital was the lost economic activity under the old bureaucrat and archaic system. The public, the development industry and Ontario municipalities had all told our province that the planning process, municipally and provincially, must be made faster and more efficient.
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The current system is cumbersome and complicated, and decisions on what development should take place and where it should go take far too long. The impact of delayed decisions amounts to millions of dollars of delayed, or even lost, economic activity and potential employment lost under the present archaic system.
Then there are the environmental costs. Development in many parts of the province was harmful to the environment. Activities including land clearing, drainage, dredging and filling continue to place pressure on wetlands and other natural features.
Planning decisions have sometimes failed to take into account the long-term servicing costs when there is urban sprawl, such as scattered rural development or expansion of urban boundaries.
Finally, there are social costs to be considered. Without clear policy direction and with many levels of decision-making, those most affected by land use decisions have become distanced from and concerned about the integrity of the planning system.
There have been demands for greater public involvement in developing local plans and access to decision-makers before development decisions are made. The public has demanded more openness and accountability of the local level of government.
These considerations led to the development of a legislative package structured around three main themes. The first is streamlining the land use planning and development system so that the decisions can be made more quickly; in other words, cutting out millions and millions of yards of red tape.
I mentioned an important example of this earlier in talking about the introduction of time frames for approvals into the Planning Act. This will require municipal and provincial planners to trim their approval process so that construction and jobs can get under way faster and easier.
For the first time there will be maximum time frames in which decisions must be made. If decisions are not made within these time frames, matters can be appealed to the Ontario Municipal Board.
By encouraging municipalities and approval authorities and the OMB to use mediation and alternative dispute resolution measures, costly adversarial and time-consuming hearings can be reduced.
These legislative changes support administrative reform which is already under way.
For the past two years, we've been testing various ways of screening applications so that they are circulated among different review agencies for comment in a more efficient way. We call this the one-window approach.
Already it has resulted in a drastic shift in the number of applications sent out for review. Under the current system, about 80% of the applications received by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs for official plan amendments were sent to many provincial ministries and public agencies. The goal of screening and targeting circulation is to reduce that to 20%; in other words, those that have a direct interest in the particular proposal.
The Ministry of Municipal Affairs has also begun to take on a stronger role as adviser and provider of information on planning matters. This approach makes it possible for critical issues and potential disputes to be addressed before the application is made. We're trying to move from being a policeman to being a facilitator and to being an adviser.
Another innovation has been the mediation of land use planning conflicts piloted recently by the Ontario Municipal Board. These projects have shown an 80% success rate and pave the way for alternative dispute resolution approaches at the local, regional and provincial government levels, as well as at the Ontario Municipal Board.
You will note that these all point to more emphasis on the early stages of planning, more public involvement and alternative dispute resolution procedures. You can see that we are already cutting red tape, converting planning and development from an adversarial process to a process of cooperation, be it between the province and municipalities or between upper tiers and lower tiers.
The second general theme of our package is giving more responsibilities to municipalities for the development process. Under the proposed legislation, municipalities will be assigned many powers for approvals of plans and development decisions that have been made provincially in the past. This recognizes the significant planning expertise already being exercised at the municipal level and reduces duplication of the approvals, and indeed, the development industry has constantly talked to me about that kind of duplication.
Our aim here is to get Queen's Park out of the development process. We believe that local decisions are better made by staff, politicians and the public in local communities. The government is taking a leadership role in establishing planning policies for the province, but we believe that these policies can best be interpreted by those who are directly affected by them, the people who live in the cities, towns and rural areas in Ontario.
With responsibility in planning delegated to local government, it's also essential that local accountability be strengthened. Therefore, our package includes reforms for open local government. They will ensure the new municipal planning powers are exercised in an open and accountable manner through legislative changes regarding open meetings, conflict of interest and disposal of property.
We do not want to make things difficult for anyone or to discourage potential candidates from running for office, but our goal is to enhance the confidence of local residents in the integrity of their local government, by making the operation of local government more open.
Finally, the underlying theme of the reform package is stronger protection of the environment. In addition to inefficiencies in Ontario's planning system, there is also fear that it simply does not have the teeth to protect the environment.
Our package of reforms promotes environmentally sound development through legislative amendments and a comprehensive set of policy statements that integrate environmental, economic and social values.
The policy statements protect water quality and quantity, preclude development in wetlands and in extremely sensitive, natural heritage features and permit a limited amount of development in other natural heritage areas.
Let me speak to you for a few moments about the philosophy behind the comprehensive set of policy statements.
Traditionally, the province's role in land use planning has been limited to regulating municipal planning and to protecting provincial interests. It has performed this role by reviewing and approving most municipal planning proposals and private development applications across Ontario, often on a fragmented and very ad hoc basis.
As recommended by the commission, a central characteristic of the new system is that the province must clearly set out its policy interests and lead planning through policy rather than approvals, as I have mentioned.
In a policy-led planning system, everyone will know the rules up front. This will reduce a lot of the ad hoc decision-making that is going on under the present system and it will also result in faster and more consistent decisions.
The province will set out its policy directions through a new and comprehensive set of policy statements, through provincial plans and through area-specific policies.
A part of our reform package is the new Ontario Planning and Development Act that will provide for a more efficient and effective provincial planning tool. It will also shorten the process for creating and amending provincial plans, such as the parkway belt west plan.
The current process for amending such plans is extremely costly and lengthy. The shortened process will still allow ample opportunity for public input while protecting areas of provincial interest.
The legislative changes will require all decisions under the Planning Act to be consistent with the provincial policy statements rather than simply have regard to them. This will provide a stronger mechanism to implement policies, but it is not as restrictive as requiring conformity with the policy statements. Being consistent with provincial policy statements can be achieved through innovative implementation at the municipal level.
I released the policy statements in May together with Bill 163 as a key part of the planning reform package. The role of this parliamentary committee will be to examine the legislative package. However, you will have to examine the policy statements as well. The temptation will be there to make recommendations on the policy statements, but they have already been adopted by the provincial cabinet, even if they will not come into effect until the legislative amendments are proclaimed.
Having such a set of comprehensive, integrated policies will enable the province to step away from the traditional role in planning and development approvals, if you want, of second-guessing the local municipalities, and focus on policy development.
When I introduced the legislation, I was also pleased to announce that stakeholder groups had agreed to help us in working out the practical details of implementing our new land use planning system.
I mentioned earlier that the provincial facilitator was heading up a 15-member task force of municipal leaders. In addition to the municipal leaders, the task force consists of developers, builders and environmental groups to help ensure there's a smooth transition to the new planning system across the province.
We also felt the need for input from professionals in the field and created a technical advisory committee composed of planners, engineers, architects, lawyers and environmental managers.
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The technical advisory committee will be providing advice to the ministry and to the task force on implementing planning reform. It will be working in tandem with the task force, looking at the same documents, to ensure as smooth a transition as possible.
Similarly, we identified a need for specific advice on rural planning issues. Growth pressures, protection of agricultural land and significant natural features affect the rural area from a variety of perspectives.
The Rural Table on Planning Reform is chaired by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. It includes 17 representatives from agriculture, small business, anglers and hunters and county planners. The table will coordinate implementation advice with the task force.
Other working groups are examining in some detail the procedures for the new planning system as well as regulations and implementation guidelines for the comprehensive policy statements.
We are relying quite heavily on the expertise of those who will be affected by Bill 163 to tell us how to make the reform package work. We are very serious about getting the implementation right and we want to make this a workable and understandable process for everyone.
In conclusion, let me say that planning is a difficult area of public policy. Perhaps that's why no government has made any major changes for decades. It's complicated because there are strong competing interests in land use: builders and developers, environmentalists, community groups and municipalities. I suspect that what the committee will hear in the hearings are strongly differing points of view on individual issues. But the role of government, and now your role too, is to find a balance between those kind of opposing views and to find out where there are complementary views that can be achieved.
The reforms and changes to Ontario's planning system that I have outlined for you are long overdue. We believe that the fundamental principles of these reforms are sound and workable.
But we have said right from the beginning that we would like to hear from the public again. That is why we are working so closely with our stakeholder groups on implementation and it is why the public hearings you will be conducting are so important. We are interested in considering suggestions to improve legislation. In fact, we have some amendments of our own that we will be proposing.
We will be anxious to hear what the committee recommends after it concludes its public hearings. I can assure you that we will study your recommendations sincerely and consider them as long as, of course, they are consistent with the principles of the bill. Ladies and gentlemen, I look forward to your recommendations and I wish you well on your deliberations over the new three weeks.
Thank you for inviting me to start the deliberations on this very, very important bill, a bill that's important to the economy, a bill that's important to environmentalists and to municipalities, and I think to each and every one of us in the province. I'll be happy to answer some questions or listen to some comments.
The Chair: Thank you, Minister. That's what we'll do. I'm assuming there are questions from the members, and we'll begin with the official opposition. Ten minutes per caucus.
Mr Bernard Grandmaître (Ottawa East): Can I split my time with my colleagues?
The Chair: Absolutely.
Mr Grandmaître: Very good.
I only have a few questions, Mr Minister. You say that you've implemented 72 of the 98 recommendations of the John Sewell report, and it seems very impressive: 72 seems very impressive. I find it very, very strange that in the last, I would say, four or five weeks I've spoken with a number of municipal leaders, UDI, the home builders' association in the province of Ontario, and they say that you've left out the most important recommendations of Mr Sewell. How can you answer this?
Hon Mr Philip: I'd simply say that those I've talked to have not expressed that point of view. They've felt that, by and large, the responsibility of any government is to take a commission's report, to deal with the main themes of that report if they agree with it and to implement as many of them as they see fit, based on the further consultation and advice that they are given.
I have met with numerous members of the stakeholder groups, I've listened to their advice and I've taken some of it. Some of the advice is conflicting. In this field there are conflicting interests. What we have tried to do is put in what we consider to be the best balance. Yes, some people will be disappointed.
Having served on committees over 19 years and worked in the Legislature, I've been part of numerous select committees in which I thought that everything that I and my committee had recommended should be implemented by the government.
Each of the governments that I've had to deal with, Liberal and Conservative, has said no, the responsibility of government is to take a balance, to implement some of the recommendations at that particular time of the committee report, to find new ways of implementing some of the others later.
Indeed, in the case of the Conservative government, as I recall, with housing policy, I was very frustrated that they were moving so slowly, but eventually a number of the recommendations of the justice committee on housing policy were implemented over a period of time.
So I say to you that if you have specific recommendations that you'd like to discuss, we would be happy to go down the list and we're still happy, of course, with public hearings to have further input on those recommendations.
Mr Grandmaître: I'm sure in the next three weeks or four weeks you'll hear from different agencies or public groups that don't agree with you or your ministry's decision. I realize that it's not easy to satisfy 100% of all of these groups. I realize this. But when you go around this province and talk about planning, I would say at the present time municipalities are going through some very difficult times. They want to be their own boss; they want to do their own planning.
You said in your opening remarks that the province wants out of the planning process. Well, if the province wants out, I don't think that the Sewell report or Bill 163 really answers the municipal concerns that they can be their own boss. I'm sure that in the next three weeks we will hear from different municipalities and planners that will highlight some of my concerns and also their concerns.
On one hand, you say that you want out of the planning process, and yet you're not willing to look at a charter bill to look at these differences, to look at the partnership that could be created between municipalities and your ministry and also your government. How come on one hand you say, "No, we're not going to look at a charter bill," but at the same time you want out of the planning process?
Hon Mr Philip: Let me answer your first question. I don't agree that municipalities are saying that we are not giving them more authority when in fact we are. You only have to go into your own neighbourhood. As recently as a few weeks ago, I delegated to the city of Kingston the right to approve condominiums and developments. We've done that with I think every separated city in Ontario at the moment. Are there any that we have not? There are a few left, but we are working with them. We have certainly said to them that we want to work with them on their official plans and to give them more authority. They've recognized that.
With regard to the charter, let me deal with it this way: I think the position of the Premier was quite clear, and indeed at AMO I had many, many municipalities come up and say to me: "We want to commend the Premier for his excellent performance. He was absolutely dead honest in what he said."
What he said was this. He said, "I've had my experience with trying to work out grandiose charter plans and I would like to do workable things that create cooperation." I say to you that we are doing that, not just in this bill but in community economic development, which I am being praised for all over the province, and indeed we're having an awful lot of business from different municipalities.
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I was in Renfrew, which is another area in eastern Ontario, your neck of the woods, on Friday, in which the mayor praised this government for its community economic initiatives, which were driven locally. This is the only province that went to our federal colleagues and said the infrastructure program must be made, the decisions must be made locally and not by federal or provincial politicians, and AMO has praised us overwhelmingly for that direction.
I suggest to you that it's not only in this bill that we are moving in that direction, but we're moving on very practical ways to allow more autonomy for municipalities as we work through the process with them. The Pilkey task force, which the municipalities are very interested in and have worked with, will be sent to them. It's at the publishers now; it will be sent to them on September 15th. We will be getting some immediate feedback and we will be moving very, very, very quickly on a program of implementing those recommendations.
I can tell you that the mood at the AMO convention was one of cooperation. People came up to me and said: "It's easy for somebody to say they're going to implement a charter in six months or a year's time. We find that a little hard to believe, quite frankly, and we would rather go the route of Premier Rae and of yourself in saying there are very specific things that are accomplishable. Let's get those things done and then we can work on other things."
There are a number of things that are very interesting in the charter. The Premier has said that; I've said that. Let's work on those things that we can implement. The pie in the sky, "Let's make a grandiose charter that will somehow put us in a box for years to come," I think is not on the cards as long as either we or indeed, as I understood the words of Mike Harris, the Conservatives would be in power. I think we've seen from the difficulties we've had in getting a federal charter that any one part can make the whole thing fall apart.
I believe politics is the art of the possible, the art of the practical. I want to move ahead. We've already done things which previous governments have failed to do in giving municipalities more authority, more say in their economic development, more say in their local decisions, and I'd rather work on those practical things.
I think the people I talked to who are members of ROMA, who are members of the francophone municipal association -- and I met with them separately and talked to their convention -- and indeed AMO are in agreement with that general thrust. Maybe that's why the Premier got such an ovation at the convention for his very honest stand on the charter issue.
Mr Ron Eddy (Brant-Haldimand): Thank you, Minister, for your statement. We all agree, I think, that the present planning process in Ontario is a mess, because when it takes over three years for approval of an OP in a rural municipality with no urban centre, there's something terribly wrong.
I really do think the ministry should have done something about correcting the situation long ago and we should have been dealing with amendments to the planning process as we went along. We should have been doing something in late 1990 or early 1991, if you found it such a mess, and it's terrible that we haven't, because it has resulted in loss of jobs in development.
I'm really concerned about the downloading of costs to municipalities in this whole thing, realizing that in effect you're requiring a two-tier system of planning in the counties and rural municipalities and in York. Yes, where there's single-tier planning now, you will have two-tier planning with the counties and regional municipalities of York and Peel having to come on -- and there was another one, but I forget which.
I'm wondering how you're going to offset the downloading of costs from the province to the municipalities in view of the fact that you said you're going to give them much more planning authority. Is it going to be part of the disentanglement process? Are you going to give directions to the OMB? Are you going to offset the costs and cancel the costs to municipalities of supplementary assessments? How are you going to offset some of the costs to municipalities? Because the municipalities are going to be faced with greatly increased costs.
The other part of the question is, although you've set out a number of new requirements for municipalities in planning, in exchange you've failed to withdraw provincial authority to interfere with resulting decisions which will result in delays and costs.
Hon Mr Philip: First of all, I haven't heard any municipality that has not agreed with me that the proposals that we are introducing will reduce time. There isn't one municipality that's come forward to me and said, "This is going to increase the time." In fact what they've said is that they are already involved in a two-tier system of planning, but that there are tremendous duplications by the provincial governments in the second-guessing of work that they're already doing.
What they would like to do is to have us reallocate our resources to working with them in a facilitator role so that they can do proper planning. If you have proper plans at the county level, at the lower-tier and upper-tier level, then in fact it results in less disputes going to the Ontario Municipal Board, less delays in getting a proposal through.
I suggest to you that what we are recommending will reduce the costs because we'll be reducing the duplication. Therefore, municipalities will have less costs, not more costs as a result of this act and other things that we're already doing.
Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): I have some short questions for the minister. I'd like to know when you're going to release the regulations concerning the implementation of the new planning and development policies.
Hon Mr Philip: We're working with the implementation committee as you know, Al. Our concern was that the regulations be very, very practical and that we not simply create policies that you couldn't implement. That's why we set up the implementation task force. They are working as quickly as they can and they are consulting. Certainly we will not proclaim the legislation before they are released, and everyone will have an opportunity of course to look at them.
We're aiming at proclaiming the legislation by January 1995 so obviously the regulations will have to be in place and be very visible for everyone to look at before then.
Mr McLean: So the conflict of interest then in this legislation, will that be pertaining to this election this fall?
Hon Mr Philip: Now I've said this and I've said this many times. I think someone -- maybe it wasn't you, but someone from your party; it may have been Ted or someone else -- asked me this question. I thought it was a good question.
What we've said is that we're publishing the conflict-of-interest legislation. The rules are very clear. In fact we even have a copy of the disclosure form so that people that are running for office know what it is that is likely to be proclaimed. That way everyone's on the same playing field. No one runs for political office without the knowledge that they're likely to do this once the bill is proclaimed.
Mr McLean: Would they have to apply then after 1995?
Hon Mr Philip: Yes, they apply after 1995. If you're elected in the next few months, when the act comes in in 1995, then you'll be required to comply. We've been running workshops and things like that for anybody who wants to learn about it.
Mr McLean: Municipal councils have the final decision on the issues of minor variances and no chance of appeal.
Hon Mr Philip: Yes.
Mr McLean: Could you give me the definition of a minor variance?
Hon Mr Philip: Yes. I'm going to ask Dana to comment on that. We've had some problems that people have actually been trying to introduce major development under so-called minor variances. We of course don't accept that. But I think that you'll find that there is a way in which someone can appeal. That, of course, is if there is a matter of law involved, then someone can still appeal to the court, and we have to preserve that right.
Mr McLean: But what is a minor variance? That's my question. What is a minor variance in your definition?
Ms Dana Richardson: It very much depends on the type of application that's before the council or before a committee of adjustment. What you're talking about is a variance from the municipality's zoning bylaw. There is no clear-cut definition that it's this much as opposed to that much, but it very much depends on the circumstances. It may be something as small as putting on a porch in a backyard in the city of Toronto or it could be changing a lot line, and it could be some minor change to actual use of the property, which doesn't actually affect the more general use of the property. It very much depends on the type of application.
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Mr McLean: So for a minor variance do you have an environmental impact study?
Ms Richardson: No. The environmental assessment process deals with major infrastructure projects. For an environmental impact study there are certain requirements under the policy statements that would have general application in the municipality.
Mr McLean: The other question I have is with regard to Bill 163 is amending the section by the infamous phrase that all planning decisions "shall be consistent with" provincial policy statements. Considering the legal framework that now exists with the current act phrase "have regard to", why have you changed that?
Hon Mr Philip: We changed that, first of all, because I think the commission in its wisdom felt that that was necessary. Secondly, because there were too many instances of "have regard to" that simply had very little regard to, and because, quite frankly, those involved in the environmental movement felt that if we were going to give greater autonomy to municipalities, we had to have a policy system up front and that development proposals had to be consistent with those policies.
I think that the words "shall be consistent with", and we could have made it even stronger than that -- the stronger wording would have tied municipalities in an absolute straitjacket and we think would have caused certain aberrations that would have been quite silly at times.
We think that this is the balance, and we've had a buy-in by all of the partners. I realize that there may be some developers who would rather not have that there, but I think that they also realize that it's a set of balances and that this is the balance that gives comfort to the people who are heading up community groups and environmental groups. This is one phrase that I would not consider an amendment to.
Mr McLean: In your appeals --
The Chair: There are three minutes left and Mr Jackson wanted to ask some questions.
Mr McLean: All right. They went over time. I guess I can too.
Hon Mr Philip: I'm flexible.
Mr McLean: The question, Mr Minister, the fact is that the appeals process is going to be in place and the 180 days is in there, and once that is not met, then they can appeal to the OMB.
Hon Mr Philip: Yes.
Mr McLean: Well then, what is speeding up the process if the appeal to the OMB could take two years after the time it's appealed?
Hon Mr Philip: First of all, we anticipate that by having the policy in a way that everyone knows the rules will reduce the need for the number of appeals. Secondly, we believe that the facilitator process that we have set up both under Dale Martin and at the OMB is reducing the number of appeals to the board. Lastly, by our front-end loading system, if you want, of working with municipalities to have official plans, we're going to have less ad hockery and therefore less appeals going to the OMB. All of these taken together, I think, will reduce the number of cases at the OMB.
Mr Cameron Jackson (Burlington South): Minister, you indicated that you were proposing some amendments. Can you give us a time when we'll be able to see those amendments? Will they occur at the front end or at the tail end of these hearings?
Hon Mr Philip: We want to have some hearings first and get some input and then some of the amendments will come as a result of some of the hearings. We've had some kind of unofficial suggestions, if you want, of people coming and talking to us, municipalities and so forth, making some proposals. They're going to come forward with proposals during the hearings, and we'd like to respond to them.
Mr Jackson: Fair ball, Minister, but quite frankly you've indicated that you've already embraced these amendments. I think we're going to have a briefing this afternoon. The public is fairly enlightened in terms of how consultation works, but it's incredibly helpful to this committee that is charged with the responsibility of amending this bill if we know well in advance. That's the normal course, unless there's something covert here, but I just felt it's a standard request and I don't see a great difficulty.
Hon Mr Philip: I think it's the same request that I'd make if I were in your shoes. What I can say is, a number of the amendments are of a technical nature. When you're briefed by staff this afternoon, we'd be happy to give you some of the draft, keeping in mind that the draft is only a draft, subject to the hearings of the committee. But we'll be happy to share them with you.
Mr Jackson: I wanted to get into the municipal conflict of interest, which is embracing school boards. I wonder if, in any of the commission's hearings and any of the regulatory framework that will back up any amendments, any consideration was given to issues around school board trustees and being members of the teachers' federation. I know that's been the subject of a couple of discussions and reviews.
My reason for raising it is it strikes at the heart of governance. On one board I'm familiar with with 20 trustees, 12 of the trustees are related directly or are teachers employed in neighbouring boards, so you're literally left with eight trustees who can only be on the salary and the finance committees. So it strikes at the heart of good governance.
I wonder if you at all put your mind around this issue. Not only is it a conflict de facto, but these people have been disfranchised from the governance process and it does weaken a form of our local governance. Could I get some feedback from you on this, if you can help with it at all?
Hon Mr Philip: I think you're right and I think that conflict of interest can go to the point where it can be silliness and in fact create the exact opposite to what you're trying to achieve. Dave Cooke is looking at that and we will be hearing from him on it. I think it's a point well taken. We could probably come up with a series of other examples similar to that but in other areas, and I think that this is something that we're having to deal with.
Mr Jackson: And my final question --
The Chair: No, I'm sorry, Mr Jackson, we went over time. Mr White.
Mr Drummond White (Durham Centre): Mr Minister, I'm of course very, very interested in this bill from a local standpoint. In my area we have a number of issues that are outstanding. Community groups, I'm sure, will be pleased to see this comprehensive statement.
What I am interested in here is, I understand that this comprehensive set of statements is probably a first in our province in terms of its being compiled in this way. I'm wondering if you could comment a little bit about your ministry's efforts to make this set, which is comprehensive, accessible and comprehensible to citizens' group.
I know in my area there are both naturalist, environmental groups which are concerned about the wetlands policies and how effective that would be in protecting a class 1 wetland in my area and the downtown business association which is concerned about how well the official plan is being followed of the local regional government.
I guess the issue I have really is: What kind of efforts are we making to make these informations accessible to people so they can use this to hold government, to hold development accountable?
Hon Mr Philip: First of all, I think it is fair to say that, before this legislation came in, there were policies, of course, of the provincial government. The problem, though, that people from the development industry have told me that they had was that often they would buy property, hold on to it for two or three years and then find out that they couldn't use it for the purpose they had intended because there was some policy they didn't know about.
One of the things that this does is it brings the policies, many of which were already in existence, into one coherent and cohesive set of documents that can be studied. As one developer put it to me: "I can live by any rules. Tell me what I'm allowed to do on a particular piece of property and I'll do it. But don't tell me three years after I've paid interest on the property and am carrying the property that I can't do it, because that really puts me at a tremendous disadvantage."
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What we've done is we've put them together. In the case of the Ministry of Housing and some other ministries, they've added -- they've perfected, if you want, as they saw it -- and cabinet has approved these policies and they have been sent out. I believe that the mailing was 19,000. I think that it's probably a pretty wide circulation, but if anyone has not received a copy and wants it, I'm sure that if they write to the clerk of the committee, Donna Bryce, she'll be happy to send them out a copy; or write to our ministry and we'll be happy to send them out.
Mr White: Nineteen thousand --
The Chair: Mr White, just a reminder, every government member wants to ask a question.
Mr White: Oh, of course, yes. That's a pretty wide circulation, so a lot of them, the environmental groups, the business groups, would be informed of the policies?
Hon Mr Philip: Yes.
Ms Margaret H. Harrington (Niagara Falls): In your opening remarks at the beginning you mentioned that this change was with regard to environmental issues, heritage and also the economy. I believe at this particular time in the province of Ontario the heritage issue is important, particularly in the area of Niagara. What do you think, personally, is the greatest step forward that you are bringing to us today with regard to the issue of heritage?
Hon Mr Philip: I think archaeological sites are included under the statement. It's a published statement that everyone can examine. I think this is a major improvement. I think that in some ways the answer that I gave to Drummond White was similar. It does protect historical buildings. I think that it's something that is fairly clear and will help those who may be concerned about this. That would be the only answer I'd give to you on that question.
Ms Christel Haeck (St Catharines-Brock): I'd like to welcome the minister here. He's always prepared to give full answers. Definitely he's aware of some of my concerns, heritage being one of them, and we'll obviously have a chance to get into that when we're closer to home.
I did also want to raise the interesting point of minor variances, and definitely it's been a concern that's been raised. I do want to thank you for those folks who are interested in glossaries -- and I guess my library background being what it is I tend to look for them. There are some important things there.
But I find with the minor variances I really do have to ask the question. There is very clearly on the part of constituents a concern that what starts off as being a few inches here or there as far as coverage on the property, all of sudden in some instances doubles in size. We do have instances in my area where that has occurred under the definition of a minor variance.
I'm wondering if, in fact, in the process of dealing with the developing of the glossary and other matters like this, for those folks who are not technically proficient at looking at these things on a regular basis, we could be as clear as we can be so that it is just as far as a few inches or we are talking something that, in my mind as a layperson, is minor rather than in some instances doubling the size of a development.
Hon Mr Philip: Minor variance is a concept that is difficult to define because it has to be defined by the facts in each individual case. But the problem we have been having is that a lot of very minor variances have been clogging up the Ontario Municipal Board. That's bad use of our resources and we don't think that minor variances belong there. We think that local councils or their appointed committees are the best to decide.
What you have here under this legislation is a series of guidelines, of rules, if you want, on open government. Having put in those kinds of requirements, and many municipalities follow these already -- I had the mayor of Ajax tell me at AMO: "We're doing all of these things" -- well, great, that's wonderful that you are, but by having an open system that is transparent, that is open, I think that the individual cases of the minor variances will be dealt with in an honest, open way at a local level. Mrs McGillicuddy's extension of her porch, which is being objected to by her neighbour whom she had a disagreement with at the Legion three years ago, is not something that belongs at the Ontario Municipal Board and that's what we're trying to stop with this.
I think that if you have the balance of openness, which a lot of municipalities already have, a guarantee of transparency, then by working with this, you'll see that it'll work better locally than being second-guessed at the OMB and holding up some poor fellow who needs the job of putting Mrs McGillicuddy's porch on six months because the neighbour's taken it to the OMB. We think that small things like that have to be decided locally.
The Chair: Mr Wiseman, one last quick question, please.
Mr Jim Wiseman (Durham West): I'm glad you raised that. I want to ask you this question, and I haven't been able to find it in here. Let's say that, for example, the town doesn't want a developer to do something, the local residents don't want the developer to do something and the town turns down the proposal in council, and then the developer goes to the Ontario Municipal Board and the Ontario Municipal Board says, "Go ahead."
Are we making any changes in here that will allow for local autonomy, for a council that has consistently said that an official plan amendment is not acceptable, not wanted and not in the best interests of planning in the town, then can be refused at the Ontario Municipal Board? Why should it even go to the municipal board if the local council has already said that it doesn't conform to planning, doesn't conform to official plans and doesn't conform to the bylaws? This has happened in Ajax once, and it appears it could happen again.
Hon Mr Philip: Let me answer this way. I think that by working with municipalities to have official plans and by having policy statements up front, then we're going to have less capriciousness on either side, be it the developer who is trying to do something which would be inconsistent with good planning or a municipality where for whatever reason the wish is to stop something.
I think that what we have to have is a series of balances, and the balance is the right of individuals who have invested money and who are behaving in a lawful way to do certain things that are allowable under law with their property. You have to have quasi-judicial bodies that will make a decision when there are the individual rights of people, and those people may be one person -- it could be the owner of a property -- and those of governments, be it federal, provincial or municipal governments.
That's why we've set up an OMB to make decisions where, if somebody is doing something contrary to policy, it can be appealed to a judicial or a quasi-judicial body. I think that's important and I don't intend to interfere with that right of appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board where someone feels that his or her rights are being interfered with.
The Chair: Minister, we ran out of time.
Hon Mr Philip: Let me just add that I don't think that provincial governments or federal governments or municipal governments can play God. We do have to obey the law. Maybe that's why we have courts and why we have OMBs to ensure that happens.
The Chair: Thank you, Minister, for your presentation and for coming here this morning. I want to thank the ministry officials as well for coming and giving their time and assistance to us.
Hon Mr Philip: Thank you, and may I thank members of all parties for what I thought were very thoughtful and constructive questions. I look forward to your deliberations. I have a lot of confidence in Pat Hayes, who has managed to bring other legislation forward on my behalf. As Art Eggleton and I and others go around the province, no doubt we'll be seeing you as more and more development goes on in your areas, and particularly infrastructure of various kinds. Thanks very much for having me.
The Chair: Thank you again, Minister.
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COMMISSION ON PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT REFORM IN ONTARIO
The Chair: I call Mr John Sewell, chair, Commission on Planning and Development, and Mr George Penfold, another commissioner. Welcome to you both. I understand your presentation may be up to 20 minutes, possibly a bit longer. That would be great, and then we'll leave time for questions.
Mr John Sewell: We'll try and keep it as brief as we can. George and I are both very pleased that we can make this presentation to the committee. As you know, our report was issued about 15 months ago, and there's been a lot of action on it, which we're very happy about. The policy statement has now been adopted, and of course we've now got Bill 163.
George and I will both be speaking, but I would like to begin by setting the context into which we made our recommendations. There are five big problems the commission was trying to address. Some of these have been referred to, but it's important to keep them in mind because these are the problems that in fact we're trying to solve through legislation.
The first problem of course is that the planning system is clogged with approvals at all levels: at the municipal level, where in some municipalities it takes two or three years to get a rezoning, at the provincial level, where it can take two or three or four years for the province to approve something that's relatively simple, or again at the Ontario Municipal Board.
Secondly, there's an awful lot of ad hoc decision-making. In fact some people call it capricious, where it seems to depend on the individual application. Nobody seems to know exactly what the rules are. There's no certainty in terms of how applications will be treated.
Thirdly, there's a lot of second-guessing by different levels of government. In some cases upper tiers second-guess lower tiers, in many cases the province second-guesses municipalities, and of course there have been complaints that the OMB second-guesses people as well. In fact we don't have a planning system where there's autonomy and trust.
Fourthly, the needed protections to the environment simply aren't there. Lots of people told us all the time that this indeed was the case.
Lastly, decisions took much too long.
Our job was to try and address those five issues and see what kind of approach we could take to actually resolve them in a long-term method. As you know, there are five general kinds of recommendations that we made to address them.
The first is that the planning system in Ontario should be based on policy. We believe, and it seemed a lot of other people agreed as well, that if we had clear policy the province had set out, that would provide a very consistent and easily recognized basis on which decisions could be made. Everyone would be singing, to use David Crombie's terms, from the same hymn book.
Of course if you are going to have a system that's lead by policy, you'll want to ensure that people pay attention to that policy, which is why we came up with the proposal that decisions should be "consistent with" policy. We struggled with a bunch of other words, including the words that are found in the Charlottetown agreement, which of course didn't get anywhere. I think the words there were decisions had to be "not inconsistent with." We decided not to go with that.
We came down and said that we want something stronger than "have regard to" because we know there are court decisions that say, if you do this, you say: "Oh yeah, this is interesting, thank you very much. Now let's go ahead and make decisions." Of course it's said that's having regard to something. We wanted to be stronger than that. We believe that you have to do that if you're going to have a policy-led system, which is the basis of our proposal.
Secondly, we wanted to ensure that the number of approvals needed from other levels of government were reduced. We believe very much that most municipalities are quite capable of making good decisions. Do they make good decisions all the time? No, but mostly they do. In the way that all other democratic bodies mostly make good decisions, we wanted to ensure that wherever municipalities were capable of exercising good decision-making power that in fact happened. So we gave municipalities a lot more decision-making power, particularly in regard to subdivisions and official plans.
Thirdly, we tried to simplify the role of the provincial government in municipal planning and in fact to get it out of a lot of overseeing of municipal activities. We thought that that was very necessary. We believe the province has a very strong role to play in planning, particularly in terms of policy, but it shouldn't be standing over municipal shoulders all the time. We suggested that in fact one ministry should be given a lead role in approvals rather than having all ministries playing each other off as often occurs.
We tried to restrict provincial intervention into municipal decision-making, particularly by suggesting that there should be a provincial holding bylaw, the same way that municipalities can do that, to freeze the situation while you work out a new policy. We thought that was a much preferable approach to one that allowed the province to intervene for reasons that weren't particularly clear. We tried to ensure that the applicability of ministerial guidelines to municipal action should be restricted. The policy should apply, but in fact the guidelines should be there for advice.
Fourthly, we tried to clarify municipal responsibility in approvals, in creating officials plans, in planning across municipal boundaries. That's a very complicated matter, particularly in terms of planning on a watershed basis, but we wanted to be clear about that. We wanted to be much clearer about the roles of the public in decision-making. Of course, into all this fits the whole question of minor variances. We think that councils are quite capable of exercising that power very well.
Lastly, we wanted the process to be more timely. That's why we made recommendations that set time limits on rezonings and plan applications and approval times. We made some strong recommendations for a speedier process at the OMB, one that was a lot more consensual.
These are the five general strands of our recommendations into which our 98 recommendations fit. As one can see, the kinds of changes we were making were quite substantial. We recognize that trying to take a package like this through the maze here at Queen's Park is not easy. It's very difficult and the hurdles are absolutely immense. As we say, we're quite pleased that things have gone so quickly and that the government has been able to address it. We believe a reason for that is there is such wide-spread agreement among all of the people we talked to and those who submitted briefs to us.
We think there's a large body of people out there who are very interested in planning reform, want to see it happen, think this is one of the few opportunities we're going to have in the next decade or two to get a really good, strong planning system in place. Therefore, it's important to get all the details right or at least as correct as we can think at this point in time.
During the last year, George and I and, on occasion, Toby, who of course is now at the other end of the country, have tried to make ourselves available to staff, to all sorts of people, to groups, to municipal councils, to talk about our recommendations and to try to ensure that they're understood and that they can be grappled with. It's in that light of trying to be helpful that we're here today.
What we wanted to do was note some of the areas where we thought there could perhaps be some amendments to the legislation. We wanted to bring them to your attention so that you can consider them. I'm sure you're going to hear lots of other people talk about these questions, but they're ones that we thought were relatively important. We have a number of them, and George and I will talk about these alternately.
Mr George Penfold: As both John and Mr Philip have said, the idea of a comprehensive set of policies is really key to unravelling some of the concerns that we have in the planning system and moving forward with some significant changes. John has addressed the issue of the language, of having consistency with those policies and actions. The issue that I'd like to address is something added to that, and that really is the applicability of policy.
In the previous legislation it was clear that policy approved by the province applied to municipalities and their actions. In our consultations we had a lot of concern from municipalities and interest groups that in fact there were a double set of standards, that the province could use policies to guide municipal actions but had a fairly free hand in their own planning and development activities to make decisions that in fact weren't consistent with policy.
Our recommendation actually stated that the legislation should read that if policy is in effect, it should apply not only to municipalities and the private sector, but also to provincial ministries in reviewing municipal activities and in their own actions. The legislation as it's currently drafted reads only "the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and municipalities." So the first suggestion we have is to look at the applicability question of policy and to expand that to include not just the Ministry of Municipal Affairs but other ministries at the provincial level.
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Mr Sewell: The second change also has to do with the province. Not only do we think it's important that everyone should be bound by the same planning policy, but we think that there should be clear opportunities for the province to intervene when it feels things aren't going right and that clarifying those opportunities for intervention will do an awful lot to assuage the concerns of municipalities.
It's for that reason that we thought that the provincial ability to interfere with OMB decisions by declaring a provincial interest should be done away with. But we thought a better power was the interim control order power, where the province could say, "We're setting an interim control power in order to study this situation and come up with recommendations within a year's period of time."
That power is now one that is available to municipalities. We think it should be made available to the province, but in fact the other power, which is not one that people seem to have a good handle on, should be dispensed with. So it's replacing one way of proceeding with another.
Mr Penfold: The third issue, folks, is on development in rural areas. It specifically addresses the question of onsite services and septic systems. As you may have heard, that was a considerable theme in our work. There was a lot of controversy about it. It's a very, very important question to resolve in terms of rural communities, particularly resolving it in a way that allows them to see some future potential for development in their communities.
There are about a million septic tanks in Ontario. Most of the information that we were able to gather said that about a third of those systems in fact are failing, which is causing significant problems in ground and surface water, about another third of them are very marginal and about a third of them are actually working well and would pass inspections without any problem. Dealing with that existing inventory of septic systems in a positive way as well as getting a good system of inspections going in the future seems to be key to creating opportunities in rural areas.
Our proposal was that septic systems that are in place should be inspected every five years. We were astounded at some of the comments we heard from people who had no idea what a septic system was, how it worked, where it was, even though they had them on their property. So having a system of inspections seemed to be really important to keeping that piece of infrastructure working.
That was our recommendation: inspection every five years. It should be on a user-pay basis and could be managed by municipalities, delegated or contracted by the Ministry of Environment to that level. That recommendation is not addressed at all in the legislation and it's one that we think is extremely important to the welfare of rural areas.
Mr Sewell: The fourth area has to do with rights of appeal. This is an area that was not addressed by the commission, but in fact it is found in the legislation and, in our opinion, we wanted to bring it to your attention because it is not something that we considered or recommended.
As I understand it, there's a section in the legislation which tries to ensure that disputes with municipal decisions don't proceed to the Ontario Municipal Board unless the person who's unhappy about the decision made some attempt to try and present an alternative viewpoint to a municipal council.
My interpretation of the proposal is that, if a person has not objected to a council before the council makes a decision, then that person has no automatic right of appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board. That is not a proposal that we made, it is not something we considered, and we think it might be a bit of a problem, so we wanted to draw that to your attention. In our brief we cite several examples of where that section is found in the legislation.
Mr Penfold: The next item has to do with how the legislation deals with the question of site alterations. This is an issue really that gets to some of the current concerns, for example, about protection of natural heritage or built heritage, as examples, where a proponent may come in with a proposal, the municipality says, "Wait a minute, you have a feature that's protected on your site," either a wetland or a forest, "so you need to be aware of that," and the next morning someone drives by from council and sees that site and it's been levelled. There's no good mechanism at the present time for controlling that kind of activity. In the morning you had a wetland; the next morning you don't.
The response of the legislation to the recommendation is that municipalities need additional powers to deal with the placing and removal of fill, which deals with a component of that question. Our recommendation went further than that and actually suggested municipalities should also have power to deal with tree cutting and vegetation removal as part of that whole package, particularly to get at the question of protection of natural heritage, environmentally sensitive areas.
Mr Sewell: The sixth area is about planning authorities. One of the things that we found when we were down in the Kingston area is that some of the county structures down in that area don't work in terms of planning, that the differences within a county like Frontenac are immense.
You've got all this activity along the 401, you've got some stuff in the middle which is sort of cottage country, and then you've got some remote stuff to the north. In fact it's very, very difficult for all these townships to get together and plan on a countywide basis. Of course, if they can't plan on a countywide basis, they don't get any of the benefits of what we see as the two-tier planning system of getting out of provincial approvals.
We were looking for a device that would permit those situations to coalesce around some kind of joint action and we proposed this idea of a planning authority. We said that in areas where counties did not have plans, then municipalities should be able to get together, townships should be able to get together to create a planning authority that would be able to have some real power. They could combine their limited resources to actually do interesting things.
That's sort of reflected in the legislation, but unfortunately there is a term which indicates that you could create a planning authority in a county which already had a plan. That, as I know, has caused a great deal of confusion among counties with plans because they fear that in fact the county might now get dismembered.
I think it's something that's relatively easy to amend, which would preserve the idea of a planning authority without threatening existing counties with plans, and it's a change that we would commend to you.
Mr Penfold: The next item has to do with comprehensive planning or planning at the municipal level and the scope of it. If there is a comprehensive set of policies, then it would make sense that municipalities in their plans, upper tier and lower tier or county, region and the local municipality, should respond to that. So we had a recommendation that in fact the legislation contain items that would require municipal plans to address in a comprehensive way those issues that are addressed in policy.
The proposal in this draft of legislation is that that content not be in legislation but in fact be in the regulations. John will be speaking to that. So that part of it is covered.
The other part of the debate we had is the extent to which municipalities in dealing with the application of policy should be considering alternatives. As you know, consideration of alternatives is built into the Environmental Assessment Act.
We'd recommended that that should also be included as part of the planning process at the municipal level in dealing with municipal plans and major plan amendments for two reasons: one of transparency in the process, and secondly, then putting in place something by way of process and review that would link nicely with the EA process without any subsequent need for class environmental assessment and so on.
It might then be addressed on the basis that alternatives had already been addressed by the municipality in their planning process. That was the rationale for it. The question of looking at alternatives is not addressed in the bill at this stage.
Mr Sewell: Lastly, we'd made a number of recommendations for legislation on questions of real detail, on things like what should be in an official plan. We thought it was useful for a municipality and people in it to say, "Where do we go to find out what should be in an official plan?" "Well, a piece of legislation, and here are the 15 things that should be in an official plan or the official plan should address."
We thought there should be legislation requiring that planning take place on a watershed basis, so if you have two municipalities sharing the same river, they would have to get together and talk about how that river affected planning matters. We thought that there should be strong legislation about public involvement in plan-making and in public notification.
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Our understanding is that these matters will come forward in terms of regulation. We haven't seen them yet. I think the minister made a comment about how they were being looked at by the implementation committee. We think it's important to pay attention to those questions to ensure that those levels of detail are in fact clearly spelled out whether in regulations or, as we had recommended, legislation.
The last point is about intervenor funding. We had recommended intervenor funding and we recognize that that is not a proposal that has been agreed to. We think there are other ways of ensuring that those who come forward to clearly protect the public interest, where they have no personal interest in it, receive some kind of help along the way.
One way of doing that, as we'd recommended in recommendation 87, was to allow the Ontario Municipal Board to award interim costs so that right towards the beginning of a hearing the OMB could say: "Well, gee, this is an important matter. It's clear that this is a big issue and it's not just affecting the one person who's brought it forward and in fact we'll support that with an award of interim costs." It's an alternative to try and ensure that those who are protecting the public interest aren't always doing it at horrendous personal expense. So we commend that to you.
There are some of the ideas that we think the committee might talk about in terms of amendment to the bill. As I'd said, this is our one chance to try and get it right and we wanted to ensure that we were giving you our best advice in this situation. I'm sure that George and I are delighted to be of any use we can to the committee now or in your deliberations. Anything we can do to help in this we'd be pleased to.
The Chair: Thank you both. We'll begin with the third party, Mr McLean, nine minutes per caucus.
Mr McLean: I have a house two miles out of Kenora with a septic system. You're saying that I should have to have that inspected every five years?
Mr Sewell: Yes, that's correct.
Mr McLean: My farm is high and dry on sandy loam soil, and you're saying my septic system has to be inspected every five years?
Mr Sewell: Yes, that's correct. Obviously, in your situation it sounds as though the inspection is going to be a fairly simple one, but the data on most septics is not quite that way. The Ministry of Environment at the initiative of cottage groups has been doing inspections around lakes and they've found that two thirds of the septics around those lakes are failing, which is one of the reasons why water quality is collapsing.
We think that in those situations having regular inspections of septics will be very good. We recognize that someone in your situation might find that a small intrusion. We think it to be entirely possible that in situations such as that maybe you want to extend the regularity; you know, instead of every five, maybe every 10 years or what have you. I don't know.
Mr McLean: Well, I agree with your last statement with regard to around the water areas, but I certainly don't agree with northern Ontario, Thunder Bay and Atikokan and some of those places, that if they have a septic system, they have to have it inspected every five years, because the health unit usually -- they're usually good for 20 to 30 years when they are approved. I think that's putting a great burden on the taxpayers of the province to have that in legislation.
Mr Penfold: The 20 to 30 years is certainly absolutely right in terms of the structure of the septic tank itself. One of the difficulties is just the ongoing maintenance. It's like a car; if you don't put oil in it or you put the wrong oil in it or you don't maintain it well, it fails.
One of the requirements of management of a septic system is ongoing maintenance by way of pump-out. Sometimes septic tiles get broken with vehicles going over them or whatever. They are not a foolproof system. Most home owners don't understand the systems and how they work, so our thought was that, if someone came onsite every five years and had a look at it, they could advise on either regular physical maintenance that might be appropriate, extension of the system if something had been added to the house, or pump-out if that was required.
Mr McLean: Have you ever been involved in having a septic system installed?
Mr Penfold: Yes, I grew up on one and I had a rural property myself that I had to redo the septic system on.
Mr McLean: Septic systems, if they're working properly, don't have to be pumped out very often.
Mr Penfold: Well, that's one of the questions. They do not dispose of everything. There are solids that settle and they can plug up the field tile.
Mr Sewell: I gather that the Ontario home warranty program is very concerned about septics. They've had major problems. They've just gotten into adding them to the warranty and now they've got a lot of problems. I'm sure there are some good septics that are well maintained, but I think we should be worried about the many that are not.
Mr McLean: I want to move on to the OMB approvals, the appeal process. You indicated that you wanted the time shortened. How is that going to happen?
Mr Sewell: The proposal that we had made was that the OMB should be required to call a meeting of the various parties to a dispute within 30 days of receiving the dispute. Mr Philip had mentioned that they'd had good experience in terms of bringing people together and getting rid of disputes. We think the same would happen at the Ontario Municipal Board.
We thought that that was probably a very strong way of proceeding and we know that the OMB hasn't instituted anything like that as a regular practice, but they are certainly trying to figure out how to move in that direction.
Mr McLean: But you're saying the province should be given an interim control order. Are you saying that they should have an order that they can deal with it and to be settled within a certain period of time?
Mr Sewell: No. An interim control order is where someone is doing something for which there's no rule to prevent it, but you know it's something that shouldn't be done. Then in fact you can put a control order to stop that happening.
Municipalities do this now with more frequency than some would like, but they do it where someone is doing something and the municipalities say, "No, we're putting a freeze on that while we do a study of it." It's that kind of power we think should be available to the province.
I believe that that power wouldn't be exercised any more than maybe once a year throughout the whole province. It's not a power that would be used often, but it should be there. There should be some way that the provincial body can intervene where it's clear there's a public interest that hadn't been previously thought of.
Mr McLean: But you're saying the appeal should be heard within 30 days, if there's a backlog and the OMB doesn't do it. I mean if the appeal is not heard within 30 days, then are you saying that the appeal is not to be taking place?
Mr Sewell: No. We're suggesting a meeting of the parties should be held within 30 days and we'd actually suggested that the OMB could appoint part-time members in places -- well, Kenora would be an example -- to bring those parties together. We believe that many disputes that now go to the OMB after waiting around for 18 months and then take up a week's hearing time could be settled if people sat down and had a meeting.
Mr McLean: The reason given for not requiring a review of alternatives -- "required for major plan amendments": that's in your brief under "7. Comprehensive planning." "The legislation does not make distinctions between major and minor amendments." Are you saying in that section that they should?
Mr Penfold: Yes. Two things. There should be a recognition that adding 100 acres of development land to an urban boundary is a different issue than changing a designation on one side of an acre or half an acre from, say, low-density residential to commercial or mixed commercial-residential. It's those major additions that do involve significant issues of extension of services and infrastructure. Looking at alternatives in the context of those amendments would really be useful not only from the standpoint of good planning but also to provide the basis of linkage into the Environmental Assessment Act.
Mr McLean: What guidelines would you use for intervenor funding? Who do they apply to and how would they make that application?
Mr Sewell: We had made some very detailed recommendations about the guidelines for intervenor funding, and I think probably the easiest thing is just to refer to them in the report, recommendations 85 and 86.
There had to be a clearly ascertainable public interest that was consistent with provincial policy, that you really did need some separate representation of this interest, that the person who was intervening didn't have a personal interest in the matter --
Mr McLean: Who would approve, John, his application?
Mr Sewell: Our proposal was that the application should be dealt with by the Ontario Municipal Board, a special panel. We recognized that there were some problems about that. That was the problem, that you'd get into a great big waiting list for intervenor funding. We tried to find a way around that.
The Chair: Thank you. Mr White is next. Just as a reminder, all four members want to ask questions.
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Mr White: Thank you, Mr Sewell and Mr Penfold. I have a number of concerns and I just want to touch on a couple of them, if I might.
The issue of integrity: I think your report and the recommendations and frankly the act speak to a great number of issues of integrity, and hopefully there will be some reinstilled.
I think there was a great deal of concern back in 1989 and 1990 not so much about the planning process but about how the planning process was being misused for the personal benefit of a number of individuals who would benefit in a very straightforward pecuniary way, people who had been elected to a public office and were abusing their position.
Was that not one of the main reasons that the commission was originally appointed? I'm wondering to what degree you feel that the recommendations that you put forth in that regard and that are in the bill will address that concern.
Mr Sewell: I can't say whether that's why the commission was appointed. I'm not the person to ask that one. But I do believe that the recommendations that we made were made in the light of those kinds of activities, trying to ensure that they wouldn't repeat themselves.
We thought there were two major problems that led to abuse of the planning system and personal benefit: First, nobody knew what was allowed and what wasn't allowed. There were no rules for anybody. Could you get to do this on this? Well, maybe you could if you talked to the right person and so forth. Second, timing: There were a lot of stories back in 1989 about people jumping the queue. Jumping the queue meant that they were way down there for approvals and they jumped up here very quickly because they played cards with the right person or whatever.
We addressed those by saying, "Let's have clear provincial policy as to what's permissible and what's not, and let's have a process that's quick." We believe that both those will go a very, very long way to ending abuse. It will not totally end abuse -- we're dealing with human beings -- but we think this is the best kind of system available to try to ensure that there is no abuse to the planning process.
Mr White: Along those same lines, you very clearly want to make sure that provincial interests are adhered to and that no ministry or provincial government goes beyond what is an intent here in the bill in terms of comprehensive policies.
Within the bill, we talk about the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, municipalities etc, but in terms of planning, in terms of site location for, say, a provincial hospital, a courthouse, whatever, would not those ministries have to go through the same process of application, through the municipality, the region, as any other body would have to?
Mr Sewell: No, that's not always the case. In fact the province could decide to do things that are outside of provincial planning controls, for various reasons. We've heard lots of examples of cutting down fruit trees in order to create a lay-by for a highway, those kinds of things, which, if you tried to do it as a municipality, you never could.
I think there's an equity question as well, that if municipalities have to pay attention to policy and be consistent with it, so should provincial ministries. If you ensure that everybody is playing by the same rules, then I think that'll help ensure that the rules are good rules.
The idea that the province should set the rules for someone else to play by means that they don't have an interest in ensuring reasonable rules. But if they're rules they have to play by as well, then I think we're better off. Having a set of rules for everyone I think puts everyone in the same position. If the rules aren't working, good, let's change them.
Ms Haeck: I'll try to be quick, realizing that other members have similar concerns. One of the things I've heard locally around the whole planning process is that people just don't understand what planning criteria are. I refer to it as the arcane art of planning. In truth, residents really and truly have a concern about what information they are given.
I'm thinking even of some infrastructure projects that the municipality locally has referred to, that people just don't know. Having these things in place, all of a sudden it opens the door to all kinds of development. So that's one: what kind of information public meetings should have available to residents. Even the septic systems, I mean, what are alternatives to septics? Because I know that those situations are there.
Residents do have notice, notice as far as, you know, the little sign that's 10 feet away from the ditch that they can't read because it's only 8 1/2 by 11 and on maybe pink or maybe yellow, but it still doesn't tell them what in fact is being planned.
I guess the question that a lot of people locally do have is, especially since I do represent Niagara-on-the-Lake, relates to being more explicit around built heritage. A lot of what you say relates to natural features and they're very supportive of those. They have felt that there should be a little bit more comment with regard to some of the built or cultural heritage that some of our communities -- not only Niagara-on-the-Lake, Kingston as well -- do in fact hold for all of the province, not just for that community.
Mr Sewell: I unfortunately forgot to bring my copy of the comprehensive planning policy statement with me.
Ms Haeck: I can give you mine.
Mr Sewell: But in fact I was pleased to see that a number of the recommendations that we'd made about heritage matters in built form did survive in the policy statement. I believe that they require that municipalities, and everybody else, have to pay attention to existing built forms. So I think it's a very good, strong way to proceed. I was quite happy with it.
If I had a copy, I could refer you specifically to the sections of the policy that say that. I know that in terms of our own policy, we made some terrific -- thank you. It's in policy B.
Policy B14 says: "Policies and decisions regarding development and infrastructure should conserve significant cultural heritage landscapes and built heritage resources."
Policy B13 says: "Policies and decisions regarding development and infrastructure should conserve significant landscapes, vistas, and ridge-lines."
I think they're very important policies to say: "This idea that we can start all over with nature and reshape or reshape our built heritage, that's wrong. We should be working within it. They should be our constraints." I think those policies will be very helpful to people who are interested in where we've come from and try to shape the future in terms of our past.
I think George wanted to deal with the other.
Mr Penfold: I'll deal with the information and notice and the septics.
Finding ways to legitimately and openly engage people in the planning process is obviously a real challenge. In section 8 of our report we had a number of recommendations to deal with public involvement and participation.
The planning legislation that's in place now requires one public meeting on official plans, plan amendments and changes. One of the significant recommendations that we had, in my view, was that for those kinds of major changes -- it gets back to the previous discussion about what's major -- there should be a requirement for two public meetings, one at the very beginning of the process where the municipality releases publicly the intent to proceed with the change, outlines the information that it's going to be dealing with, what opportunities there will be for other public involvement between that point in time and reaching a final decision.
We didn't suggest actually prescribing that in the legislation or guidelines, but in fact requiring that the municipality outline that up front. Components of those recommendations are proposed to be dealt with in the regulations under the act so the extent to which they'll be reflected is not clear. So that's how we propose to deal with that.
Notification: We looked at registries, for example, where individuals could say to the municipality, "I simply want to be sent notice of changes in my area or my ward or my section of the community so that I get it directly," as an alternative. Again, whether that will be in the regulations we're not sure.
Septics: There are a number of alternatives that we looked at as part of the background of the commission work. We had one of our newsletter issues specifically on alternatives for standard septic systems. There are alternatives available that are useful in various kind of site conditions. Some are more useful than others. All require some level of maintenance, which gets back to the regular inspection question.
The third question really has to do with a middle range of servicing which is communal in nature, where a number of units could be on a small system of their own. We had recommended that that should be considered for small developments as either publicly owned servicing or as privately owned servicing where there would be some agreement with the municipality.
The technical issue of alternatives: There are some problems there in terms of getting the Ministry of Environment to approve various technical kinds of solutions. The other key question really comes back to management.
Ms Haeck: I appreciate your comments very much. Thank you.
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Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): John, it's good to see you. Your comprehensive report here, as you know, will go very far in making many, many changes to how things are being done and resolving some of the problems that we have faced for years. I think it's a bold move on behalf of you and on behalf of the government to do this. But again, as you know, the municipality and developers and individuals have been frustrated for years in having things change. You know that this cannot be done unless the government itself will respond positively to some of the recommendations that you have made.
Of course, you've been in public life long enough, elected life, that you know that not everything that you recommend will come forth, as the minister has said. Some of the recommendations that you have made, and some of them are quite significant, did not appear very much in the legislation, to define very well in the legislation, and you expressed some of your frustration. You hoped that it was there, because it needed strong legislation.
Hence, your committee hangs its hope on the fact that regulations will make their way in defining that. But I want to speak in the sense of an elected individual and an opposition member who has found now that late regulations -- sometimes not knowing how to criticize or come forward with some of the legislation here as we go around, it would be said by the government that it will be in regulations.
What emphasis would you like me or my colleagues as we go around the province to emphasize? You talk about some of the areas. As a matter of fact, you mention the four areas: contents of an official plan, planning on a watershed basis, public involvement in plan-making and public notification.
If regulations come long after and there's nothing we can do -- many times, you don't even see the regulations because there's a draft regulation and then all of a sudden it becomes law -- what strategy would you recommend to us in emphasizing to the government to bring regulations forward so we can be helpful in making a very, very sound legislation and very good plan?
Mr Sewell: I guess the best thing to do would be to say, "Let's see the regulations before the bill is finally read a third time." But as the minister has indicated, one of the problems with that is that the implementation committee, which is a bunch of interest groups, are trying to sort that out among themselves. But it seems to me that the more you can get an understanding of what those regulations will be and the items they will touch on the better the public interest will be protected in my mind.
Mr Curling: I find this dilemma -- and I'm really using your resource here and your knowledge -- that the frustration in actually -- I don't want to call it "criticizing" -- assessing any policy or legislation is that if you don't have the regulation, you feel out there, not making the kind of contribution. I know I'm asking a question that's difficult for you to give some response to.
Mr Sewell: Yes, it's why we suggest it should be in legislation. We thought that's the easy way of dealing with it. Let's just put it down. We realize that it's detail, but there is lots of detail in lots of other regulations.
Mr Eddy: Thank you for your presentation. It's very helpful. My concern is the matter of timing of the various steps of the Planning Act, and it's true, the time consumed in many matters is far too long. It has been pointed out to me that the government's claim to be addressing the need to provide for more time in efficient decision-making is greatly overstated and the bill really isn't a streamlining document. I know there are some time frames tightened up but, overall, what is your view on that? Shouldn't we be addressing that more?
Mr Sewell: I guess I disagree with that criticism. We had suggested three kinds of time frames: one at the municipal level, the second at the provincial and the third at the OMB. What we'd suggested at the municipal level is that municipalities should have three months to do a rezoning -- if a decision hadn't been made, then they could go to the OMB and say, "Hey, come on, let's get on with this" -- and six months for official plan amendments. Those are both in the legislation. We're pleased with that. We had no quarrel whatsoever on that.
The second area of timing was the time taken to approve things. Now, of course, we've removed the need for provincial approval in many, many instances. We've said, "You just don't need it." Municipalities can do these kinds of things on their own. If people are unhappy, they'll have their own rights.
But what we suggested is that in cases where the province still will have approval power, it's got to make its decision within a six-month period. That was our recommendation. That is in the legislation as well. So we don't have any quarrel with that part of it. People might say six months is too long for an approval body. We thought at the end of the day maybe it's not. That's why we suggested six months.
The third area was at the Ontario Municipal Board, where we'd said the OMB should be asked -- I don't think we proposed legislation on it, but we did say the OMB should be requested to try to have these 30-day hearings, you know, meetings, where you get the parties together to see if it could be resolved.
Mr Eddy: Thirty days?
Mr Sewell: Not a hearing; a meeting of the parties.
Mr Grandmaître: A pre-hearing?
Mr Sewell: Yes, where you sit down and say: "Now, what is the problem? Let's be serious about this. What kind of evidence are you going to be bringing forward?" those kinds of things. We really do believe that the experience the ministry has had and the OMB has had with minor variances will in fact be reflected across the area. With minor variances, I think they're finding that 40% or 50% of them are being settled right at that hearing, at that meeting stage, and a number of the others are falling off the table.
That was our third area of streamlining. I know that the OMB is considering all this and I'm not sure what recent instructions have gone out and how they're looking at it. I think in terms of streamlining, we don't have any quarrel. We're pretty happy. We think that the bill incorporates this idea of streamlining.
As I said, I think the one area where you might question is whether an approval body should have six months. But it was our considered opinion that six months was a reasonable period of time. We thought speeding it up wasn't going to make much sense.
Mr Grandmaître: Two years ago or maybe three years ago, John, the OMB appeared before the government agencies committee. We were told by the then chairperson that what you're proposing today was in fact in place. Did you find out otherwise, that it's not in place, this pre-hearing process?
Mr Sewell: We know that there's been some experimentation at the OMB. They have a couple of mediators who are trying to do it.
Mr Penfold: There have been three pilot areas in the provincial facilitator's office.
Mr Sewell: That's right. Dale Martin is leading a whole new assault on this area and I gather it has been quite successful. So what we were trying to do was saying, "Okay, come on, let's implement it as a regular kind of thing." I know it's being expanded at the moment, because it works. Courts have been doing this for quite some time and finding it works, and we think the OMB could do it.
The Chair: Mr Sewell, we ran out of time. We want to thank you and Mr Penfold for all the good work that you have done and for the presentation that you have made to this committee today.
Mr Sewell: Thank you very much, Mr Chairman. If there's anything we can do to help the committee in its process, we'd be delighted, individually or collectively.
The Chair: Thank you for that.
There are two matters to deal with, first of all, some of the statements that some of the opposition members may want to make. We'd like to do that and then to deal with one small matter once you've done that. Mr Grandmaître, your statement?
Mr Grandmaître: Mr Chair, I'm interested in hearing what people have to say about Bill 163. I think we've asked some very important questions this morning. I'm sure that in the next three weeks, you're going to hear from us. We'll leave it at that.
The Chair: Very well. Thank you.
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Mr McLean: I'd like to put a few questions on the record for the parliamentary assistant to answer. We didn't have much time this morning to ask the minister, but I thought it would be appropriate --
The Chair: Mr McLean, if you're going to pose questions, he won't answer them today. Unless you're going to make statements.
Mr McLean: I'm making a statement and my statement's going to be in the form of some questions. I've done that before and I think it's appropriate that I'm allowed to do it again.
The Chair: Very well. Go ahead.
Mr McLean: I would like to know what cost-benefit analyses has been carried out to measure the impact of this legislation with the municipalities. If they have been done, are they going to be made public? I know that Sewell at OMA the other day was very critical of some of the legislation and I don't think we heard about it all today. I'm wondering what views the parliamentary assistant would have on some of the negative impact that we have heard on that.
The rural municipalities have complained to me about the top-down method of planning and development contained in Bill 163 and we will hear from them during the next two or three weeks. But I'm wondering what flexibility there's going to be there with regard to this government and the parliamentary assistant. I would like him to let me know.
The right of public appeal has been severely restricted in a misguided attempt at streamlining the planning and the development process. The right to appeal is nullified. If you don't file a letter of objection or make an oral presentation before a municipal council decision is made, then why was this done?
I talked about the minor variances this morning with regard to the no chance of appeal. I didn't get a very good explanation of what a minor variance really is, and I would hope that the parliamentary assistant would see that that was placed.
We want to talk just briefly about the policy statements. How definite are they going to be? The legal framework that now exists with the current phrase, as I said this morning, "have regard to," we want to know why that was changed.
I want to know with regard to the policy statements -- they are sometimes confusing and contradictory. For example, in policy B, which deals with economic, community development and infrastructure, section 13 says that decisions related to infrastructure should conserve significant landscapes, vistas and ridge-lines. But in policy A, dealing with natural heritage, there's no mention of this subject. How are these two policy elements supposed to work together?
There's no onus on the government in this legislation to deal significantly with the provincially significant areas. A developer could buy land and find out later that it's adjacent to an environmentally sensitive area and they can build on that. The question is, is that fair? I wish your staff would look into that and get back to me.
In policy B, economic, community development and infrastructure, there's hardly anything about economic growth. Most of it deals with intensification. Why wasn't there attention paid to growth and job creation?
Agriculture, natural heritage and community development are now pursued by individual ministries. With Bill 163, the new provincial policies, there will be a cumulative effect on all these areas which could strangle development in rural communities. How will these goals be matched with the ministry's existing policies? Are there going to be several ministries involved, or is it going to be just dealt with by one ministry?
Section D of the policy statements dealing with agriculture leaves no room at all for local decision-making. Permitted uses, severance policy and separation distances are set out without any regard for different regions in Ontario. Why do you take away so much power from rural Ontario?
It's interesting to note when I asked a question today about a septic tank two miles out of Kenora, why would that have to be inspected every five years? I think northern Ontario is really a lot different than southern Ontario.
The conflict-of-interest guidelines: You say they're not tough enough on local politicians. Many of them are just part-time people. It's different --
Mr Pat Hayes (Essex-Kent): Excuse me, who made the statement that they're not strict enough?
Mr McLean: I said they're too strict.
Mr Hayes: I think you made a comment about "you," referring to the government, that they're not strict enough.
Mr McLean: Well, it will come up in Hansard if you don't understand what I said. You will read it in there. You recognize the difference in the changes of the guidelines. That's what I wanted to tell you.
"The Ministry of Housing uses the Planning Act as an instrument to force higher levels of affordable housing on new developments where possible. Low-income housing is not a planning matter. It should be removed from these reforms." I'm wondering if that is your intent, to do so.
The final one I have is "The policy stipulates that the building materials and the transportation of these materials should be conserved where feasible through reuse, recycling and renovation." That doesn't belong in planning and should be removed from it.
I am looking forward to the opportunity to listen to some of the comments from some of the municipal people with regard to these very issues, and some of those questions I would hope that your staff would be able to clarify as we go along.
The Chair: Statements from anyone else? Okay. One last matter to deal with. That is, Roberta Jamieson from the Ombudsman's office has called us and would like to appear before this committee in Toronto on Monday, September 12. I looked at the schedule and it's quite tight, in my view. I'm not sure whether others have a different view. If some of you want to look at that agenda and think that we can squeeze her in to the tight schedule that we have, you might let me know.
Otherwise, what I might suggest is that we ask her to give us a brief and to simply submit it to us for us to consider. We have asked her if she could make it today, because we thought we'd have the time today, and she can't. So we at least made that effort. But unless there's a contrary view, I suggest that we simply ask her, through her office, to send us a brief.
Mr Hayes: Sounds good to me.
The Chair: Is that all right with all of you? Very well. This committee will recess until 1:30 this afternoon.
The committee recessed from 1207 to 1337.
MINISTRY OF MUNICIPAL AFFAIRS
The Chair: I'd like to call the meeting to order. I think we're ready for the technical briefing and would invite Mr Philip McKinstry, Ms Diana Dewar and Mr Dale Martin. Mr Martin is not yet here. Is he coming? Yes. Perhaps we should invite Mr Glenn Johnston anyway to the front, and Mr Peter-John Sidebottom. We'll begin with the three of you who are here, and as the others come, we'll bring them along. Welcome.
Mr Philip McKinstry: Thank you, Mr Chair. My name is Philip McKinstry and I'm the acting director of the municipal planning policy branch in the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce the subject before we move on to the other people.
Bill 163 would amend the Planning Act, the Municipal Act, the Ontario Municipal Board Act and other related legislation. The Local Government Disclosure of Interest Act, which would replace the existing Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, is also included in the bill.
In this first presentation, Diana Dewar and I will highlight the key features related to municipal planning. Glenn Johnston will highlight the key features of provincial planning under the Ontario Planning and Development Act. Dale Martin will then talk about how planning reform is being implemented.
The second presentation, on open local government and local disclosure of interest, will be given by Paul Jones.
I will begin with an overview of the Planning Act changes and the comprehensive set of policy statements.
Bill 163 would amend the current Planning Act. To understand how the whole package would work, it is also necessary to refer to those sections of the act that would not be amended by the bill. The same is true of the Ontario Municipal Board Act. We will be concentrating on the proposed changes from the current legislation.
One major change would be the addition of a "purpose of planning" section to provide greater clarity and direction for decisions made under the act. This section would address the need to foster economic, environmental, cultural, physical and social wellbeing, as well as the need for sustainable development through a planning process that is fair, open, accessible, accountable, timely and efficient. To achieve this objective, a policy-led system is advocated, where matters of provincial interests are integrated in provincial and local planning decisions and where cooperation and coordination among various interests are achieved.
Section 2 of the act would be revised to expand the list of provincial interests and to require that all planning jurisdictions that make decisions under the Planning Act "shall have regard to" these provincial interests.
Section 3 of the act would be revised to require that decisions of planning authorities under the Planning Act "shall be consistent with" policy statements. "Shall be consistent with" is intended to be stronger than "shall have regard to" but not as strong as "shall conform with." It is intended to provide an effective mechanism for implementing policy while still providing flexibility to recognize local diversity and to permit practical and innovative implementation of the policy.
As the minister mentioned, cabinet has approved a comprehensive set of policy statements that have been released for information purposes. It is intended that they would come in to effect when the legislation is proclaimed. As Dale Martin will explain, implementation guidelines that would be advisory in nature would be released at the same time.
The policy statements themselves are not part of the proposed bill. They are, however, an integral part of planning reform. I will briefly highlight the key features. The policies address six policy areas.
Goal A addresses natural heritage, environment and hazards, and contains three subgoals. The first, natural heritage features and environmental protection, deals with sensitive features which would be protected from development. It includes policies relating to water, natural heritage features/systems and fish habitat, as well as a policy encouraging municipalities to protect the ecosystem. The second includes the existing wetlands policy statement. The third, hazards, deals with lands where development may not be appropriate because site conditions may cause a risk to public health or safety or result in property damage. Included are policies on the Great Lakes-St Lawrence shoreline, erosion, hazardous sites and contaminated sites. The existing floodplain planning policy statement, which deals with riverine flooding, has also been included.
Goal B addresses economic, community development and infrastructure. It includes policies regarding matters such as social and human services planning, economic development, transportation and infrastructure, growth and settlement, development in unorganized territories, natural cultural features and land use compatibility. Some of the policies reflect the transit supportive guideline and the growth and settlement policy guideline.
Goal C, housing, replaces the existing land use planning for housing policy statement.
Goal D, agricultural land, replaces the existing Food Land Guidelines, which were approved by cabinet in 1978.
Goal E, conservation, promotes efficiency of energy and water use through land use planning. Policies regarding waste reduction and efficient transportation systems are included.
Goal F, mineral aggregate, mineral and petroleum resources, contains two subgoals. The first incorporates the existing mineral aggregate resources policy statement. The second includes policies for mineral and petroleum resources.
Section G addresses implementation and interpretation issues.
As I indicated, the four existing policy statements have been incorporated into and replaced by the new set of provincial policy statements.
When Bill 163 comes into effect, decisions of specified planning authorities regarding land use planning matters under the Planning Act must be consistent with these policy statements.
This comprehensive set of policy statements will be a key component of the new policy-led planning system.
Thank you, Mr Chairman. Now I'll ask Diana Dewar to speak more about the legislative part of it.
Ms Diana Dewar: I am Diana Dewar, manager of the municipal planning policy branch from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. I'd like to highlight some of the significant legislative features of the new planning process under the three themes of streamlining, local empowerment and environmental protection.
I will begin by describing how the proposed bill will streamline the planning process.
First, I will discuss time frames. The proposed legislation specifies time frames within which decisions must be made. In the current process, there is no time limit to the time for making a decision on official plans or development applications. In the new system, the approval authority would have 150 days for official plan amendments and 180 days for plans of subdivision. Where the approval authority has not made a decision within the specified time frames, the matter could be appealed by the proponent to the Ontario Municipal Board.
What constitutes a complete application would be prescribed by regulation, so that applicants know up front what is required to be submitted. The approval authority could refuse to consider the application until the required information is submitted. The time frame for making a decision would start once the complete application has been received.
Third, I would like to discuss early public involvement in dispute resolution. The new system stresses early public involvement in the process. For example, there would be a 30-day separation between the public meeting and council adoption of a plan. This is intended to encourage the resolution of conflicts before the plan is adopted.
Also, there would only be a 30-day window for requesting referral of an official plan amendment or appealing a decision on a subdivision to the Ontario Municipal Board. The current act provides for referral at any time until a decision is made.
Another important change is that notice of a subdivision application would now have to be given.
I'd like to now discuss dismissal powers. Both the approval authority and the Ontario Municipal Board would have expanded powers to dismiss an appeal or referral if there is no merit to the appeal.
The approval authority and the Ontario Municipal Board could dismiss a matter where reasons do not disclose any apparent land use planning reason, where a request is not made in good faith or is frivolous or vexatious, where the request is made only for the purpose of delay, where the plan is premature, where the person requesting referral did not make oral submissions at a public meeting or did not make written submissions to the council before the plan was adopted or has not provided written reasons for the request. The Ontario Municipal Board could dismiss a matter if the fee had not been paid or a request by the Ontario Municipal Board for further information has not been responded to.
Minor variances would no longer be appealable to the Ontario Municipal Board. Council's decision would be final. This means that the Ontario Municipal Board could concentrate on the larger issues. Council could delegate this authority to a committee of council, committee of adjustment or staff. Municipalities would have the option of establishing a two-step process, with council reviewing the decision of the committee of adjustment if requested to, as long as there is no council member on the committee.
A lapsing provision has been proposed in the bill which would allow approval authorities to put a time limit of not less than two years on a draft-approved plan of subdivision. This would allow municipalities to allocate servicing capacity to developments that are ready to go ahead. The municipality would have the authority to extend draft approval.
Municipalities would now be able to adopt a development permit system for a defined area in a municipality or for the whole municipality and would be able to delegate the issuance of development permits to staff. Development permit areas would be defined in a municipal official plan and be used as an alternative to site-specific zoning bylaw amendments and site plans.
The proposed legislation provides for an optional process. This would allow municipalities to meet the requirements of a class environmental assessment and the Planning Act at the same time. The work that is done in support of an official plan or official plan amendment would also meet the requirements for an infrastructure undertaking. This has significant potential for savings in cost and time.
The bill proposes technical amendments to the Ontario Municipal Board Act which would streamline the administrative practice of the Ontario Municipal Board. For example, the service of notice by fax could now be recognized.
Another important theme of the bill is municipal empowerment. Bill 163 assigns power so that regional governments and cities outside regions would be responsible for subdivision approvals and most regions would be responsible for approving official plans and official plan amendments of local municipalities.
One of the technical amendments the minister mentioned this morning would be to provide for further delegation of subdivision approval from the region to a local municipality. Separated cities and cities in northern Ontario would be assigned the authority to approve plans of subdivision.
The legislation itself would not automatically assign power to counties. This recognizes local diversity and the various levels of planning in counties. Authority could be delegated. It is intended that once a county has an approved official plan, authority to approve development applications would be delegated.
Planning boards would now have the power to zone lands in unorganized areas. Provision is in the proposed legislation which would allow the minister to deem an existing zoning order to be a zoning bylaw.
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A new section is proposed to be added to the act to provide for the establishment of municipal planning authorities. This would allow councils of two or more municipalities in one or more counties to establish a municipal planning authority.
In some areas county planning is difficult because of the configuration of the county boundaries and population distribution. This would allow municipalities with similar issues and growth pressures to plan together. Minister's approval would be required. There are a number of considerations to be taken into account, for example, the continued viability of county planning.
The new system would require that official plans be prepared in regions, separated municipalities, cities in northern Ontario, planning boards and municipal planning authorities. Counties would be required to prepare an official plan, but the timing of this would be prescribed by regulation. Recognizing the diversity of county planning, the legislation would provide for phasing in the requirement for counties to plan.
The third important theme is environmental protection and there are a number of legislative provisions in the bill to further this theme. As Philip McKinstry has described, there exists a clear set of comprehensive policy statements which put forward clear provincial policies regarding the environment. Bill 163 would require that all decisions under the Planning Act "shall be consistent with the policy statements."
The minimum content of official plans would be prescribed in regulation. This regulation would include many environmental matters.
Also within the theme of environmental protection, amendments are proposed to the Municipal Act to allow municipalities to regulate the dumping of fill and lot grading.
There is an amendment proposed to the zoning provisions which would permit municipalities to prohibit development on land within areas such as significant wildlife habitats, woodlands, wetlands, contaminated sites and sites containing significant archaeological resources.
I would now like to turn it over to Glenn Johnston.
Mr Glenn Johnston: Good day. I am Glenn Johnston, manager, provincial planning policy branch of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. At this time I wish to provide a statement on the Ontario Planning and Development Act component of Bill 163.
The Ontario Planning and Development Act was first enacted in 1973. It was conceived as an important provincial planning tool that would enable the province to set policies and create plans for geographic areas of the province. The purpose of these plans was to establish policies for the economic, social and physical development of a specific area.
Under the new act plans could include policies for the distribution and density of population, parkland, water resources, environment, servicing, communication and transportation systems, educational, cultural, recreational, health and other social facilities and for the coordination of planning and development among municipalities or planning boards. These plans would be developed by the province based on the location of existing or anticipated provincial interests requiring planning and protection.
Planning reform seeks to empower municipalities to make planning decisions, to help protect the environment and to streamline the municipal and provincial planning processes within a policy-led system. The Commission on Planning and Development Reform recognized the need for the province to lead with policy such as those in the provincial policy statements and area plans as already provided under section 3 of the Planning Act.
Another method that can be employed to provide policy direction, especially for unique areas with significant provincial interests, would be the use of provincial development plans created in accordance with the Ontario Planning and Development Act, the OPDA.
The original OPDA was created 20 years ago, but its cumbersome processes and other shortcomings discouraged its use to address either current or future provincial concerns and opportunities. The proposed OPDA revisions would streamline the processes in the act and strengthen public participation in those processes.
Bill 163 would replace the original OPDA with a new act of the same name. The purpose of the act would remain the same, but experience with creating and amending a provincial plan under the existing act has shown where streamlining of the processes is necessary.
The province used the OPDA and the Parkway Belt Planning and Development Act when creating the parkway belt west plan in 1978. The parkway belt west plan was designed to protect a corridor of land stretching from Highway 48 in Markham to the Niagara Escarpment in Hamilton-Wentworth. It is comprised of approximately 50,000 acres to be used for highway, hydro, utility and other infrastructure corridors, and for open space and such other uses as complementary residential development.
A major reason why Highway 407 is now rapidly being built is because a transportation corridor and related policies were part of the 1978 parkway belt west plan. Markham Centre can proceed with its innovative design on a tract of land some 1,100 acres in size because the lands had been included in the parkway belt reserve. A number of corridors and facilities important to the rapid growth of the greater Toronto area would not have developed quickly and with minimal disruption to other services and adjacent developments without the existence of the parkway belt west plan and the Ontario Planning and Development Act.
There are several significant changes in the OPDA that make it good news for planning in Ontario. One of the most significant changes pertains to improving the processes for creating and amending provincial development plans. Under the original OPDA, the same complex process for creating a major new plan was also used to make even the most insignificant change in a plan. Under the new act, the process for creating a plan would be different from the one for amendments and both processes would be more streamlined and flexible than in the original legislation.
The current OPDA requires two mandatory committees be used relatively late in the plan creation and amendment process. Under the proposed OPDA, the minister would be required to ensure that the public is given an opportunity to participate in the preparation of the proposed development plan. Methods that could be used to encourage public participation may include committees, focus groups, public meetings, workshops or any combination that would be appropriate to the circumstances. Similarly, these methods could be employed in the amendment of a plan.
In the case where there are no concerns or objections with a proposed amendment, the minister would be able to forgo a hearing. It would save time and money.
The minister would also have approval authority for amendments to the plan after consulting with other ministries, municipalities and the public.
Under the new OPDA, the existing Parkway Belt Planning and Development Act would be repealed and existing amendments and regulations would be provided for in the revised OPDA. Many of the over 50 outstanding parkway belt west plan amendments would benefit from the streamlined processes which will provide for their speedy resolution.
The key changes to the OPDA in the revised legislation would make the act a more viable provincial planning tool. The processes would be streamlined and more user-friendly, the creation of development plans would become more accessible to the public, amendment approvals would be made easier and quicker and more cost-effective, and the parkway belt west plan would benefit from all these changes. Thank you.
At this time I would like to introduce Dale Martin, who will speak on how planning reform is going to be implemented.
Mr Dale Martin: Mr Chairman, I apologize for being late. My schedule and your schedule don't seem to coincide for some reason. Mine is obviously out of date.
I would actually like to make a contribution to the committee's consideration in three ways. One of them I'll speak to, as has been mentioned, is implementation of the package, but I also want to bring the committee up to date on some of the work that my office has been doing that comfortably fits with the work of the commission and the recommendations that you find before you legislatively, and hopefully set something of a context for the members in the course of their deliberations. They see the legislative piece as a part of a number of other initiatives that necessarily fit together if we hope to be successful in transforming the planning system in the province.
The first thing I want to talk to is what has been going on over the last year in my office aimed at planning reform. About a year ago, really two years ago, shortly after I was appointed, I along with the development industry sponsored a series of seminars across the province that we called Building on Success seminars.
The first series of 12 were specifically with the Urban Development Institute and Ontario Home Builders' Association. Then this last year we sponsored another series of 12 with regional governments and county governments across the province. It was a fairly straightforward day-long proposition of sitting provincial review and approval people down, senior people, together with representatives of either regional and local government or the development industry, to talk about one another's practice and ways that we can improve the way planning is done in the province.
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I think you'll find that many of the suggestions that came out of those Building on Success meetings are either in the legislation or in the section 3 policy statements or are found in some of the implementation proposals that I'll speak to in a minute.
We've had 24 meetings around the province that are regionally based, and out of those meetings a lot of good suggestions. Some of them needed the legislative change; some of them are administrative in their nature.
In addition to that we've engaged in a series of pilot projects over the last year and many of them suggested the direction that we should be moving in with respect to planning reform. I want to speak a bit to some of those projects.
The first set of pilots that we have been running for the past year were mediation pilots in four communities in Ontario: one in Nepean, one in Kitchener, one in the city of Toronto, and subsequent to those being launched, we added one other one in Cambridge. The intent was to look at what would happen if you offered mediation services to objectors to the Ontario Municipal Board.
There had been a lot of talk for a number of years about the benefit of that approach and I think everybody who's in the planning process has a strong preference to get away from the adversarial tribunal resolution of conflict and into other alternative ways of managing disputes.
Not surprisingly, in the same way that the Ontario Municipal Board did in its mediation services, we too found that there's potential, and in fact the success rate was somewhere around 85% for the objections that were seen as mediatable objections.
Initially the bulk of those were aimed at resolving minor variance concerns, but subsequently we became more ambitious and tried more complicated zoning bylaw objections with more than one party. But I think the main message coming out of the pilot was tremendous potential. We then had a conference that was cosponsored by a quite a range of different organizations, including the development industry, the bar, professional planners, municipalities and the environmental movement, to explore the whole issue of mediation and land use planning.
Out of that conference was the suggestion that land use planning, more than simply being a Band-Aid that you'd sort of tack on to the land use planning process, should move central to planning in the province and we should look at every conceivable opportunity to introduce a non-adversarial, mediation-type approach to conflict resolution in the land use planning system.
I think you'll find in the legislation itself a reference to that. I know that some people don't think the reference is strong enough and I'm sure that we'd be interested in hearing from this committee on ways that it thinks that non-adversarial approaches to resolving conflict in land use planning can be brought. But I should say that the pilots were run, they were successful, they were enthusiastically endorsed by municipalities and, for the most part, the administration of them was voluntarily given by the municipalities involved.
The second thing that area pilots got involved in was consolidation of decision-making within the provincial government, essentially trying to develop an agreement between Municipal Affairs and the Ministry of Environment that would allow Municipal Affairs review people to make decisions on behalf of the Ministry of Environment on routine matters. That we saw as a key way of reducing the amount of time that an application spent in the system. Again, I think that all of the participants in those pilots -- the main ones ran in the greater Toronto area -- agree that they hold tremendous potential as a way of expediting land use approvals, certainly with routine applications.
A third area that we worked fairly strenuously at was the idea of delegation and transfer of review functions from the province to other administrative bodies involved in land use planning. This was an attempt to eliminate what is seen as the duplication in review. In water-related matters, you often have four or five agencies -- conservation authority, health unit, a couple of ministries and often a municipal government -- that are involved in reviewing for more or less the same thing. A slightly different spin, but it's totally possible, we think, to consolidate that review in one location.
One of the pilots, probably the most successful in this respect, is going on now in Cambridge with the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Grand River Conservation Authority, where the Grand River Conservation Authority is, through agreement, performing a review function for water-related matters, again something we think has tremendous potential to improve the delivery of service to people in the land use planning process, eliminate duplication and improve efficiency.
We have had three or four pilots over the last year that all point in a very specific and positive direction for change in land use planning. The legislative proposals and the policy statements and those sort of administrative changes all fit together, I think, in a reasonably neat package that we have to extend from individual pilots to a province-wide approach to land use planning.
The reason I wanted to indicate that was not only as a way of providing a broader context for the committee's consideration, but also because I think one of the underlying objectives that needs to be achieved if this overall change in the way we do land use planning is to be achieved is a fundamental change in the personality of the system. We've gone again from looking at mediation, for example, as a minor event to a major event in land use planning.
What I mean by changing the personality of the system is really in two or three ways. There is now growing agreement that we have to fundamentally move away from an adversarial approach to resolution to a non-adversarial approach, a more partnered approach to planning our communities.
As you all know, almost everybody in the system now, the way the system is set up, starts thinking about going to the board the moment they hear about an application for development in their community. That simply isn't a good way of doing planning, and I think the intention of many of the changes as proposed in the legislation is aimed at doing just that, getting more of the planning action to occur earlier in the system and certainly in a more non-adversarial way.
The other important personality shift really speaks directly to the province's role but probably also involves regional governments and other municipal governments. That is, first of all, a more customer service-oriented approach, not a policing review approach, and implicated in that, much more provincial involvement early on in the planning process so that people understand what the province's interest is early on rather than finding out after a municipal council has adopted a bylaw or an official plan that the province's Ministry of Environment or Natural Resources or Municipal Affairs objects in one way or another to their proposal because it doesn't fit provincial policy interests.
The idea is to move the province's resources to the front end so that they are engaged with communities and municipalities early on in understanding and articulating the province's interests and so as to avoid subsequently disputes that emerge between the province and municipalities.
So personality shift in two ways: Tilt the system forward, get involved earlier, pre-consultation, that sort of thing, and secondly, a much less adversarial system, one that's loaded up with opportunities for people to describe their concerns early and have them addressed early as a way of avoiding the tribunal as the ultimate resolution of planning matters and planning for communities.
With those two things, I want to now lead to the third issue, and that is the implementation task force that I chair and some of the approaches we hope to achieve with respect to implementation. This, I think, again flows comfortably out of our experience over the last couple of years, our experience in Building on Success, the wisdom of bringing all the parties together to figure out together how best to plan our communities in the province.
We have created, as you probably know, an implementation task force and I think there's a handout that has gone around that lists three committees, and I'll speak to all three of them.
We thought early on that there are two or three areas of implementation that are not normally handled all that well by government. One of them is the development of the sort of instructive guidelines: How do you actually achieve the policy interest that is described in a section 3 policy statement and how do you do it in a consistent way across the province? How do you know that everyone's reading the same policies in more or less the same way and trying to adapt their planning situation to hit the provincial policy interest?
One of the complaints that was legion across the province is the fact that the province has historically been fairly inconsistent in its application of policy from one part of the province to the next, from one district office to the next.
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We thought the way to avoid that was by developing together the guidelines that we all agree represent a collective understanding of the interpretation of the policies, and that is the first work of the implementation advisory task force. It is meeting monthly. It started meeting half-days; it's now beginning to meet full days once a month, and will meet as frequently as we need to get the job done. But the task force is reviewing in detail all of the guidelines proposed by ministries that would relate to the section 3 policy statements that were adopted by cabinet.
It has been, I think, to everybody involved a very useful and instructive process to date. The one consensus that was reached by the committee was that they do not want prescriptive guidelines. They don't want to be told how to do things. They want to have instructive guidelines. They want to have some suggestions as to how that particular policy is being successfully implemented in this or that community, and we have lots of opportunities to do that across the province. So the first work of this task force for the next few months is going to be around the guidelines and coming to an agreement on what sorts of guidelines will be published associated with those policy statements.
The next thing that the committee has agreed, through its adoption of its terms of reference and work plan, that it's going to concentrate on, although it's already beginning in a minor way now, is the education and training packages that would be associated with the new planning regime.
There's a strong feeling that education and training has not been as systematically and comprehensively pursued in planning as it needs to be, and as a result, all of the participants in the system are very different in terms of their understanding of how the system functions, the policies and their levels of sophistication. Our view is that we need to have sustained education and training in order to expect a good product at the end, an improved planning system.
We expect that, unlike the usual circumstance where you do a bunch of education and training at the beginning and then let it fall off, in this case we'll end up with education and training as an ongoing and living part of land use planning. In fact one of the things we did last year in my office was develop three or four core curriculums for the consulting industry in key areas of planning. The industry welcomed that.
We just think that it's something that should not only be available to the industry, but should be available to the general public, to municipalities, to the Ontario Municipal Board and to provincial employees that do a plan review and approval. Everyone should be singing from the same songbook, have the same understanding and have the same education and training packages available. The next thing that the committee, the task force is going to be preoccupied with is education and training.
Beyond that, the committee has agreed to remain together for at least a year after the new planning regime takes effect in order to act as a place for people to bring their concerns and to manage any midcourse corrections that are needed in the system.
Trying to keep our eye on the ball of the product, a better planning system that produces better communities in the province of Ontario, again we think this is a rather novel approach in that for the first time people will have a place to bring their concerns as they experience the new regime in process and there'll be a place to air issues and come up with solutions if there are solutions needed.
Those remain at this point the three identified terms of reference and work plan for the implementation advisory task force. As you can see, the task force is evenly divided between the municipal sector, the environmental sector and the development sector. While there are named individuals representing those sectors, we allow specialists to sit at the table in substitution for one of these individuals in the event that there's a guideline or issue that they need to have specialist recommendations available to.
In addition to that, we've created two other committees, one a technical committee made up of planners and lawyers and others who are the day-to-day workers on planning matters in the province and who can give us specific technical advice around the guidelines and around the implementation of the new planning regime.
Finally, we've created a table we're calling the rural table. There's an acknowledgement that by and large planning in the province has been oriented to urban areas, understandably, and to areas where development pressure is the greatest, and so often planning regimes speak more directly to urban areas and fast-growth areas in particular than to other parts of the province.
We think it would be very useful, and in fact the rural table has met and agrees it's very useful, to spend a lot of time looking at how the planning regime could operate best in rural Ontario, potential problems that rural Ontario may face that need to be addressed and concerns that need to be dealt with in the course of setting up this new regime. That rural table is, as you see, listed fairly completely, covers just about all aspects of rural Ontario.
The plan at this point is to have both the rural table and the technical table report ultimately to the task force and to the deputy ministers' committee responsible for overseeing the overall implementation of this planning reform initiative.
Finally, if you look at the very back, there is a sheet that could make your eyes roll, but it's a fairly conventional table that demonstrates the relationships that we're trying to achieve with respect to implementation.
It takes the external stream that I've just spoken to -- the task force on implementation, the technical committee and the rural table -- associates it with the deputies' committee -- that's a province-wide committee that includes all those ministries that have anything to do with land use planning -- and then finally within Municipal Affairs itself, the lead ministry, a transformation committee aimed at, among other things, transforming the culture and the behaviour of land use planning review and approval agents in the ministry but also making sure that all of the ministry are up to speed on the implications of planning reform and are ready and able, when planning reform is fully implemented, to meet the challenge of a new process.
I think that may be adequate remarks. I'm certainly happy, along with everybody else here, to entertain any questions and bring any other information. If committee members are interested in more detail on any of this, obviously we're prepared to make that information available.
The Chair: Very good. I'm assuming we're not hearing from anyone else. Correct?
Mr McKinstry: There is one more presentation, but that is on the open local government part of the package from Paul Jones.
The Chair: I'd prefer that we did this now, and then we'll take questions of all of you after that.
Mr McKinstry: Yes, I agree.
The Chair: Can we just fit him in? Mr Jones.
Mr Paul Jones: My name is Paul Jones. I'm manager of local government policy at the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. For the information of committee members, in your committee binder there is a tab 11 that contains several appendices. Included with that is a table of contents, and the green pages within tab 11 refer to the open local government provisions that are contained within Bill 163. There are a number of charts and other information that you may want to make reference to during your deliberations.
The open local government component of Bill 163 is the result of extensive consultation over the past four years. It is a package which strives to balance the privacy rights of members with the public's right to know. There are three parts to open local government. They are open meetings, disposal of real property and local government disclosure of interest, formerly known as municipal conflict of interest.
The changes proposed are designed to ensure that local government decisions are made in an open and accountable manner and that the public has access to that process and to the information that they require to hold the local government process and their representatives accountable for the decisions that are made.
The open meeting provisions in Bill 163 would replace the Municipal Act section 55. The new provisions would apply to municipal councils, committees of councils or similar entities and local boards as defined in the Municipal Affairs Act, which includes bodies such as public utility commissions, planning boards and boards of health.
The open meeting provisions of Bill 163 would not apply to the following, as they have their own specific legislation: police services boards, library boards and school boards.
The current legislation concerning open meetings requires only that regular meetings of council be open. All other types of meetings, whether they be special, committee of the whole, standing committee and so on, may be closed at the council's or local board's discretion, regardless of the topic under consideration.
Bill 163 would change the criteria for permitting the holding of a meeting in the absence of the public from a scheme based on the type of meeting to a system based on the subject-matter under consideration.
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Bill 163 would permit a council or local board to discuss a limited number of topics in the absence of the public. Some are already incorporated into municipal practices or procedural bylaws. The topics most often would include security of property; personal matters about an identifiable individual that would possibly include employees; property acquisition; labour relations or employee negotiations; litigation; receipt of advice from a solicitor; and any topic for which the province or federal legislation requires a closed meeting.
While a meeting may be closed for the discussion of one of these topics, no votes may be taken during a closed session. In addition to these discretionary exemptions, a council or local board would be required to close a meeting to discuss a request under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act where the council or board is the head of the institution for the purposes of that act.
If a council or local board wishes to close a meeting or a portion of a meeting, they would be required to pass a resolution during an open meeting indicating the general nature or reason for the closing.
In addition to these requirements for the conduct of meetings, all councils and local boards would be required to pass procedural bylaws outlining the method for calling, conducting and governing the proceedings for a meeting.
The disposal of real property provisions in Bill 163 would replace the current provisions in section 193 of the Municipal Act. The new section would set out the manner by which councils and local boards could dispose of surplus real property.
The Municipal Act provides local governments with a large degree of discretion as to the manner in which they dispose of real property. The provisions regarding the disposal of property in Bill 163 would affect municipal councils and those local boards as defined in the Municipal Affairs Act that have the right to acquire and dispose of real property. The exception to the list would be school boards, because school boards have their own legislation and regulations.
In addition to disposing of property in an open process, municipalities and local boards would be required to establish and maintain a register of properties owned by the municipality or local board.
A regulation is proposed that would permit a municipality or board to exempt certain types of properties, such as roadways, from the register.
Municipalities and boards would also be required to pass a bylaw establishing procedures for the sale of property. This bylaw is to include notice provisions and may provide for different procedures for different classes of property.
When a municipality or local board wishes to sell property, there are a number of procedural steps described in Bill 163. The council or local board would be required to declare the land surplus to their needs at a public meeting, obtain at least one appraisal of the value of the property and provide notice of the sale of the property.
The Minister of Municipal Affairs would by regulation be permitted to describe certain types of properties and certain types of property transactions that could be exempted from the appraisal requirement. It should be noted, however, that nothing in Bill 163 would limit the current right of a municipality to determine the final price, or other considerations, for which surplus property is to be sold.
Schedule B to Bill 163 would revise the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act and rename it the Local Government Disclosure of Interest Act. Many of the provisions in the current act would be carried over into this new act, including the coverage of the act which includes municipalities, school boards and other local boards, of which there are 15 or 20 different types.
Bill 163 would impose a number of duties on a member. Each member would, as at present, be required to orally disclose their pecuniary interests in matters before the council or board. The members would also be prohibited from accepting any gifts or benefits associated with their office or duties except those of a social or protocol nature. The bill would prohibit a member from using or disclosing information that is not publicly available and that would further their own or another person's pecuniary interests.
Members of a council, school board, public utility or police village, in addition to the duties described above, would be required within 60 days of election or appointment to office to file a financial information statement. The statement would contain a description of certain assets, liabilities and sources of income and financial interests of the member, the member's spouse and minor children and any companies controlled by any of them.
Under the current Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, a member is required to orally disclose their pecuniary interests in matters before the council or board. This obligation would be continued, albeit amended, under the proposed legislation. It should be noted that a member's pecuniary interests include their direct interests, their indirect interests arising, for example, from employment or other association and their deemed or family interests, which are the interests of their spouse and minor children.
Once a member determines that they have a pecuniary interest in a matter and it does not fall within any of the exemptions provided in the act, a member would be required to orally disclose the interest at the meeting, indicating the general nature, and the clerk or local board secretary would record this disclosure in the minutes. This is a current requirement. They are to make no attempt to influence the decision at any time, including any attempt to influence employees of the municipality or local board. That is a current provision as well.
What is new is the proposal that they be required to leave the meeting prior to the discussion of the issue and not return until the matter has been dealt with and to complete and file with the clerk or secretary a written disclosure of pecuniary interest that follows up on their oral disclosure and outlines the general nature of the interest. These written disclosures would be maintained in a register that would be open to the public.
If a member is absent from a meeting when an item is discussed, they would, at the next meeting they attend, orally disclose the general nature of their interest and file this written disclosure statement.
Bill 163 would prohibit a member from, directly or indirectly, accepting any gift or benefit that is related to the performance of their duties. Exempted from this prohibition would be the acceptance of gifts or benefits of a social or protocol nature.
A member accepting such a gift or a benefit or a series of gifts from the same source would be required to disclose the receipt of the gift if it exceeds a prescribed dollar value. The prescribed limit would be established by regulation. The information to be disclosed would include the nature of the gift, its source and the circumstances under which it was given or accepted. A municipality would have additional authority to establish a dollar value set below the regulation.
The member's written disclosure would be filed with the clerk or secretary of the board and these disclosure statements would be maintained and open to the public.
Members of councils, school boards, public utility commissions and police villages, groups that are for the most part elected to office, would under Bill 163 be required to file a financial information statement. The statement would contain a description of certain assets, liabilities and sources of income. This statement would include the interests of the member, the member's spouse and minor children, as well as any companies controlled by them.
A regulation power is provided that would permit the details of matters to be described in the statement to be established by regulation. A draft financial disclosure form was circulated to all municipalities and local boards in June, and it's included in your information binders. Included in that form was the provision that no member would be required to disclose the value of the interest and that only those interests with a value exceeding $2,500 would be required to be disclosed.
The matters proposed for disclosure are described in the regulation and include property interests, business interests, liabilities related to the property and business interests, sources of income from employment and public service.
While a member would be required to disclose the interests of their spouse and minor children, they would do so as if they were their own. They would not have to identify an asset or liability as being that of a spouse or minor child, or even identify their spouse or minor child by name.
A member would also be able to apply to the commissioner proposed under this act to exempt an item from their statement if they felt there existed the possibility of harm to a person or business if disclosure was made.
The person would be required to file a statement within 60 days of election or appointment and update it annually in December of each year, except an election year. These disclosure statements, as with all other disclosure statements proposed under this act, would be maintained in a register that would be open to the public.
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It should be noted that an amendment is being considered that would require the register to be maintained for the member's term of office plus two years. This would be consistent with the limitation period for bringing in action under the legislation.
By virtue of their office, members of councils and boards are privy to information that is not otherwise available to the public. By using this information they may realize a pecuniary benefit. Bill 163 would require that a member not use or disclose information not available to the public that would further their own or another's pecuniary interest. Contraventions would be offences under the Provincial Offences Act and subject to a fine of up to $5,000.
The enforcement process proposed in open local government is quite different from the existing Municipal Conflict of Interest Act. Bill 163 would establish the position of local government disclosure of interest commissioner, and the commissioner would have the responsibility to investigate contraventions of the act and bring action to the courts where appropriate.
Any person would be permitted to apply in writing within a limitation period to the commissioner requesting an investigation. The person requesting the investigation would be required to provide sufficient reason, be required to pay an application fee, and that amount is yet to be established and would be done by the commissioner.
The commissioner would be required to complete the investigation within 180 days, and could apply to the court for a determination as to whether a contravention has taken place and advise the applicant whether or not the commissioner would be proceeding. If the commissioner advises that the commissioner
will not be proceeding, then the applicant would be able to bring action at his or her own expense.
Penalties for contraventions of the act would also be revised. A member that is found to have contravened would, under Bill 163, be suspended without pay or benefits for a period of not more than 90 days. If members are suspended, they are not able to participate in any meeting of the council or local board to which they are members or meetings of other councils or boards they sit on as a result of being members of the originating body.
In addition, the courts would be able to declare a seat vacant, they could disqualify a member for a number of years not exceeding seven, and in instances where the contravention resulted in personal financial gain, they could require restitution.
The current "saving" provisions of error in judgement and inadvertence will be removed from the legislation. In addition to the commissioner's role in enforcement, the commissioner would have responsibilities in the area of education and training and in applications for quorum reduction or relief.
Regulation-making powers would be available to the Lieutenant Governor and to the Minister of Municipal Affairs. Proposals for regulations, many of which already have been provided in draft form to AMO as part of the ministry's ongoing consultation, are included in your committee books.
The proposals would cover such matters as the financial information to be disclosed, dollar value for gifts to be disclosed, rules for application to the commissioner, duties of the commissioner, forms required under the act and other entities to be covered by the act.
I would be pleased to answer, as would all of my colleagues, any questions you may have.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We have 19 minutes per caucus. I'll start with the government members, Ms Haeck to begin.
Ms Haeck: I want to thank you all for coming before us and giving us a very full presentation. I would like at this point to ask Mr Johnston, with regard to his presentation on page 2, something that is very much important to my constituents. At the very top you refer to significant provincial interests, and definitely that is a big concern for my constituency, Niagara-on-the-Lake. Could you expand on that provision?
Mr Johnston: As I understand your question, you question the areas that could be of provincial interest?
Ms Haeck: Yes.
Mr Johnston: I'll give you an example. The experience before with the parkway belt was a combination of transportation, open space, power generation etc that were incorporated into one plan. There were recreational and cultural aspects as well. Each one of those was of provincial significance and all of them are combined into a specific plan. Under the Ontario Planning and Development Act, you could theoretically develop a plan that had fewer aspects of provincial interest or more aspects of provincial interest. There's no limitations in the legislation as to what the plan can address.
Ms Haeck: Let me pursue this just a minute longer. You have a community like Niagara-on-the-Lake. It has in some instances heritage that goes back beyond the War of 1812. It has the escarpment, it has the Niagara parkway, it has the tender fruit lands, it has a range of rather unique features, and I guess the question that my residents have been putting to me over the last four years is how to ensure that some of these rather unique characteristics are preserved over the long term in the face of, obviously, some development pressures that have occurred in fairly recent memory. How would one frame this?
Mr Johnston: In theory, in fact you could have a provincial development plan for an area that has all those features that you just related to me. The government of the day would have to give directions with regard to defining a planning area and undertaking research for the determination of the scale of those developments, the areas that would have to be within the plan and the policies and restrictions that would be part of that plan.
Ms Haeck: Rather than taking up more of my colleagues' time, I think you and I should have a chat after this has adjourned. Thank you very much.
Mr Wiseman: I have a number of questions. Could you define "frivolous and vexatious" for me?
Mr Grandmaître: Minor variance.
Mr Wiseman: That was part of the next one.
Ms Dewar: I guess I'd have to ask our legal staff if perhaps they can refer us to some case law that has dealt with "frivolous and vexatious." The existing legislation also has a provision in there for a request for referral to be refused if it is frivolous and vexatious, and that essentially means that there is no planning merit to the request for referral. That is continued in the bill.
Mr Wiseman: One of the complaints that I've read in one of the deputations that has been written in is that they believe that the phrase -- that comment you've just made will restrict the individual's community right to participate in the process if they happen to miss the date or miss the time period within which they can make presentations.
The other thing is that within the planning process in communities, only a certain area will be mailed the information about changes. I think that's a concern that a number of people are going to be raising, that in fact their public rights to participate in the process will be reduced.
Ms Dewar: Just to answer your first question about the 30-day time period between the public meeting and the adoption of the plan, that is intended to encourage early public participation. As Mr Martin explained, the new planning process is intended to encourage public involvement up front in the process, and that is essentially why that's in there. It's a discretionary power. The approval authority or the municipal board don't need to exercise that power if they feel there is some merit to the appeal or the request.
Mr Wiseman: These are going very well. Thank you.
I have another question. You were all excited about official plans and the degree to which you see these official plans as being the answer to a lot of questions. I don't share your enthusiasm for official plans because I don't happen to feel that they're worth the paper that they're written on. The reason for that is that Durham region has just had an official plan approved by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and already has three official plan amendments. These are not insignificant plan amendments.
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My understanding of an official plan was that it was kind of like a document that took into account the transportation and land use and social factors and a whole variety of community things. All of a sudden, within two months after an official plan has been approved by your ministry, by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, there's Durham region asking for significant change from residential to industrial-commercial.
How can they do that without having to go through and redo their whole official plan, because in my opinion of official plans, it's supposed to be some kind of a balanced ecosystem, sustainable development, biological document that, if you change one part of it, you put the whole thing out of balance, and now we've got three official plan amendments from Durham region. I don't share your enthusiasm for official plans.
Ms Dewar: Well, the official plan process does allow for amendments to it.
Mr Wiseman: Why?
Ms Dewar: You referred to a change in designation, and that is certainly an appropriate situation to amend an official plan. The official plan sets goals and policies for protection of features and explains what the municipality's intentions are for accommodating growth and development in the municipality.
Mr Wiseman: But if they've said that for this one reason, for reasons of balance and sustainability, it's going to be industrial-commercial, and then all of a sudden they turn around and say, "We want to change it now to residential," does that not change the whole organic nature of an official plan and does that not then say that maybe the whole official plan should be done over again just to make sure that the balance and the sustainability are maintained?
I have some real difficulty with official plans that can be so readily changed. I also have a little bit of difficulty removing through sort of big definitions like -- what was the other one? -- you know, the difference in the definition between "shall be consistent with" being changed from "shall have regard to" but not as strong as "shall conform with." Through the wording in the use of the English language, are we opening up loopholes here that Mack trucks can be driven through into what used to be residential communities on official plans?
Mr Martin: Just having had a career or a former career in municipal politics, I think that there's a very tricky balance, and I don't think there's any instant answer to it. But between local decision-making and ability of a local community to define its own future and articulate a vision, and provincial policy interest within that context -- I mean, you probably don't dislike official plans. You may just dislike the ease with which they're amended. The idea of planning a community is an important idea.
Mr Wiseman: If it's planned.
Mr Martin: What we have is a process that allows local governments who are democratically elected to amend their own vision of their own community, and if you don't like it, there is a process for objecting to it and trying to get at it. But short of the province substituting itself for municipalities, I'm not sure that there is a better way of doing it than this kind of balance.
Mr Wiseman: No, I think what residents are asking for is an assurance that what's in the official plan and what has been zoned is in fact what's going to be behind them when they take possession of their house or their property and that developers aren't going to come along year after year and ask for something that is not in the official plan or in the site plan or even in the local community plan.
Then to go to the Ontario Municipal Board, which, even if the council is totally opposed to it, to have it overthrown at the municipal board and all of a sudden there's this development that nobody in the community wanted, yet somebody at the municipal board has turned around and imposed it. That happens if the official plan is degraded in terms of the values that are being placed, if it's easily amended.
Mr Martin: It is absolutely true that if there's an official plan amendment, it should be consistent with the overall vision of an official plan. There's no doubt about it. I presume there will be as many opinions on whether that happens as there are individuals in a community often. But it's an irresistible fact that someone has to make a decision, and you then have a process that allows people to try to evaluate the decision in its wisdom. I mean, as many bad official plan amendments, I guess, as we can identify, we can probably also identify good ones.
I think it's very difficult because there is at the same time a tremendous amount of resistance to rigidity in the planning process and a tremendous amount of resistance to the province imposing a view of a community. There's a tremendous interest in local communities in articulating a vision of their own. So there's a balance that is not easy to strike but is, I think, attempted through this process.
The Chair: Mr Wiseman, just as a reminder, there are other members who want to ask questions.
Mr Wiseman: Yes, this is the last one, as I've already indicated. What does it say to the integrity of the process if within three or four months of an official plan being approved, there are now three major official plans?
Mr Martin: I don't know the facts, but I can tell you that if you look at the changes that are being proposed, they are, first of all, to have everybody in the system understand what the policy objectives of the province are in the system, make them up front and clear; involve the province earlier on than they're normally involved; allow the public to be and ensure the public is involved earlier on so that their concerns can be dealt with earlier on rather than left to the end and they end up at the board and maybe an unsatisfactory outcome.
The first thrust of this is to do as much locally and sort out as much of the issues locally as you can possibly sort out. I think that's a positive change. I think both the fact that more people will know the rules of the road and that they will have a chance to make their objections felt earlier is a positive change in addressing the concern you raise. But I wish I knew the facts of these three majors that have now rolled through that don't conform to the Durham plan as adopted three months ago. I presume somebody had a better idea.
Mr Wiseman: They're not fixed. They're going to the Ontario Municipal Board.
Mr Martin: Right. I presume someone thought they had a better idea and the planning department in Durham maybe agreed with them, and the council at Durham and whatever the local municipality was agreed with them, and the OMB now is going to be put to the test on whether they agree with their view that this is consistent with the Durham official plan. But short of that process, which may be imperfect in many ways, I'm not sure what there is to propose, except a very rigid, inflexible provincial involvement in the day-to-day life of municipalities, which is not doable, in my view, or desirable.
Ms Harrington: I do want to thank each one of you for the amount of information you have brought to us. It will take some while to get through it all. I did sit on city council in Niagara Falls and I believe that the planning issues and the planning process is one of the most important and interesting parts of that job as well as important in the terms that we are dealing with it. It was always interesting to see the different interaction between the planning principles and the neighbourhood voices which are usually raised quite loudly.
You talked about a fundamental change in the personality of the system. Now normally at council meetings the mayor will say, "All those in favour of this amendment and all those opposed to this amendment will please raise your hands," and from the very first word of the meeting, there is an adversarial system set up. Are you telling us that that whole planning meeting will look radically different?
Mr Martin: What happens is there will be more that goes on in front of that council decision. I think one of the things that we've realized in the course of all the consultation that's gone on is that all too often a council makes a decision without the complete information available, including what the province's position is, including what the precise neighbourhood objections are and whether there have been attempts to address them.
The intention is to have both a mediation moment or alternative dispute resolution as a part of the ongoing day-to-day life before the council decision, require people to indicate what their concerns are, lodge their objections before the council decision, and have the province and the provincial policy interests available to the participants in the system long before the council's decision, right at the beginning.
What we hope then is that a council will be making a decision not any differently -- they'll raise their hand yea or nay -- but will have quite a different staff report from a planner. Just to relate my own personal experience to it, I represented downtown Toronto in the middle of the development boom with very sophisticated active communities. It wasn't uncommon -- and I can name two or three examples -- to see fairly major developments that came off the shelf in a very unpopular way for a community, but if they were put through a community consultation process and a lot of what represented mediation, to have quite a different project at the end of the day that satisfied both the developer's financial imperatives and the community's interests such that when the decision got to council, it was a different project that was being adopted, some more different than others.
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Nevertheless, those examples of planning that involved active community participation early on, community objections registered early on and a mediation attempt done early on, led to a council decision that was quite different than it would have been if it was just left up to the normal process with an adversarial moment at council. So what we're aiming for is the former and not the convention that has emerged, which is people posturing for the OMB.
Ms Harrington: It might be helpful that the planning meeting procedure not be quite so explicitly adversarial in the wording that is set down.
My other quick question is, have the professional organization of planners across this province been consulted with regard to your training packages and are they on side with this?
Mr Martin: Yes. They are on the technical committee and they will be full participants. We've talked to them quite extensively about training and about using their publication as a vehicle for education and training, which they're agreeing to do. They, through the technical committee, will be involved in the day-to-day development of the education and training packages.
Ms Harrington: Are they excited about it?
Mr Martin: Yes, very.
Mr Grandmaître: As a follow-up to Mr Wiseman's question, will municipalities have an option in reviewing their official plan or will they have to review their official plan every five years?
Ms Dewar: Municipalities will be expected to review whether there's a need to do a new official plan every five years. That is still in the legislation.
Mr Grandmaître: So the legislation will not change?
Ms Dewar: The existing provision requiring them to review the need to update their official plan is in the bill as well. That hasn't been changed from the legislation; that still exists.
Mr Grandmaître: If I may ask Mr Martin to tell me more about his three pilot projects, as a mediator or facilitator I hear that you've been very successful. I would like you to describe the model mediation that will take place before an OMB hearing. How will this work?
Mr Martin: I'll tell you how we've done with the pilot and what we expect to do. With the pilot the four communities do two things. If there's a referral to the Ontario Municipal Board of a decision by either council or a committee of adjustment, the clerk sends the referral to the Ontario Municipal Board in the usual way.
They also send a copy to my office, and I have a mediator-coordinator in the office who reviews the file and decides whether or not the file has potential for mediation. There are some that are too complicated, too many parties, clearly no opportunity. It's something that a tribunal will have to decide on, and we simply indicate that we don't think it has potential.
But if we think there is potential, we refer that file to a mediator. We have five mediators that are available and they're paid on an hourly basis. They take the file, contact the parties, set up the meeting and conduct a mediation process. They file a report with us and a report with the local council either way, whether it's successful or not, and that's it. That concludes the process. It's voluntary.
We have an advisory committee that's attached to it that includes council members and members of the bar and others, and the general feeling was we should start with the least intrusive, most voluntary process we can try and see how that works out. There's no penalty for not participating. People are invited to participate in the mediation. That voluntary system has produced a very successful outcome.
The Ontario Municipal Board has a slightly different system. They have three mediators now and they simply assign individual cases, and at that point it's quite close to the hearing itself. In our case we guarantee 30 days from the day the objection is lodged to have a first mediation meeting. It's much earlier on in the process and it remains local, so it happens in your home town.
We think, though, that there is substantial opportunity, which is why we then asked Cambridge to do a mediation, to do mediation before the council decision, so if you detect local opposition, to actually start a mediation process before council makes a decision. That again has proven to be a very successful approach. What we're interested in doing, and we've talked to the planning professionals and lawyers, is actually training planners in mediation skills so that as a routine part of their contact with the public they're capable of providing mediation services.
We're even talking about, if you needed to have a totally independent mediator, someone who wasn't from that planning staff, creating a trade arrangement so a planner from an adjacent municipality would come in and act as an independent mediator.
The object of all of these exercises is really to avoid the expense of an independently funded mediation process, which could be very expensive if you tried to do it in all of the places there's an opportunity to do it. When we say "change the personality," we mean everybody in the system being very much more oriented to problem-solving and non-adversarial resolution rather than imagining they're going to be at the board as a witness, which is the way it works more often than not now.
Mr Grandmaître: Once Bill 163 is in place, what will be happening to your office or your five people? Will they be totally independent of the OMB?
Mr Martin: I suspect that's something the government's going to have to decide. The term of the office is running until March.
Mr Grandmaître: What would be your recommendation?
Mr Martin: I think that there's a place for this office. It's an interesting experiment in facilitation mediation. The work that my office more directly does is really within the government between ministry resolving conflicts. If you looked at our case load, it's not the mediation experiment or the pilot project. That's done independently; it's done through my office but independently of the day-to-day life of our office. We've resolved about 400 cases, and those cases are really the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Natural Resources not agreeing on a file -- how do you get one government position out of several different ministry positions?
Mr Grandmaître: Now that the Minister of Municipal Affairs will be the lead ministry, will your office be part of --
Mr Martin: Logically the office could perform that function for the Ministry of Municipal Affairs --
Mr Grandmaître: For the ministry.
Mr Martin: -- because the other ministries will remain review agents in many cases, will have a role in the planning process, and their concerns will still have to be worked out.
Mr Grandmaître: One last question on the technical statement. I'd like to talk about the Parkway Belt Planning and Development Act. This act will be repealed and existing amendments and regulations would be provided for in the revised OPDA. What about the existing amendments, and you have quite a number of amendments concerning the parkway belt act.
Mr Martin: That's correct, sir. To clarify, the existing Parkway Belt Planning and Development Act has largely been redundant for over a decade. Once the plan was in place, it became a piece of legislation without any teeth or use, so we're just cleaning that up.
As far as the amendments to the parkway belt west plan are concerned, they are coming through the process right now. They will continue, but they'll be able to be moved ahead much faster using the streamline process. For example, if there is no objection to a minor amendment, that could go through the process without the cost and time of a hearing. So those amendments will continue, but we hope that they'll advance much quicker and be resolved much faster.
Mr Grandmaître: So the parkway belt act will not be repealed once this bill comes into effect, Bill 163.
Mr Martin: The Parkway Belt Planning and Development Act will be repealed at the time Bill 163 comes in, but the processes are under the existing Ontario Planning and Development Act. Those processes which affect the amendments will continue under the new Ontario Planning and Development Act.
Mr Grandmaître: Under the new.
Mr Martin: That's right, sir.
Mr Grandmaître: God, oh God, that's another 10 years, or maybe 15 years. Ron?
Mr Eddy: Just some short questions regarding Ms Dewar's presentation on the top of page 2. I hope that means a matter could be appealed by the proponent to the OMB, which would be required to proceed within the time frame.
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I'm going to give you a list of these, if you'd respond to them, to save time.
Number 4, that means, I hope, either the approval authority or the OMB.
Next page, page 5, the second paragraph: The Municipal Act prevents a council from delegating its authority, and this says it would. I'm wondering how that will be resolved.
On pages 6 and 7, I'm wondering about the wording here and the relationship with York and Peel regions, which do not have official plans -- that's not mentioned -- and also about Metro, whether the approving authority is going to be the constituent, if they're called that, municipalities.
Going over to Mr Jones's paper, just two quick items. On the second-last page, concerning the funding of the position of local government disclosure of interest commissioner, it looks to me like you're preparing to allocate the costs to the municipalities.
On the next page, unless a council passes a resolution, a member who's not present for three successive meetings is no longer a member, absents himself. I'd like you to comment on those items just briefly, if you could.
Ms Dewar: I may have to ask you to repeat a couple. On the top of page 2, "Where the approval authority has not made a decision within the specified time frames, the matter could be appealed by the proponent to the Ontario Municipal Board," yes, that would be within a specified time frame.
Mr Eddy: The OMB would be required to proceed.
Ms Dewar: There are no specified time frames for the Ontario Municipal Board.
Mr Eddy: Isn't that unfortunate? Thank you, I agree.
Ms Dewar: I'm sorry, the next one?
Mr Eddy: Dismissal powers. I'm taking it as either the approval or.
Ms Dewar: Either the approval authority or the municipal board could dismiss for all the items listed on the bottom of page 3, but the Ontario Municipal Board could also dismiss if the fee has not been paid or if they have requested further information and they haven't received that information. So there are those two extra.
Mr Eddy: Okay, that was stated.
Next, delegating authority by council to a committee.
Ms Dewar: Council could delegate the authority for minor variances to a committee of council or a committee of adjustment or to staff.
Mr Eddy: The Municipal Act prevents the delegation of authority by a council. You've got a conflict there, I think. Better look at it. You know what I'm talking about. The Municipal Act specifically says a council cannot delegate its authority, so I don't know.
Ms Dewar: We'll get back on that.
Mr Eddy: Yes, okay, that's fine.
Ms Dewar: The municipal empowerment, I believe, was the next one.
Mr Eddy: Yes, it looks like you're going to assign power to regional governments, including York and Peel, even though they don't have official plans.
Ms Dewar: York and Peel are not going to be delegated that power until they have an approved official plan.
Mr Eddy: Oh, it doesn't say that. Then I'm wondering about the situation with Metro.
Ms Dewar: The situation with Metro is that essentially there has been no change through Bill 163 to any of its powers. They will remain as they are now.
Mr Eddy: So that's the local municipalities.
Ms Dewar: Yes.
The Chair: Mr McLean.
Mr Eddy: Mr Jones was going to answer a question.
Mr Jones: You had two.
Mr Eddy: Yes, short ones; they were very short.
Mr Jones: You had two for me. In terms of the commission, it was originally proposed that the commission would be paid for by local government.
Mr Eddy: By the local government or by the province?
Mr Jones: By the local government.
Mr Eddy: Oh, did they?
Mr Jones: Originally it was proposed, okay?
Mr Eddy: They proposed that?
Mr Jones: No, the government proposed.
Mr Eddy: Oh, I see. Okay.
Mr Jones: In the submissions that were received to that proposal, local governments expressed the opinion that they did not support this funding approach and they asked the government to reconsider the method for funding, and we are in the process of reconsidering that.
In answer to your other question about members of council losing their seat if they miss meetings for three consecutive months, not three meetings --
Mr Eddy: Three consecutive months. So that's your 90 days?
Mr Jones: That's right. The legislation covers it off.
Mr Eddy: Yes. It's three months, isn't it?
Mr Jones: That's right.
Mr McLean: Who's going to appoint the commissioner? You say that the commissioner's going to be paid for by the municipalities. Who's going to appoint the commissioner?
Mr Jones: The commissioner will be appointed by the Minister of Municipal Affairs, and I did not say that it would be paid. It was originally proposed. Municipalities have asked us to reconsider that and we are reconsidering it.
Mr McLean: So you're telling us today then that it's reconsidered and the ministry then is going to pay for it?
Mr Jones: I would prefer the minister to make the statement on government policy as opposed to me.
Mr McLean: Maybe the parliamentary assistant could indicate whether they're going to pay for it or not.
Mr Hayes: We're looking very favourably upon not having the municipalities pay for the commissioner.
Mr McLean: Thanks. I have a question with regard to a statement you made in your opening statement:
"A regulation power is provided that would permit the details of matters to be described in the statement to be established by regulation. A draft financial information disclosure form was circulated to all municipalities and local boards during June. Included in that form was the provision that no member would be required to disclose the value of the interest and that only those interests with a value exceeding $2,500 are required to be disclosed."
Mr Jones: Right.
Mr McLean: Would a car, a boat be part of the --
Mr Jones: No, if you notice from the form that you have in your package it's a very limited, specific list of financial information that has to be disclosed. So this notion about jewellery, cars and collections that you have, none of that's required. It's with respect to --
Mr McLean: Money in the bank?
Mr Jones: -- property interests, where you get your money from employment and things of that nature. It's a very specific list. No cars.
Mr McLean: So you don't have to put down what you own then, a car or a boat, as an asset?
Mr Jones: That's correct.
Mr McLean: Thank you. There was a question asked with regard to consulting with other ministries. I thought the comprehensive set of policy statements that has been laid out was that this ministry was going to be making the decisions and that the local government was going to be making a lot of them. Why have we now got consulting other ministries? I thought that was to be done away with.
Mr Martin: That's not the intent at all. The policies represent a range of government policy interests that include the interests of a variety of different ministries. They were generated by different ministries. The other ministries have within them the expertise to make the review and approval decisions. By and large, that will remain as is, except in circumstances where the review function has been transferred somewhere else through agreement. I mentioned the Grand River Conservation Authority, for example, doing water-related.
That is the desire and intention, to really take the review function out of the provincial government and locate it in a more consolidated way and more locally. But that certainly won't be available for some time. Tomorrow morning or whenever the legislation is actually in place the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of Environment will do what they do today. They'll have planning people reviewing their aspect of an application.
One thing we've done to try to consolidate that is take the routine applications, so instead of circulating, as we do now, 90% of applications to the Ministry of Environment, only circulate the 10% that require the specialized knowledge of a Ministry of Environment person. The experiments we've done with that, the pilots in Metro have been very successful, so you'll see Municipal Affairs providing that service for most ministries, but there will remain that function in ministries where their expertise is needed.
Mr McLean: Thank you. My next question is to Mrs Dewar. "Planning boards would now have the power to zone lands in unorganized areas" -- or territories I presume?
Ms Dewar: Yes.
Mr McLean: How many unorganized territories are there in the north and how many planning boards are there that do not have the power now to make those zones?
Ms Dewar: There's no provision now in the current act to allow planning boards to zone. The land use controls on unorganized areas have been through a minister's zoning order that the minister has put on. What this does now is it gives planning boards the authority to zone and it also allows the minister to deem any of those zoning orders to be zoning bylaws for the purposes of those areas.
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Mr McLean: How many areas in northern Ontario that are unorganized do not have any planning?
Ms Dewar: I believe there are approximately 20 planning boards and most of them do have some planning controls. I can get back to you with the number.
Mr McLean: I guess the question that I'm getting at is, are you now going to have the jurisdiction and the power to put zoning bylaws on all of those unorganized territories whereby they will be zoned for planning purposes?
Ms Dewar: Yes. The intention is to allow for the zoning controls to be administered by the planning board, so that they're administered locally.
Mr McLean: The comprehensive set of policy statements with regard to putting forward "clear provincial policies regarding the environment," are those policies going to be clear enough now that an aggregate person who wants to establish a quarry will be able to do so as I read in the policy statement that you have?
It says, "Clear and reasonable policies shall be provided to permit the establishment or expansion of pits and quarries." Is that going to be done simply now or is it going to continue to be a long-drawn-out process? Is that going to be within the mandate of the 180 days?
Ms Dewar: I believe so.
Mr McKinstry: Maybe I could take a stab at answering that question. There will continue to be provincial legislation governing the establishment of pits and quarries and the policy statements don't attempt to change that. However, what these do is they attempt to put a land use planning framework on to what kinds of land uses could occur on aggregate deposits, for example. But in fact we have simply taken the existing mineral aggregate policy statement and put it into this package of provincial policy statements.
Mr McLean: So you're telling the aggregate producers now it's going to be easier now to locate and have it rezoned?
Mr McKinstry: I don't think we're saying that. I think we're saying there is a provincial planning framework and that existing mineral aggregate policy statement stays in effect.
Mr McLean: What does your policy statement say with regard to waste management, the feasibility of locating new waste management sites?
Mr McKinstry: If my recollection serves me right, I don't think the policy statements deal particularly with locating waste management sites. They do deal with hazardous sites. They talk about where development should or should not take place on lands that are contaminated, which may have been contaminated by waste management.
Mr McLean: The other question I have is on agricultural land use policies and it has to do with "one lot for a farm operation for a full-time farmer of retirement age." Who is determining what that farmer's retirement age is?
Mr Grandmaître: His bank manager.
Mr McKinstry: If I could continue with the answer to that, I guess one of the things we were doing in these policy statements was providing broad general policy direction. We weren't attempting to be specific. We'll be looking to municipalities, using the guidelines that we're going to be developing to help them, to think through what a reasonable retirement age would be.
Mr McLean: Are you trying to have one policy statement and one severance policy for all of Ontario?
Mr McKinstry: What we're doing here is basically saying there are some minimums. Municipalities can be stronger. For example, some municipalities may want to have no retirement severances, and we're saying that they could do that. The policy wouldn't prohibit them from doing that.
Mr McLean: Are you telling me then that the northern municipalities, if they wanted to have a policy for northern Ontario, could have three or four severances, which they would like to have?
Mr McKinstry: If it's on prime agricultural land, the policy would say that they could only have one retirement severance according to these policies. That's why I'm saying it's a minimum. But this is only obviously in classes 1, 2 and 3 agricultural areas.
Mr McLean: I'd like to return to minor variances and it says, "Council could delegate the authority to a committee of council, committee of adjustment or staff." But it says, "Municipalities would have the option of establishing a two-step process, with council reviewing the decision of the committee of adjustment if requested to, as long as there is no council member on the committee."
Wouldn't the municipalities be wise, then, to not have any council members on the committee, and then they could then review all of the severances that are made if they're minor variances?
Ms Dewar: If the municipality wanted to adopt this two-step process, it would be with the requirement that there's no council member on the committee. So, yes, that would be a situation where the municipality could use the two-step process.
Mr McLean: Would they have to have the minister's approval to do that?
Ms Dewar: No.
Mr McLean: They could do that on their own?
Ms Dewar: Yes, I believe so.
Mr McLean: Okay. The other one is to do with the -- have I not asked enough questions yet? I've got lots of time, haven't I?
The Chair: Yes, you do.
Mr McLean: Great.
Interjection.
Mr McLean: You've got a short one? Go ahead.
Mr Jackson: I wanted to get into the question on the conflict commission review area. Members of cabinet have an extended caveat that they can't do business one year or two years -- I forget which -- after they leave public life. The two-year window that you're referring to for the registry is confined simply to the registry? It's not confined to their activities?
The reason I ask whether you have looked at that is I had a case in my own school board jurisdiction, where a trustee left public office and then immediately was hired as a consultant doing extensive engineering work for the school board. If we're saying that we really don't differentiate in terms of standards regardless of the level of your public office, that it's a standard we're seeking, why have we not transferred that similar standard to that level as well?
I might even extend the question to, does it include the municipal sector -- when I say "municipal," I mean municipal office -- as well as the school board? I just know of an absolute case that I thought was rather shocking and inappropriate, frankly.
Mr Jones: During the conflict-of-interest consultation deliberations when they travelled the province, there was some discussion of this. In the final analysis, a determination was made that we did not want to restrict local persons' ability to be able to be gainfully employed after they leave public office, given the part-time nature of many of their works. We did not move to legislate and restrict post-employment activity in any of the local government sectors, whether it's school board or municipal.
Mr Jackson: That's unfortunate, because I've seen it become very lucrative for people to actually make more money by leaving public office. A limited public service becomes an entrée to cornering the market. I know of several examples in my own community of Burlington where that occurred. It's the standard we have to follow but it may not necessarily be the standard for everybody else.
My other quick question: Did you cost-estimate the creation of the commissioner's office, the local disclosure commissioner -- you'd have a provincial commissioner, obviously, and then you'd have the various panels. Was there any discussion in terms of the numbers of commissioners that would be required and/or what that cost-estimates? It's still an open-ended question as to who is going to pay for it. Surely your review activities would have determined what that cost might be.
Mr Jones: Yes, and over the years we've discussed with the municipal sector and the local government sector in general the possibility that it could cost as much as $2 million for the operation of the commissioner's office.
Mr Jackson: Does that include the local disclosure commissioners in each corner of this province?
Mr Jones: Really the commissioner that's provided for in the act, we're talking about his office and the whole of his duties.
Mr McLean: The other question I have is with regard to, "Goal E, conservation, promotes the efficiency of energy and water use through land use planning." Are we wasting water now and how are you going to preserve that through land use planning?
Mr McKinstry: This was in policy E?
Mr McLean: Yes.
Mr McKinstry: What we're thinking here is, these are matters which can be helped by land use planning and we want the municipalities to be thinking, in doing their land use planning, how they could be helped. You'll notice that those policies do not have a mandatory edge to them, that they are suggestions to municipalities that these are good planning things they should think about.
Mr McLean: In the cabinet's approval of a set of policy statements, they're saying: "Legally existing pits and quarries shall be identified and protected from incompatible land uses." If these operations are permitted actively, with no use or other activities permitted that would be incompatible with mineral aggregate operations, how are you going to see that they are protected from incompatible land use?
Mr McKinstry: This is the same policy statement that was in effect before. This is the existing policy statement that's been in effect for a number of years, and I guess cabinet's intent was not to change that, simply to bring it into the new statement.
Mr McLean: Well then, why don't you put something in here that would protect the farmer that's farming and have it so that's he protected, that he can continue his operation without being interfered with by zoning and housing?
Mr McKinstry: I guess we thought we made it clear. For example, in wetlands we made it clear that existing farm operations could continue. There was some concern from the farm community about the wetlands and we had made that clear. Now, we're not sure what else --
Mr McLean: But what are you doing to protect that farmer who lives next to Nobleton and Nobleton wants to expand, and according to the rules they can, what's protecting that farmer to let him stay in business? Anything?
Mr McKinstry: I guess the thing that would protect him is, if it's his land, he could not sell his land.
Mr McLean: There's nothing in here to stop the sites that are being proposed now in my friend's riding to put a dump in?
Mr McKinstry: From putting --
Mr McLean: A disposal site, garbage.
Mr McKinstry: The policies are not dealing with that, no.
Mr McLean: No. This is under the IWA?
Mr McKinstry: That's right, yes.
The Chair: Thanks very much. There are no further questions? I'd like to thank all of you for taking the time to come and to provide presentation and assistance to this committee. Thank you very much.
We're going to recess for approximately half an hour. I'm not sure whether the people will be here exactly at 4 or earlier, but we should be safe to say we'll recess until 4 o'clock.
The committee recessed from 1523 to 1603.
CITY OF ETOBICOKE
The Chair: I'd like to call the meeting to order and would ask Ms Brenda Burns to come forward and also Ms Laurie McPherson, director of policy and research division. Welcome to you both. You have half an hour for your presentation. If you want the members to ask you questions, leave plenty of time.
Ms Brenda Burns: Thank you, Mr Chair. My name is Brenda Burns and I'm a solicitor with the city of Etobicoke. With me today is Ms Laurie McPherson, who is the director of policy and research division of the city of Etobicoke's planning department.
The city of Etobicoke has reviewed the provisions of Bill 163 and has a number of comments. They are six in number and we'll just review them briefly. We've submitted to you the city of Etobicoke's report to council as well as a brief on our presentation today, which will go into more detail on what we're about to say.
Firstly, the city of Etobicoke supports the retention of the Minister of Municipal Affairs as the approval authority for the local official plans in Metropolitan Toronto. However, in the event of delegation, approval powers for local official plan amendments should be granted to the local area municipalities once the overall municipal official plan has been approved by the minister.
Once the municipal official plan has been approved by the Minister of Municipal Affairs, and in order to further expedite the approval process, municipalities themselves should possess approval powers with respect to amendments to the official plans.
Any amendments to the municipal official plans are required to demonstrate conformity with provincial policy statements and the Metropolitan Toronto official plan. So the necessary controls on local planning would be in place but the amendment process would be significantly shortened.
Secondly, the city of Etobicoke is not convinced that the proposed section 17 provisions affecting the processing of development applications will streamline the processing of those applications.
In particular, subsection 17(16) of Bill 163 states that 30 days must follow a public meeting before council can make a decision on an official plan or an amendment, unless there is more than one public meeting, when adoption can then take place 30 days after the first public meeting.
This is a change from the current provisions of the Planning Act, which allow council to adopt an official plan or amendment following the holding of a public meeting and provided that an opportunity was afforded to the public to submit comments. It's not clear why there should be one month following a public meeting before council can make its decision, particularly on minor amendments. The city would prefer therefore that the Planning Act provisions not be amended in this regard.
Subsections 17(17) and (18) state that after the notice of adoption Bill 163 requires the complete record, not just the notice of adoption, be sent to the approval authority.
The clerk's department at the city of Etobicoke has advised us that in certain situations, particularly those involving complex applications and amendments where there has been extensive public consultation, that there may be difficulty in meeting the 15-day time restriction prescribed under these sections.
Subsections 17(7) and (8) state that regional, metropolitan and district municipalities would be required to prepare official plans, while for local area municipalities official plans are discretionary.
This requirement establishes a hierarchical approach and does not take into account that most land use decisions are made at the local level. Most of the land use tools, such as zoning bylaws and site plan approval, are at the local level. So local official plans should also be mandatory unless delegated to a higher authority.
Subsection 17(34) allows the approval authority 150 days to give a notice of decision on an official plan. The time frame for this decision does not start until the complete application is received.
Subsection 17(24) allows a 30-day referral period following the 150-day approval review period, with the last day of referral to be shown on the notice of decision. If the approval authority fails to give a notice of decision within the 150 days, then the amendment may be referred to the Ontario Municipal Board.
Etobicoke does support setting time restrictions on the approval authority in the processing of official plans or amendments. However, in the event that circulation is not completed within the 150-day time frame, the minister should first be required to provide interested parties with a status report update in order to determine whether or not referral to the Ontario Municipal Board would be necessary. In the event that a status report is not provided, the amendment may then be referred to the board. Automatic referral upon request following the expiry of the 150-day time period places an unnecessary burden on the OMB to deal with what might be purely an administrative function in gathering information.
Subsection 22(1) of the bill requires municipalities to hold a public meeting within 180 days of all applications for amendments. These provisions do not make it clear whether a public meeting is required regardless of whether council is approving or refusing an application for amendment. Changes should also be considered to section 17 of the Planning Act, which deals with applications supported by council. In addition, there's no obligation on the part of the applicant to provide all necessary documentation, such as essential studies and fees, to assist staff in evaluating the proposal within the specified time frame. This should be a requirement so that the 180 days should commence from the time a completed application is received, including all fees and all necessary information.
The city does support subsection 17(12), which states that council must inform the public of the power of the approval authority to refuse to refer a proposed decision as well as the powers of the OMB to dismiss an appeal if there are no oral submissions at the public meeting or no written submissions prior to the adoption of the plan or amendment.
The city does support this initiative. This provision eliminates the opportunity of last-minute referrals to the OMB, particularly in instances where the objector has not participated in the process and not identified or recorded any specific concerns.
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Subsection 22(3) again provides that if council fails or refuses to adopt an amendment within a 180-day time period, only then can an applicant request council to forward its application to the approval authority. The recommended time frame of 180 days is more realistic than the current 30 days. Such a measure eliminates the potential for an applicant to submit an application while simultaneously requesting referral to the OMB without first undergoing council's consideration and due process so that a hearing date can be established.
Etobicoke's third main concern is that the wording of subsection 3(5) should not be changed from what it is presently, "shall have regard for," to "shall be consistent with." The present wording provides for interpretation of policy statements to reflect local circumstances.
The city maintains that the phrase "consistent with" is undefined and does not allow opportunity for interpretation based on local circumstances. The new wording forces strict conformity with policy statements. This is a problem, particularly as the legislation does not provide for resolutions to potential conflicts between policy statements. The wording "shall have regard for" allows municipalities to take into account the policy statements when making their planning decision, but also provides them with sufficient flexibility to interpret these conditions.
The fourth concern of the city of Etobicoke is with respect to section 2 of the Planning Act, which should not be further expanded to include the new clauses "(o) the protection of public health and safety; (p) the appropriate location of growth and development; (q) any other matters prescribed."
These additional clauses are so broad in scope that their effect might be to provide the minister with an unfettered discretion to intervene in local planning matters such as the urban design/built form site plan issues that Etobicoke has recently faced during the motel strip hearings. Section 45 of the Planning Act also should not be amended to delete the right of appeal on minor variances to the Ontario Municipal Board.
The legislation proposes that council will have the final decision on minor variances instead of permitting the right of an appeal to the OMB. This legislative change was undertaken in order to reduce the OMB's workload, and this change has not been supported by the city of Etobicoke. Etobicoke's committee of adjustment staff have advised that they support the position of the Ontario Association of Committees of Adjustment and Consent Authorities, which maintains that minor variance appeals take up only 6% of the OMB's time, and that removing the right of appeal to the board for minor variances would not meet the aims of the Sewell commission to restore integrity in the planning process and make the process more timely and efficient.
Etobicoke also has specific concerns about the sections of the bill dealing with conflict of interest. These concerns are more particularized in the briefs handed out to you, but in particular we are of the opinion that the powers of the commissioner are extensive and unwarranted. The legislation contains no necessity for any individual making allegations of contraventions of the act to bring forward any proof of the charges. Neither is there any deterrent if the charges are unfounded or if the proceedings are commenced for frivolous or vexatious purposes.
Also, given the commissioner's extensive rights to information and access to records and the commissioner's responsibility for receiving, investigating and commencing prosecution proceedings based on evidence garnered, there is the appearance that an allegation would only come to the court by the commissioner if there had been a virtual finding of guilt by the commissioner. This approach, we believe, would seriously undermine the principle of the presumption of innocence.
Those are our comments, and as I said, they are more detailed in the briefs we've presented to you.
Mr Eddy: Thank you for your presentation. I'm most interested in it. It's certainly designed to facilitate the planning process, the recommendations you make, and to reduce the costs, in my opinion. We're told that the change of wording from "shall have regard for" to "shall be consistent with" of course is much preferable to the wording "shall conform to," which was considered, so it's middle ground. You may or may not agree with that.
The point you make about the last-minute referrals to the OMB, would you be willing to have any qualification to that? We're told that, for some reason or other, an objector or person who might object may never hear of a particular application, or it may be a new owner who will be seriously affected, and therefore they should be involved and have the right to participate even at the last minute.
Do you have a viewpoint on that? Should we have any qualification on that particular recommendation that you're making? What do you feel about that? Because I think that is a concern that's been registered with many of us by people who are concerned about some of the changes.
Ms Laurie McPherson: Perhaps I'll answer that question, Mr Chairman. My understanding is that the OMB would have the authority to not accept the referral if they so wished. They would have the discretion to consider special circumstances such as that. I don't think the act prohibits that.
Mr Eddy: And you would agree with that?
Ms McPherson: Generally, yes.
Mr Eddy: Okay. The other question I have is about the delegation of approval authority. It appears to me from your brief that the city of Etobicoke would like to be treated more like the separated municipalities that we have in Ontario, like the city of London for instance, and many other cities that are not in a two-tier system of government. It seems to me that that would expedite the whole planning process. How does Metro feel about that, or has there been any discussion by the -- we may be getting a presentation from them.
Ms McPherson: I believe you'll be getting a presentation from Metro because their council position is that they would like to have the approval authority. I think the local municipalities in Metro are unanimous that the local municipalities would like to have the authority for the amendments if the minister is going to delegate. If the minister is not going to delegate, then the city of Etobicoke would like the minister to retain that authority.
Mr Eddy: Yes, I tend to agree that the local municipalities should have that right, and then Metro should be given some approving too, instead of having the province, because what you really have is a three-tier system of planning, and that's too costly, too long and unfortunate.
Mr Grandmaître: You say that under subsections 17(7) and (8) of Bill 163 regional, metropolitan and district municipalities would be required to prepare official plans for local area municipalities and official plans are discretionary. You're saying that Metro and other regional governments should all have official plans.
Ms McPherson: Yes. We're not disputing the fact that they're mandatory at the regional level. We're just saying that we think they should also be mandatory at the local level, unless the local level wishes to delegate that up to the regional level.
Mr Grandmaître: Delegate. Very good. Thank you.
Mr McLean: You indicate that there's only 6% of the municipal board's time that is spent with minor variances. I thought we had some indications from the minister there's a lot more time than that spent from their perspective on dealing with minor variance appeals.
Ms McPherson: That number came from a publication of the Ontario Association of Committees of Adjustment and Consent Authorities, and that's what our committee of adjustment provided us with for that. We didn't do the research to come to that number ourselves. That was the association's feeling of what the number was.
Mr McLean: I read this bill fairly good and I haven't seen anything in here that indicates to me with regard to planning development. There used to be a 5% for parks or money in lieu. Is it in this bill that you know of?
Ms McPherson: I believe the parkland requirements have not changed between bills.
Mr McLean: So the 5% or whatever deemed appropriate by the municipality would still be there. What's your feeling with regard to the 30 days? There's been a lot of discussion with regard to the time limits that have been put in this bill. Do you think they can be met? Do you think they're along the lines that municipalities could meet the time limits?
Ms McPherson: Which 30 days? I'm sorry.
Mr McLean: The 30 days for appeal. If you don't appeal in 30 days, it's finalized.
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Ms McPherson: In fact our position would really be that if the minister doesn't make any modifications in that report, there would be no 30-day period. If people wanted to refer, they would refer within the 150-day time limit that the ministry has to report, and only if the minister makes modifications to the plan would there be an additional 30-day appeal period. But in fact our feeling is the 30-day appeal period makes the process even longer. It doesn't help shorten it.
Mr McLean: The bill allows the approval authority 150 days to give a notice of a decision on an official plan and the time frame for this decision does not start until the completed application is received. So the application has got to be all complete, then there's 150 days.
Ms McPherson: That's correct.
Mr McLean: That, in your estimation, would be plenty of time?
Ms McPherson: Generally speaking, yes. Our concern is with complex documents, for example, a parent official plan or a secondary plan or a very complex private amendment where there has been years of applications, public meetings. The ministry staff have to circulate that to all the different other ministries. They have to get all the comments. They have to incorporate them, discuss issues with the municipality.
So generally speaking, yes, but our feeling would be that for complex applications there should be some provision in the act where after 150 days the minister must present a status report if they're not prepared to present a decision. That status report would say, and perhaps it could be built into the act, that they could get an additional 30 days or 60 days or whatever an appropriate time would be, if it's a complex document, to say in the 150 days they would have to present the report: "We haven't completed it. We still have outstanding comments from the Ministry of Environment that we're trying to resolve. It'll likely take 30 more days." Then they would be allowed that 30 extra days before the automatic appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board would kick in.
On simple applications and simple amendments I don't think that 150 days would be a problem, but on the complex applications you might end up in a situation where an applicant or a city then refers it to the Ontario Municipal Board and waits a year for a hearing, and it's a very expensive and timely hearing, when the only problem at the ministry was that it was trying to resolve one concern from one ministry, and if they had 30 additional days, the issue could be cleared up.
Mr McLean: You expressed very strong views with regard to the minor variances. You don't think that they should be gone by without being able to appeal them to the OMB. Do you feel that other municipalities in the Metro Toronto area are of the same opinion?
Ms McPherson: I believe yes. I can't say that with any certainty. I know the city of Toronto, I don't know if they're going to be making a presentation, but they had done a brief survey of other municipalities and their indication was that a number of the municipalities had the same concern.
Ms Harrington: Thank you for your presentation. It was very well presented. I had a question regarding your concern number 4. You picked out a couple of the subsections of section 2 and described them as being so broad. It seems to me in looking at the list in section 2 that very many of them are broad; for instance, the minimization of waste and the adequate provision of employment opportunities. It seems to me that they're all guidelines. I'm wondering why you would pick those two particular ones, the protection of public health and safety and the appropriate location of growth and development, as ones you would object to.
Ms McPherson: Perhaps I'll answer that question again. The old Planning Act had 10 items of provincial interest, and the Sewell commission I believe expanded that to 14. Those were ones that the city supported. The additional three that have now been put in are very broad; for example, the appropriate location of development. That's what a local municipality normally does, determine the appropriate location of development, and clause (q) is "any other matters prescribed." In addition to section 70, which says that they can add any at any time, basically what it does is it allows the minister to declare a provincial interest in any matter whatsoever, anywhere, any time.
Etobicoke had, unfortunately, a very bad experience recently with that very situation where a motel strip area in Etobicoke went to a lengthy Ontario Municipal Board hearing and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs was quite involved and their objections related to built form/urban design guidelines. At the end of the day, I think it was agreed by most parties involved that the minister really shouldn't be getting into that kind of detail about how a building looks and how big it is and whether it's stepped or not. That was under the old act. If this act gives even more powers to step in and have that type of intervention, then we have a concern.
Ms Harrington: Yes, it seems that these are guidelines which the province would wish development to respond to, and you say 10 of these 14 were already in effect.
Ms McPherson: Yes, I think the Sewell commission added about four more that had come out for public comment in the past, and now this act has three additional ones. Our concern is that based on any of these, the province can then declare a matter of provincial interest, then once they get into that, the ultimate approval is back in the hands of cabinet and away from the Ontario Municipal Board.
Ms Harrington: I believe instead of declaring a provincial interest that this act in fact changes that, that they could get an interim control order only, but maybe our staff could respond to that. Thank you. There may be other people who have questions.
Mr Wiseman: I come from outside of Metro and part of this brief, and you don't need to comment on this, is that I seem to be getting sucked into what I would consider to be a minor skirmish in the turf war between Metro council and the local governments. You don't have to comment on that.
Mr Grandmaître: How do you know? She might have a comment.
Mr Wiseman: I would think that would be an opinion and that maybe some staff people might not want to delve into that area. I just have that sense of some of this.
I would like, because I think it's important -- one of the things that the residents are telling me is that they feel somewhat powerless in the face of governments at any level and that they need to make sure their rights are protected. The comment "frivolous and vexatious" is a phrase that I have not heard defined in a way that puts any kind of substance or some kind of rounding to the edges that I could be comfortable with. Could you offer us a definition of "frivolous and vexatious"?
Mr Grandmaître: Same answer as this morning.
Mr Wiseman: I hope not.
Ms Burns: I think that "frivolous and vexatious" is sort of a legal term which is used often, and all it means is that if it's something that's commenced without foundation, has further purposes or further intents, and there's no penalty for that. There might be any number of reasons, someone might bring a charge, I wouldn't even want to guess, but the fact that those reasons, if they are so extreme, go unpunished is something that we think should be addressed.
Mr Wiseman: We have phrases like "minor amendments," "frivolous and vexatious," and I think about the residents in my community who believe that what they're appealing to the OMB for is extremely important to them but that the council in fact thinks that they don't have a case. They're not supported by the council in any way and they would deem them to be frivolous and vexatious.
As a sitting member, I want to be very careful in any kind of changes that I make in legislation that I don't reduce the ability of residents to access the political decision-making. I don't want to reduce that in any way. I want people to be able to feel that there's a forum for them to be heard. So when words like "minor amendments" and "frivolous and vexatious" come up, I see those as doors slamming in the face of people who feel that they've been wronged.
The Chair: We ran out of time. I thank both of you for the submission you made today. Thanks very much.
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COUNTY PLANNING DIRECTORS OF ONTARIO
The Chair: I would call Mr Gary Cousins, County Planning Directors of Ontario. Welcome, Mr Cousins. You've seen how the proceedings go. Please begin any time you're ready.
Mr Gary Cousins: Good afternoon, Mr Chair and committee members. My name's Gary Cousins. I'm the director of planning for Wellington county and I'm here representing the County Planning Directors of Ontario.
This is the first opportunity our association has had to make a presentation in front of one of the provincial legislative committees, and I hope we can offer some constructive comments on Bill 163. We have a great number of concerns about the legislation, but we've decided that we can best serve our purposes by zeroing in on those things that most directly affect counties in Ontario.
Over a million and a half people live in the 26 counties in Ontario. Sixteen counties have established planning departments and many of them have operated for over 20 years. These planning departments provide a variety of land use planning and community development services and have extensive public contact on a daily basis. The County Planning Directors of Ontario manage these departments and the views we are expressing are our own.
We believe that the existing planning system has broken down because the degree of provincial involvement required to permit, license or approve virtually all aspects of municipal authority exceeds the staff resources available to support such a high level of involvement. Simply put, provincial resources cannot support the approval system that's in place today.
We believe that the solution should be to encourage responsible planning and decision-making at the municipal level, where the public have the greatest opportunity to participate.
We are strong advocates of community-based planning and are concerned that Bill 163 and the overall reform package diminishes the ability of people to make important decisions about their own communities. As examples we would suggest that the provincial policy statements go too far in setting local policy, that changing the current requirements "to have regard for" provincial policy to "be consistent with" prevents communities from tailoring provincial policies to suit local conditions or to recognize the diversity that exists in Ontario today. Lastly, the failure to empower counties in the same manner as regions makes the residents of counties second-class citizens overseen by a Toronto-based civil service.
Provincial policy statements: We realize that the provincial policy statements are not in front of this committee. It's unfortunate that that part of the reform package that has the greatest impact on people and investment is not a matter to be considered by the Legislature.
At this point there seems little the committee can do, but we would recommend that the provincial policy statements be reviewed within two years' time with a view towards improving the opportunity for community-based decision-making; secondly, that section 2 of Bill 163 be deleted and that the existing requirements for municipalities to have regard for provincial policy be retained.
Empowering counties: Bill 163 provides regions with positive incentives to plan. Regions are given approval authority for local official plans and subdivisions. Counties are being told to plan and will be given financial penalties if they do not plan. Regions are given carrots; counties seem to be hit with a stick.
In our view, county councils should be given the same opportunity to exercise approval authority as regional councils and they should meet the same obligations. We would recommend that section 10 of Bill 163 should be amended to provide counties with the authority to approve local official plan amendments in the same manner as regions are given that authority.
I should at this time, Mr Chair, tell you that all of the amendments that we are proposing are listed on a yellow sheet at the back with specific wording for each amendment. I don't propose to go over it in detail with the committee.
Section 28 of Bill 163 should be amended to provide counties with approved official plans and prescribed counties with the same powers as regions to approve subdivisions.
These proposals create incentives to plan rather than imposing penalties for not planning. They recognize and reward those counties that have developed county official plans and encourage other counties to do the same. Extensive delegation of approval authority to counties and regions will allow provincial staff resources to be allocated to other activities.
While we would encourage all counties to plan, we would not require county official plans. We would leave it to individual counties and their local municipalities to determine if planning should take place at the county level, the local level or both. In our experience, county planning will evolve when people perceive the need and it will be stronger if it emerges locally. In the meantime, create positive incentives or positive conditions for county planning to evolve.
Municipal planning authorities: Section 8 of Bill 163 proposes the creation of municipal planning authorities or joint planning areas. We understood from the Sewell commission that this was intended to provide a means of intermunicipal planning where county planning had not evolved. We accept this creation reluctantly because we believe it will prevent county planning from developing, but we understand the need.
We have two concerns with municipal planning authorities. First, the bill allows these authorities to be created in counties that have established county planning operations. This will lead to yet another level of planning and duplication of service in areas that do not need it. The potential to undermine existing county planning operations or to create conflict within counties is of real concern to us.
The bill also proposes to eliminate the county levy for planning in these areas. Aside from the potential to undermine county planning, we believe it's inappropriate for the province to determine how a county sets its levy. Leave the financial arrangements between counties and their local municipalities alone.
We would recommend that section 8 should be amended so that municipal planning authorities cannot be established in counties with approved official plans or in counties which have been prescribed, and that section 8, subsection 14.3(5), should be deleted so that matters of county finance are not legislated by the Planning Act.
Other matters: Section 40 of Bill 163 proposes to allow the province to build counties without official plans to support provincial staff resources. As we have maintained in our submission, the province should use positive means to encourage county planning and the province should not use the Planning Act to interfere with county finance. We would therefore recommend that section 40, subsection 69.2(1), be deleted so that matters of county finance are not legislated by the Planning Act.
I would like to thank the committee for the time you have given us and I would also like to encourage you to support community-based planning; give counties the opportunity to exercise the same approval powers as regions; provide positive encouragement for county planning and avoid the proposed negative approach; and please keep your hands off county budgets.
This submission, as I said earlier, has a yellow page with specific wording for the amendments we would like to see take place. It also has a blue page that outlines the status of county planning in Ontario, listing the counties, counties with planning departments and counties with official plans, and I'm going to very quickly suggest that I'll have to add a correction to this paper. I can see my friend from Middlesex -- or from Brant, formerly from Middlesex -- will tell me that Middlesex itself has a county official plan and I haven't listed it. They don't, unfortunately, have a county planning department.
The Chair: Thank you. We'll begin with the third party. Mr McLean, five minutes.
Mr McLean: I'm just looking at this section, 69(2), that you referred to, that you feel should be deleted from this bill. "Service of any notice...may be made by telephone transmission of a facsimile of the notice, subject to any rules made by the board under section 91 regulating its use or any practice directive issued by the board." You're saying that you don't like to think they can use the fax machines to send in their approvals. Is that what you're referring to?
Mr Cousins: No, on page 57 of the bill itself, the very bottom, section 40, section 69.2, it says: "If a prescribed county fails to adopt a plan and submit it for approval...the minister may charge fees to the county for the processing of planning applications...."
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Mr McLean: Okay, that's section 69.2 on page 59. It's actually section 40, is it?
Mr Cousins: I have it on page 57 in my bill, unless it's changed, Mr McLean.
Mr McLean: Yes, okay, that's right. The other question that I wanted is the county planning. You say there are 16 counties that have official plans and county planning committees?
Mr Cousins: No, there are 16 counties that have planning departments established, and 10 of them have official plans, actually 11, if I count Middlesex.
Mr McLean: How many counties are there without official plans?
Mr Cousins: Fifteen.
Mr McLean: Do you feel that this bill will put an onus on those counties or regions to proceed with an official plan that haven't already got them, and they won't get anything unless that happens?
Mr Cousins: That's a very hard question to answer, because what the bill says is that the minister can prescribe counties that have the plan. In essence, one year, two years down the road, the minister can tell a county that it must do an official plan and there seems to be no appeal of that. If they don't, the minister can begin to charge them financial penalties for not doing that. Our submission is that you should recognize those counties that are doing planning in a proper way now and give them approval functions and thereby encourage other counties to get into planning.
Mr McLean: But if other counties don't do it, what's the ministry's alternative? As you've said, it's to penalize them, but they'll just sit back and say, "Well, we're going to wait and see how it happens in Lambton county," for instance.
Mr Cousins: I draw a distinction, Mr Chairman and committee members, between county planning and planning in counties. Most counties are involved in planning in some way; it's usually at the local municipal level. Some have not chosen to do county official plans. As an example, Simcoe county has, I think, a great many local official plans, but they do not have a Simcoe county official plan.
I think the first objective of the province is to ensure that good planning is being done somewhere within that county framework and I think you should leave it to that county to determine whether it be done at the local level, the county level or at both levels through a two-tier system.
Mr McLean: But I would have thought that the counties would have been directed to plan. I mean, I can't see them leaving the local municipalities to do the planning and the upper tier not doing it. I would think that the proper way would have been for the upper tier to proceed with a county plan and, if the others want to do an official plan, from my reading of it, it has to conform with the upper tier anyway, so why not just do the upper tier?
Mr Cousins: I think the real question to me, Mr Chairman, again is, do you force people to plan? Do you legislate people to plan? I think legislating people to plan is a little bit like trying to legislate them to think. There seems to be a good deal of willingness to do planning at the local level and that seems to be taking place. You can legislate counties to plan if you think that's appropriate, but I think the commitment to that planning will be less if you tell people they must do it rather than if it evolves because they perceive the need.
Mr McLean: You believe that section 8 of Bill 163, which proposes the creation of municipal planning authorities for joint planning areas, will prevent counties from planning. Really what you're saying is there's going to be joint planning of municipalities and that's going to prevent the county from planning.
Mr Cousins: I think, if a municipal planning authority is established and if the county is then precluded from raising a levy for planning purposes, it will make it very difficult for county planning to emerge within that community.
Ms Haeck: I take it from the kind of statistics that you've given Mr McLean that your association represents actually a relatively small group of people.
Mr Cousins: Yes, we're a very small group of people. As I said, there are 16 planning operations in the county, and we manage them.
Ms Haeck: I ask that just because I've got some letters from planners within my local municipality who want some recognition with regard to their association across the province of Ontario, so obviously you're probably trying to fit in with that group.
Anyway, aside from that digression, I am somewhat concerned with regard to your comments specifically on the first page of your submission where you raise this point about "to have regard for" the provincial policies and "be consistent with."
I think if you were here a little earlier you probably heard Mr McLean and others talk about that the third option was that it basically had to conform and not just "be consistent with," and that this is sort of the compromise wording that really and truly sets down a series of guidelines which in fact deal with a wide range of subject-matter and interests of residents in my area, and I would suspect in your own. I'm wondering why it would be difficult for a county, or in my case the region where I come from, not to be consistent with those policies as opposed to what you proposed, just simply "have regard for."
Mr Cousins: This has been one of the most widely debated parts of Mr Sewell's work as well. It was certainly controversial as he went through the province discussing it. The current legislation requires us to have regard for provincial policy. In our view, that means that a local municipality has an onus upon it to follow provincial policy, but if there are exceptions within its community that would for reasons of local circumstance dictate that there's a good and ample reason for setting aside provincial policy and following another course on a particular application, they have the ability to do that.
We don't see the terms "be consistent with" or "conform with" as being a compromise between either of them. Both of them, in our view, mean simply that you have almost blind obedience to the policy, very little room to exercise discretion at the local level to determine whether or not that policy fits your needs or whether minor exceptions are appropriate. We think it really removes the ability of local communities to make appropriate decisions for their communities. We prefer the current legislation.
Ms Haeck: I would suggest that there are probably lots of reasons why it would be better "to be consistent with," and I'm looking at my local situation as opposed maybe to yours. But what do you see as the biggest obstacle? What of the 14 or so different guidelines seems to be so onerous that your county can't in fact deal with it?
Mr Cousins: All right, I'll give you probably an example that I use within our county and it has to do with the provincial policies protecting farm land. We would agree very strongly that those are appropriate policies, and our counties adopted strong policies to protect the farm land within our community.
But I would suggest to you that there are parts of Ontario, including places within our jurisdiction, where the pressures on farm land are not that intense, that the amount of good agricultural land lost is very low, and the community priorities may not be as heavily related to protecting farm land as they might be to encouraging some forms of community economic development.
It may be more appropriate within that community to allow some economic development activities that might lead to job creation within that community rather than to save every acre of farm land. It may also be appropriate within that community to allow the establishment of things like fire departments and community parks and those sorts of facilities within that agricultural community. We believe those sorts of things should be open to judgement.
Ms Haeck: But there are only specific classes of farm land that are so protected. I'm wondering if all of Wellington county is class 1, 2 and 3.
Mr Cousins: The parts that aren't are areas that are natural environment or gravel. I would say there are some very small areas of class 4 and 5 farm land. They're generally associated with environmental constraints. We have looked at this fairly carefully, and I would suggest to you that virtually all of my county is class 1 and 2 and 3 farm land, except for natural environment areas. I think you'll find that the same is true of most counties in southwestern Ontario and -- well, I'll say southwestern Ontario for that matter.
Ms Haeck: So you're not really looking at intensification in looking at Wellington county, and you were talking Elora, if I'm correct, and Fergus. You mean that the intensification argument in fact wouldn't hold much appeal to your county council, the fact that this would be a better approach to deal with planning rather than putting it on to the farm land.
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Mr Cousins: No, I think our county is adopting the ideas of intensification. We are trying to encourage more intensification within our urban centres. We are seeing changes in all of our planning documents that provide for greater density of development within the urban areas and we agree with that general direction, we just don't agree with it to the nth degree. We think there needs to be a little bit of room to allow some rural development in appropriate locations and we think there's very little opportunity for that under the proposed policy statements.
Ms Haeck: I have to give up the floor, but I don't necessarily agree.
The Chair: We're right out of time. Mr Grandmaître.
Mr Grandmaître: If I may, I'd like to ask the parliamentary assistant a question.
Mr Hayes: I thought you were giving me your time.
Mr Grandmaître: No, Ron will give you his time. Why are counties treated differently than regions? What was the reason the ministry made a difference?
Mr Hayes: I'd like to refer that to staff, please.
Mr McKinstry: I guess the issue that came up with counties and regions is that there's a great variety of counties across Ontario, and I think Gary has referred to that in a sense.
Mr Grandmaître: And regions.
Mr McKinstry: Some counties have planning departments, some don't, some have plans, some don't, whereas all the regions have planning departments, but two regions don't have plans. We have treated those two regions without plans slightly differently in the legislation. But the government is certainly of the view that where we can delegate to counties, that would probably be a good thing to do.
Mr Grandmaître: You will look into it?
Mr Hayes: Yes.
Mr McKinstry: Yes. That's sort of an ongoing thing that we have always done. Some counties are delegated and some are not. So that would continue.
Mr Eddy: I really appreciate this brief. It's an excellent brief. I'd have to point out that, although you're a small group, you're not as small as the association of regional planners across the province; it's even smaller. I do hope that we hear from them as well.
I agree with I guess everything in your brief except appendix B, and you did correct that, pointing out that Middlesex county has a policy plan rather than a land use plan, like the region of Waterloo. I really want to comment on that, but certainly we need changes. As you've pointed out, provincial resources cannot and indeed don't support the current approval systems, so there need to be changes.
Thank you for pointing out the discrimination against counties, because I've been very aware of that and it happens in many other areas in this province. The clerk of Brant county has a long list of where counties are unfortunately treated differently, so I agree very strongly with your opinion there.
Would you agree that in the case of the subject where local municipalities may want to plan with a municipality in an adjoining county, yes, we could provide for that happening but it really should be subject to the approval of the upper-tier council perhaps, and any financing change should also be a decision? That's one question that I have.
Also, I really agree with the fact that the county should have the opportunity to have two-tier planning, single-tier planning at the lower level or single-tier planning at the upper tier. Simcoe county, of course, has just recently with their bill decided they'll have, I believe, a two-tier planning system. But I'm very strong on the other system, either single tier at the county level or single tier at the local level. I think it saves costs, time, money, staff, problems and a long list.
Would you care to speak a little bit more on that and give your opinion about the suggestion I made about letting somebody plan with somebody else rather than that county. There are instances, I believe, in the province that might be considered to be an advantage by that local municipality.
Mr Cousins: I think we recognize that the concerns that we deal with in planning don't always stop at municipal boundaries and we have no difficulty with the concept of joint planning. The way it's set out, however, it seems to us to undermine county planning, particularly related to the effect it has on county levies. We think that there needs to be some involvement of the counties at the very least. Our preference is if the county has got an official plan, we shouldn't be undermining the operations in that county.
Mr Eddy: Realizing it doesn't happen with Peel region, where Orangeville is right on the boundary in another county. Please continue.
Mr Cousins: Yes, we share boundaries with nine counties and regions in Wellington and we have, not formal planning relationships with them, but we do a number of cooperative ventures, particularly with the region of Waterloo. So the concept doesn't trouble us at all; it's the way it's been developed within the legislation and the fact that it could undermine county planning operations.
We also believe that, as you said earlier, Mr Eddy, we think counties and their local municipalities should have as much choice as possible to determine what's the appropriate planning frame for their municipality, provided that there is planning taking place and that provincial policies and provincial guidelines are being addressed within that community.
Mr Eddy: Which would meet the provincial requirement.
The Chair: We ran out of time. Mr Cousins, thanks very much for taking the time to come here today and giving us your brief.
Mr Cousins: Thank you kindly.
FEDERATION OF ONTARIO NATURALISTS
The Chair: We invite Ms Gonzalez, environmental researcher, Federation of Ontario Naturalists. Welcome. Please begin any time you're ready.
Ms Neida Gonzalez: Hello. My name is Neida Gonzalez and I'm representing the Federation of Ontario Naturalists. The FON is a non-profit conservation organization that has been active for over 60 years. We have approximately 15,000 members and 78 affiliated clubs. We have been quite active in the issue of wetlands preservation and lobbied for approximately 12 years for a wetlands policy statement and have been following the implementation of the wetlands policy statement since 1992.
We also have participated in the consultation process of the commission. We are here to comment on Bill 163 as it pertains to the Planning Act. We're just going to go through the areas that we feel are of most concern to us. I hope that you have the brief that we submitted of August 22. I will start there.
Our first concern is with the purpose section. The purpose section of the Planning Act in Bill 163 does not clearly set out the protection of the environment. We feel that this is necessary. Also, the package proposed that environmentally sound development would be promoted through both the policy statements and legislation. We feel that this has not been met. The policy statements certainly are in place, but nowhere in the legislation is the environmental protection component addressed. We think the purpose section of the Planning Act is the appropriate place to state an intent for environmental protection.
Secondly, we have concerns about provincial accountability in subsection 3(5). In Bill 163 only the Minister of Municipal Affairs is bound to the policies of the Planning Act, whereas in the present Planning Act all ministers and ministries are bound. We feel that this amendment weakens the enforceability of the policies. We would recommend that this amendment be repealed and that the current status be held where the crown is bound.
The next area of concern is official plan content requirements. In Bill 163 the requirements for official plan content are not in the act but will be listed under regulation. We realize there is a concern about adaptability and flexibility in this area, but we feel that certain basic requirements need to be stated in the act. There are concerns about the appropriate mapping. We feel that this is vital. There is no reason why this can't be stated in the act. We also think that the need for goals and objectives and intent to meet them and how those goals and objectives would be met are things that should be included in the acts and not in regulation.
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Secondly, with official plans we feel that alternatives should be looked at when preparing official plans. This is in regard to growth and settlements and infrastructure. This was proposed by the Commission on Planning and Development Reform but has been ignored. We feel that it is vital to move this way and it would make land use planning a more progressive tool if alternatives were looked at as in our EA system.
Also, the commission recommended that appropriate geographic bases be used when analysing municipal issues. We feel that this is very necessary. The FON recommended that this happen. Ecological boundaries must be recognized. One of the examples is water resources where subwatershed and watershed planning is starting to be used by many conservation authorities and some municipalities. Laurel Creek is an example as well as Henley Creek in the Waterloo area and Guelph.
We see that it's necessary for municipalities to recognize that these resources that they're dealing with go beyond their jurisdictions, that there needs to be some planning beyond the current municipal jurisdictions, that with water resources if there's upstream activities, this is going to affect the downstream areas. We feel that with Bill 163 at this point there is an opportunity to start to direct municipalities in this area, not to dictate to them how to do it but to suggest that this is the way that they should be moving. The FON feels strongly that natural resources should have an ecological basis instead of just a political basis.
The other area that we're concerned about is the public right of appeal. We feel that the public right of appeal is severely restricted in Bill 163 through amendments to the Planning Act. Particularly it's the clause that's repeated in a few areas that we have listed in our brief that states that if a letter of objection is not filed or an oral presentation is not given before a council decision is made, the public right of appeal is nullified.
FON believes that these amendments will only hinder the planning process. We feel that it will cause a more adversarial position between citizens and municipal councils. We feel also that the "frivolous and vexatious" clause takes care of appeals that are misplaced and that this is unnecessary, and we hope that these amendments can be removed. We also think that more cases would go to the OMB if this clause remains.
Also, minor variances cannot be appealed. We understand that this is in the bill to try to unload some of the cases at the OMB. However, we see it as a problem because there is no definition of minor variance or a listing of what activities cannot occur through a minor variance.
We feel that if there is not going to be an appeal mechanism, at the very least there needs to be set clearly in the legislation what cannot be done through a minor variance so that there isn't a gap there where councils can decide to include activities that are grey as far as whether they should be a major variance or a minor variance. I think a definition of minor variance needs to be there so that that is clear to the councils.
Lastly, we are concerned about pre-approval site alterations. Vegetation removal and tree cutting on sites before final approval has been a long-standing issue with the FON as well as other conservation communities. These activities have resulted in needless destruction of many natural areas.
There has been the recognition by many government agencies that this is a problem, and there is also an assumption that this bill would deal with this issue. We recommend that vegetation removal and tree cutting be regulated under section 52 of the act where the placement and removal of fill are regulated, and we see it as a fairly clear-cut issue.
In concluding, we'd like to say that these are major areas of concern. We have others but we thought that these changes are the most vital and are ones that can be dealt with quite efficiently and successfully by this committee. Are there any questions?
The Acting Chair (Ms Christel Haeck): Thank you, Ms Gonzalez. I would like at this point to turn to the government caucus, Mr White.
Mr White: Thank you, Ms Gonzalez. You bring forth a number of very excellent points. Of course, as you may know, a lot of these issues have been circulating and they're part of the controversy that we'll be dealing with in the next several weeks, but I think you articulated them very, very well.
I'm wondering if I could, with your indulgence, go to the wetlands policies, to the ecological policies, within the comprehensive set of policy statements. You have a copy of this, no doubt. Frankly, I've read the wetlands policy. My friend Mr Wiseman and I are probably unique in this, at least in our region, having read the thing backwards and forwards.
What I'm thinking about here is, you mentioned the ecosystem issue and planning on an ecosystem basis. I think you're quite right to point out that the political boundaries and ecosystem boundaries, watershed boundaries, are obviously not identical, not the same. Yet are they not reflective to some degree, at least from a policy standpoint when we talk here about planning from an ecosystem standpoint, of planning that respects the wetlands and adjacent areas? Is this not essentially, both the wetlands policy and this comprehensive statement, a mammoth leap forward in terms of those ecosystem protections?
Ms Gonzalez: Wetlands are one type of ecosystem. They don't encompass an ecosystem approach in itself. It's a site-by-site basis that essentially the wetlands policy statement deals with.
What we're suggesting -- and we didn't bring up the policy statements here because we were told that you will not be able to touch them essentially -- what we're looking for is an overall ecosystem approach, which the wetlands policy statement or any of the individual policy statements are not. Municipalities, we feel, need to address their resources in a more holistic manner and need to identify what the ecological boundaries are and know what that means, even though they might not be able to plan for it completely at this point.
Certainly we see that the wetlands policy statement was a huge step forward and we're very happy that it happened, but we see it as the first step. Essentially that would be my answer.
Mr White: Does that not become enhanced, though, with this act that sets out the fact that the province will be establishing overall policies that put issues like that to the forefront in terms of municipal planning?
Ms Gonzalez: At this point we're not quite sure. Not having seen the guidelines to these policy statements, we have very little idea how they will be enforced and how they will be implemented. We've just finished doing a study on the implementation of the wetlands policy statement and found that many municipalities have been quite hesitant to implement it, that there have been problems with the mapping, there have been problems of getting in some cases help from the MNR.
It seems even though we have the policy statements we're still at a preliminary step. If there's an opportunity in Bill 163 to help in that direction, we feel that it should happen. We're just suggesting that opportunity does exist and that it should not be --
Mr White: I want to thank you for advancing those particular issues. Thank you.
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Mr Hayes: Thank you, Ms Gonzalez, for your presentation. Just to expand a little bit on the wording about "be consistent with" versus "have regard for." I notice in the one letter, you left this in your package that you're very pleased that we are using that word. Of course, you're no doubt aware that there are a few others, a fair amount of other people that will be expressing their views on this in opposition to it.
Do you feel that, had this wording been in there in the past, maybe some of our wetlands and other wildlife sanctuaries or flood control areas would be probably preserved more so now, a larger percentage than the 25% of wetlands in the province now? If you had that kind of wording in, that you would have more clout maybe in preserving some of our wetlands in this province?
Ms Gonzalez: We feel that it certainly would help in combination with the policy statements; that without the policy statements, it doesn't really matter if it's "have regard for" or "be consistent with." Our problem with cases that we had at the OMB was that the wetlands were just guidelines. Essentially, without the statements we don't have very much legislative backing. We are happy -- "be consistent with" seems to be a bit stronger, but our main point is that we need the policy statements.
Mr Hayes: But there were already policy statements since, I believe, 1988, yet we still had just "have regard for" rather than "be consistent with," and if that wording were changed, going to the OMB, it might have given you more clout.
Ms Gonzalez: Being more specific, the only environmentally progressive policy statement that we think existed before this legislative reform was the wetlands. There wasn't any other policy statement that dealt directly with environmental issues. The wetlands policy statement has only been in existence for two years. The cases that we've been dealing with with wetlands go back almost 15 years, so I am taking more of a historical --
Mr Hayes: Thank you.
The Acting Chair: We have nine minutes for the Liberal caucus, first Mr Eddy and then Mr Curling.
Mr Eddy: Mr Curling was to go first.
Mr Curling: Thank you very much. For the first time I'll precede my colleagues here. They've dominated, with all their intelligence, to this. They are, as you know, members who have been part of the municipality powerhouse for years. I have never had the opportunity to play that role.
I just want your advice on this, because one of the complementary parts of this legislation is that it is intended to streamline and make the Planning Act more efficient. There is a considerable amount of concerns about delays and a long process. I notice when you spoke in your section about subsection 3(5) of the Planning Act, you talked about provincial accountability, and I just want to know why you would feel that all planning decisions should remain binding on every ministry and minister of the crown and you went on include all the other boards.
I think in my limited experience in the cabinet, not very long -- we intend to, of course, expand that experience.
Mr Jackson: Are you going to run federally, Alvin?
Mr Curling: But the fact is we found that actually trying to pass things, every ministry took so long to get things approved that, again, we are back to that delay in process. Why do you feel going back to that process would be effective in making things more streamlined?
Ms Gonzalez: Essentially we feel that, in a lot of the cases with these planning issues, though Municipal Affairs is a key ministry, they are not the only key ministry; 80% of Ontario is crown land. The Ministry of Natural Resources has a great deal to say about what happens on those lands.
As well, with these policy statements, the natural heritage, the comprehensive policy statements that we're looking at, it's the Ministry of Natural Resources that is working on the guidelines. They are the ones that we have to go to when we are looking for information on wetlands or woodlots and various other things. They play an important role and we feel that they should be directly accountable, as well as other ministries, and that it should not just be on the shoulders of Municipal Affairs.
Essentially we feel that we would have to go around the issue extensively if we have a problem through Municipal Affairs, if it happens to be the MNR, Ministry of Housing or Ministry of Transportation, when we should have the opportunity to deal directly with them if it is within their jurisdiction.
Mr Curling: You spoke about intervenor funding, and I think that if you're going to go through those steps, that intervenor funding amounted to an enormous amount. I think organizations like yours would have to have a lot of money to monitor all of those ministries to see that they are accountable, even within the legislation that --
Ms Gonzalez: We don't get intervenor funding and we do what we can.
Mr Curling: So you support a lot of intervenor funding, a larger budget.
Ms Gonzalez: Certainly we would like to see intervenor funding. We haven't mentioned it in this brief because at this point we don't think it's an issue we want to flog, but as an organization we do spend a lot of time trying to monitor things. We don't do a complete job but we try to do as much as we can and we'd like to be able to be helped in that way. We feel that if the policies are binding on the crown, it is helpful to the citizens, because they can directly deal with each ministry. Essentially we'll be creating another layer if we have to go through Municipal Affairs to deal with another ministry.
The Acting Chair: Mr Eddy, you have three and a half minutes.
Mr Eddy: Oh, thank you, I'll just make it. Thank you very much for your presentation and expressing your concern about a healthy environment in Ontario. It's very important. I agree with some of the things you said or many of them, including, and I must speak to this specifically, the need for appropriate mapping because what we're finding out, being involved with the conservation authority, is that there's very little mapping. They're working at it, but some of the mapping that's there is outdated and indeed inappropriate. So it's a very important matter.
I want to zero in on the pre-approval site alterations. As you will know, some of the counties and regions of Ontario have passed bylaws under the Trees Act, requiring an application and a process to get approval. Unfortunately, many do not, and I'd like your opinion on that.
Perhaps all upper tiers should have it and separated municipalities should have the right to do it too. Perhaps there should be something stronger in there about removal of vegetation, which has been mentioned earlier today. Indeed many of us have had experience where developers do go in and remove trees and perhaps all vegetation and there the site sits, causing tremendous, serious erosion. I'd like your viewpoint on that, if you'd elaborate. It's very important. Thank you.
Ms Gonzalez: We did participate as well in the amendments to the Trees Act, where we asked for quite stringent regulations on municipalities essentially on tree cutting bylaws and vegetation removal. Certainly we'd like to see as strong a policy in the Planning Act as possible to stop the vegetation removal and tree cutting that happens before there are even final approvals. If you're asking me for a suggestion on the wording, I would need some time and could give it to you in writing.
Mr Eddy: Yes, I think that will be helpful if you'd supply it, because municipalities are concerned about what's going on. Conservation authorities and the citizens are concerned. So something you would do in that regard would be helpful.
Ms Gonzalez: Certainly we have that work done, as we did it for the Trees Act, so I would be glad to pass that on.
Mr McLean: I want to welcome you to the committee and thank you for your brief. You know, you've asked several of the same questions that I've asked this morning about this Bill 163 with regard to the protection of the environment. It's not very clearly spelled out, the commitment to the environment, and with regard to the planning decisions, which should remain binding on every minister and every ministry. I think those are important elements of the bill that are not being directly looked at.
The other aspect that you have made is with regard to the boundaries, with regard to the recommendation "for municipalities to analyse issues based on an appropriate geographic basis regardless of municipal boundaries has been ignored." I sat on a conservation authority for 16 years, so I'm well aware of how they deal with the watersheds and how that should be part of an overall planning strategy.
With regard to the public right to appeal, you make some excellent points there with regard to the objections. There are going to be a lot of people who will not have the opportunity or will not know that it has passed, when they should have put in an objection or not. Then the minor variances -- I asked those very questions this morning of the minister, clarification of those, so I think you've a well-prepared brief. I hope that the parliamentary assistant will take into account these points you has made and I hope that he will act on them, and the members of the government. Thank you very much. It's excellent.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr McLean. I'd like to thank you very much for coming and making this presentation to us today. Obviously our members found it very useful.
A reminder to committee members: We start tomorrow in Niagara Falls at 10. Our bus leaves here tonight at 6:30 at the front steps. This committee is adjourned.
The committee adjourned at 1722.