Committee Transcript 1994-Aug-31 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

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

City of London

Grant Hopcroft, comptroller

Town of Exeter

Rick Hundey, town administrator

County of Perth

Mark Swallow, planning associate

Sandy Levin

Susan Smith

Norfolk Field Naturalists

Jackie Davis, environmental director

Nancy Tilt, technical consultant and chair, ecological and environmental advisory committee, Halton region

Peter Carson, member and technical consultant

Michael Smither

Township of Norfolk

Jim McIntosh, planning director

County of Huron

Allan Gibson, warden

Gary Davidson, planning director

County of Wellington

Catherine Keleher, warden

Gary Gousins, planning commissioner

Wellington County Clerks and Treasurers Association

Robert Skeoch, clerk-treasurer

James Andrews, member

Nicholas Varias

County of Oxford

Ed Down, warden

Craig Manley, director, policy and development

London Home Builders' Association

Ric Knutson, member

Lars Bygdon, member

Township of Puslinch

Archie MacRobbie, reeve

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 / Président suppléant: Curling, Alvin (Scarborough North/-Nord L)

Bisson, Gilles (Cochrane South/-Sud ND)

Chiarelli, Robert (Ottawa West/-Ouest L)

*Haeck, Christel (St Catharines-Brock ND)

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

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 Gary Wilson

Also taking part / Autres participants et participantes:

Ministry of Municipal Affairs:

Boeckner, Pat, manager, plans administration branch

Hayes, Pat, parliamentary assistant to minister

McKinstry, Philip, acting director, municipal planning policy branch

Sidebottom, Peter-John, senior policy adviser, local government policy branch

Clerk / Greffière: Bryce, Donna

Staff / Personnel: Stobo, Carolyn, research officer, Legislative Research Service

The committee met at 0833 in the Delta London Armouries Hotel, London.

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 call the meeting to order. In order to keep to our schedule, we have to begin on time.

Welcome, Ms Cunningham. Nice to see you here.

Mrs Dianne Cunningham (London North): Welcome to London, Mr Chair and committee members.

The Chair: We're happy to be here.

CITY OF LONDON

The Chair: Welcome, Mr Hopcroft. It's early in the morning but we're all ready for you. You have half an hour for your presentation. If you want to have the members ask you questions, please leave as much time as you can.

Mr Grant Hopcroft: Thank you very much, Mr Chair. Welcome to London, first of all, and thank you to the committee for squeezing in the city of London's presentation so early in the morning. I'll keep my presentation fairly brief so that we do have an opportunity for some questions and answers at the end.

I'd like to address several parts of the bill, the first with respect to the Planning Act reforms. For the most part, London council is satisfied with the changes reflected in the draft bill at the present time in so far as the Planning Act reform is concerned. We do have two outstanding concerns, however, which were reflected in a submission that was sent to the minister back in early August.

The concerns are with respect to goals B7, B8(b) and B8(c), which continue to make reference to sufficient reserve water and sewer plant capacity being available to accommodate new development. The city continues to object to this policy as the method for determining sufficient reserve capacity for these services, or at what point in the development approval process sufficient reserve capacity must be available has not yet been resolved.

Our practice has always been to gauge the amount of development which is prepared to come on stream. We have, in the city of London, always planned very carefully to ensure that capacity is there. We are concerned, however, that the way in which this could be interpreted could preclude approval of plans which should be approved to ensure that there's a sufficient supply of housing units available or lots available for development.

We are concerned as well as to the impact of Bill 120 on the calculation of reserve capacity, because it does effectively, in many of our neighbourhoods, double the existing densities. We do have concerns about how those calculations will be completed.

The other concern the city has is with respect to the housing policies, goal C, which we feel includes unrealistic and unreasonable targets for affordable housing. We feel that the concerns which we have expressed earlier have not been reflected in terms of the percentages that are to be applied.

With respect to the other provisions of Bill 163, dealing with disclosure of interest and open meetings, basically the city of London has endorsed the brief of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, which I understand the committee will be receiving on September 13. However, I would like to highlight several aspects both of what AMO will be submitting in terms of what's been endorsed by London and a couple of concerns which we as a city have with respect to some of the aspects of those provisions.

The first item, with respect to disclosure of interest, is the prohibition against members of council being able to seek council action on matters of personal affairs. For example, if my house contravenes the zoning bylaw in a minor way, where a minor variance would normally be sought, the legislation as it presently sits precludes me from hiring an agent to appear before the committee of adjustment to seek that minor variance. So while we continue to agree that it is improper for the council members themselves to appear before council, asking for something which would confer a personal benefit, there should still be the ability for them to retain others. Otherwise, they could be placed at a very serious disadvantage in terms of their own personal affairs.

The next item I would like to address is with respect to the disclosure requirements which will take effect after this election. We are for the most part satisfied with the basis of disclosure. It's something that affects members of the Legislature and we appreciate the fact that you would like to have basically the same types of rules and same disclosure requirements apply. However, we continue to feel that the disclosure should apply to candidates for office as well as members who are sitting on councils so that council members are not placed at a relative disadvantage in the context of an election campaign, and if it is that important, the electorate should have an opportunity to see what potential conflicts might arise from a member's holdings prior to him or her being elected.

The next item is with respect to the commissioner. We are concerned that the legislation as it now sits provides for basically dual recourse on the part of citizens. They can complain to the commissioner. The commissioner can investigate. If the commissioner finds no wrongdoing, the citizens then have the opportunity to pursue the matter through the courts. I guess our position is that if the commissioner has found no wrongdoing, that determination should be final and that the commissioner be given sufficient authority to deal with complaints in a way that can in fact be final.

The last issue is with respect to the removal of the saving provision in the current legislation for bona fide error. As the legislation stands now, council members can seek legal advice as to whether or not they have a disclosure. I'm perhaps in a bit of an advantageous situation because as a lawyer I treat those matters very carefully and probably have a better chance than most to avoid conflicts of interest being undisclosed. But most council members who do not have legal training have to rely on legal advice as to whether or not they should disclose an interest. The amendments would remove that defence from members of council and would require the courts to impose a penalty even where council members have acted in good faith.

We feel that saving provision is very important and should be left in the legislation. We do, however, welcome the changes in the legislation that would permit the courts to vary the penalty. We feel that's a step in the right direction and wholeheartedly support those aspects.

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The last two items I'd like to address pertain to, first, section 55 on open meetings and in particular subsection 55(9), which requires "...a meeting shall not be closed during the taking of a vote." We feel that the legislation has quite rightly recognized the fact that there are certain matters of a personnel or contractual or legal nature that should be dealt with in camera. We are concerned that subsection (9) prevents council from giving direction on those matters during an in camera session.

We follow a practice in the city of London where all in camera matters are released at some point and voted on in open council. However, we do need to give direction on those matters in the interim. If I can give you one example regarding property acquisition, where you may have several sites that are under consideration for acquisition or for disposal by council, it would require offers to be submitted or received and in most cases the clerk and the head of the council signing those papers to indicate council's intent. If I were a mayor or a city clerk, I would be most reluctant to sign papers without having a vote on the record that in fact would permit me to act in that fashion. So, we would urge the committee to consider amendments to subsection (9) which would still permit votes to be taken in camera on at least an interim basis, pending final release of those decisions of council.

The last matter is something that's not addressed in the legislation at all, and I would like to thank my friend Mr Smither, who I understand you will be hearing from later, for raising this during a session at the AMO conference last week. It has to do with the matter of privilege. As members of the Legislature, you enjoy absolute privilege for comments that are made in the Legislature. Municipal council members enjoy only qualified privilege with respect to comments that are made during the course of council meetings.

With the new requirements in Bill 163 for matters to be considered in open meetings that previously may have been considered in camera, and the very strict limitations on what can be considered in camera, we feel it's of paramount importance that there be amendments to give council members absolute privilege, because matters that previously may have been dealt with in camera because of their sensitive nature or the potential for litigation will now be required to be dealt with in an open meeting.

Given the basic thrust of the bill, which is to put on council members much of the onus and many of the responsibilities that you as members of the Legislature have, we feel it's only appropriate that we have some of the privileges that you share as well.

I thank you for the opportunity to present briefly some of our concerns. We will follow this up with a written brief for the committee at some point within the next week and a half or so. I welcome your questions.

Mr Bernard Grandmaître (Ottawa East): Welcome to your famous city, Grant. Let's start with your letter -- I shouldn't say "your" letter -- but AMO's letter of June 30 to the minister, highlighting some of AMO's concerns towards this piece of legislation. Are you familiar with this?

Mr Hopcroft: I don't have a copy of the letter with me but I'm aware of the basic --

Mr Grandmaître: I was going to ask you if --

Mr Hopcroft: -- content of it because, as you know, I'm a member of the AMO board as well.

Mr Grandmaître: You highlighted a number of concerns. The fact that you were a member, or your association was a member, of the advisory task force on implementation -- or Mr Dale Martin's committee -- didn't mean that you supported the legislation. Have most of your concerns of June 30 been, let's say, resolved?

Mr Hopcroft: I should say that in terms of the Planning Act aspects of Bill 163, the city of London's position does not endorse some of the concerns that AMO has brought forward. Basically, our council's position on the Planning Act amendments in Bill 163 is that our concerns are limited to those two matters I addressed in the opening part of my comments.

AMO, however, has had further concerns which they feel should be addressed in the context of the legislation. I'm sure they'll be bringing those forward on September 13, but London's concerns are those two with respect to what we feel is an unreasonable change in terms of the affordability criteria in the housing statement and the requirements with respect to capacity for water and sewer, which we feel need to be better defined and defined in a way that allows some flexibility in terms of approval of development.

Mr Grandmaître: The Conflict of Interest Commissioner, Grant, what about the cost of this new office? As you know, the cost will be borne by municipal governments. What are your thoughts on this?

Mr Hopcroft: Well, I can indicate that we originally had very grave concerns about the need for a commissioner. I think we see some benefits to having a commissioner in place provided that he or she is capable of making final determinations and that the commissioner's office will be prepared to give council members advice when they have questions as to whether or not, in a particular fact situation, they should be disclosing an interest.

We do see the commissioner as being able to provide a service to members of council, but that's clearly contingent on our concerns regarding the finality of the commissioner's decision being put in place. If we're still going to be subjected to court proceedings when the commissioner's found no wrongdoing, we see that as creating needless duplication and expense.

Mr Grandmaître: What about the cost to councillors who are, let's say, charged under the conflict-of-interest legislation, the cost to councillors or municipal people?

Mr Hopcroft: Obviously, there are considerable costs, both in obtaining opinions and in defending actions that are brought. It's our hope that with the commissioner investigating matters prior to charges being laid, many frivolous complaints will be weeded out.

On the other hand, at our AMO board meeting a councillor from Metropolitan Toronto was charged $10,000 for a conflict-of-interest opinion on a matter that she obviously wanted to vote on. The easy way out is always to disclose an interest if you're unsure, but where there's a matter of extreme importance to your constituents I think a council member has a duty to vote if that's possible. That type of expense is something that, hopefully, could be avoided if the commissioner's office is in a position to give advice to members of council on whether a particular fact situation presents a conflict.

I think where the commissioner has found wrongdoing, clearly the matter needs to be aired before the courts. There are times when the public does question the ethical standards of politicians. I think it's the nature of the animal that sometimes a few bad apples creep in and it's in all our interests to see those kinds of people weeded out to preserve the ethical standards.

Mr Grandmaître: Open votes or votes in camera, can you repeat what you just said? Maybe I missed out. You wanted this legislation to allow votes in camera?

Mr Hopcroft: Yes. This is the example I used. Say council wants to buy a site for a public facility and it wants to put an offer in on that site. The legislation, as it now sits, says you cannot vote in camera. You have to vote in public. The dilemma we're faced with is, say you want to put in an offer for $500,000 but you're negotiating with others as well; you don't want that offer to be made public. The mayor and the clerk have to submit an offer, and without a council vote I certainly wouldn't place myself in a position of second-guessing council, particularly where it's been a matter of some contention within council. I think, to protect the officials and the head of council in terms of these kinds of negotiations, there needs to be a mechanism where council's will can be reflected in camera so those actions can be taken.

0850

Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): Just to follow up on that briefly, if you're in council and you're in camera, you could have a motion to come out of camera and go back into regular session and make the motion then, couldn't you?

Mr Hopcroft: The trouble is that once you've voted on the matter in public -- if I can just grab the section here; I'm sorry, I can't put my finger on it at the moment -- but it's our understanding that when a vote is held in public the subject matter of that vote must be disclosed to anyone making inquiries, so the concern would be that other property owners, for example, who may be also trying to have the municipality purchase land from them, or who may be trying to sell land to the municipality, would be able to find out the basis upon which council's negotiations are proceeding.

Mr McLean: Were you anticipating having the privileges of members of council in camera or in open council, or at all during the council meetings -- that they would have the same privileges a provincial member has with regard to what he says?

Mr Hopcroft: Obviously, in terms of in camera discussions, those generally would involve only members of staff and members of council who are present. I wouldn't see there being a distinction between in camera and open meetings. I think the importance of allowing council members to speak their mind on issues of public importance is paramount.

Mr McLean: Have you seen the comprehensive set of policy statements the ministry has issued?

Mr Hopcroft: Yes.

Mr McLean: With regard to item B, economic, community development and infrastructure policies, on page 7, the first discussion you had was with water, sewers, housing and development. I was wondering if that policy statement on page 7 didn't cover what you were talking about with regard to development, water and sewage.

Mr Hopcroft: I'm sorry, I don't have a copy of that in front of me, Mr McLean. Our concern is with respect to the definition.

Mr McLean: Page 7, second paragraph from the top: "Development should be serviced by full municipal sewage and water services wherever feasible. Where full municipal sewage and water services are not provided, and where site conditions permit, multilot/unit development should be serviced by public communal services. Where the use of public communal services is not feasible, and where site conditions permit, development may be serviced by individual onsite systems. Development on partial services will be discouraged except in the situation where a public communal system is required to address remediation of failed individual onsite systems."

Mr Hopcroft: We certainly support the intent. For us to say anything different after our recent boundary discussions would seem a little hypocritical. The concern we have is the way in which reserve capacity is calculated, again particularly with the changes from Bill 120 which double densities in some parts of our community. We still don't have a ruling on whether that affects our reserve capacities. The way we've approached this in the past is that we may have, for example, two subdivisions approved within the watershed of one sewage treatment plant. When you take the full buildout of both those subdivisions, it may in fact exceed our capacity, but we recognize that in many cases these take five to 10 years to be fully built out. We have plans on the books to expand that capacity as time goes on. That's the concern. that it doesn't allow you to stage the expansion of your capacity to keep up with building it. It requires you to have excess capacity in place up front.

Mr McLean: My final question, Mr Hopcroft, is with regard to this fall; the elections are going to be in November. This legislation is not going to be passed until way on in December. They're telling me that the candidates will then have to fill out the forms, in January, of the conflict of interest. What about this fall? The ones that are running now are not fully aware of what these conflict rules are going to be because they could be amended in the next few weeks, and could be amended in committee in third reading. What do you say to those people who are running this fall who perhaps may find themselves in a difficult situation come January?

Mr Hopcroft: I think it's incumbent on anyone running for office to find out what they're getting into before they file their nomination papers. I think clearly it would have been preferable if these amendments could have been finalized long before now. It's getting very close to the point of decision for members and clearly it's going to have an adverse effect on some members.

Ms Margaret H. Harrington (Niagara Falls): I want to clarify a couple of the things you mentioned at the beginning with the Planning Act reform. First of all, with regard to reserve capacity, I think you've explained most of it. What you're saying is that most municipalities do things in a staged manner so that the example you gave of approving subdivisions, where the capacity was not actually in effect at that time -- you feel it's too strict, the way we are going?

Mr Hopcroft: Yes, particularly when you look at the housing policy statements with respect to having a certain amount of service land available for development. We've always taken the approach in London that we would like to see maximum choice in terms of availability of service land, that one subdivider doesn't have the market cornered. Recognizing that we have a certain range of development or expected development to come on stream each year, as long as we have the capacity for that range and enough of a cushion for a year or two into the future, and as long as we have plans for expansion to build out to the ultimate built capacity and we have the financial capacity to do it, that should be sufficient. You shouldn't have to certify that, as at a particular point, you have capacity in your sewage treatment and your water treatment plants for everything that's approved out there, regardless of how many years' supply that represents in terms of your growth.

Ms Harrington: I would imagine in some instances across this province that would lead to running into some difficulties.

Mr Hopcroft: That may very well be the case.

Ms Harrington: But you're saying it is a common practice.

Mr Hopcroft: It certainly has been in our community and we think it's worked very well. In these days, it just doesn't make sense to be building capacity years ahead of it being needed. We've got so many competing demands for our money these days, it just doesn't make sense to spend money before it has to be spent.

Ms Harrington: The other question was with regard to your statement that it's an unrealistic housing policy, something to that effect. I don't have a copy of your brief. Would you clarify what you meant by your concerns around the housing policy?

Mr Hopcroft: In terms of the housing, the targets for affordable housing are being increased to 30% from the current 25%. In addition, the new housing affordability policies require that no less than half the affordable housing required be affordable to the lowest 30% of household income distribution. That's a new requirement, a more onerous requirement than the existing housing statement. In the context of our community, we see that as setting an unreasonable and an unnecessary standard.

Mr Drummond White (Durham Centre): Thank you very much, Mr Hopcroft. I believe we spoke only a week or so ago in Toronto. You appear on many occasions under different guises.

Mr Hopcroft: I have many hats.

Mr White: Indeed. I'd like to take up with you the issue of -- there are many, many things in your brief that are of interest, but the issue of privilege is one of them. You were discussing the fact that municipal politicians have a limited privilege. I wonder if you could describe that and what kind of privilege you would recommend.

Mr Hopcroft: What I'm recommending is the same privileges you enjoy as a member of the Legislature for statements that are made in the Legislature.

Mr Jim Wiseman (Durham West): I'm not so sure we should have that privilege.

0900

Mr Hopcroft: I think particularly when you look at the requirements in the legislation for presumably more matters, you're going to expect more matters to be discussed in public as a result of these amendments than were previously. Many of those matters -- and, to some extent, I guess I'm speculating on the practices of other municipalities, but where you're dealing with a matter of some sensitivity in terms of potential for libel, I think the tendency would be to deal with those to the extent that you can in camera. I think there are limitations on placing those matters in camera with the new legislation, and to the extent that you are requiring council members to deal with those matters in public now, they should be extended the same privileges as you have as a member of the Legislature to speak their mind on those issues without fear of someone launching a suit for libel or slander.

Mr White: Could you go back to the first part of my question, which is the rights you presently enjoy?

Mr Hopcroft: Okay, the qualified privileges that we enjoy at the present time are limited to the extent that we can in fact be taken to court and the onus is on the member to show that first of all there was truth and that the matter does not extend beyond fair comment in the circumstances. The standard of fair comment is one where there can be some uncertainty and the courts of course will have the jurisdiction to rule on that matter.

Whether a council member has some uncertainty in their own mind as to whether something may be a fair comment or not may preclude them from bringing that matter forward in the context of a debate. It may be information that is germane to the issue and should be brought to the attention of council prior to the vote. But, clearly, to the extent that a member is afraid they could be sued and, believe me, there are lots of people out there looking for ways to embarrass members of council, the issue may not receive full debate and full consideration by council. Does that answer your question?

Mr White: Yes, thank you.

The Chair: We ran out of time. We appreciate your taking the time to give us your feedback on this particular bill and we appreciate the fact that you did it so early in the morning.

Mr Hopcroft: Thank you for fitting us in and we will be following this up with a written brief. I apologize for not having one this morning, but I've been a little under the weather the last couple of days.

TOWN OF EXETER

The Chair: We invite Mayor Bruce Shaw, Mr Rick Hundey and Councillor Bob Spears. Welcome to this committee.

Mr Rick Hundey: Bob Spears is a member of our council in the town of Exeter and I'm Rick Hundey. I'm the town administrator. Very quickly, I thought I could give you a brief introduction to the town of Exeter. We're a very small community, 4,300 people, and we thought it would be useful for you to hear a small-town perspective. To give you a feel for Exeter, someone like Bob would be a member of council -- a small amount of recompense for that, roughly $4,000 a year -- sits on committees on a volunteer basis. From a staff perspective, we have people who wear many hats. I'm the town administrator but I do many other things as well. Two weeks ago, I caught a dog running at large. I'm quite proud of that.

Just a brief illustration of the kind of community we're dealing with: We try to keep things straightforward and simple and we're a bit concerned about this legislation because it may become more difficult for us to perform as a municipality because of the complexities it introduces for us.

I have a brief that I think some of you have. Unfortunately, I didn't realize there were so many people on the committee. I brought 15 and we're short. Nevertheless, I'll go through the brief.

We've looked through this legislation. We've been involved in the process at earlier stages as well. We support the intent of what the committee has in front of it. We support the idea of delineating roles and ensuring that provincial policy is stated up front and that we know what it says. We think that open and accountable government is important but we also think the legislation that you have, Bill 163, has some flaws that affect all municipalities and, as I said, we'll try to give you the small-town perspective.

In the past, just following what's going on and participating in what's going on, we get the feeling that what's been said hasn't really been heard, and that's really our first general observation. We think that a lot of what's been said before hasn't been heard and what will be said to you now and in other hearings has been said before and perhaps hasn't been heard and should have been heard.

Looking at that second point in the brief under the Planning Act, provincial-municipal relations, one of the things we've noticed is that there's a move afoot to move municipalities into a position of greater authority, a wider-stated authority, guaranteed in legislation. There's also a move afoot to empower municipalities in a more flexible way through flexible enabling legislation. We think that what we've got now in the Planning Act amendments is an approach where we're expected to stringently follow policy set out by the province in respect to the word changes. We have "regard for" being changed to "being consistent with" provincial policy. That suggests to us a much more stringent approach and perhaps eliminates the flexibility that we feel exists now under the current act and should exist under the future act.

The variation that exists across the province is something that we think should be recognized in our legislation and if you have terms like "be consistent with," that implies stringent adherence rather than "regard for".

We also noticed that the content of official plans is to be prescribed, as is the plan process. We do a good job of local planning, but in a small community we often don't avail ourselves of the advice of outside experts, something that's rather expensive to do. We do a reasonable level of planning, we're concerned that the prescriptions you'll be writing for us will require us to do more than is necessary for small community needs.

Then the fourth point in that particular submission or that particular area has to do with the fact that we expected to see counties having the right to have local plan approvals. That's not something that's automatically given under the new act, it's only going to be given to prescribed counties. What that means, we're not sure, but we think that counties, like regions, should have the right to approve local plans. Our concern here, of course, is that the approval process is quite protracted at the provincial level and we think the approval process can work quite well at the county level.

Our third point under the Planning Act has to do with municipal accountability. The policy statements that are associated with the Planning Act are rather detailed. We see that there will be regulations coming and guidelines coming. We see that all these things will prescribe the way in which planning is to be done at the local level and we're a bit concerned that what will happen is, the outcome of policy at the local level will be predetermined. Things will have been set out in such a way and such a pattern as to result in pretty well only one answer: the answer that's written for municipalities by the province. So what I see happening is municipalities echoing the provincial position and implementing policy but not developing the policy in concert with their community. In effect, I think what could happen is both the councils and the public are disenfranchised in that kind of scenario.

Our fourth point has to do with the process. We're not entirely sure what's coming down the pipe. There are two aspects of the package that really aren't available yet to municipalities. We have four things coming. We have the legislation, which of course we've seen. We have policy statements, which we've seen as well. There are regulations that are being drafted that we haven't seen -- I'm not sure if they're out yet -- and there are also guidelines that will assist municipalities in carrying out all these rules under these policies, regulations and statutory provisions.

It would have been good to know what's coming, and I illustrate this point in our fifth argument. There's one question that really concerns the town of Exeter that has to do with planning for infrastructure. Here the point is, and it has been made previously, that the party that pays for infrastructure should do the planning for infrastructure. At one point earlier the suggestion was strongly made that the upper tier, ie, in our case a county, would do the planning for infrastructure: hard services, water, sewers.

In our situation, if that were done, they would be planning for services that, with the help of the province, the town of Exeter finances. That's fundamentally unfair and it's also illogical. If the regulations coming out and the guidelines coming out call for upper-tier planning of infrastructure, then we have a problem with that. We think it's a serious problem. We do think the municipalities that pay for a service should have the planning responsibility for that service, and that's something we think you should look at closely.

0910

There's a footnote, and I apologize. If you look at the footnote, it starts on page 3 and goes to page 4. That's a rather important footnote to the town of Exeter. One of the things in your policy statements talks about the way in which planning should be done across the province. The one-shoe-fits-all-sizes approach here is something that bothers us.

In the town of Exeter we've got 4,300 people. If our growth is even 5% per year and we're out of servicing capacity, we have to plan for that growth. The policy guidelines require us to consider projected growth through statistical analysis. At 5% per year it's uneconomic for us to plan expansions on that kind of basis. Naturally our planning's going to be based on financial considerations. If it costs us $3 million to expand our sewage treatment system to grow 5% more per year for the next 20 years and only another $100,000 to grow at five times that rate, the municipality's going to spend the extra $100,000. Growth in small communities has very little to do with population projections. You can realize that at 4,300 people, all it would take would be one new industry or one new subdivision -- in other words, the opportunity to grow -- to completely throw projections out of whack.

We think you should consider the variations in municipalities across the province before saying that there's one way to do this work and it's this way. There are many ways to do this kind of work.

Our sixth point has to do not so much with the Planning Act but what's wrong with planning in general. We think that in rural Ontario, where municipal government has not been restructured, planning problems have more to do with structure than with the Planning Act. We think many of our problems have to do with boundary problems, they have to do with too many municipalities, many of which have insufficient resources to do all the work they must do as well as they should do it, and in some parts of Ontario we even think single-tier government may be worth considering. Local government in some parts of Ontario is too complicated for the population size and for the needs and can be simplified. If those things are done, that will advance the efforts of municipal planning as much as any changes in the Planning Act.

Our seventh point again has to do with municipal empowerment, or municipal autonomy. The Planning Act as proposed in 163 says that counties must do official plans and local municipalities may do official plans. We suggest that your interests should be that there be official plan or planning coverage across the province, that in some places a county plan only will suffice, two tiers of planning would be useful, or only local planning will do the trick for you. If you insist on two tiers of planning, it seems to me you're giving a degree of emphasis to county planning over local planning that may be inappropriate.

I guess I'd conclude that point by reading the last sentence in point 7: "The act should empower municipalities to do planning in a way that fits their needs and circumstances," and again, the one-shoe-fits-all approach doesn't seem to make sense to us.

The eighth point is relatively minor. It has to do with minor variances. Now, Exeter rather likes the idea of having appeals heard at the council level. This is a local matter and it should be left there.

There are a few glitches that perhaps should be addressed. For example, if a committee of adjustment includes a council member, it's hard to see that kind of appeal going to the council. We just think perhaps your staff can look at that issue and recommend some province-wide solutions to that particular point.

The ninth item has to do with something we call a threat to local autonomy and we're going to suggest an amendment to the act if it's going to proceed in the way it has started out. As you know, the act now allows and will allow a local municipality to do an official plan. A problem can arise, however, because of the fact that any county can require a county levy to pay for various county services. What can happen and has happened is that counties have charged full service, including a charge for local planning services not performed. There's nothing in law that prevents a county from doing that, and this has happened before. It's happening right now.

It seems to us that if a county provides a local planning service, that should be done only on an optional basis. To protect municipalities from arbitrary decisions of a county council to charge for a service not provided, a legislative amendment would be useful for consideration. That's contained on the top of page 7.

Those are the points we wanted to make on the Planning Act. We also had some points on the disclosure-of-interest section, if we can continue to that part. The main point is a general point, and that has to do with the concern that a small community has with respect to this kind of legislation. Small communities have part-time politicians, as you know, whose recompense is low and whose access to advice is limited. In those kinds of circumstances the natural concern that arises, not only in Exeter but in other small communities, is whether or not a more onerous or a more demanding disclosure requirement will discourage good candidates from running for municipal office.

That's the main point that Exeter wants to make. We're extremely concerned that requiring much more disclosure, in fact from our point of view intruding into matters that are rather private, will discourage people from running for municipal office, and in small communities that can be a problem.

We have a few specific points that we think might be worth considering under the disclosure section. In the first place, we think the role of the commissioner might be to give advice. We're a bit worried about the cost of getting advice, especially in new legislation. In the second place, if there is a ruling done by the commissioner that there is no conflict, we've noticed that there is an allowance for further appeal to the courts. We think once a ruling has been made that there's no contravention, that's where the matter should end.

We think also that there should be some allowance through the act for the suspension of penalty where a contravention has been made inadvertently.

We also think, finally, that the right of privacy is something that should be looked at. We don't have specific recommendations in that regard, but we think that's a very serious concern in small communities, where disclosure may discourage people from running for office.

We close by just underscoring that this is municipal legislation even though it's something the province is contemplating enacting, and because it's municipal legislation we have a very strong interest and a stake in the outcome of these discussions. We thank you very much for hearing our points and we hope you can take them into account as you conclude your work.

Mr McLean: I want to indicate to you that the first day of the hearings I asked the minister for a copy of the regulations. It seems impossible to get them, and yet in the Understanding Ontario's Planning Reform part of empowering the municipalities, it says there: "Counties must prepare an official plan within a scheduled time frame where required by regulation." Well, it would be kind of nice to know what time frame we're talking about here, whether it's two years, three years or five years. The parliamentary assistant said they're working on them, and perhaps if he's listening he could maybe give us what that time frame will be. Will it be three years or five years? Any idea?

Mr Hayes: To have the regulations?

Mr McLean: Yes, that they'll have to prepare an official plan, the county?

Mr Pat Hayes (Essex-Kent): Three years.

Interjection: Isn't it two?

Mr Philip McKinstry: I guess what we're doing there is, we really want to consult with the counties and think that issue through before we prescribe them. So that's why the regulations aren't available on that particular issue and why we haven't told the counties who actually is to have a plan.

Mr McLean: I see that you've read this legislation pretty well, because I see where you indicated that the two-tier may approve the official plan, and it will be interesting to see what happens there.

The plan for infrastructure, the issue that you raised, who pays: Well, that will be interesting, because I'm sure it'll be the local municipality that will be paying for any infrastructure work that goes on, whether it's the local government or the county. Is it your opinion that the county should pay? The county has the official plan. The county is going to be running kind of the infrastructure program. Would you feel it's the county or the lower-tier government that would pay?

0920

Mr Hundey: There are really two answers. One answer is, the county should pay if it's doing the planning. It only makes sense that if they're responsible for determining land use designations and associated servicing sizes and capacities, they should be paying for that. But on the other side of the coin, the community itself that is providing that service and then operating that service and the community which is growing around that service has the most interest in that particular matter. Despite the fact that I'm saying that if the county's doing the planning it should be paying, I believe that it's a local matter, especially in the county setting. It's a local concern. Therefore, it should be planned locally and financed locally. It's planned locally.

Mr McLean: The other question I have is with regard to the conflict-of-interest guidelines that are laid out. I really agree with you with regard to small-town Ontario. I know a case of a reeve of a village at the present time of probably 1,500 people who has a plumbing business. If he's going to have to disclose all of his business, it's going to be interesting, because metros are different from rural. Unfortunately, some people don't realize that, but it is the case. How would you determine the two differences and where would you cut off the population?

Mr Hundey: That is a difficult question to answer. One thought that springs to mind is the possibility that the determining factor could be whether the politicians are full- or part-time. A full-time politician is likely to have interests that are secondary to the day-to-day work that person does, whereas the part-time politician obviously has something else that consumes his or her time on a full-time basis. Maybe that could be one of the distinctions. And because of the fact that these are small communities, maybe the information only need generally be released and be more limited. I'm sorry, that's about the best I can say.

Mr McLean: So we're saying to the parliamentary assistant there should be some changes in that aspect of conflict.

Mr Hundey: I believe there should be.

The Chair: Mr Hayes wants to make a clarification.

Mr Hayes: I think we have to be very careful here that we don't put something out in public that really isn't there. Mr McLean used the example of the councillor who's a plumber. All that individual has to do is say, "I own this plumbing business," not go through all of his assets and things like that. That isn't there.

The other thing is, I can understand your concerns, small-town Ontario, which I come from myself, but we do know that 40% of the complaints of conflict of interest come from municipalities with less than 5,000 population. So I think that just because you're the big city doesn't mean you're more likely to get into a conflict than in a small municipality. It might be a small municipality, but they can get involved in some pretty expensive developments.

Mr David Winninger (London South): Mr Hayes actually covered part of the point I wanted to bring out on conflict of interest. For example, we as members of the Legislature have to comply with the conflict-of-interest act. We file with the conflict commissioner a lot of fairly detailed information regarding our principal residence, our mortgages, our RRSPs, our corporate interests, if we have them, bank accounts, but what actually gets published is just the fact that we have a principal residence, we have a mortgage, we have RRSPs, none of the details. So in a sense, a lot of that privacy that you're concerned about is actually protected; of course, subject to freedom of information and protection of privacy.

So I can't really see it as a serious deterrent to capable people running for municipal office. I think it's important that the point come out that all of your detailed personal affairs are not going to be an open book under this legislation, just that people who do have conflicts will be made aware when their judgement may place them in a very difficult and delicate situation that might warrant them either withdrawing from the debate or declaring their conflict of interest.

Mr Hundey: I understood that there would be unencumbered access to this information at the municipal level.

Ms Christel Haeck (St Catharines-Brock): Just that you have a mortgage, not that you have two mortgages worth a certain amount.

Mr Ron Eddy (Brant-Haldimand): But that means easily checking the actual -- you've got a mortgage --

The Chair: I'm sorry. Let's not get into that.

Mr Winninger: Maybe we could hear from the ministry, if there's time.

The Chair: Absolutely. I think we should.

Mr McLean: Let's have clarification on that.

The Chair: Do you have further clarification on the point we just raised? Please identify yourself.

Mr Peter-John Sidebottom: I'm Peter-John Sidebottom. The process to be followed for municipal members affected by Bill 163 would be a much simpler process because you wouldn't have to disclose, as a member of the Legislature does, all of the details, including dollar values, of all manner of things. The form that we sent out to all clerks in late May and early June described a very limited number of matters, and it is simply the existence of the asset, liability or source of income and not the value that must be recorded. That information is available to the public.

In a similar manner, members of the Legislature disclose to the commissioner. The commissioner then removes a large number of items, including the values, and the remaining information, such as property holdings, mortgages and so on, are then filed with the Clerk of the Legislature and are also available. So in both cases you have access to disclosure forms by any person.

The Chair: Sorry. Part of the problem is we're quickly running out of time. If there's further clarification, you can talk through that with the ministry staff person here. I'd like to move on and get the official opposition some questions.

Mr Eddy: Thank you for a very, very important brief. I'm somewhat irked, because we're dealing with three distinct and separate and very important municipal matters rolled into one bill, and there just isn't time to examine. Each one of them should have hearings, in my opinion. However, we'll move on.

Your brief is so important because it shows and reinforces the difference between rural Ontario and urban Ontario, and when I talk about urban, I'm talking about Metropolitan Toronto and Hamilton-Wentworth versus Haldimand-Norfolk and Huron county, where you're from. There are so many tremendous differences that aren't being taken into consideration and need to be. You mentioned about how the government governs, that we have statutes and of course innumerable amendments, regulations, policies, guidelines, and of course in the recent case of London-Middlesex, government by government whim, which is terrible.

However, I'm really interested in your point about planning for infrastructure, and I agree that in the rural counties you should have the option: official plans locally, county official plans, both, or only one, at one or the other level. So it's very important what you said about planning for infrastructure; therefore, that municipality should have an official plan and should plan. I would expect you would agree, however, that if you have an official plan locally, you would be subject to including the requirements of the upper tier in some regard, such as roads, transportation corridors and so many other things. Would you like to comment on that further, if I haven't taken all the time?

Mr Hundey: We'd agree with that. We believe that if there is a county interest, the local level has to take that into account in doing its plans.

The infrastructure that we were most concerned with had to do with the services, say, for an urban community: the underground services, the sewage treatment, the water treatment and the distribution and collection systems associated with those two kinds of systems. Those are very much local services, as opposed to the county roads that you might think of when it comes to county planning, and unless there were intermunicipal agreements between municipalities on some of those underground services, those are just individual local municipal issues which should be planned for at the local level.

In the regions, it's true, it's different. They do the planning and the financing for those major services at the upper tier, but it's not done that way in the counties. Moving that way and still insisting that local municipalities pay doesn't make sense to us.

Mr Eddy: I also want to note your particular point on the cost of county planning or a county planning operation where the local municipality actually does the planning. I note that and would certainly be prepared to look into that.

Mr Hundey: Thank you very much.

The Chair: Mr Spears and Mr Hundey, thank you very much for taking the time to come, and thank you for the brief.

0930

COUNTY OF PERTH

The Chair: We invite the County of Perth, Warden Bob Mathers and Mr Mark Swallow. Welcome to this committee. Please begin any time you're ready.

Mr Mark Swallow: First of all, I would like to apologize on behalf of Mr Dave Hanly, the planning director. He unfortunately is in front of an Ontario Municipal Board hearing today and is unable to attend.

I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to speak on both Bill 163 as well as a comprehensive set of policy statements which has been brought out by the province recently. The submissions have been endorsed by county council at its July 1994 session as well as by the county's community services committee.

Generally the county is supportive of many of the policies contained in Bill 163 and the provisions as they relate to the planning policy statements. However, there are some statements and concerns that the county wishes to express to this committee.

First of all, I would like to talk about Bill 163. The county is pleased to see that the provincial interests as set out in section 5 of the bill now include the protection of the agricultural resources in the province. Perth county is primarily an agricultural community. Most of the rural and urban settings within the county are based on agricultural economic activity and we are very pleased to find that it's now a provincial interest.

The county is also supportive of the land use planning at the county level and for this reason is supportive of the county plan initiative. Currently, Perth county is in the process of preparing a draft official plan for county council to review. This county-wide plan will hopefully be initiated over the next term of council expected in the new year.

One of the questions we have for the committee is that subsection 17(7) of the bill indicates that the official plan is mandatory for a prescribed county, yet the county of Perth does not know what a prescribed county is and would appreciate further clarification on this point.

The county of Perth is also pleased to see that the province is attempting to reintroduce joint planning into the planning process in Ontario. Prior to 1983, Perth county, which consists of 14 rural and urban municipalities, was planned under six official plans. Four of these plans were joint official plans and two were local plans. When the new Planning Act was introduced in 1983, the six official plans had to be broken up into 14 different individual plans. From the county point of view, this was viewed as a step backwards and was initiated in the last few days of 1985 at the requirement of the legislation.

Perth strongly supports the idea of reintroducing joint plans. However, there are some concerns that we do have with respect to the mechanisms or the specifics as set out in the act. Some of these are identified as including the fragmentation of the county into municipal planning areas. This may have the effect of totally undermining the county-wide planning philosophy which Perth has undertaken. Currently, although Perth does not have a county-wide official plan, it does provide planning services for all the local municipalities which are within the county framework.

We are also concerned that there is a distinction between regions and counties by not permitting municipal planning areas in regional municipalities. Should joint planning be reintroduced into the planning process in Ontario, the county strongly suggests that it must occur within the framework of county-wide planning as recommended by the Sewell commission and consistent with the requirements of the county plans in subsection 17(7) of the act.

In conjunction with this, the county is also concerned that subsection 14.3(5) indicates that a county levy for county land use planning purposes cannot be charged to local municipalities within a municipal planning area and allows local municipalities in a municipal planning area to opt out of county land use planning services. The county is opposed to this provision as it will result in a loss of consistency and the fragmentation of planning philosophies across broader areas having similar concerns. We also feel it will have a negative impact on the county's ability to provide cost-effective and efficient planning services over the long run. The county suggests that the province review and re-examine this issue with a view to permitting joint planning to operate within a county plan structure and within a county land use planning service structure.

Bill 163 does not appear to provide for delegation of local plan approvals and subdivision approvals to the county level. The county suggests that this is not acceptable and that the proposed legislation should be changed to make provisions for such delegation subject to acceptable criteria.

We also have some minor concerns with respect to the time frame suggested in the bill. Mr Sewell has suggested that he would like to streamline the planning process in Ontario, and the county has some concerns with respect to some of the increase in notice periods for severance applications from the current 14 days to 30 days, as well as an additional 30-day delay period between public meetings for official plan amendments and the adoption of that official plan amendment. The county would suggest that the 14-day notice for land severances should be retained and, further, that the 30-day delay period between the public meeting for an official plan amendment not be required in the case of simple or straightforward or technical amendments. Some kind of criteria could be established to determine what is simple and straightforward based on the local level and local need.

I'd also like to talk about the policy statements. Generally the county is supportive of most of the policy statements, but I would like to turn to policy statement B, the economic, community development and infrastructure policies. The county is concerned with the definition of "on-site systems" for private services and the "five lot rule," which will have the effect of shutting down most of the hamlet/village development in Perth county. Because of the relative size of the county, most of the subdivision proposals are in the range of 10 to 20 lots. Such lots are feasible economically to be developed by plan of subdivision but are not feasible to be developed on any other type of sanitary system except for private on-site services.

We're also disappointed that development on partial services will not be permitted under the goals of the guidelines. There are several examples in Perth county which have private water supply systems and which are communal in nature or owned by the municipality, and private individual on-site sanitary services which have worked well within the county system. The county is suggesting that the option for partial services should continue to be allowed.

0940

Item 8(c) permits the continued expansion of settlement areas under class 1, 2 and 3 agricultural lands. While this provision is consistent with the Sewell commission's recommendations, the county has expressed its opposition to this provision to the Sewell commission in the past and continues to be opposed to same. In the simplest terms, the provision does nothing to protect the class 1, 2 and 3 agricultural lands surrounding urban areas; it merely delays the inevitable development of same. The county suggests that the province should be re-examining this issue and taking a stronger stand in respect to the preservation and protection of such agricultural lands.

The county also is requesting clarification if item 10(a) is intended to permit residential development on isolated pockets of poor farm land in areas consisting primarily of prime agricultural land.

Statement D, item 1, of the policy statement permits the extension of settlements into prime agricultural areas in a manner similar to that referred to above, section 2(c) of our brief. While the county is not supportive of the province's attempt to shut down development in hamlet/village areas, it does have concerns regarding continued, unchecked development of hamlets and villages on to prime agricultural land. The county suggests that the province re-examine this issue with a view to establishing a middle ground position between the two extremes, somewhere between the no growth scenario versus the unchecked growth scenario.

Item 3 of the policy statement appears to be flawed in that it makes no allowance for the severance of land for a bona fide agriculturally related business. This is a minor point, but it's extremely important in the Perth county context. With the words "existing agricultural businesses," it implies that a new agricultural business must establish on a larger parcel of land and then be willing to take some risk in trying to sever that existing business from that 100-acre parcel. The county suggests that item 3 be revised in order to permit the severance of lands for bona fide agriculturally related businesses.

Item 3 also makes provision for the creation of farm retirement lots. The county feels strongly that farm retirement lots should not be permitted, as they fragment farm properties, result in the creation of non-farm residential lots and unduly restrict neighbouring farm land by limiting options for agricultural use. The creation of farm retirement lots in the county of Perth has been virtually eliminated since 1968 through appropriate official plan policy restrictions. The county is requesting that the provisions allowing for farm retirement lots be removed from the policy or, alternately, that

the policy state that local councils have the right to enact provisions restricting the creation of farm retirement lots.

Item 5 of the policy statement requires that new development comply with the minimum distance separation formula of the Agricultural Code of Practice. The county has concerns over this provision due to the fact that the revised Agricultural Code of Practice does result in greater separation distances from some agricultural activities. These increased distances will result in situations where legal conforming livestock operations become non-conforming operations and as such will now be subject to new constraints and/or restrictions. The county has previously expressed its concerns to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs in response to the county's review of the Agricultural Code of Practice.

With respect to policy statement G, the county supports the statement that "Nothing in these policies is intended to prevent planning authorities from going beyond the minimum standards established in any of these policies, unless doing so would conflict with any other policy statement." As noted above, the creation of farm lots is not welcome in Perth county. We suggest that this statement in its present form may result in the provincial policy statements being waved in front of the county of Perth, advising that the provincial policy is that farm retirement lots are permitted. The county would suggest this statement would be improved and strengthened considerably by indicating that the minimum standards should not be used against local municipalities in any planning matter appeal situation where that municipality has chosen to implement more restrictive standards.

In summary, the county would like to thank the province for the opportunity to comment on Bill 163 and the related planning statements. The county has taken an active role in commenting on provincial initiatives in the past and we continue to hope to do so in the future. The county respectfully requests that any notice of any follow-up changes to Bill 163 and related policy statements that may be forthcoming be brought to our attention for our further review.

Ms Haeck: I want to thank the county of Perth for coming forward. I want to take this opportunity actually to compliment you on some of the stands that your county has taken over some time, as you mention on page 4, relating to farm lot severances, the retirement lots, because that's definitely still a very contentious issue in my own area of Niagara, and definitely the farm community is divided on that issue. It's nice to see that for some length of time your county has been able to move ahead and I think develop a good strategy for farming in that regard.

It should be pointed out that what you mention in (c) of your brief you can do, and anything else, what you mention on page 2 as well -- excuse me, not page 2, page 3, in (c), the fact that you can take the steps. The municipality, the county can take the steps required to limit the development on agricultural land. It's a matter that there is that flexibility there for you with regard to those points.

Some of my other colleagues may want to ask some questions or make some comments, but I did want to point out that in a meeting with the Ontario Clean Water Agency myself, I raised some issues about alternatives relating to sewer and water, and definitely the Ministry of Environment and Energy is funding at least a pilot project in my own area which is a constructed wetland dealing with sewage treatment, and definitely within the next few years there will be a range of alternatives available to communities across the province that will save you, as a county, money, as well as the taxpayer, and provide green solutions. So I think we just have to at this point realize that there are going to be a range of possibilities.

I'll turn it over to my colleagues.

Mr Wiseman: I'm interested in perhaps your expanding on where you say, "The county suggests that the province should be re-examining this issue and taking a stronger stand in respect to the preservation and protection of such agricultural lands." Perhaps you could clarify that. I would think the only stronger stand we could say is that you won't build on it, period, put a dot at the end and say that's it. How do we --

Mr Swallow: I think one of the solutions would be for the province to recognize that in some settlement areas which are in prime agricultural lands, there are constraints on that settlement area. I would think that an option would be that the province must recognize that because of the agricultural land use around the area, other constraints such as receiving streams, for example, the opportunity for further growth is not a right; it's something that needs to be directed into some areas which are best suited for growth.

Mr Wiseman: I sure wish that philosophy was present in Durham region, because just about the whole area is prime agricultural land, and the local councils and the regional council have this philosophy of growth at all costs. So I applaud that comment. I wish it was more prevalent throughout the province, especially in my area where it's a high-growth area, all of it on prime agricultural land.

Mr Grandmaître: One question, Mr Chair, and then Mr Eddy will follow up. Maybe my question should be addressed to the parliamentary assistant. It's concerning subsection 17(7). As pointed out in Perth's brief, Bill 163 indicates that an official plan is mandatory for a prescribed county. The legislation contains no specifics as to which counties in the province are prescribed. Mr Parliamentary Assistant, can you give me the criteria needed to become a prescribed county?

Mr Hayes: Mr Grandmaître, one of the things that we have to do and we have committed ourselves to do is to consult with all of the counties before it's done. Then of course this would be also a task for the implementation task force. We're not just going to come and arbitrarily do it; we're going to be discussing this with the counties.

Mr Grandmaître: This will be done by December.

Mr Hayes: Yes, we plan on doing that.

Mr Eddy: Thank you for your presentation. Just following up on what the parliamentary assistant has said and your point made on page 2, item (d), pointing out the differences between regions and counties, it's discrimination, there's no doubt about it, but I'm very pleased to hear the approach that the ministry has taken. I think what we need to do is have some set rules pertaining to the delegation of authority, that delegation of authority will happen under certain stated rules so that those municipalities that want to have that can then, if they meet the rules, go. So I'm pleased to hear about that.

0950

I'm also pleased to see that your brief points out the big difference between rural Ontario and urban Ontario. There are tremendous differences.

I'm a bit confused about the joint planning situation, because although you seem to be coming out strongly in favour of it, you certainly have some cautions. Is it your fear that certain municipalities will be lopped off, so to speak, from county planning and go with other areas? I know you have two separated municipalities. Perth county is a medium-sized county, with the separated city of Stratford and the separated town of St Marys. Do you see joint planning facilitating planning between the separateds and the county? Is that what you favour, and the caution is having some of the rurals leave the county for planning purposes to go someplace else?

I did have one point I just want to stick in, because I've run out of time, and that's enacting provisions restricting the provision of farm retirement lots. I also compliment you on doing that. There's going to be more realization because after several generations, and you get several retirement lots off a farm -- it shows the folly of it, I have to say, in time, considering that retirement lots are a maximum of five years in the name of the retiree and then they're gone to something else.

But it's the joint planning thing that I'd like you to comment on further, if you will.

Mr Swallow: Previously, the county had joint planning. It works.

Mr Eddy: With the city and the town?

Mr Swallow: With planning areas about the local municipalities --

Mr Eddy: Within the county.

Mr Swallow: -- within the county. The city of Stratford is completely separated from the county --

Mr Eddy: And should it stay that way, do you think?

Mr Swallow: -- and there are efforts right now with a joint planning committee of the city and the four surrounding townships, through an informal Stratford and area planning advisory committee, which does make recommendations on planning issues.

The town of St Marys, although separated, does buy the planning functions from the county --

Mr Eddy: Oh, good.

Mr Swallow: -- so we do have the ability to coordinate some of the local interests from the town with the county interests. Of course, there's always a political line to follow on that.

The concern that the county has with joint planning is not the fact that local municipalities will be encouraged to plan jointly; it's the mechanisms and the costs involved with how we are going to implement that. If we have four or five townships which get together and decide that they are going to be a planning area, how does the county manage to retain its county function if that group of municipalities decides not to employ the services of the county planning service? That's where our concern is, this fragmentation that may result if the four or five or six local planning boards then decide some will use the planning services of the county, some will use private consultants or some will hire their own planners.

Mr Eddy: At the present time the county does provide the planning service for all of the constituent municipalities.

Mr Swallow: That's correct, and generally speaking, the joint planning functions in the county are still in existence. They have their own separate official plans, but with the exception of perhaps the township name, they're almost identical and they still have informal joint planning committees.

Mr Eddy: I see. Thank you.

Mr McLean: I welcome you this morning and thank you for your brief. There's one area that concerns me too. I have a lot of hamlets and villages in my riding, Simcoe East, which is north of Orillia, or Orillia and area. You're asking that there be some middle ground between the two extremes. We have villages that have sewage systems, we have villages that don't and we have hamlets where most don't have sewage systems. What recommendations would you make with regard to some middle ground on that?

Mr Swallow: I think in the Perth county context there has been some realization that many of the municipalities that don't have services are in a very difficult situation where they need to expand because they are the retirement communities of the farm area. The local farmers are retiring to these spots. They have always lived in the area and these hamlets serve no other function than retirement lots. They're not bedroom communities for London or Stratford. There's just not that much pressure for that type of activity.

The middle ground would be for the local municipalities to recognize the constraints of some of these hamlets. They recognize that there's limited development in some areas. Many of the subdivisions which are proposed are 10 to 20 lots and they are that size because of costs involved with the installation of services such as roads and storm sewers and perhaps a water supply. They're not developed and built upon overnight. These 10 to 20 lots may exist for five, 10 or 20 years.

Mr McLean: Do you think a secondary plan would help resolve some of that situation, spelled out in the plan?

Mr Swallow: In the county context, the idea of a secondary plan would probably not be needed. The size of the hamlets is not that large. Many of them are 40 or 50 people in size.

Mr McLean: Do you think you could do it in the county official plan? Does your county have an official plan?

Mr Swallow: The county does not have an official plan, but all of the local municipalities have official plans.

Mr McLean: My colleague wants a clarification from the parliamentary assistant.

Mrs Cunningham: Mr Chairman, I hope this is related, but I was just noticing that Mr Hanly's off doing something else today. You're director of planning?

Mr Swallow: Yes.

Mrs Cunningham: I have a question with regard to the planners. It's been brought to my attention with regard to the Advisory Task Force on Implementing Planning Reform that the planners, the Ontario Professional Planners Institute, are not represented on this. That's my understanding. If somebody could even make a note, I'd like a response.

They're tremendously involved, as we all know, in the work that all of us are concerned about and they're pretty good at bringing a lot of different ideas together. They did make a request that they be on the task force, and I'm just wondering if the parliamentary assistant knows if there's been any movement in that area.

Mr Hayes: My understanding is that, yes, they are on the technical parts of the task force. So they are included and will have input, yes.

Mrs Cunningham: Okay. Representation along with the other three groups then?

Mr Hayes: You want to just make sure you get it right?

Mrs Cunningham: Yes, I want to make sure it's right because I have to answer this today.

Mr Hayes: That's right. And I don't want to give wrong answers.

Mr McKinstry: We heard a lot about the fact that there are a number of groups who are not represented on the task force, and we also felt that it would be very helpful to have a lot of professional expertise and advice for the government. So as an adjunct to the task force the technical committee was set up, and the technical committee contains membership from people like the Ontario professional planners association, the architects' association, lawyers, municipalities.

We also set up a rural table to make sure that there would be advice being given to the government from the rural sector. This was our way of making sure that we got all the input while still allowing the groups to be small enough to function effectively, because they have a lot of work to do. We are depending on them for lots and lots of work.

Mrs Cunningham: Okay. Now, they'll probably be pleased with the information, which they probably already have, but their request was that they wanted representation on the advisory task force on implementation comparable to that given to AMO, the development industry and environmental interest groups. The response that you've given is that they are a subgroup of that but not on the task force itself.

Mr McKinstry: They're not exactly a subgroup, they're a parallel group. So they don't report through the task force. The task force gives the government advice; the technical committee also gives the government advice. But we felt that the technical committee, being made up of mainly professional folks, would be helpful. They could discuss things on a more detailed level than the task force might. OPPI is a very valuable institution for us.

Mrs Cunningham: Yes. I thank you for the clarification.

The Chair: Mr Swallow and Mr Mathers, we thank you for your participation in these hearings.

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SANDY LEVIN

The Chair: We call upon Sandy Levin. Welcome, Mr Levin. Please begin when you are ready.

Mr Sandy Levin: Thank you for the opportunity to present. I'm no stranger to this bill and to planning in the area, having made a number of presentations on annexation, and I recognize members of the government and the opposition parties. I also appeared before the Sewell commission twice. I'm keenly interested in the outcome because, one way or another, I'm going to have to live with this bill.

I'm past chair of the Urban League of London, which is an umbrella group for neighbourhood associations which often find themselves at city hall discussing planning issues. I'm also one of two provincial appointees to the board of the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority, and this bill will certainly affect section 28 approvals under the Conservation Authorities Act. Finally, I'm also a candidate for city council in London, and therefore I'm going to have to live with this for a long time to come.

Let me start by commenting on the provincial policy statements.

In part A, goal 1.4, it troubles me to see the phrase, "Every reasonable opportunity should be taken to maintain the quality of air, land, water," and so forth. When the province is talking about natural heritage and environmental protection, there are two problems here: One, the policy says every reasonable opportunity "should" be taken, rather than "shall" and, two, who defines "reasonable"? Without a clear, upfront definition, it will be up to case law and various cases going before the OMB to define the meaning. By that time, who knows what we're going to lose?

I'm also curious to know how part A, goal 2, stands against the Drainage Act. The Drainage Act may be the pre-eminent piece of legislation in this area and sometimes a wetland stands little chance in its wake. So can somebody sort out how that's going to work if this bill becomes law?

Also in part A, I'm interested in knowing how the government sees goal 2.2 working out. How will the policy encourage municipalities to protect wetlands that are not provincially significant? Where's the incentive? Without an incentive, London in particular is going to lose many wetlands that are not classes 1 to 3. I say this because there's no positive incentive, nor a negative disincentive, for the municipality or the developer to protect the lands. Is there some direction this legislation can offer?

As far as part A, goal 2.4, dealing with environmental impact studies, the bill doesn't set out procedures for an EIS. The established procedures should be driven by policy or by legislation and not by the proponents. Are there some means to set up a mechanism by which the proponent, the municipality and citizens can meet to define the terms of reference for the EIS? It has talked about a lot more group participation in other areas and minimizing appeals to the OMB. Why not here as well?

It would also be useful to require that an EIS have a public review stage before approval. Concerns brought forward by the public would then be part of the documentation, as is the case with the environmental assessment process.

I am, however, pleased to see there's a monitoring plan that will be included in the preparation of the EIS.

Moving on to part B of the policy statements, it seems to me that the province's transit supportive land use planning guidelines do not seem to be included anywhere. The closest reference to transit supportive land use planning is part B, sections 5 and 6 of the policy statements. They sound good, but there's no monitoring and no clear idea as to who gets to define what "efficient use of land" means. I'm puzzled why such a well- researched guideline wasn't integrated into policy.

I'm also puzzled by B.7. How do cities plan servicing facilities that maintain or enhance the quality of the natural environment? London's going through that process right now and I'm not sure that if a pipe that moves sewage most efficiently is down a river or creek valley, by gravity rather than by pump, that maintains or enhances the quality of the natural environment. I'm not sure how we're going to define those things. If it's more expensive to put the pipe in another way that does enhance the environment, which policy takes priority, A or B? Without clear priorities within the policy statements, there's no direction to the municipalities. That's the important part of the policy statements: to give the direction to the municipalities.

It's of some concern that the section on interpretation and implementation states that these policy statements do not take priority over other policy statements. I interpret that to mean that, even internally, no policy has priority over the other. You've got to address that at some point, because how else do you resolve conflicts between, say, policy A and policy F, which can be mutually exclusive? How do you resolve it?

I'm also looking forward to seeing how B.10(a)(iv) will look. This section deals with development within rural areas within a municipality. It sure sounds a lot like London. However, who's going to assess the long-term, public costs of infrastructure, public services and public facilities, and then who decides what's acceptable? Whose numbers do we use? If a goal is not measurable, it's not much of a goal. I note there are lots of definitions in the policy statements; there's room for more.

Policy B.13 deals with significant landscapes and vistas. It's sort of a "nice, but" section, because the wording currently says "decisions about development and infrastructure should conserve" rather than "shall."

Conservation policies in E also need to be tightened up here because many paragraphs start with "municipalities should be planned." My question is, if municipalities aren't planned in the manner set out by policy, what happens? Where are the means of enforcement? Because some of these measurements are subjective.

Maybe one way to deal with that is through a commissioner responsible for receiving information from the public when the intentions are seen to be inconsistent. Maybe the Environmental Bill of Rights commissioner could fulfil that function, rather than setting up another bureaucracy, if you will.

Now, before I leave the policies and move on to the changes to the act, I want to suggest one new thing. I think it's a really good time to include enabling legislation, startup funding and technical assistance for the purchasing of land through community land trusts. Alternatively, make it easy to put a referendum on a ballot so that citizens could vote to float debenture issues to pay for conservation easements.

This has worked successfully in the Philadelphia area. We pay for services as a community; why not for land? They've saved farm land and natural areas in several places in North America, including California and Pennsylvania, Lancaster county in particular. It provides the financial compensation, that financial incentive to save the land.

Amendments to the act: Clause 16(a) refers to the content of an OP and it suggests that OPs "shall contain goals, objectives...to manage and direct physical change and the effects on the social, economic and natural environment." However, clause (b) says that an OP "may contain a description of the measures and procedures...." Therefore without (b), (a) is somewhat irrelevant.

Section 16 also amends the act such that the OP content requirements will be contained in yet-to-be-written regulation. Too bad, because the Sewell commission's final report contains sound ideas in recommendations 32, 35 and 45. I wonder if everybody's waiting for London's Vision 96 process to guide the regulation writers. Let me know, because I'm the chair of the economic development advisory committee and I've got some input into that too.

Section 21 of he act should contain a provision that municipalities undertake a general OP review every five years. I would like to recommend that the section include a provision that municipalities may defer an application for a major plan amendment until a general plan review is completed so that we look at things in a comprehensive manner, which is the goal of the Planning Act.

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Could you also please clarify section 22. I'm concerned that if I'm reading this one way, it may deny the right to a public meeting. If so, coupled with the denial of appeal rights in sections 29, 38 and 41, we may have some problems here. The denial of appeal rights never came up in any of the hearings in the Sewell commission, so it seems to suggest that if you miss the public meeting you may lose your right to appeal.

I'm wondering how that might apply to conservation authorities. For example, London sends a liaison to the Upper Thames here. The Upper Thames responds but isn't always at the public meeting. If they miss the public meeting, do they lose the appeal right? I'm not so sure.

I'm also concerned about the impact for the public more so than for the conservation authorities and the people who know there's a process. Unfortunately, most people don't know the rules of the game because they don't know the planning process has rules. For example, I've sat at many a planning committee meeting when a neighbourhood resident has said, "If I'd only known before." Public notification to only those residents within 120 metres and one notice in a paper come across as being somewhat secretive.

Although a 90-day appeal period is good for some, I'd only accept that change if the act was amended to require more public notice. I've felt for a long time that posting onsite of a notice of application to amend the OP or the zoning bylaw, which you see in a lot of municipalities in this province, should be mandatory because better information means better decision-making, fewer appeals, fewer conflicts. But if the government feels that the present process is sound, then maybe the act should require the chair of the planning committee or the planning board to have appeal procedures posted prominently or announced to the public attending the public meeting.

I'm also concerned that appeals to the OMB could be denied if the request is not a valid land use planning ground. It's not defined. Because there are widely differing views on what's good planning, I'd suggest deleting the phrase, because "frivolous or vexatious" has captured the meaning and intention well enough up to now.

I'd be less concerned, however, if the province were to carry out the recommendation in the Sewell commission to provide intervenor funding. It's essential because cases are still going to go to the OMB and the cost of hiring competent counsel is excessive. For example, here in London a developer had plans to build an intensive concrete development just outside the 120 metres adjacent to lands of the class 2 wetland, 10 minutes from where we're sitting. To fight this, local ratepayers retained counsel and the bill's over $30,000. Without intervenor funding, how's the public interest going to be heard? Most proponents have more funding than concerned citizens. Even AMO and the Ontario Home Builders' Association supported this idea. I would suggest one way to raise the money, knowing full well about financial difficulties, is levies on the development application. Such levies will only be paid if the proponents don't engage in a meaningful public consultation early in the planning process, as I recommended a little earlier.

Moving on to section 70.2: I'm a little in the dark on this one because all the details are going to come out in the regs. It deals with the development permit system. I'm concerned about the public input going into that. Please continue to consult the public in that process while you're doing that because the regs may have some significant impact on the rest of the legislation.

I'd also like to recommend an amendment to part IV of the act which would prohibit pre-approval site alteration or site alterations in contravention of terms and conditions of approval. It's also essential that municipalities be required to establish a permit system to regulate tree cutting, vegetation removal, changes in grade, placement and removal of fill.

Within this proposed system you must give private citizens the right to apply to the courts for injunctive relief in cases of unauthorized site alterations. I'm concerned because it doesn't appear that a new Trees Act is going to be passed during the mandate of this government, and without the legislative authority, separated cities like London are relatively helpless to stop the clearing. We've had cases in this city over the last little while. If the committee feels amending section 7 is inappropriate, section 223.1 of the Municipal Act could also suffice here.

In winding down, I'd like to make one comment on the Municipal Act and the conflict-of-interest guidelines. I note the change in the Municipal Act in section 55 to make votes on in camera items open to the public, but I'm not so sure how the public's going to know when the votes are going to be taken, because we're excluded during in camera discussions. So if a vote's recorded and the context isn't there, how do I know what's happened?

The conflict-of-interest guidelines: I'm not too worried about them as a candidate. I think we all gain when municipal politicians file some financial information for the public record. I'm not so sure if you ever have any idea if everything's in there.

In conclusion, nearly a year ago a meeting of the land use caucus of the Ontario Environment Network had publicly asked the minister if we'd see amendments to the Planning Act during this mandate of the government. To his credit, he gave a direct one-word answer: yes. And we got them. I congratulate him and the government for bringing the changes forward and allowing continued public input.

Although I have mentioned areas for improvement in the bill, many parts of this bill are sound. There are still some gaps. It doesn't incorporate many important proposals of Sewell developed after extensive and wide public participation and consensus and it also leaves many of us wondering what the unwritten regulations will contain. As no piece of legislation is perfect, especially in a province as diverse as Ontario, I look forward to this committee's bringing forward substantive improvements to the bill. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Levin. I know that many members would have liked to ask you questions and that you would have liked to get answers to many of your questions. We just don't have the time.

Mr Levin: I understand.

The Chair: But we found your brief very, very interesting and we thank you for coming.

SUSAN SMITH

The Chair: We invite Susan Smith. Welcome.

Ms Susan Smith: Thank you very much. Sandy Levin's a very tough act to follow at any time. I'm sorry you didn't have an opportunity to ask him questions.

My presentation will be a little bit different. My button says "Elect Aunt Susie to Board of Control." I'm a registered candidate for municipal council in London. I wasn't able to pull my presentation off the computer, so please try to ignore the shuffling of paper and the lack of eye contact as I find my points in my sheaf of papers.

My first comment: Please pass this bill. The over four years of looking at disclosures of interest and conflicts of interest and the archaic legislation we've had have been a pretty good four years of thorough review. In addition, the almost three years of input to the processes, including the Sewell commission, I think speak well to getting on with the job with a majority government mandate term of office.

Planning's a difficult area of public policy. There are really strongly competing interests in the area of land use: municipalities; the provincial interests; builders; land developers; community developers; ratepayers; private property owners of small properties; residential dwelling and private property owners of large, vast amounts of property with varieties of zoning on them; also environmentalists. Then we have those who believe land use stewardship for intergenerational equity and interspecies equity is the most exigent planning exercise to which human beings could ever be called as an academic exercise.

I'll start with the section on conflict of interest and open local government. I think that's a really important area to pass. I've looked at the draft, if you have it in your packages, of the disclosure form and I have a few comments on it. My personal view is that it is not open enough. Under income sources I would like you to consider adding income sources including inheritance, lottery winnings, mutual funds and pensions, some of which are taxable, some of which are not. I say this in the context of forms 292 and 266 under the Income Tax Act, which treat a part of earned income from a political job, an elected position, with some form of tax-free status.

I think the wisdom for that has passed. I appreciate it's not in your jurisdiction; it is strictly federal law, but I believe that time has passed. I believe it can't be defended on the basis of merit, and the context in which I make the comments about a very demanding disclosure of financial information is that the positions you yourselves fill are most often filled by people who come out of municipal councils in Ontario. So, that is in the context of one who is running for office.

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I'll go briefly to some of the issues of policies. I won't be the first person or the last person to tell you that there appears to be some fine-tuning that you will have to look at. I'll give you a theoretical example. We have pre-existing policies that aren't going to be revisited. In the biggest context of the framework that I've talked about, in terms of intergenerational land use planning for sustainability, part of a water supply would be the first issue I would ask you to consider.

Within that context and in the micro of living in southwestern Ontario, some day, perhaps not in my lifetime, as people live here and not in other parts of the globe, the supply of potable water is going to be a serious consideration to maintain, not only not wanting to have desiccated wilds, not wanting to have groundwater sources and extensive moraines contaminated with highly stable toxic chemicals that certainly will not be organically broken down. The supply of potable water is a very strategic thing to plan for. If I were to consider myself, in 1994, in southwestern Ontario to be an urban survivalist planning to make sure we have a source of potable water, it's very species-centric to want to think that human beings will continue to be in this little corner of the globe. But I think it's a consideration that is not too far removed from the exercise that you practise.

Therefore, looking at connected greenway, flyway space for birds of upland hardwood, is also significant for retaining upland hardwood that is found on top of mineral aggregate. Now, we're in 1994. I believe we have the technology. Certainly there's the collective brainpower to do things like find recycled materials to build roads. There is a possibility to actually sterilize aggregate, and I think that the application of policies can consider looking at that. This might be the next generation of consideration after you pass this bill, but it is not immune, to be visited as an intellectual exercise in considering why you would want to take that into consideration.

Similarly, the Drainage Act: A cynic who doesn't own private property might say it's pre-servicing. I think that in my lifetime, from what I've seen of industrial activity and agricultural activity, I consider agricultural activity to be a subset of industrial activity. Therefore, the exercise of requiring official plans, remarking current land use and its economic value and balancing that against the ecosystem imperative I tried to explain earlier, is the framework in which you look at this.

The biggest challenge is creating the supportive databases, both the ecosystem, biological databases, and human activity databases. For that I would suggest including landfills, railway lands, military sites, certainly military sites next to railway lands with respect to certain types of hazardous materials that you would want to take into account when doing any kind of land use planning, including considering sterilizing the land for a period of time for specific uses. I think again that gets to the intergenerational issue of how far ahead you really have to be prepared to look at issues.

There are wonderful things in this bill: planning boards for unorganized areas, and the best example I can cite is out of -- not an AMO document. North Bay just got a landfill site. They went through all the processes, and where they finally got the landfill site was of course in an unorganized territory.

I think there is a lot of equity built into this bill: respecting areas of land where there's a very sparse population on it as well as areas that are already organized and have a great deal of human activity giving input to public policymaking for land use.

I'd like to be specific about a few finer points. I don't believe minor variances should be appealable to the OMB. I believe that private property ownership doesn't necessarily have to be an ethic subsidized by all kinds of people in this province who have all kinds of equity and are stakeholders and don't own private property at this time. I believe that's one of the ways of building equity into that.

I want to get back to the issue of unorganized areas and where planning can be certainly devolved to other approval authorities. I think the basis of that is the opportunity to have a good database of geographic information. I think that's really essential and that is where the focus should be. I am personally a proponent of devolving more responsibility to the local authority. One example is that I believe the commissioner, under open local government, should be paid not by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs but on our local tax base. I think that is one of the easiest places to ask the electorate to spend money, to have their money spent in that area. I think it's quite appropriate that the local municipality pay for that role. It's a very essential role.

Similarly, I think with a lot of geographic information systems, given that it's 1994 and we have the technology -- even though I can't pull my report off a printer -- the opportunity to share information and having something like registries is really appropriate, really useful and verifiable. This is the information age. It is not the property ownership age.

An analysis that I will give you of how intergenerationally I look at this issue is to look at another part of the globe in another era, before I was born, when geographic information was used to make a political decision in South Africa about all kinds of things. I don't think there's anybody in this room who didn't have a very clear recognition, through the majority of their lives, how inappropriate certain aspects of power and control over land were, and systems that were not democratic were not very appropriate human activities. As one who has not a great deal of respect for the common law of private property ownership, I think the era that I live in requires all of us to look at other considerations.

I don't want to be piggy with the time, so if anybody has questions, I've just highlighted probably the most contentious of some of my positions but I'd be happy to answer questions.

The Chair: We thank you. If we entered into questions, it would be a problem because there are only approximately two minutes left. So I'd rather --

Mr McLean: Half a minute each. All I want is 30 seconds.

The Chair: I'm not sure about 30 seconds, unless you want to make a point as opposed to raising a question.

Mr McLean: At this point the commissioner, you say, should be paid by the local municipalities. Are you in favour of raising taxes in London to pay for the commissioner?

Ms Smith: Yes, I am, and for a number of other reasons too. But yes, I am.

The Chair: Any other quick ones?

Mr Eddy: Yes. Thank you for your presentation. We can't ask questions, but there are several things that I'm very, very interested in. I do want to emphasize the difference between rural and urban planning. I think we have to do some things to meet those different circumstances.

I was afraid when you first spoke of the Planning Act -- "Get on and pass it," I just wanted to say I think everyone here has agreed we need improvements to the present Planning Act. We want and need them and I expect the act to be going forward. It's some of the details, and you certainly elaborated on several.

Ms Smith: May I please respond? I do say get on and pass it. I've been of the understanding that when you were the administrator for Middlesex county you were not recommending an official plan for the county.

Mr Eddy: The county has had an official plan for many years; a county official plan. I can give you a copy of it. It's been approved by the ministry back in 1982 or 1983. Jean Monteith was the consultant.

The Chair: They have a plan.

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Ms Smith: No, no, you did have a plan. I'm sorry; what I meant to say was that you didn't want, or somebody didn't want, to raise taxes to hire a planner. I have tremendous respect for that profession; I feel it should be shuffled right to the top of this whole process, including on the technical committee.

Mr Eddy: Mr Chairman, I have to respond to this. I have the report. I'm sorry, but the report went to county council, and I can get the date and the year. There was a vote, it lost by one vote, and it was to hire a planner, a staff planner, who would do economic development, because it's the only way we seem to get it together. I can give you a copy of the report and I fully supported it.

The Chair: That's quite clear, Mr Eddy. If there's anything further, you can talk to each other afterwards.

Thank you, Ms Smith, for your presentation.

NORFOLK FIELD NATURALISTS

The Chair: We invite Norfolk Field Naturalists, Ms Jackie Davis and Mr Peter Carson and Mrs Nancy Tilt. Welcome to this committee. You have half an hour for your presentation. If you want the members to ask you questions, please leave as much time as you can.

Ms Jackie Davis: Yes, we shall. Thank you very much. I'm sorry I have to take my glasses off and can't look at you directly.

Mr Chairman and committee members, on behalf of the Norfolk Field Naturalists I welcome this opportunity to talk with you about Bill 163. Before I go any further, I would like to introduce my colleagues Mrs Nancy Tilt, who is a biologist and chairman for the Halton ecological and environmental advisory committee, and Mr Peter Carson, a biologist and member of the Norfolk Field Naturalists, both of whom are our technical consultants and will answer questions at the end of this presentation.

Historically, the main objectives of naturalist groups have been to observe, study and appreciate the various life forms -- plant and animal. The approach by both professionals and amateurs has been to isolate species and to study them individually, but this approach is no longer adequate for our greater understanding of the natural world, though it is still necessary for some kinds of information collection.

Students of nature are embracing a systems approach to the study of natural history: What are the parts of the system and how do these parts fit together? The focus of the naturalist/ecologist then becomes the ecosystems in which a species functions. That of course involves its whole environment: air, earth, water and other species, including humans.

As naturalists we look at whole ecosystems and environments, not just a particular species which may have originally attracted our interest. We have seen that an impact in one part of a system has repercussions in a distant other part. That other part may be the songbirds we treasure, the fish we want to catch, the game we want to hunt, the special plants we want to see or even ourselves. The naturalist becomes the environmentalist.

My comments are directed towards how Bill 163 has an impact on some environmental protection issues. My talk will touch on three areas of Bill 163: the statement of purpose, the public notification process and public involvement. It is easiest to start at the beginning, so I will start with section 1.1 of the Planning Act amendment, the purpose.

Whenever I must make a decision, I always go back to the basic premise, to the primary assumptions, to the reasons or purpose for the exercise at hand. I frequently go so far as to write them out and stick them on my desk lamp so I can glance up and read them and check that I am on course, that I am not deviating from my intended purpose.

Were I to do that with the purpose as written in the Planning Act amendment, I would be hard pressed to know that one of my guiding principles is to maintain and protect the natural environment. When I read clause 1.1(a) on page 3 of the amendment, the purpose is "to promote sustainable economic development in a healthy natural environment within the policy and by the means provided under this act." I know that the phrase "sustainable economic development" has much more weight in this statement than does the phrase "in a healthy natural environment," in spite of the excellent protection policies, most of which we fully support.

Let's simply look at the intent of the sentence from the way it is meant to be read and understood. The purpose of the act is "to promote sustainable economic development." That is the main idea: to promote sustainable economic development. "In a healthy environment within the policy and by the means provided under this act" is only a modifying phrase. The healthy natural environment is less important here than sustainable economic development. Sustainable economic development does not necessarily maintain or create a natural healthy environment.

For example, a pine plantation is a sustainable economic development. Pine trees are planted, are left to grow for several years and then are harvested. If so desired, the process can then be stated all over again. It is sustainable, it is economically viable and it is a development. However, it neither creates nor maintains a healthy natural environment. Pine plantations are sterile environments. They have very limited species diversity.

"To promote sustainable economic development" is enshrined in the purpose of the act, is defensible on that ground and has the power of all Parliament behind it, whereas "a healthy natural environment" is maintained only through ministerial policies which, though very strong, can be more easily changed than the act itself, either by legal challenge or change in the government.

Throughout the hearings held by the Commission on Planning and Development Reform in Ontario, that is, the Sewell commission, strong voices were raised in support of more environmental protection. We therefore recommend that the purpose section of the Planning Act include a separate statement saying precisely that the act guarantees the maintenance of the natural environment for present and future generations.

Next I want to talk about public notification. Clause 1.1(d) of the amendment to the Planning Act says the purpose is "to provide for planning processes that are fair by making them open, accessible, timely and efficient." Our main concern here is with accessibility and timeliness.

The Sewell commission recommended, in number 76, that municipalities be required to maintain a registry for those requesting information on planning matters in the municipality. However, the amendments to the act do not include these recommendations. I would like to explain to you just how important a registry and regular notification procedures are in rural areas, because a registry may frequently be the only way in which interested people or groups will get information on planning matters.

Most newspapers are weekly, not accessible to all and not timely. There are several township councils in our region and at least that many different newspapers to consult. On one occasion recently, a notice appeared in the local weekly paper for a public meeting on that very night to discuss a local planning issue. Though the notice had appeared just that day, over 100 people showed up. News of the meeting had travelled by word of mouth. However, not everyone interested in the issues knew about it in time and thus missed the opportunity for involvement.

An ad hoc committee consisting of many stakeholders and heavily represented by the development industry was set up to address problems in the development application process. The committee brainstormed and expressed concerns with delays caused by OMB hearings, the public input process and objections after studies were completed. Untimely public notification was partially responsible for the delays. The committee recommended that, "A registry should be considered for circulation of development applications to interest groups...."

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There is another factor that can at times have an impact on the public notification process, as well as other local municipal processes. Because of the small population base, people are frequently in positions to make decisions which have an impact on friends, neighbours and adversaries. Biases and personal relationships do sometimes influence actions taken.

Public notification requires different considerations in rural areas than in urban settings. Because of the communication barriers -- weekly newspapers; distance, both physical and psychological; and smallness of community -- it is essential that a public notification system be carefully set up at regional and local levels, impartial and monitored.

We therefore strongly recommend that number 76(b) of the Sewell commission recommendations be included in the Planning Act, that part being: "Municipalities be required to maintain a registry of those requesting notification of planning matters in the municipality or in parts of the municipality. A nominal fee may be charged for this service."

More accessible and timely public notification will go a long way to improve fairness and ensure public involvement in the planning process, but this is not enough. It is often individuals or small environmental groups that realize that a local or regionally significant environmental area may be at risk in a development application. These people are volunteers with a commitment to the environment but must attend to other jobs for income. Although they do not often have great amounts of time and money at their disposal, they often have considerable technical expertise and are very aware of the possible negative environmental impact by a development. They also may not have access to all the resources and information that will help improve the development application.

This is one of the reasons why I would like to talk about another statement in section 1.1 of the Planning Act amendments. The purpose is "(e) to encourage cooperation and coordination among the various interests."

Many regional environmental issues are not understood and are undervalued. They do not receive the attention they require. This can result in minimal or non-existent cooperation and coordination with the environmental community.

I cannot speak for other areas, but I can say with certainty that in ours we must recognize and include regional environmental interests in a more formalized way than we have done in the past. Poor planning and development decisions are rapidly degrading areas which only a few years ago were healthy and viable.

Less than five years ago, ruffed grouse lived in the forests on a quiet country road about seven or eight miles from the city. Hunters were able to bag their limit easily. But indiscriminate building in woodlots has totally destroyed grouse habitat in that location. Grouse are not even an interior species -- that is, they will happily live at the edge of woodlands -- but there is now so much human disturbance they have lost their habitat.

Last weekend I visited Hullett provincial wildlife area in Huron county, 2,200 hectares of managed and naturally occurring ecosystems, an impressive marshland costing $1.5 million and taking 30 years to create. We easily have the equivalent and more, if we are wise enough to make sure that we keep not only provincially but regionally significant areas. What I am saying is that we already have a good supply of woods and marshes but we are rapidly losing them through constant nibbling away. It's not the one house in the woodlot, it's not the small marshy area a farmer drains, it's the cumulative effect of all these small incursions which is badly diminishing our natural areas.

Essex county now has 1% forest left. The federal government is pouring large amounts of money into this area for restoration, not because it's aesthetic and not because it's nice, but because it's absolutely essential.

Other areas look with envy at our natural resources. Though some people take it for granted, there is a committed environmental community which recognizes and values the natural heritage here. That community realizes that efforts must be made to preserve it now.

Over the past few years several attempts have been made to introduce the idea of an ecological and environmental advisory council, an EEAC. All efforts have met with a negative response and yet our investigations have shown repeatedly that EEACs can help to save the environment and long-term costs. They can and do perform a large number of functions to advise and assist a municipality in the management and conservation of a high-quality natural environment. Effective EEACs have high levels of technical expertise among the committee members, are non-partisan, are objective and volunteer, and they operate under terms of reference endorsed by their council.

EEACs can go a long way towards mitigating development applications, anticipating objections, avoiding OMB hearings, preventing 11th-hour objections and improving the public involvement process. Overall, EEACs make development applications work better for the environment while attempting to help the developer find a solution he can live with.

The Sewell commission recommended, number 78, that "The Planning Act...permit municipalities to establish committees to advise on...the natural environment" and other matters. We would go further. We strongly recommend that the Planning Act be amended to require the establishment of ecological and environmental advisory committees in communities or municipalities where they do not already exist and that these ongoing committees advise and assist the municipality in the management and conservation of the regionally significant natural environment.

In conclusion, the Sewell commission observed that we in Ontario want to make environmental protection a priority. The Planning Act amendments and policies are meant to reflect that priority. Add to those amendments a statement in the purpose to guarantee the maintenance of the natural environment; a public notification, particularly a registry, that will work in rural areas; and placing of ecological and environmental advisory committees in municipalities without them. That will assure us that you have really heard those strong voices across Ontario.

Thank you. Mr Carson will answer questions on the regional environment in our area, which is Carolinian Canada around the area of Haldimand-Norfolk, and Mrs Tilt will answer questions on the roles of environmental advisory committees in municipalities.

Mr Eddy: Thank you for your presentation and your stated concern about maintaining a healthy natural environment. It's certainly very important. I endorse it.

There are many problems. You're talking about Haldimand-Norfolk specifically because you're a Norfolk federation. The region is presently, I believe, reviewing its official plan. Have you been part of that in making presentations and attempting to convince --

Ms Davis: Yes.

Mr Eddy: Can I ask the reaction, or has any action been taken regarding that? I would hope it's been.

Ms Davis: There have been small encouraging nods, but they've been very small and only nods. We are making a little bit of progress, I'm happy to say, but we feel there's a little bit more urgency to the situation than is being reflected in the progress that's --

Mr Eddy: I realize your concerns when you consider the fragile sandy soils of Norfolk. There has been some improvement in agricultural practices, thank God -- minimum tillage, no tillage and environmental plans, farm plans. Some of the things are moving. But I do understand the many sensitive natural areas that you have and I would hope that you could be successful with the regional council on those.

Ms Davis: We're trying.

Mr McLean: You spent some time talking with regard to the registration re public meetings. Your view appears to be that each site or minor variance site should be posted with a sign, like a real estate sign, at the road indicating there is going to be some rezoning take place.

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Ms Davis: That does happen, and the problem is the space, the area. Because our population is vastly spread out, very often people who have an awareness of regional environmental issues are not aware of when the notifications go up, because all that is done is that notification at the site. We would have to be driving around in our cars, I don't know how many hundreds of miles every week, to stay in touch and we can't do that.

Mr McLean: That has been expressed by many delegations coming before us with regard to the availability of public hearings, people being able to know that there is rezoning taking place. Your simple answer would be that they all should be posted.

Ms Davis: No, our answer is that there should be a registry.

Mr McLean: So you'd have to keep checking the registry every week to find out --

Ms Davis: No, the registry -- oh, okay. By that I mean the registry would send out notifications to us. In fact, we have a spotty response from our municipal governments. Occasionally, they do circulate -- just as the ministries and other commenting agencies are circulated with development plans at several levels -- because of our interest in environmental concerns we are circulated, but we are not circulated regularly enough.

Mr McLean: Thank you for appearing before the committee and expressing your views.

Ms Haeck: I'll keep my comments brief. You, in fact, reflect a number of concerns expressed actually in Niagara Falls where we met yesterday, which is close to where I live, and so I think your points are right on.

The act basically suggests that one meeting be required on official plans. I know people in my area would actually like to feel they had more input. I'd like to get your response to that.

Also in dealing with my local residents, they feel that they should have as full information about an application as possible. I'm thinking of a water line issue that has come up in the Niagara-on-the-Lake area where people really and truly didn't know what the municipality had put in its application, and yet they were told something else. They probably would have had a different response if they had full information as to the economic development aspects of what would occur as a result of that water line.

How would you respond to those two concerns? Are you in favour of those two --

Ms Davis: My response is that's the role an environmental advisory committee serves. Very often, as I said, the individual simply does not have access to the resources and expertise. They have an intuitive sense of what the problem may be but they don't have the technical information, and that's why an EEAC may be formed. I think Nancy could answer more fully on that.

Mrs Nancy Tilt: With the work I've done with the Halton region EEAC, our committee is made up of about 20 members with a variety of areas of expertise in the environmental field. Development applications that come to us -- these are usually ones that are in or adjacent to environmentally sensitive areas that have already been designated -- when they come to us, we can draw on that field of expertise and three or four people will take a good, close look at it and provide technical advice back to planning staff who will then incorporate it in their comments and feed that back to council for their deliberations when they're considering things.

In the sort of ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill type of things that come up, it's a really effective way of getting that kind of input on environmental matters without getting into an interest group for every single little issue. Interest groups will still form, but they generally end up meeting with EEAC, and we can sort of provide advice to them and help get the right message on to council.

Mr Wiseman: I just wanted to make a quick comment on something I think I heard you say. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but you said that to rehabilitate a marsh was about $1.5 million --

Ms Davis: It was a particular marsh, it was Hullett in Bruce county.

Mr Wiseman: The studies coming out of the United States forestry now are indicating that you can plant trees but you can't restore ecosystems. It's very clear that even 80-year-old forests that have been replanted have no ecosystems in them, that the flora, the fauna, the lichens, the mosses, the birds, the bees, the flowers, the trees that were there before do not regenerate; you can have a tree but you don't have a forest.

Ms Davis: Mr Carson could probably answer that.

Mr Peter Carson: That's definitely true. We're certainly not at the stage of understanding of these ecosystems that we can even start to recreate them. I think that's only going to happen over a long period of time. What we can do is preserve small pieces which will allow us eventually to -- these pieces act as sort of a seed source and you can have a spreading out on the edges and eventually you can reach some degree of rehabilitation, but we're certainly not at the stage where we can even understand the processes, much less recreate them.

Mr Wiseman: Provided you have a large enough gene pool that will allow the kind of migration that is necessary in that they are interconnecting because, with an isolated little forest, the gene pool could very quickly become a problem.

Mr Carson: Yes, actually I think the largest protected area in the United States has suffered 11% loss in gene pool over the last 100 years, and this is their largest natural area. It's quite true.

Mr Wiseman: One last quick question.

The Chair: Actually, Ms Harrington had a question, if you wouldn't mind.

Mr Wiseman: Sorry, I didn't know. I'll ask later.

Ms Harrington: Thank you. I think you've made a very interesting presentation and your point about accessibility and timeliness being important to the fairness of the process, I think, is something we are all hearing and hopefully taking to heart. I'd like to point out also the cumulative effect of change and that's what Mr Wiseman was getting at too, that it's not one little thing, it's the whole thing together that we have to look at.

You began your presentation with talking about the purpose of this act and that was, as you quoted, "a sustainable economic development in a healthy, natural environment," but I wasn't able to actually write down what you had proposed as a purpose. Did you have a purpose that you would like us to note?

Ms Davis: Yes.

Ms Harrington: Do you have a copy of your brief?

Ms Davis: Yes, I can leave this. We would like a separate statement stating precisely that the act guarantee the maintenance of the natural environment for present and future generations.

Ms Harrington: Do you think that's actually possible with development?

Ms Davis: Is it possible to guarantee? I don't think we have any choice for our future generations. Perhaps Nancy can answer you.

The Chair: One quick answer then we'll have to end.

Mrs Tilt: This will be quick. Mr Wiseman's comment about not being able to restore an ecosystem in 80 years is right on. It takes many, many, many years, centuries, to establish an ecosystem. It can be destroyed in a day by a bulldozer and that's precisely why we should be very, very careful in our decisions before we barge ahead and do something. These areas still can be protected and we can work around them.

Ms Harrington: You are only talking about certain areas. There are other areas that can be --

Ms Davis: Well, yes. I understand that the official plans are going to try to keep development out of rural areas, so we hope in the region that woodlots will not be developed for houses. I'm thinking of this road that five years ago when I moved to the area was pristine and now it's a strip development. There's not a beast in sight except two-legged ones. I'm sorry, that was rude, it wasn't intended as a slur.

The Chair: We've had many quick questions and we're running out of time. Thank you very much for participating at these hearings. We appreciate your input.

Ms Davis: Thank you very much.

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MICHAEL SMITHER

The Chair: We call upon the Municipal World magazine, Mr Michael Smither.

Mr Michael Smither: I appreciate the opportunity. I'll keep my initial comments very brief. I have provided a written copy. The first part in the white pages are my basic recommendations; the second part, the green, is a redraft of the proposed pecuniary interest act. I think the first issue which we should focus on is the need to place Bill 163 into a proper context and there's the chance that this will not be done, so please bear with me.

In 1967, the Ontario Committee on Taxation looked at restructuring and refinancing of local government and in bringing in their recommendations they set out two imperatives: (1) that there be political accountability, and (2) that we maintain a community of interest. Over the last 27 years, both of those recommendations have been widely disregarded, and I suggest many aspects of Bill 163 also disregard them.

If we look at the pattern that has evolved over that period, we see the introduction of metropolitan, regional, restructured counties, amalgamations, the creation of new structures of government that have eliminated 130 municipalities. In so doing, they have eliminated hundreds, thousands of opportunities for electors to run for office and to vote for those offices. If we look in the same period, we see school boards cut from over 2,000 to 172. Again, thousands of opportunities to run for office have been eliminated; thousands of opportunities to vote for those offices have been eliminated.

If we look at the term of office for council, we see it change from one and two years to three. Millions of opportunities to vote and for the electors to express themselves and to run for office have been eliminated. If we look at current legislation, we see reduction in sizes of council, we see other amalgamations, we see a compression of power at the local government level and even though the majority of people who are elected and running our local governments are decent, honest people, we also see a change, a trend towards some people becoming involved in local government with ulterior motives. But, more than anything else, we see a public perception and disillusionment and a feeling of isolation.

I suggest to you one of the major problems that has occurred is that, in legislation, the Legislature has responded to the response to the problem and not to the problem itself, and I suggest certain aspects of Bill 163 are going to do precisely that.

I will not run through all the points I have made in my brief, but I would ask you very sincerely to keep that perspective in mind. There is a major decline in electoral opportunity to participate. We've virtually eliminated the volunteer element. People are feeling isolated from their local governments. They sense they are no longer part of a community; they're no longer local and this is a major underlying concern.

Legislation that we brought in over the years has imposed further constraints on the people who run for elected office, increasingly so. You see campaign contributions being listed; you see conflict-of-interest rules tightened; you see all kinds of things done to make it so that you can constrain the monster that has been created potentially in the public's mind, but you don't see the issue of public participation being addressed, and a number of aspects of Bill 163 will again limit the public participation.

I'd like to refer first of all to the one Controller Hopcroft mentioned this morning, the question of privilege, and it is a crucial one. Last Wednesday I chaired a session at AMO with approximately 800 to 1,000 people there. In that session, it arose there are currently about five cases involving libel and slander of members of council across this province. One mayor at the meeting stated if he hadn't won his case, he would have been bankrupt. Another one indicated he is being sued for $1 million. That is a major issue, there was a major concern and libel chill at that meeting. I asked the question: Excluding the lawyers present, can anybody in this room tell me what the rules of qualified privilege are and when they apply to a municipal council? Not one person in that room answered and understandably so. They are buried in the common law.

In the Legislature, you make most of your crucial decisions in cabinet behind closed doors, in caucus behind closed doors, and when you do speak in public you have absolute privilege. You now bring in open local government, which is generally widespread across this province anyhow, and you are placing the municipal official in a precarious position because you have totally disregarded, in Bill 163, the issue of privilege. It's a crucial issue, I suggest even irresponsible, not to have addressed it.

In my recommendation I have suggested that the rules of qualified privilege, and I have drafted out the suggested piece of legislation, be included in the statute so at the very minimum the members of council can be aware of what those parameters are.

At the AMO conference, the suggestion was made that absolute privilege should be conferred on councils. I don't disagree with that, my only concern is I doubt the Legislature has the ability to give that privilege. Your own privilege, as legislators, is precarious enough if you look at the background to the legislation. I don't know if you have the power to give it to municipalities but, at the very minimum, you should be codifying the rules as they apply to qualified privilege. If you don't, you're doing two things: You're eliminating a great many decent people from running for office because they don't want to be threatened in this manner, you're preparing a hidden trap for those who unwittingly do so and compounding the problem that we've seen over the last few years.

The second point I would raise is the question of pecuniary interest. The bill's schedule on the disclosure of interest act omits the word "pecuniary" from the title and omits it from numerous sections, but at the same time it defines "pecuniary interest" and includes it elsewhere in the bill. That may seem a minor technicality. I suggest it is not because if you use the word "interest" as a means for disclosure and a direction for disclosure, you're dealing with all kinds of things: real and tangible benefits, economic advantage, pecuniary interest, nonpecuniary interest, bias, non-pecuniary bias and merely a curiosity about something. You create a point of absurdity.

Again, it's a deterrent to people who want to run for office and need some certainty. Obviously, the statute must refer to pecuniary interest all the way through. It is the monetary aspect of the office and the concern of influence there that you're trying to address.

Another area in the bill which I have concerns about -- it was again addressed by Controller Hopcroft -- is the question of influence. The current legislation speaks of influence before, during or after a meeting by the member; it does not preclude the member from a having a member of their family or their legal adviser meet before council and represent their point of view. You're merely trying to remove the individual from influencing their fellow members. The new legislation is extensively drafted to preclude anybody from participating in that capacity. It also extends to employees, correctly so.

What I have proposed, and again I have drafted some legislation and put it in here, is saying in effect that you keep the principle that you're advocating, you extend it to include statutory circumstances, which are omitted from it, and you also put in a subclause permitting somebody else to represent the member when the member has disclosed, provided that person acknowledges the relationship with the member.

I would suggest to you the section as it's drafted now would not withstand a charter challenge because it obviously places the member in a position where their right to equality before the law is being inhibited. Council frequently acts in a quasi-judicial capacity. The example was cited this morning of a minor variance appeal. Clearly, that is wrong, not to be able to be represented in circumstances such as that. So again, that section does need to be changed.

Again, it has an inhibiting effect if you don't. You're limiting the people who will run for office because of their personal involvement and they're the very people in the community that you want to be involved in your council. You merely want them to separate their private and public interests.

A similar situation arises with the question of advisory members of advisory committees. Again, that is ignored. You take many committees: LACAC committees, specialist committees. The very people the council wishes to appoint in an advisory capacity are the ones who have expertise in that particular area. If you preclude them by making them disclose and abstain, you remove from the ability of the municipality to use that expertise.

Simply, you address the issue by setting out a different definition for advisory committee. You make it so the member can disclose, require their recommendations to council to indicate the disclosure, but allow them to participate otherwise in the decision-making process. If you don't, you again effectively limit the people who will participate in those capacities.

I have a number of other points here which are technical ones. I will not dwell upon them. But I would be pleased to quickly respond to your questions.

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The Chair: Thank you very much. We'll begin with the third party.

Mr McLean: I thought the government was next. I'm first, all right?

The Chair: If you like.

Mr McLean: Well, certainly. I'm pleased to see Mr Smither here this morning because he always has some good recommendations and I appreciate them. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to go through them all, but I want to maybe start with the posting of notices. There's been some discussion this morning with regard to putting up notices if there's going to be some rezoning or that type of thing. What is your opinion on that?

Mr Smither: I agree that it is a problem area. I've had personal experience of this quite recently. The act currently gives the discretion to the municipal clerk to use a number of different mechanisms, one of which can be publication in a local newspaper if there's consideration that this is sufficient to meet the needs of the people. I'm aware of one municipality where that was done and the majority of the people who were involved and affected by this rezoning did not know there was a public hearing and did not attend the public hearing, but the clerk had complied with the law, so there was no recourse.

Mr McLean: Yes, they do comply with the law, but is that giving the people out there the opportunity to know that there is something taking place within their cul-de-sac or within their subdivision, a minor variance? Do you think there should be a notice on the lawns or on their property that there is something taking place?

Mr Smither: I think there are a number of mechanisms. Probably what should be done is use of the newspaper and use of some other mechanism parallel with it. Certainly it's a discretionary point right now, but not everybody reads the newspaper.

Mr McLean: This morning Mr Hopcroft raised the issue with regard to a vote in committee of the whole in closed session. Do you agree with that point?

Mr Smither: Yes, I do, very strongly, because the recommendations in the legislation are impractical. You have to be able to go through a process. First of all, you're having closed meetings to start off with on some issues because it's essential they be closed. You're put in a position of arising from that meeting and either -- one of two things -- disclosing what the meeting is about and what the issue is by taking a public vote, or, alternatively, manipulating it into some vote which is cast in language which doesn't convey the message. Either way, the public isn't going to gain by it. Very clearly that's an issue where it should come down to the final vote in the council being where it is cast, but in the committee certainly there has to be that process of giving advice and direction to staff.

Mr McLean: In the conflict-of-interest guidelines, the clerk will be the one who will take your application. With us it's a commissioner. Whatever the clerk has is public knowledge. Do you feel the conflict-of-interest guidelines are too stringent for small-town Ontario?

Mr Smither: I've strong mixed feelings on this going in both directions. There is, first of all, unequivocally an invasion of privacy. It's also contrary to the municipal freedom of information act the way it is drafted, in my opinion. But if you legislate it that way, it probably won't be. You've got an invasion of privacy. You've got a major impact upon individuals, not only on the persons running for council, but on their families and on their employers, on any number of aspects of it. I also have a reasonable doubt, if you get a person there with an ulterior motive, that this will achieve anything anyhow.

The recommendation coming to you on September 13 from AMO is that you adopt the Alberta stance, which will provide that there will be a filing with the clerk which shall be confidential and shall only be accessed if there is a complaint that is related to that matter. That's a suggestion coming forth from that.

You take your own disclosures, which I hear thrown out as being a reason for this. Your own disclosures are made, they're edited by the commissioner, they are filed in Toronto. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they're not filed in your constituency. But these are going to be filed in the constituency and open to public inspection. That is a very, very sore point; again, a major deterrent to decent people. It isn't the ones who would run with the ulterior motive. They just see that as one more obstacle they can vault. It is the decent people who object to that kind of invasion.

Mr McLean: The other question I had, I was thinking -- I had it all ready and then I got listening to what your comments were and it slipped my mind. It had to do, I guess -- did AMO pass that resolution, the Alberta resolution, at its conference last week?

Mr Smither: I'm not absolutely sure on that point, but I do know that their committee that has been studying this will be bringing that forward as one of the recommendations, because I've seen their draft report.

Mr White: I'm interested in your comments in terms of the privilege issue, which was brought up, as you know, this morning, and also the issue of the open vote versus the closed vote. The municipal freedom of information was reviewed, as you know, earlier this year pretty extensively. There were a number of deputants, a number of people, who expressed grave concern about this issue of closed meetings and what can be decided in closed meetings.

Your recommendation of motions revealing the substance of the matter under consideration, pretty well detailing what the discussion was, what the nature of the motion is, would to some degree deal with those concerns that were dealt with at the time, but it does seem like a very large concern still. How does one ensure that the public has full knowledge of and access to the knowledge of what has been discussed in closed meetings, what has been arrived at, which may very directly affect them?

Mr Smither: I personally don't object to the fact that the majority of the meetings are going to be open. I think it's a move in the right direction. I would say that it is a move already made by the majority of municipalities.

Interestingly, the present municipal freedom of information act contains a gross error. If you read it directly, what it is saying is that it exempts from disclosure any information from a meeting which by statute is closed to the public. Well, the meetings are not closed by statute. The statute merely opens the council meeting. They're closed by common law. So, quite frankly, at the present time you can go and get the minutes of any closed meeting anyhow. But that's an error in the statute. Ironically, when you bring in your new Bill 163, you will be stipulating by statute what will be closed and you will be implementing that section for the first time.

I think personally that the majority of meetings should be open, but I see it as pointless to have other meetings which are recognized as necessary to close and then to encumber them by saying the votes should be taken in the open. Obviously that's irrational. What you should be doing is identifying categorically the ones that should be closed, limiting them and making sure that they are closed and the privacy is respected. As Grant Hopcroft said this morning, in a majority of instances what is decided at the closed meeting comes forward for council ratification anyhow, because committees recommend. Committees follow a direction of council; they do not themselves make the decisions, or at least they shouldn't.

Mr White: The point is, though, that what is finally decided upon in an open session needs to be clarified. There may have been a vote taken, but the public won't be able to appreciate the nature of that vote unless there is an adequate explanation.

Mr Smither: I agree with you 100%. It's not unknown for them to rise from committee of the whole and pass a resolution in council to say, "We adopt the recommendations we agreed to in the committee of the whole," and you have no idea what they are. Obviously that's inappropriate. But to make -- it's totally impractical. In the course of a committee meeting you sit for an hour probably to make decisions, give direction to staff; you probably take about 10 or 12 votes. You very easily could. It's just totally impractical to jog in and out and it serves no purpose.

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Mr Winninger: Just a quick question. It's one of clarification regarding your comments on pecuniary interest on pages 7 and 8. It appears to me that what you are asking for is further precision in how "interest" is defined and that wherever the word "interest" appears, it should be qualified by "pecuniary" interest. Is that correct?

Mr Smither: Yes, absolutely correct. You're defining "pecuniary interest." In some places in the act you are saying merely "interest." I am saying you should use the words "pecuniary interest" throughout. It is dangerous not to. It isn't a minor point.

Now, the argument might come back in rebuttal that if you read the section, we've used "pecuniary interest" in the first instance and we've used "interest" somewhere else in the same section; we know what we're referring to. That doesn't work, because if you read some of the sections, you've used "pecuniary interest" all the way through.

Mr Winninger: Okay, I think I understand your point there. You have, however, given several alternative meanings for "interest" on page 7, such as, "an economic advantage, that is not necessarily pecuniary," "any real and tangible benefit...to the personal benefit of a member," "a private non-pecuniary interest." You're not saying that those kinds of interest aren't relevant and shouldn't be disclosed in a municipal situation?

Mr Smither: I'm saying that the disclosure, to be practical, has to be confined to pecuniary interest, which is what the current legislation is saying. If you extend it beyond that, you reach a point of impracticality. I am interested in the proceedings of this committee; I do not have a pecuniary interest in the proceedings of this committee.

Mr Winninger: Don't you think it would be relevant to an impartial observer whether a city councillor has an economic advantage he or she may derive from a particular decision?

Mr Smither: The economic advantage -- I note it in here and I would like to delete it at this point, because obviously that's a pecuniary interest and it comes within the scope, so you're absolutely correct. But if I have a bias -- I mean, the legislation recognizes bias as only applicable in a quasi-judicial situation. The Planning Act particularly excludes bias from the application of the Planning Act and the deliberations there.

But when you start putting a word like "interest" into this act, you're nevertheless going to be in a position where you're going to have to disclose and you're literally going to have an unworkable situation. The focus of the legislation is the monetary impact, and that is what the "pecuniary interest" refers to. If you're going to say "interest" and you want to include the scope that is here, then define "interest" and include all these items, and then try to fill the seats on council, because nobody will be able to run.

Mr Winninger: I think I understand what you're saying now and I don't disagree with you. In London, by the way, it seems we've never had any scarcity of people running for municipal office.

Mr Smither: But you have pecuniary-interest cases. The first one that occurred under the new legislation was in the city of London, Blake v. Watts.

Mr Grandmaître: Thank you for a very interesting brief. If I may quote you from the prefatory or opening remarks, you touch on something that I'm sure is of great interest to this committee, the decline in electoral opportunity. You go on to say that in the last 27 years, the number of municipalities has gone from 964 to 830, our school boards have gone from 1,400 people to 172, and the term of office has increased to three years from the two-year term. We all know that bigger is not necessarily better. Are you saying that it is a mistake of the previous governments in the last 27 years --

Mr McLean: The last 10.

Mr Eddy: No, 27.

Mr Grandmaître: -- it says 27, in the last 27 years -- to eliminate these municipalities and school boards because we're also eliminating people from participating in the process?

Mr Smither: I'm saying that to ignore the recommendations of the Smith commission in so doing was a mistake. I think it is also wrong not to look at this aspect when you are viewing what you're planning to do with Bill 163. Make sure that you don't compound the problem.

It's very, very hard to turn the clock back, but I get literally thousands of phone calls every year at Municipal World and I've noticed a particular trend, a change. I get calls, naturally, from elected representatives, I get them from a lot of other people, and there is a growing concern about the isolation the people feel from their local governments. There's a tremendous concern about that, and their inability to participate. And there's a growing concern and perception of the cost structure. It isn't related only to your elected officials. If you look at your administrative structures of local government, they have changed also. On the basis of efficiency, you've adopted the administrator system in the last 20 years also. Again, there's a perception of a concentration of power.

I'm not saying that the public is necessarily always right; I'm not saying turn the clock back either. What I am saying is, be aware of this as an underlying cause of the public concern when you are adopting your legislation like Bill 163 and view the recommendations you're making in that context. If they are going to further inhibit that, then you must, I suggest, have regard to it. If you're not going to have regard to defamation, you are limiting the people who will run. If you're not going to have regard to influence, you're doing the same thing. If you're not going to allow advisory people to participate, again you're doing the same thing.

Many other things: The disclosure of assets and liabilities is a major concern to a great many people. It isn't, I suggest to you, the ones who have nefarious objectives; it's the decent people who just don't want to be exposed.

I think in all seriousness that you have done a better job in drafting this legislation and the regulations you propose to focus it upon certain things that -- and you've almost reached the point now, because of the situation that's created, where you're going to have to have something of that nature. But I think it's imperative that you look at the consequences of the legislation and try to focus it on the problem, not on the response to the problem, which is what's been happening.

Mr Eddy: Thank you for coming, Michael. I'm pleased that you threw in there for a moment about Municipal World. Certainly it does a tremendous job in keeping us advised of municipal and school board problems and many others. I'm so pleased that you were able to come and make a presentation.

I agree with you for what's happened to local government and school board governance in this province. It's made a tremendous difference. I'm talking primarily about the rural areas because I know them best. So thank you for bringing a thought-provoking and challenging criticism of the act. I hope that many of the things you've spoken about will be paid attention to.

I just have to say about the consolidation of school boards, we'd already eliminated the one-room schools in the local community centres, but in the case of my board of education, when they started closing the rural consolidated schools and changing everybody to large urban schools and putting dozens of portables up, it's a very sad thing, along with all the rules. You try to make a presentation to a board of education and see what the rules are you must follow. I've been in that particular situation. It's disgraceful. It is not democratic.

You've hit on many of the things, and we certainly here on this side will be paying attention to many things. I really think we shouldn't be dealing with so many things in one bill. Each of the things we are dealing with deserves a separate process to get to the heart of the problem and correct it and all cooperate. Thank you.

Mr McLean: Can I have one question?

The Chair: We normally don't do this, but go ahead.

Mr McLean: Just your view, Mr Smither, with regard to county restructuring and regional government. Do you think the government is heading in the right direction by promoting that?

Mr Smither: I think there are circumstances in which regional government and restructured counties are an appropriate vehicle. You have to remember always that local government is intended to be local. It's meant to reflect the particular circumstances in the local area. So you can't look at it globally; you've got to look at each one particularly, and I suggest you also look at the Smith commission's recommendations on accountability and community interests when you're doing it.

Ms Harrington: I really thank you for coming, Mr Smither. You obviously bring a vast degree of information with you.

You talked about there being fewer municipal politicians. Certainly the public out there doesn't, I don't think, want to see more politicians. But you also say people are feeling isolated. How can you get people more involved and yet not increase the number of politicians? I think there is some way of doing that. What would you propose?

Mr Smither: The first thing is I would correct what I perceive as the deficiencies in Bill 163 which are going to preclude people running for office, preclude people acting in an advisory capacity. I think every council should be looking at trying to extend its committee structures, its advisory processes, out to the people and encourage the openness.

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I'm not opposed to open local government; far from it. I think that's a good process but it has to be workable. You do not put people's heads on the block to accomplish a philosophical objective, and that's what Bill 163 is going to do if we're not very, very careful.

Ms Harrington: Well, we will be very careful.

The Chair: We ran out of time. Sorry, Ms Harrington. Mr Smither, we thank you for your submission. We found it very informative.

TOWNSHIP OF NORFOLK

The Chair: We invite the township of Norfolk. Welcome to this committee, Mr McIntosh. Would you just do us the favour of introducing the other people who will be sitting with you.

Mr Jim McIntosh: Good morning. My name is Jim McIntosh. I'm a planner for the township of Norfolk. On my right is Mr Jack Boughner, who's a township of Norfolk councillor. He also sits on Haldimand-Norfolk regional council as, I believe, the deputy mayor. On my left is Mr Merlin Howse. He's the clerk-administrator for the township of Norfolk.

Mr Eddy: The mayor is present.

Mr McIntosh: The mayor is present. I was going to say that there are other representatives from the township of Norfolk council in the back. We're here to present a brief presentation mainly dealing with the planning reform issue in Bill 163. The township of Norfolk has been actively involved in responding to the Sewell report as it travelled around the countryside, and went to the extent of having its own public meeting, which was attended by some 125 people. It shows quite an interest, in the township of Norfolk, on planning issues.

A bit about the township. It's one of six area municipalities within the region of Haldimand-Norfolk. It's predominantly agricultural and rural, two small urban areas and 14 hamlet areas. The current population is about 11,000. The population forecast 20 years from now suggests a population of about 13,000. Of the total population, about 14% resides in the two urban areas in the township, so you can see the population is mostly rural.

The total land area of the township of Norfolk is about 176,000 acres. Approximately 47,000 acres are forest-covered. There are 29,000 acres of provincially significant wetland, and if one adds other "significant" ravines, valleys, stream corridors and then adjacent areas, clearly 50% or more of the township would be protected, or sterilized, by some people's definition, by policy statement A.

We request that the committee consider the effect of planning reform on relatively small rural communities and recognize there are significant differences between larger communities, subject to higher levels of development pressure, and areas like the township of Norfolk, which is relatively slow-growing and rural in character.

The township has a keen interest in the planning reforms out of necessity. Opportunities for providing a diversified economic base are limited. There is very little that we can do in terms of incentives to attract and foster business, but there are lots of things that can happen to scare business away from an area like the township of Norfolk.

In general, the bill includes a number of positive changes to the legislative framework of the planning process. This response focuses on a few key concerns which are the most significant issues from the perspective of the township.

First, the reforms suggest that there will be a "...clear delineation between provincial and municipal roles in land use planning, integrating environmental concerns into the planning process and reflecting the diversity of municipalities across Ontario." While these objectives are enthusiastically endorsed, the effect of the policy statements as proposed do not appear to acknowledge any municipal diversity. As far as relatively small rural municipalities are concerned, the policies would unnecessarily curtail many reasonable opportunities for development.

As in earlier submissions to the Sewell commission, it's the position of the township of Norfolk that the proposed change to the phrase "have regard to" to be replaced with "be consistent with" removes whatever little flexibility for reasonable interpretation is now available and eliminates any latitude for local judgement.

Since the policies blanket virtually any form of rural development, it's important to maintain some sort of ability to apply a reasonable interpretation to different circumstances that arise. With policy statements "no" means "no" -- there would not be any opportunity to make individual amendments even if there's a clear and obvious basis for some change.

Dealing with proposed policy statement A, "Natural Heritage, Environmental Protection and Hazard Policies," the restriction of development in significant ravines, rivers, streams and natural corridors poses some concern. While the necessity of protection for environmentally important features is recognized, the terms of the policy lend themselves to extreme interpretation, given the definition of "development," which includes everything from construction, additions, change of use to activities such as grading, filling or drainage works. The term "significant" is defined but remains subjective and open to a range of interpretation by those with different opinions or value judgements. The combination of these terms would place an unreasonable burden on proponents of development in the face of any challenge by individuals or groups.

The township of Norfolk has had experience with municipal board hearings on matters that were appealed by interest groups where the opinion was that the system was being abused, and these policy statements may provide more opportunity for delay and abuse of the system.

We have a comment on section A1.3. "Development may be permitted if it does not harmfully alter...or destroy fish habitat." This can be a particularly difficult issue to assess, given the apparent lack of standards to measure potential effects; for example, nitrates entering cold water streams and affecting fish habitat. We've had occasion, for example, where such an issue has arisen and a proponent was close to hiring a hydro-geologist to assess the situation, only to find out that the province has no standards to judge such an assessment. So I think the point here is that the implementation and response to these things should be thought out and put in place in conjunction with the formulation of the policy statements themselves.

The township has serious concerns over the method of establishing policy relative to certain lands without the precise knowledge of the location and extent of lands affected. The blank-cheque approach of establishing policy restrictions and so on without knowledge of what specific lands are affected somewhat deny the public meaningful access to the process, and not unlike the wetland policy text which was put through, with maps following later on. Those astute enough to know that their property may well be affected would have a reasonable access, but those others without knowledge of what a provincially significant wetland was or the criteria they might use to establish one pretty much would be denied access to the process and would only find out about the effects and implications after it's too late.

The proposed policy statement B, community development and infrastructure policies, poses some concern again. Extensions to services in builtup areas are to be permitted only if the amount of land can be justified based on population and employment projections. It is suggested that this policy be clear on the area to be included in the review of the justifications. The 1978 Food Land Guidelines, which are the guidelines being used now, state that all lands within the planning area be considered.

In circumstances where the planning area is a regional municipality or even a municipality with numerous urban areas, it's unreasonable to consider some of the farther-away locations which might be somewhat outside a local market area or lands affected. The two urban areas in the township of Norfolk are about 30 kilometres away from one another and growth in one has little to do with growth in another. We do have population projections and servicing allocation reports for each independent municipality in the township of Norfolk and indeed the region of Haldimand-Norfolk.

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Employment projections should be a factor worthy of some consideration, but not necessarily a requirement in a provincial policy statement. Some amounts of intermunicipal communities are expected, as are proposals for lifestyle and retirement communities, particularly in the township of Norfolk. Employment projections may be relevant in some circumstances and not relevant in others. In any event, it's an issue that I think could be adequately addressed in local official plans rather than entrenched in provincial policy.

Proposed policy statement D. The agricultural land use policies are cause for a great deal of concern for the township of Norfolk. Precluding any non-agricultural use from prime agricultural areas is considered too restrictive. The township of Norfolk is largely a rural community where prime agricultural land predominates. It is important in such a community to provide for some diversity: that is, small-scale commercial and industrial or even institutional uses which would serve the agricultural and rural areas. Alternative locations in existing communities are not always feasible or possible or indeed desirable. Settlement or hamlet areas in the township are predominantly residential enclaves. Directing commercial or industrial uses -- for example, trucking businesses or corn-drying operations or machinery repairs -- to these areas will only result in land use conflicts.

Furthermore, we've had examples in the township of Norfolk in the reuse of old buildings. We have one that was some time ago a propane tank manufacturing operation which sat vacant for I think close to a decade. Just recently, Titan trailers took over the operation there. It's quite a successful industrial manufacturing use and a good reuse of an existing facility where no agricultural land is being affected and virtually no impact on agricultural activities in the surrounding area is going to occur. Yet this forms an important part of diversifying the economic base in the township of Norfolk.

Certain public service facilities have been located in what would now be considered prime agricultural areas to provide their most efficient or convenient service. The township of Norfolk roads department is located centrally in the township of Norfolk. It's not in an urban or a settlement area but in a central location where it's located to provide the most efficient service. Given the number of service facilities like this that would occur in an area like the township of Norfolk, one would wonder how much agricultural land really would be sacrificed to provide an efficient service for the community and wonder if that's something that really needs to be set down and precluded in provincial policy.

Present provisions in the township of Norfolk district plan provide for small-scale commercial and industrial uses serving or related to the rural economy, including such uses as abattoirs, carpentry shops, commercial kennels, electrical shops, grain dryers, metalworking shops, and the list goes on. The township of Norfolk would like to have those sorts of uses remain, or the flexibility to provide for those sorts of uses, and that those uses and their location and so on be screened through the zoning amendment process, which gives adequate process time for the involvement of surrounding land owners, be they farmers or otherwise, and the township of Norfolk council an opportunity to review the individual circumstance.

Conspicuously absent from the agricultural policy area is provision for recreation and tourism operations. Those uses seem to be addressed in the infrastructure policies, with some policies for justification, but I don't see where they're permitted in an agricultural and rural area. I'm thinking of the types of uses that the township of Norfolk is trying to attract: tourism and recreation operations such as golf courses, trailer parks and other such outdoor recreational opportunities.

With respect to severance policies, section D3, this section represents a change from the residential severance policies currently in place in the township and in fact the region of Haldimand-Norfolk. Since 1978 a one-lot-off-the-farm policy has been established, which through attrition or whatever will result in the situation where no more residential severances will be granted. It's not completely unlike the retirement severance policy in the policy statement. I think it would work towards the same end, but from the standpoint of the township of Norfolk it would be much more desirable to maintain the severance policy in place. It was somewhat of a contract with the community. People have now, since 1978, been able to live with that policy. They understand it. That is working towards a logical conclusion for severances, other than the surplus dwelling and infilling lots that are also provided for. The township would request opportunity to depart slightly from the theme and maintain the one-lot-from-the-farm policy that it currently uses.

With respect to interpretation and implementation policies, this section would require an environmental impact study for development proposals in areas adjacent to significant ravines, woodlots etc. If there is to be such a requirement, there should be measures in place to ensure that the studies are understandable by the public and can be dealt with expeditiously. It is recommended that it be clear that such studies are completed to the satisfaction of the pertinent decision-making body, for example, municipal councils, with input from commenting agencies rather than to have commenting agencies become the ultimate approval authorities.

Regulations, guidelines and criteria that deal with implementation, together with maps showing areas subject to policies, should be drafted and available to review in conjunction with policies.

That concludes the presentation. I'd be glad to entertain any questions or clarifications.

Ms Harrington: We drove Highway 3 last night. Would we have gone through your township? Where about are you?

Mr McIntosh: Quite likely. East of Tillsonburg all the way through to the Dunnville area would be through the region. The township of Norfolk has that section of Highway 3 which would be just outside of Tillsonburg to the urban area of Delhi.

Ms Harrington: Actually, we did hear more about Norfolk this morning. We had the Norfolk Field Naturalists talk with us briefly. Do you know of that organization?

Mr McIntosh: Oh yes, quite aware of that organization.

Ms Harrington: They did talk about an EEAC, which is an ecological and environmental advisory committee. Do you have one advising your --

Mr McIntosh: No, not at the township level. There has been discussion at the regional level about establishing such a committee. The regional planning commissioner and members of the regional council of development, industry and other groups such as field naturalists were sitting around a table dealing with streamlining issues, and that was one of the issues they were talking about, but it would be at a regional level. I'm not aware of talk about establishing one at a local area municipality level.

Ms Harrington: I would think that it would be good to have advisory committees at all levels. We heard just previously from Mr Smither about involvement, that people want involvement. Certainly you've stated that your particular township has a lot of very sensitive and good land that has to be preserved. I would think that you would welcome having your citizens involved in that particular way. You do say that 50% of your township would be protected by policy statement A. I think you called that "sterilized."

Mr McIntosh: I said some opinions would call it sterilized. The point being made there was that I'm not suggesting for a minute that we rape and pillage wetlands or anything of that nature, but a lot of the areas talked about in policy statement A I think are to be defined later on. I'm not entirely sure what a "significant" woodlot is, given the forest cover in the township of Norfolk, which is quite substantial. If it's going to fall into a no-development category, that's of some concern.

Ms Harrington: You would agree that a healthy natural environment for those lands is what you want for the future?

Mr McIntosh: No question. It's as important to the township of Norfolk as it is to anyone else, any other individuals or groups.

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Ms Harrington: I also wanted to touch on your statement here that to "change the phrase `have regard to' to `be consistent with' removes whatever little flexibility for a reasonable interpretation" etc. We, if you look at the broader picture across this province over the past, have had some difficulties, and all municipalities have, with a very vague statement like "have regard to." It has been interpreted very differently. I think what all of us need for the future is a clearer understanding of what the province's policy statements mean. I would ask you if you would not agree that it should be clearer.

Mr McIntosh: Actually, I don't think I agree with you on that score. It's been my experience that the "have regard to" phrase that we operate under now doesn't provide a great deal of flexibility at either the Ontario Municipal Board or with provincial agencies. Taking what little flexibility there is now and replacing that with no flexibility in my mind is inappropriate. There should be some latitude.

Ms Harrington: I think all of this has to be clear and strong in every part of this province.

Mr Eddy: Thank you for coming forward with a presentation from a purely agricultural township, if I can use that term, realizing of course that you do front on Lake Erie and have areas that border on the lake.

I'd like to clear up a bit of a problem, because I think you're the township of Norfolk in the regional municipality of Haldimand-Norfolk, but the Norfolk naturalists who were before us previously use the term from the old county of Norfolk, which includes several local-tier municipalities. So there is a difference there in the area and you're talking about the region.

I want to thank you for taking the initiative to have a public meeting on the Planning Act and discuss it from your own township's point of view. I know there are other meetings going on, because Haldimand-Norfolk is reviewing its regional plan. Of course, that's a bit of a problem too because we heard from the Haldimand-Norfolk representatives yesterday and realized that Haldimand-Norfolk, when it was established 20 years ago, was one-tier planning and has changed to a type of two-tier planning with district plans, as I understand.

I'd like you to comment on the region's request, if you would, to the province to delegate some approval authority to the region for approving changes to district plans. If you'd just hold that one for a minute, you've pointed out, I think, and brought very forceful views to us on the difference between urban and rural municipalities, and there are so many differences. What I see in urbans is that everything goes and in the rurals, in some places, they try to save everything, which is good from many points of view, but such a difference.

I tend to agree with you under "Agricultural Land Policies." You've stated, "It is important in such a community" -- such as the township of Norfolk -- "to provide for some diversity, ie, small-scale commercial and industrial or even institutional uses which would serve the agricultural and rural area." That's what you're stressing, that point of view, and also bringing in about the possibility of recreation and tourism, because you're on Lake Erie. I recognize your interest in that.

What I see as almost necessary is to have some different rules for rural municipalities. We've been told that the same shoe doesn't fit and can't fit everybody in Ontario. I'd like you to comment on that. I think you've talked about that. Those two points, please.

Mr McIntosh: First on the rural issue, I think the township of Norfolk is different than a lot of urban areas or areas on the fringe of urban areas that are subject to different pressures. The small-scale commercial and industrial developments we're seeing aren't really escaping to Norfolk to beat land costs in London or Hamilton or Toronto or anything like that; they're mainly there to service the area. We've had numerous examples of businesses -- trucking comes to mind -- that service the agricultural industry in the area where policies, and even regional official plan policies that are being debated now, would direct those sorts of uses to hamlet areas. Hamlets have evolved from little communities that used to have maybe some industrial or some commercial uses to mainly just residential enclaves, and it's totally inappropriate to jam some of these industrial uses into those areas. It's just asking for trouble.

When you look at the township in Norfolk there are, I think, 418 parcels of land that are three quarters of an acre to 10 acres, and that would represent over 700 acres in the township of Norfolk. If there are opportunities on some of those parcels that aren't being farmed now for some of these small-scale uses, is there any damaging effect on the agricultural land? I think not on agricultural activities. Those sorts of issues can be screened through a zoning process quite accurately by the township council.

Mr Eddy: When we're quite willing to add an area like the township of Westminster, 64,000 acres, to the city for development, it seems strange that you see this restricting you from any development, because that will all go.

Mr McLean: I want to ask you a question with regard to your hamlets. You indicate you have 14 of them. This morning Perth was in. They don't want any more severances. They have a policy of no severances in Perth. This legislation now is not going to allow any more severances in hamlets or the area surrounding or the municipalities other than the retirement lot that's in the agricultural lands policy: one lot for a farm operation for a full-time farmer of retirement age. That's what's in there now, and you have to be farming as of January 1, 1994. What's going to happen with your hamlets as the legislation is now?

Mr McIntosh: First of all, I hope it's not an illusion but I thought that there was some provision for a development in hamlets in the policy statements.

Mr Hayes: There is.

Mr McLean: What is that statement?

Mr Hayes: Just to clarify things, if I may, we're talking about protecting the prime agricultural land to be used and protected for agricultural use and then we have the list. I'm sure you have a copy of that. There's nothing in here saying that you cannot do any development in a hamlet for commercial operation or whatever the case may be. There's nothing. We haven't changed any rules to say that you're not going to be able to do it. I think that's clear.

Mr McLean: Can you build infill within a hamlet?

Mr Hayes: Yes.

Mr McKinstry: Maybe I could offer a clarification. There are policies in policy B which talk about what municipalities would be permitted to do in their settlement areas, and we've called them settlement areas because that would include hamlets, villages and so forth. What we're saying is, "Areas proposed for development which are within the settlement area but which are not builtup areas" should be "logical extensions" and there should be some kind of planning for that development.

Mr McLean: Which number are you reading?

Mr McKinstry: This is on page 8 of the policy statement.

Mr Hayes: Number 9.

Mr McKinstry: Yes. I guess the policies really are structured so that we would encourage development to take place in hamlets where servicing could be reasonably accommodated.

Mr McLean: Oh, servicing.

Mr McKinstry: Yes.

Mr McLean: Septic systems?

Mr McKinstry: That's one possibility, or the other possibility is some kind of public communal system.

Mr McLean: The environmental impact study for development proposals, you raised that issue. I know what the policy reads. What's your interpretation of it?

Mr McIntosh: The environmental impact study: We've had occasion to go through a number of them under the present wetland policy statement. To the public it seems quite mysterious and, I guess, to the agencies, like the Ministry of Natural Resources, in the case of wetlands. When it fell in their lap I think they had to quickly try to respond and figure out what it meant, what do we want to see and how much do we ask for and that sort of thing. I think the main concern is having the agencies that are going to be involved in reviewing these things know how they're going to review them and what will be required at the same time the policy is being adopted.

The Chair: We'd like to thank all of you for taking the time to make this presentation to us today. Thank you. This committee is recessed until 1:30.

The committee recessed from 1200 to 1334.

COUNTY OF HURON

The Chair: I call upon the county of Huron, Warden Allan Gibson and Mr Gary Davidson, director of planning. You have half an hour for your presentation. We ask you to leave as much time as possible for the members to ask you questions. If you can do that, that would be great.

Mr Allan Gibson: Thank you, Mr Chair. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm the warden, Al Gibson, of Huron county. We have a brief here. I'm going to ask the planning director, Gary Davidson, to go through it at this moment.

Mr Gary Davidson: Thank you for the opportunity to make this presentation. It probably will be about 10 minutes and then there'll be room for questions if that's required. Maybe if there aren't a lot of questions, you'll get out of here earlier today.

Mr McLean: Short answers.

Mr Davidson: Short answers? Okay.

The brief has been passed around to you and you can read it in detail at your leisure. If I could ask you to turn to page 2, what the county of Huron would like to focus on are some larger issues which we feel affect rural Ontario as a result of Bill 163. There are three concerns that we want to talk about and then make some specific suggestions.

The first one is a fairly general one and it's not one that's probably directly in the purview of this committee, though we'll make the point anyway, and that is that the provincial policy statements in their sweep probably have a large impact on rural Ontario which is larger than on urban Ontario and in fact in many instances do the planning for them.

We have a concern over the change from "have regard for" to "be consistent with." We feel that it's another indication of a control system that does not allow rural Ontario to try to create its own vision and its own future.

The third major point, and this is the point that refers directly to the act and that the presentation focuses on, is the failure to empower counties in the same way as regions, thereby making counties second-class citizens.

The notion and the concern over the relationship between counties and regions comes out in a few areas. The first one has to do with official plans. Regions in the act are given the authority to approve local official plans as long as they have their own regional official plan. Even the two regions that do not have official plans, Peel and York, have this power preserved for them when they do pass official plans.

With respect to counties, the act uses the notion of prescribed counties and doesn't indicate in the act what the criteria for that prescription will be. It is felt by the county that regions and counties should be the same with respect to the ability to approve local plans and it should be based on whether or not an approved official plan has been approved by the county.

A similar situation exists with respect to subdivisions. Counties are required to request delegated authority for subdivisions and regions are given it as a matter of right. Regions are given it as a matter of right whether or not they have an official plan. It is felt that with respect to counties, if a county has an official plan which is approved by the minister, they should have the right to approve subdivisions, and the same criteria with respect to staff capability should be used for those counties that do not have subdivisions to approve official plans. This is the same situation as with the regions.

The third component of the bill that we would like to address is municipal planning areas, the notion that a municipal planning area should be used only if a county refuses to prepare and adopt an official plan.

The way it is set up now, a municipality in the county can in fact opt out of county planning and opt out of the county planning system. In effect, this creates mini-counties from a planning point of view and it creates a situation where these small mini-counties, that is, two or more local municipalities, have the right to plan. Unfortunately they don't have the financial authority to implement those plans, so you could have an interesting situation where a municipal planning area composed of two or three local municipalities would have a roads plan but the county in fact would have the roads budget.

It is felt that municipal planning areas, and it is understood why the province wants to retain this notion, should only be set up on the approval of the minister and that some discussions should take place before the establishment of a municipal planning area with the county.

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In summary, it is felt that counties should be treated in the same way as regions, that the authority to approve local official plans, the authority to approve subdivisions should be dependent on whether or not the county has an approved official plan and not on the fact that it is a county. Furthermore, the notion of a municipal planning area should be a power that is reserved to the minister and should only be used in consultation with the county.

We feel that these three changes are quite straightforward and that they would in fact serve to strengthen the proposed amendments. They remove the main problem of discrimination against counties. Also, by providing encouragements for the county to plan rather than sanctions, they will probably lead to more counties undertaking planning.

We'd like to thank the committee for listening to this presentation and would answer any questions, if there are any. Thank you very much.

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): Thank you for your presentation. I notice at the beginning of your presentation here, which was to be read more than what you had presented, stated that you had no problem and you could see it would have no great impact on your municipality or region. But then you proceeded to say quite a few things that will have an impact if the government did not adhere to these. I don't want to comment on that. I presume later on my colleague here, who has much more expertise on all these planning parts, will.

What I'd like you to comment on is the conflict-of-interest aspect of it. I notice you have not made any comment at all in that regard because of this great omnibus bill. I know that the way this government is pushing it through so fast with this great, large omnibus bill, you did not have the time to do that. But are there any comments you could make about the impact that would make when they change the conflict-of-interest regulations?

Mr Davidson: This report was dealt with by the county's planning and development committee and it did not deal with the conflict-of-interest component. That's why our report doesn't deal with that.

Mr Curling: Did it look at it and see if the changes would have any impact? You didn't take a look at it.

Mr Davidson: No.

Mr Curling: It's such a large bill, I understand.

Mr Hayes: They figure it's all right.

Mr Curling: No, it's that you didn't have enough time to do that.

Mr Eddy: Thank you for your presentation. You've zeroed in on some matters affecting county and you've shown leadership of course, Huron county, in county-wide planning for many years and economic development.

We've heard this before and I understand it's being considered by the ministry and, in view of the fact that the ministry is bringing in some amendments which we'll have shortly, I understand, I hope this is one of them, because a county is not a county. You have the restructured county of Oxford, which is a region. You now have Lambton county, which has brought the separated municipality in. You've reallocated service from the lower tier to the upper tier and there's a great variety of counties. I think the only proper way to do this is exactly the way you've said it: Let's have the rules for having the delegation of authority and do it that way.

But I would like to have your view on the presentation, if you're familiar with it, of the association of county planners of Ontario, which made a presentation the other day. I think the key there, the thrust, was to let counties decide whether they will have official plans at the lower tier, the upper tier or both. I wondered if you would care to comment on that, realizing that you have a situation in Huron county where you have an official plan at the upper tier only, I believe.

Mr Davidson: We have some at the lower tier. When you're looking at it from a planning perspective, when you're looking at a region, the region and the regional municipalities, the local municipalities within the region have certain planning authorities. A lot of people go on to say that regions are in fact different from counties and because of that, counties should be treated individually.

I'd probably go on to say that most regions probably feel that they are different. I don't think that the region of Ottawa-Carleton feels that it's remotely similar to the region of Muskoka. Similarly, counties have their own interests. A county in southwestern Ontario is considerably different from Renfrew county.

What all of those regions or counties have in common is the right to plan, and they hopefully will plan in such a way that reflects the views of their citizens both from a county perspective and a local perspective. I think the province, in treating the upper-tier municipalities in Ontario, the counties and the regions, should take a view that focuses on encouraging those upper-tier municipalities to plan and hopefully to allow them to plan in such a way that reflects the views of their citizens.

From a planning perspective, the more the local community agrees with the planning and buys into the planning, the more likely it is to be implemented. From the point of view that an upper authority, the province or the county, is enforcing planning regulations, the more, I'll use the word "creative," local communities can become at avoiding regulations.

In fact there are some counties in Ontario that have become notorious in their ability to evade what the province wants them to do. Part of that is, if you set out a system that tries to impose regulations, unless you have massive amounts of enforcement the local municipalities will just figure out ways to get around it.

I think the goal is to encourage counties, to encourage regions, to encourage local municipalities to do appropriate planning, and the way to do that, in my personal opinion, is to believe that they in fact will carry out those duties responsibly. I work with 26 municipalities, we do massive public participation, and I don't ever hear people or local councils saying, "We want to destroy the environment." They live in that community and I think that they want to do the best they can.

That's why it's felt that if the province takes the position of encouraging municipalities to plan, if they do plan they get certain authorities such as subdivision approval and if they don't plan then they don't get those authorities, but that is a fair way of treating them. Treating them any other way in fact basically leads to an antagonistic position.

I think, as most people realize now, most of the planning resources in Ontario reside in regions, counties and local municipalities. They don't reside at the province any more, and as the province continues to downsize. that case will continue to magnify.

One would hope that counties and regions and local municipalities just don't get into a creative fight of how to avoid provincial regulations. I think the way to do that -- and a lot of the goals that the province have are quite admirable -- but when the regulations become too directive, then municipalities just get very creative at avoiding them.

Mr McLean: That leads me to my question. In Understanding Ontario's Planning Reform it says, "Counties must prepare an official plan within a scheduled time frame where required by regulation." This morning the parliamentary assistant said he believes that's going to be probably three years, what that time frame's going to be. Are you aware that that is going to be part of the overall Bill 163?

Mr Davidson: No, this is the first time I've heard it.

Mr McLean: Okay. Then perhaps I could ask the ministry staff to clarify some of the questions that you have asked in your brief with regard to the time frame, the very essence of what he wants to know. It makes it difficult for us when you're bringing in some amendments. We don't know what they are and we don't know how many there are. You have regulations that you're going to bring in. We don't really know what they are. I got the one this morning from you verbally, but we can't see nothing in writing. Perhaps you might take this under consideration and advisement and have them prepared for next Tuesday.

Mr Hayes: Do you have amendments too?

Mr Grandmaître: Your amendments.

Mr Hayes: But you have some too, right? We're not aware of them.

Mr Cameron Jackson (Burlington South): On a point of order, Mr Chairman: I believe that that matter has been clarified by the minister, and we're anticipating those amendments which the government is aware of. We should be getting them any time now. To avoid any of this jousting, I think it's fair that the minister gave us a straight answer that we should anticipate them. All my colleague has indicated is the significance of having that information now to share with deputants. It helps the process. There's no political game involved here. Just for the record before --

The Chair: I think you made the point. You know it's not a point of order. Besides, you made the point.

Mr Jackson: No. The point of order was you have this additional request for information, and there is a pre-existing request for information for the record. Before the Chair applied a second request for information I wanted to make sure that we didn't lose sight of the fact that the minister has undertaken to share that with us, and his staff will. My colleague, and any other member of this table, shouldn't have to get these in a piecemeal, verbal fashion.

The Chair: Okay. Thank you, Mr Jackson. Were you going to complete your remark?

Mr Hayes: He made his point and I'm not going to go on with it.

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The Chair: Mr McLean, please go ahead.

Mr McLean: I was waiting for the ministry staff to comment with regard to the questions that they have in this brief with regard to the planning approval powers.

Mr McKinstry: I'm not clear exactly if you want me to go through each one of them.

Mr McLean: The proposed act and the municipal planning powers is what I was talking about. "The proposed act should treat regions and counties the same with respect to planning approval powers."

Mr McKinstry: Right. I guess the reason we didn't do that was because we felt that some counties were, as Huron is, and have been involved in planning for a long time; some counties have not. I guess the way we felt was that we didn't want to require every county to have an official plan. That's what we would need to do if we were assigning the powers as we have with regions, because every region is required to have an official plan. So that's why we said that the counties would be different in legislation.

Mr McLean: But according to this, it says, "Counties must prepare an official plan within a scheduled time frame." So you're saying that every country should have an official plan, aren't you?

Mr McKinstry: We're saying that every county would have an official plan according to the prescribed regulation but that there would be some flexibility of when that got prescribed, or maybe there will be some that would not get prescribed until a very long-term horizon.

Mr McLean: So then the minister is going to be the one who's going to determine when they should have their official plan.

Mr Grandmaître: If they're prescribed.

Mr McLean: If they're prescribed.

Mr McKinstry: In consultation with the county.

Mr McLean: Jeez, it leaves it pretty vague.

Mr Davidson: Which is probably one of the concerns that the way the act is drafted leaves. We don't know from a county perspective. We assume that at the beginning a certain number of counties will be prescribed. We have several counties in Ontario that already have official plans and we don't know whether they'll start out as prescribed counties and have access to these authorities or not. Hopefully, and it was brought out in the brief, although I didn't dwell on it, that will be clarified with the legislation: What counties will in fact be prescribed?

Mr McLean: That's exactly what you asked. In the information from Municipal Affairs, it says that this approach was devised to deal with certain situations, differential growth, especially in eastern Ontario, and they haven't been clarified. What is that information that you have for that? They're asking for it.

Mr McKinstry: We don't have the regulation prescribing the counties. That work has not been completed, so that's why we haven't given it to the committee. But we are starting to talk about it. We do want to talk to the counties and we do want to talk to the implementation committees, the three of them that have been set up, in order to get some kind of public consultation on this issue.

Ms Haeck: Just quickly -- and it sort of follows up on a number of the points that have already been made -- one of the deputations that we heard yesterday in Niagara Falls indicated that their group felt that having a time limit for compliance with a range of the policies and having a plan would be something that they -- and that was a food lands preservation group -- would feel very positive towards. They referred to it as the Oregon model.

I would assume that in light of some of the comments you've made, you're not necessarily totally in favour of a tight time frame -- they were looking at five years, not necessarily three -- but maybe a comment with regard to how you would feel about a specified time frame for compliance.

Mr Davidson: A reasonable time frame, as long as the time frame allowed enough time for two components: One is the research component, which usually can be done quite expeditiously, and another for the public participation component. The notion of three years may be a little short. I think five years would be closer to what could be reasonably done. I don't think that you want to get into the situation of having an open-ended one or you could get into the situation of York and Peel that have just gone on and never done plans, although I think they've been working on them now for almost 20 years.

Ms Haeck: So in fact a set time frame I think would answer a number of your concerns and obviously put Huron and, I guess, Oxford and Perth and a couple of other counties very much ahead of those that to date have not really come into compliance.

Mr Davidson: One would hope that the minister, in prescribing county official plans, would recognize those county official plans that are already in existence. Some municipalities -- Wellington, for example, which I believe is presenting next, has just recently had an approved official plan. Whether they should in fact do another one, just to meet some prescription, I think is a very valid point. But I would hope that the ministry would recognize those plans that are already in existence because they're ongoing. Some counties, like Huron, are continually upgrading and amending their plans through local secondary plans. We have local secondary plans that are on the minister's desk now for signing. I don't think those municipalities should have to do another one.

Ms Haeck: Is there some time left?

The Chair: Yes, there is.

Ms Haeck: Oh, good. I wanted to say thank you for your comments on the first page, where you indicated that a lot of the policies that have been set out really won't add an awful lot of workload to what they're currently doing. We've sort of heard the reverse from a number of presenters, and I'm just curious as to what you're doing at the present time, which means that you may just have a few, as you referred to them, administrative wrinkles to deal with rather than obviously what some other folks seem to be doing.

Mr Davidson: Huron already has delegated subdivision approval authority. We were the first county in Ontario to have that. Since then the minister has delegated subdivision approval powers to Victoria and some other counties. So we already have subdivision authority and we've been doing that for several years. We don't see a lot of the changes in the act as adding a lot of burden to what we already do. I can see if a county had never done subdivision approval -- when we took that on in 1990, it took some gearing up for.

Also, because of the nature of Huron county, we tend to perform according to the time lines that Bill 163 lays out in any event. We don't see a lot of the details as adding much work to what we do in Huron, mainly because we have a lot of the delegated authorities and we've had an official plan since 1971 and we have a planning department with several professional planners. So I think we're in a situation not unlike a region, although, quite frankly, we plan much better than the regions do.

Mr Eddy: Some don't plan.

Mr Davidson: No. Not Durham, especially Durham.

We've been adapting to the changes, and a lot of the changes, as I'm quite sure the ministry have told you, in Bill 163 have been anticipated for some time, and a lot of planning departments and municipalities have been planning in an environmentally friendly, if you want to use that term, or sustainable way for some time. So a lot of the changes and policies that come forward are quite common to those counties.

The Chair: If you wanted to ask one more brief question, then it's possible.

Ms Haeck: A quick one.

The Chair: But not long.

Ms Haeck: No, I promise not to be long.

One of the concerns of residents has been around notice and trying to make sure that as many people hear about a particular situation, and I would just like to hear your comments on how in Huron you manage to sort of get people really involved in the process.

Mr Davidson: We basically use a community development approach to planning. We invest an awful lot of effort into informing the community, holding meetings. Although the Planning Act requires one public meeting, when we do official plans, for example, it's not uncommon to hold 15 or 20 public meetings, and we actively encourage our public to participate. The councils of the local municipalities have been very supportive in local public participation and that's how our process works.

Whether it's one meeting or three meetings, Huron has always had multiple meetings when it does official plans. Our approach is that if people agree to do things cooperatively you'll get farther than if people are required to do things.

Ms Haeck: Great. Thank you very much.

The Chair: Mr Eddy, did you want to make a comment?

Mr Eddy: It was to the ministry, a question. I thought automatically that every upper tier, because of the new act, would be required -- I guess every municipality has an official plan -- would probably be required to have a new official plan based on the new provincial policies. From what I'm hearing today, that isn't necessarily so, but isn't that going to be the result? I don't know whether the ministry is in a position to comment on that now, but that was my automatic thinking.

Mr McKinstry: There's no requirement in the act that municipalities bring their official plans into conformity with the policy statements. However, in making decisions, and that will be in subdivisions or in consents if it's a zoning, they have to be consistent with the policy statements.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Gibson and Mr Davidson, for your presentation today and for taking the time to come.

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COUNTY OF WELLINGTON

The Chair: We invite the county of Wellington, Warden Catherine Keleher, Mr James Andrews and Mr Gary Cousins.

Ms Catherine Keleher: Thank you, Mr Chair. I'm Catherine Keleher. I'm the warden of the county of Wellington and I'd like to introduce the two gentlemen with me. On my left is our chief administrative officer, Jim Andrews, and to my right is our county planning director, Gary Gousins, whom I think you've heard earlier.

I am particularly grateful for the opportunity to address the committee today and I thank you for this allocation of time. You all, I believe, have a copy of our submission, and since you haven't had the opportunity, I'll just take a few minutes to read it to you.

At the back of this submission is a copy of a letter and council report that I sent to the Minister of Municipal Affairs. It was endorsed by two thirds of the 21 municipalities within the county of Wellington and there has been no municipality opposed to it. As I'm sure those of you with experience in local government, lower tier, will remember, some just receive it and file it and that's the end of it, but no one has been opposed. The report expresses the initial shock and anger -- and I don't think these terms are too strong -- felt by county council on seeing the contents of Bill 163 and the planning reform package.

Wellington county council believes that as much as possible decision-making should be clearly in the hands of elected and accountable officials at both the provincial and municipal levels and that decisions should be made from the point of view of the community and the advice we receive from our respective staffs.

We're finding, however, that increasingly decision-making authority in all areas affecting municipal government is being placed in the hands of special-purpose bodies and provincial civil servants. As examples of that we would cite multiservice agencies, some aspects of police service boards, district health councils, conservation authorities -- there are a number. Our ability to apply discretion and common sense to the many day-to-day concerns of our citizens is constantly being diminished. Bill 163 follows this unacceptable practice.

We recognize and accept the need for the province to set out its objectives related to land use planning and the need to that ensure provincial directions are followed. What we need is for provincially elected officials to understand that municipal government has objectives related to community planning that are based on our extensive contact with our citizens, and we need the means to achieve our objectives as well. The system must provide us with the flexibility to make locally appropriate decisions that respect provincial concerns as well as the concerns of individuals and the community at large. This requires trust in municipal government, which we feel is missing in Bill 163.

I'll tell you a little bit about Wellington county. We have 21 municipalities, 75,000 people. We are close to a number of large urban centres, Toronto, Hamilton, Guelph, Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo, and I note this says Orangeville, but that's all right. In some areas of our county we are experiencing pressures of growth because of our location. Other areas of our county are more traditionally rural.

We've had a planning department for 20 years. We have received approval for our county official plan and we are the approval authority for all severances within our county. All of our 21 local municipalities have had official plans and zoning bylaws for over 20 years and 16 of them have adopted new official plans in the 1990s. Many of the rest either have or are about to prepare new zoning bylaws.

If you were to examine our planning documents, you'd see a strong commitment to resource and environmental protection. This commitment stems from the views of our citizens which is the real strength of the commitment.

Wellington county and its municipalities have a long tradition of planning and have demonstrated a commitment to sound environmental policy. We find it difficult to understand why the province finds it necessary to diminish our ability to plan by establishing an overly intrusive set of provincial policies; limiting our ability to apply discretion where needed, by requiring blind obedience to provincial policy; setting up an extensive set of regulations and guidelines to accompany the legislation that will further define what we can and cannot do; and dramatically broadening the power of provincial civil servants to veto the decisions of elected local government without an Ontario Municipal Board hearing, and I think this is a very, very critical point.

Wellington county also finds it difficult to understand the unequal treatment given to regions and counties under Bill 163. Regions are being assigned the authority to approve amendments to local official plans and to approve plans of subdivision. Counties are being required to plan but are not being offered these approval powers.

We understand not all counties have been involved in planning. Many don't have the staff resources. Bill 163 should provide those counties that are actively involved in planning with the same approval function as regions. That would provide an incentive for other counties to plan by offering approval authorities once they're involved. However, should they choose not to, that would be a matter for local decision-making.

I've seen the amendments proposed by both AMO and the county planning directors which link the preparation of a county official plan to the authority to approve both local plans and plans of subdivision. Those proposals place counties on an equal footing with regions and they would be acceptable to Wellington county council.

Wellington county council is also concerned about the proposals for municipal planning authorities which would have the potential of creating yet another layer of planning jurisdiction within our county. We understand that MPAs were intended for those counties that were not actively involved in county-level planning. The legislation, however, allows them in all counties, including those like Wellington which do plan.

We would ask that these unnecessary and potentially disruptive planning bodies not be allowed in counties which are planning, and we would accept the proposals made by either AMO or the county planning directors.

Some of the problems we foresee with MPAs are an added level of bureaucracy with its attendant human resources cost and other costs, an accountability problem where they're not elected, they are not really accountable to anybody, a problem of fragmentation and the effect upon the county levy.

Wellington county council takes great offence to section 10, subsection 17(29) of Bill 163, which gives the approval authority, usually provincial staff, the ability to veto the decisions of elected local government without appeal. This section is far broader than the current legislation and allows provincial staff to make final decisions without being accountable for those decisions.

We all know that in theory provincial staff is answerable to the minister. However, in practice I'm quite sure the minister doesn't have either the time or the resources to become intimately familiar with each separate document that is dealt with by his department. So it's theoretical accountability rather than practical which occurs more at the county and lower-tier level.

Subsection 17(38) confers exactly the same powers on the OMB to dismiss municipal decision without a hearing. We can reluctantly accept the OMB having these powers as they are perceived to be impartial. We see no need for provincial staff to also exercise the same powers as the OMB, particularly where matters concern a provincial interest and staff cannot act impartially. It seems that democratic rights are being trampled to achieve administrative convenience.

I would like to make the following recommendations to you on behalf of Wellington county council:

Provide municipal government with discretion to make locally appropriate decisions within a broad provincial policy framework by (a) deleting subsection 6(2) of Bill 163, which requires municipal decisions to "be consistent with" provincial policy, and leave the current provision to "have regard for" provincial policy in place and (b) require the provincial policy statement to be reviewed in the near future.

Give counties with official plans the same authority as regions to approve local official plans and subdivisions by amending sections 10 and 28 as proposed by both AMO and the county planning directors.

Eliminate the potential for municipal planning authorities in counties with official plans by amending section 18 as proposed by either AMO or the county planning directors.

Delete section 8, subsection 14.3(5) and section 40, subsection 69.2(1), which both intrude into matters of county finance.

Delete section 10, subsection 17(29) or exempt municipal government from this section, which allows provincial staff to veto the decisions of elected local government.

The last page of our submission is just a little appendix that is the report that actually went to county council, was debated and adopted, and I think it outlines our concerns pretty concisely. In closing, I would like to again thank the committee for allowing us the opportunity to make this presentation.

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Mr McLean: I guess the veto that you talk about with regard to the ministry staff, it appears that they can veto any decision that an elected official makes. That's on page 5. Do you really feel that that is the case, that they are vetoing decisions that the local county has made?

Ms Keleher: Looking at the proposed legislation on page 15, the approval authority may refuse to refer all or part of the proposed decision to the municipal board. It's pretty clear if the request now is not made in good faith, is frivolous or vexatious or only for the purpose of delay. We all have problems with applications that fit those criteria now and we can all relate to that. However, the Ontario Municipal Board currently has that same authority to dismiss any application.

What we have a problem with is the part that says "if the plan or part of the plan is premature." Now "premature" is a pretty vague word and open to a pretty broad definition, depending on which provincial official is looking at it. If the reasons do not disclose any apparent land use planning ground which could be approved or refused by the municipal board, I guess what we're saying is in that case let the municipal board deal with it. They're an impartial authority with no axe to grind.

Mr McLean: The power that you're looking for for the local municipalities is to be able to approve subdivisions and land designations without going to the ministry. Is that the resolution that was passed by AMO?

Ms Keleher: Now, you've got me a little bit. I'd have to do a bit of homework here. Maybe Mr Cousins can give me a quick yes or no.

Mr Gary Cousins: Yes.

Ms Keleher: Yes. Thank you.

Mr McLean: The preparation of a county official plan to the authority to approve both local official plans and plans of subdivisions, you indicate these proposals place the county on a -- that you want them to be on the same footing as the regions.

Ms Keleher: In that respect, yes.

Mr McLean: The regions now, are most of them given the power by the minister to do their own subdivisions and approvals?

Ms Keleher: Yes. Now I'm not sure about Peel and York. They may be coming up when they have their plans approved, but yes.

Mr McLean: Maybe I could ask the parliamentary assistant how many of those regions do not have that power now.

Mr Hayes: Peel and York, isn't it?

Mr McLean: I'll refer it over, thank you.

Mr McKinstry: Sorry, could you repeat the question?

Mr McLean: The power to be able to approve of local planning is designated to the region by the minister. How many regions do not have that power now?

Mr McKinstry: I'm not sure exactly, but there are only two or three regions, I think, that have the power to approve local official plan amendments at this point.

Mr McLean: Are there any counties that have that power at the present time?

Mr McKinstry: I'm going to ask my colleague to answer that question.

Ms Pat Boeckner: Just back on the regions, the only regions that do not have that ability now are York and Peel -- they will have that ability when their official plans are approved -- and the region of Haldimand-Norfolk, which we heard was a situation because they don't have single-tier plans now so they don't have that ability anyway.

Mr McLean: Are there any counties that have it?

Ms Keleher: Not to my knowledge.

Ms Boeckner: I can get back to you in about two minutes on that.

Mr McLean: Are there any counties that are anticipating being able to do it? Maybe you could get back to me on that.

Ms Boeckner: We certainly anticipate that there would be many counties that would be able to do official plans locally because they have an official plan.

Mr McLean: Okay, what's my next question? Are there many hamlets within Wellington county?

Ms Boeckner: We have a lot of hamlets, yes.

Mr McLean: And they're going to come under the agricultural policy? There would be no expansion within those hamlets?

Interjection.

Mr McLean: No, we didn't get it straightened out this morning.

Mr Cousins: There are a lot of hamlets within the agricultural community of Wellington and it will be difficult to expand those hamlets. I think it's possible. A good deal of the difficulty is that the things that are going to be directed to hamlets are things that are hard to integrate into hamlets, as I think the Norfolk people were saying earlier.

Most of the traditional hamlets in Wellington are small clusters of housing, maybe grouped around a school or a ball field or something along that nature. To try to put agribusiness or to try to put municipal garages or those sorts of facilities into those hamlets is going to be a very difficult thing, if you're familiar with their nature.

Mr McLean: I agree with you. The member for Durham there doesn't think it's a good question, but I think it's very importance because there are an awful lot of hamlets in this province that, in my estimation, are going to be frozen under this bill.

Ms Haeck: I want to address actually your point 5 about your feeling, the veto of decisions, especially where a particular application is premature. At the technical briefing that we had publicly at an open meeting on Monday, Dale Martin, the provincial facilitator, outlined -- and I don't know that I have the document handy; space is at a premium here -- the whole process of developing a complete application so that if you do not have a complete application, then you're not going to be allowed to go through the system.

If I could speak on behalf of my residents, those people who are in St Catharines-Brock, they feel that one thing that has happened with far too much frequency is that a developer has put forth an idea, a few site plans, and over the time of negotiation with the municipality, that particular plan has gone through many stages and in fact never looks the same as what the people were reacting to at the beginning as to what it ends up looking like. In fact in one instance you have something that's gone from 40 units to anything over to 130 units, back down to 106 units in size and configuration.

Even the commenting agencies from the province have very little idea of what in fact they're reacting to, because the project on the part of the developer keeps changing. My residents very clearly have indicated support for the idea of a complete application and definitely a lot of input on the part of the residents, so that they fully understand and appreciate what they may be living with for a very long time.

Ms Keleher: Is that a question?

Ms Haeck: You may comment on it, if you wish.

Ms Keleher: I know that I'm fortunate to live in the county of Wellington, but it's been my experience within the county that we haven't had major problems in that area because each of our 21 local municipalities appears to be very concerned with working at it until you get it right before you go to the public, before you cause a big stir.

We're very small communities and we meet these people on the streets and in church and at the ball diamond every day of our lives and we don't want a big kerfuffle. We try with our staff to work with developers until we have something that we genuinely believe is going to be acceptable to the majority of our residents; then it can be fine-tuned. So I can't personally relate to what you're telling me.

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Ms Haeck: But I have to say to you that from what I've seen, and I know that other people on this panel would probably be able to corroborate my statement, and what I'm talking about is the development that is occurring in a community of 13,000 people; it's not a major urban centre. I'm quite sure that there are many instances of this and it's one of those problems where you may be doing it right but somebody else is doing it wrong, and it's always the question of how do you end up dealing with it so that everybody's doing it right.

Ms Keleher: Possibly this discussion is illustrative of the fact that one size does not fit all and what works --

Ms Haeck: I think there's a certain flexibility here anyway. I mean, the urban reality that I deal with in St Catharines and the rural reality that I deal with in Niagara-on-the-Lake provide some very interesting instances of how Niagara-on-the-Lake can definitely get things wrong and occasionally St Catharines can get it right.

Ms Keleher: I guess we just have trouble with appointed officials vetoing the decisions of elected representatives. The OMB we can live with. As I say, it is perceived to be an independent, impartial body. But the philosophy is what I think we have trouble with.

Ms Haeck: I'll defer to my other colleagues.

Mr Wiseman: On your last point about elected officials having the final say, one of the things that has struck me as interesting is in the Durham region official plan, which has just been okayed, they held a public meeting and then the official plan went to the council and the council rewrote it on the floor of the council chambers, and it did not reflect anything that happened in the public meeting, or very little of what happened in the public meeting and very little of what was in the original plan. This becomes a real aggravation for residents who participate in the process, only to see that it's not what they were commenting on and then not to have it come back to them to comment on what has now appeared in it.

I think there's a fine balance there between being elected and also representing the constituents. What I hear on a regular basis from constituents where I come from, where the population used to be 26,000, 10 years ago, and now it's 60,000, is that too much of that happens. How do we balance these conflicting jurisdictions?

Ms Keleher: Again, the OMB is one resource. It's very difficult to formulate policies that apply across the board.

Mr Wiseman: Yes, but most of the things that were thrown in are now before the Ontario Municipal Board.

Ms Keleher: Yes, and perhaps that's appropriate.

Mr Wiseman: I guess the question is, how do you then come back to people and include them in the process so that they don't become jaded with the system as it exists?

Ms Keleher: I don't know if there's a way, other than November 14th.

The Chair: Mr Hayes, do you have a point of clarification perhaps?

Mr Hayes: Yes, thank you, Mr Chair. On your number 5, your concern, Warden Keleher, I think we all have the tendency to point the finger at staff and point the finger at bureaucrats. All politicians periodically do that. But just to clarify that, it's not really the staff who are the ones who do the vetoing; it's the minister who has that authority and it's the minister if a plan is not complete or does not meet certain criteria.

But one question I'd like to ask is I understand that when the minister signed Wellington county's official plan, it was with the understanding that the official plan was somewhat deficient at that particular time and that it would have to be strengthened. The warden at that time and the minister signed an agreement which said that the county would do certain things within four years, and one of them was growth management work and of course environmental policies. I'm just wondering, has that been resolved at this time?

Mr Cousins: If I could answer that, Mr Chairman, what we did, when our official plan was approved, the province said there were certain areas that it wasn't comfortable with and it wanted us to review and deal with in more detail, and county council has agreed to undertake that. In fact they've given the department instructions to look at specific areas this year, and we hope to have an amendment prepared this fall for public meetings.

But what has caused some problems for us in doing that is that the province has totally revamped the provincial policy structure. What you wanted us to look at was largely issues relating to growth and settlement, and we haven't, quite frankly, known how to draft our policy to revise our plan because the provincial policy statements really haven't come forward in their new form until just the last month or so. In fact they're probably still under some consideration, and until we know how the dust is finally going to settle in the province, it's been difficult to do.

Mr Eddy: Just following on with that OMB and allowing the OMB to make the veto, were you aware that the present policy of the OMB, in my experience, is that they won't make the decision to dismiss an appeal unless the local council takes that action first? I was quite surprised at that, but that in fact is the way it is.

Thank you for the helpful brief and the points you've made. You've said many of the things that other county representatives have, including the discrimination against county, so to speak, treating them differently to regions, and that can be dealt with, I hope.

The serious thing, though, from my point of view is this matter of having municipalities opt out or form planning areas, and it seems to me now that perhaps the ministry wants to provide for the separated municipalities to plan in some way jointly with their municipalities, but that would be disastrous, as has been pointed out by some other counties, to the county planning operation if they were to leave the county. I don't know that that was intended, so I think we need some clarification of that.

I'm looking at a safeguard, and it seems to me a safeguard might be, and I'd like your opinion on this, that a municipality could have joint planning but only withdraw from a county planning organization or planning setup where you're proceeding to get an official plan with the consent of the county council. I don't know whether the ministry would approve of that.

The other point that I'd like you to comment on is 1(b) on page 6 where you said "require the provincial policy statement to be reviewed in the near future." Are you saying that the policies that are attached to this should be circulated for review and comment and possibly be revised and amended before this act is passed? What is your point there? I personally would like to see that because it has come up that the policy statements themselves are not open to or have not been examined, and we've had some people bring in some perceived problems with them.

Mr McLean: They're approved by cabinet.

Mr Eddy: Approved by cabinet did you say?

Mr McLean: That's what I said, yes.

Mr Eddy: Do you see that being adequate enough doing it after the act is passed, or what is your point there, and comment on the other one about withdrawal.

Ms Keleher: We would prefer, of course, that they would be reviewed as soon as possible. It's our understanding they're not part of the mandate of this committee or their review is not part of the mandate of this committee, yet they're so closely tied to the legislation that it would be great to have them reviewed before it's passed.

Mr Eddy: For possible correction.

Ms Keleher: Sure.

Mr Eddy: With a view to improvement.

Ms Keleher: None of us is perfect.

Mr Eddy: I realize that.

Ms Keleher: Including myself, the authors of the document, yes. With respect to withdrawing, we think it's going to cause fragmentation. We would support the position that you outline where in a county that already does plan, which has a professional planning department and is prepared to undertake that function, MPAs would be formed only with the consent of the county council.

1430

For counties that do not plan, they certainly make eminent good sense, but they're going to fragment our county, they're going to cause dissension. We happen to have a county library system in which some of our municipalities have not yet been included, and we recognize the difficulties of that and we're not anxious to see it expand. We want to consolidate and form a strong county government.

Mr Grandmaître: One short question?

The Chair: It's 2:30. If it's quick.

Mr Grandmaître: Have you received an answer for your June 29 letter of this year?

Ms Keleher: Not that I'm aware of. That hasn't crossed my desk, no.

Mr Grandmaître: It's only September.

The Chair: We ran out of time.

We appreciate your taking the time to participate in these hearings. We thank you.

WELLINGTON COUNTY CLERKS AND TREASURERS ASSOCIATION

The Chair: We welcome Wellington County Clerks and Treasurers Association, Mr James Andrews and Mr Robert Skeoch.

Mr Robert Skeoch: First of all, I'd like to thank you for entertaining me this afternoon on behalf of the clerks and treasurers of Wellington county.

As mentioned before, there are 21 municipalities within the county. Our association includes not only the municipalities but also the county of Wellington and the city of Guelph as a separated city.

To go through the report, rather than reading it right through, I'll very briefly hit the highlights. I'll start at page 2. We've split the report into three separate areas. The first area covers the Planning Act.

The first point is we do strongly support the comments and recommendations of the county of Wellington that you've just heard. If the county gets approval for giving authority of the official plan approvals and subdivision approvals, we feel it will definitely speed up the system, and I think this was the idea of Bill 163 to start with.

The second point is we also agree that the words "shall have regard to policy statements" should be included in subsection 6(5) on page 5 of the bill.

Item 3 deals with time framing of official plan amendments. At the present time that section not only asks for 15 days to send out the notice of the passage of the amendment, but also requires that everyone gets a copy of all the information. We find the time frame is just too short, and also it's going to be very expensive, because it's not only the official plan that has to be photostatted, there's also a lot of documentation that goes along with the official plan to approval authority which can be very costly.

What we're suggesting is that only the written notice of the adoption of the plan be sent to each person of the public that requires a copy of same and that any person could come to the municipal office to review it if they so wished during normal office hours. It would be consistent with the present Planning Act that's in effect right now.

Item 4: We're suggesting a little clarification on the word "request." This could mean verbal request or some other type of request that may not allow the council to have all the information they need to make a proper decision. So we're suggesting that it be changed to "written request in a prescribed form acceptable to council." As you know, every municipality is a different size and has different concerns or maybe has different application forms. I think using this type of wording will cover all municipalities.

Item 5 gets into the committee of adjustments. Under the act it talks about appointing an officer to carry out the provisions of the committee of adjustment, but there's nothing under section 45 or 45.1 to govern the duties or responsibilities of the officer. It talks about how they can hold a hearing, but it doesn't go further on to include it under the regulations of a committee, it doesn't say what they're supposed to do with it. So something has to be done with that.

Item 6: We request that if the appeals of the committee are going to go to council, then we feel there should be a copy of the decision of the committee of adjustment going to the local clerk. As you may not be aware, in a lot of the smaller municipalities the clerk is not the secretary of the committee of adjustment. They appoint their own person to act in that behalf.

Therefore, I think if the council is going to make the decision on any reviews, they should automatically get a copy, plus the fact that a lot of people contact the local municipal office for information about the decision of the committee and I think it's important that the local municipality should have at least a copy of it.

Item 7: This talks about the time for the council to review a request on the decision. There is nothing in the act or in Bill 163 that will set out a date for review of the decision. So for political reasons or other reasons, council may delay the review of the decision indefinitely. They may never handle it.

We're suggesting that there should be some type of time frame incorporated in Bill 163 to force the councils to make some type of decision one way or another. Also, you get into the problem of, of course, elections and various things happening. So we're suggesting maybe 180 days from the time the decision's made.

Item 8, which is on page 4: We're asking that this section be clarified. It's dealing with subdivisions' authority. We're suggesting it should be clarified as it's unclear whose responsibility it will be to give that specific notice that's required under that section.

There are other minor concerns which are also attached to the back of the report. I'll leave that to you to review on your own later.

Going through the amendments to the Municipal Act, we have concerns there too.

Section 47: Most municipalities already have a procedure bylaw in force. The act doesn't really indicate what happens to these existing procedure bylaws. Do they stay in force or can they be amended or do the municipalities have to pass a new procedure bylaw? Secondly, would municipalities be able to adopt the bylaw that would apply to council and to all the local boards under their jurisdiction? In other words, actually pass one bylaw instead of several. We would like this section clarified.

Item 2, section 51: It deals with the procedures for purchase and sale of property. It's not clear if this bylaw should be part of a procedure bylaw. Some municipalities already have in the procedure bylaw certain criteria dealing with selling of property and the purchasing of property. Bill 163 is not clear on this matter.

Item 3, section 55: We feel to adopt a procedure bylaw at the smaller municipalities it may not be a long enough time period. Small municipalities usually meet only once a month and they may not have the staff or the expertise to prepare such a document. In turn they may turn to their local solicitor and, if you know municipal solicitors, sometimes they take a little while to get the information back and adjust it to council's preference. We are suggesting maybe six months would be more acceptable.

On page 5, item 4, again we're asking for a little clarification. Would the municipality be allowed to continue to use the existing bylaw in force rather than adopt a new bylaw?

Going on to local government disclosure of interest, item 1, clause 3(m): We would like to have some clarification of what is "remote or insignificant" in its nature. This may be something different to each member of council compared to the public or a commissioner that is going to review. Therefore, the councillor could possibly end up losing his position, even though he or she thought they may have complied with the section of the act. We're suggesting that this section either be deleted or reworded.

Item 2, clause 4(1)(e): We're suggesting that this should be deleted as we feel that the member has already given his oral disclosure and has been already recorded in the minutes by the clerk. If there is any further discussion, if there's a concern from the public, we feel that they can always apply to the commissioner for additional information or maybe contact the individual himself.

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Item 3, subsection 4(2): We're suggesting this subsection be deleted. Our understanding of the purpose of changing the present procedure was to get the member to leave the council chambers to avoid swaying any decision of the members remaining. Declaring a pecuniary interest should be done only when the member is present at the meetings when the issue to be discussed is part of the agenda.

To follow up through there, the other concern is what happens with the approval of the minutes at the following meeting. If you're having these people leave the council meeting, they won't be able to endorse that section of the meeting.

Item 4, subsection 6(2): Some members of council at the local level of government are also members of the second-tier government, such as the county of Wellington. It doesn't really indicate, are they to file disclosure statements at both levels of government, both at the municipal level and the county level? We would like some clarification on that.

We're also suggesting that all candidates should file this disclosure as a condition of running for office when they register under the Election Act. This way both the existing council members and the new candidates are treated equally. Otherwise new candidates may have an advantage over the former council as the former council will have filed their declaration, where the new candidates will not.

Also, submitting information prior to the election could possibly eliminate the calling of a new election and save the municipality thousands of dollars. As you know, municipalities have been cut back in spending and we just don't have the money to throw away on new elections. Hopefully, with all candidates filing the same information prior to election, any member of the public can deal with them and ask questions prior to the election rather than after.

Item 5 on page 6, subsection 6(3): Some members of council may be separated from their spouse or may have a court order to stay away from their spouse. Therefore, the financial information of the spouse may be impossible to obtain. Secondly, the child could be under the custody of the spouse or the member may have children from a previous marriage. How does the member obtain the financial information?

Financial information for both the spouse and child we feel should not be disclosed. This would prevent any problems with filing of statements, and all members will be treated equally: members of council, that is.

Item 6, clause 6(3)(b): At what point or in whose opinion is the possibility of serious harm to a person or business determined? A councillor could argue that a mortgage against any of his property could be a harm to his business. In fact that was one question that was brought up by one of the candidates for this election coming. He has several parcels of property and he has a mortgage on a few of them and he feels that this could hurt him if people knew that he was maybe not as financially solvent as he anticipates.

Going on to page 7, item 7, subsections 6(5) and (6), the wording is very confusing and we're suggesting that these be either deleted or clarified. That's dealing with the spouse and child information.

Item 8, section 15, should be deleted or at least reworded under subsections 15(3) and (4). We're suggesting all documents, and especially the disclosure documents, should not be available to the public. As you know, Bob Rae has already found that private information should in some cases remain private; therefore, we're suggesting that any person requesting to access the information should follow the procedures already set out under the municipal freedom of information act or be part of section 8 of Bill 163, which deals with the commission, how the commission can go in and do any analysis of the information and make a decision from that.

This way the member has the same privacy as members of the provincial government and will protect any information that may be disclosed by a member in error. If the members are aware that disclosure and documents are not going to be available to the public, they would be more open about the information they give. Otherwise, it will be a lawyer's nightmare. In other words, they'll be going to their lawyers first before they'll be filing any declarations. The way the act is written right now, we've talked to a couple of lawyers and both of them have different opinions on certain sections of the act, and it's not good. Also, this will prevent the information about the spouse or child being misused by the public.

Item 9, sections 19 and 21: There should be different amounts set for different sizes of municipalities. Will the municipality or board bylaw have jurisdiction over the Lieutenant Governor in Council regulations? In past experience we've seen that the Lieutenant Governor in Council regulations usually take one or two years to come into effect. If the public have accepted the suggested municipal or board bylaw, why would it need to be changed when these regulations do come into effect?

Finally, on page 8 is number 10. Because of the time restraint, I wish to advise you that there are additional items in the appendix attached that you can peruse at your leisure. I'd like to thank the committee for letting me speak.

The Chair: Thank you. Ms Harrington first. Four minutes per caucus.

Ms Harrington: Thank you, Mr Skeoch, for coming forward today. I wanted to deal with the section of the act with regard to planning. Obviously we're all here today as part of a process to make planning better in Ontario. I see it as trying to make it more efficient, therefore cut red tape, as well as make it more participatory for the general public and have them more part of the process, as well as adhere to common principles across this province which I think are very important.

We've heard this morning that the general public is feeling isolated. This is from a man representing Municipal World. We also heard from groups that there should be more accessibility and timeliness in order to make this whole planning process fair. Whether it's a committee of adjustment decision or whether it's a planning matter or the official plan, it's essential that people do have their input.

I see clerks across this province as a key part of that process. In any municipality the clerks are the ones who give out the information and allow people access. You say on page 2 that the association suggests that only a written notice of adoption of the plan be sent to each person or public body that files with the clerk a written request. What I'm asking you is, can you see way through your job as clerks across this province to have more public input, to have a new and better way for people to be involved in a very important process?

Mr Skeoch: At the present time the system is that before any adoption of official plan or amendment to official plan takes place, of course there are public meetings. The system itself I think seems to work in most cases.

I know in Wellington county we haven't had any major problems that I'm aware of, but our concern wasn't really -- we still think, you know, the public should have their input, we're not saying they shouldn't; our concern is the time frame for actually getting those notices to the public. If we're going to have to start photostatting all the documentation that goes to the approval authority and give it to everybody that asks for a request or any public body that requests it, that's fine, but 15 days is impossible. There's no way we can reach that time date.

Ms Harrington: What do you think of advisory committees like the EEAC committees? Do you find it helpful to be able to deal with them, to communicate with them? That's your job, communication.

Mr Skeoch: I guess it depends on the municipality. I come from a very small one, and it depends I guess on the topic that you're dealing with, whether it's, like, what the situation is with the official plan, whether it's dealing on a county-wide plan that you're dealing with or whether it's dealing with a local issue, a minor issue. It varies, it depends on what frame of municipality you're in.

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Mr James Andrews: I think maybe Bob has touched on one of the problems. I'm at the upper-tier level, so at this point in time -- and I'm with the county -- we're not directly involved. But I was for many years with the city of Guelph. Certainly when you've a larger municipality probably an advisory committee has value. It has value as far as you being able to tap into certain expertise in the community.

But when you're in a municipality -- I just forget the population but Bob's is somewhat small -- it may be quite as advantageous or even necessary, because of the size of the community. I think this is one of the problems that probably you're having to deal with at the provincial level, that we're not all around metropolitan or regional centres. There are a lot of municipalities that are very, very small. The shoe doesn't always fit every foot. This is one of the points that I would like to get across to this committee when you're dealing with this.

Ms Harrington: I think there should be various ways, whether it's a small municipality or a large or whatever, to have people involved and I think clerks are part of that.

Mr Winninger: Just a very quick question. Some of your concerns you expressed around conflict-of-interest disclosure reflected some discussions we had this morning. We had some clarification from the ministry on the kind of information that would or would not be made public. I heard you refer to the concern of a particular interest who had mortgages on certain properties and, if that became public, it might have an adverse impact on his business. I wonder if we could have a clarification from the ministry as to whether specific mortgages on specific properties would be required as part of the disclosure or not, and could be made public.

Mr Sidebottom: The precise items to be disclosed by a member will be set out in regulation. We sent out a draft regulation in May. It says liabilities that are related to particular assets, and those assets include property holdings. Similar to the members of the Legislature, as the public part of your disclosure as a member of the Legislature, it would simply say you have a property at a particular address and you also have a mortgage with a particular institution or other lending agency at that same address. There'd be no indication of the value or the extent to which it's mortgaged --

Mr Winninger: But would it relate the mortgage to a specific property?

Mr Sidebottom: Yes.

Mr Andrews: I did see the sample form that went out. Quite frankly, we weren't too concerned if we could be assured that it would be fairly restrictive like that. But we have a very specific instance that sort of precipitated this comment, where a businessman would've been concerned if the information was available. There was a notice of substantial change in that information over a fair period of time. He was in the type of business where somebody could probably buy business, which would put him in hardship, just the fact that that knowledge is readily available.

What we would not argue against is not so much having the information available, but how it's to be released. As we interpret this early stage, it would appear almost that there's a book available through the clerk that anybody can walk in and flip through. What's the reason? If it was centred through a commission or some restrictive manner where they have to justify this information being available -- which I understand is what happens at the province; I've been told that anyway -- I don't think that you would have the objection.

It also, particularly in smaller municipalities I think, puts the clerk in a rather precarious position politically because he could be perceived as providing this information in a small community. As a staff member I would have real concerns with it.

Mr Eddy: Thank you for your presentation. You've come up with some suggestions on many items that need review and consideration and I hope that's done. Thank you for doing that.

Item 5 on page 3: I had thought that when you appointed officers under that section automatically they would proceed the same as the committee would. I didn't realize that it wasn't really defined. You're saying it's not defined in the new act, so it needs a definition. I think that's an awfully good point.

I want to follow up on that point of the mortgage. You know, it's interesting because as soon as you know that a person owns a certain property you can easily, at least you could, go into the registry office and check the property and find out the amount of the mortgage, to whom it's owed and all the details. If you have an idea that somebody owns a property, you can already get that. Yet on the other hand, you are giving information. It's easily obtainable, in my opinion anyway. I don't know that there needs to be much of a concern about the one on mortgages because it's already, as I say, obtainable unless that act is going to be changed.

The point you raised about farming statements at both levels, I need a clarification on that. I guess you would have to file at both levels. If you were a locally elected council who sits on an upper tier, then you would have to file that information with both clerks. Is that correct? I would think so.

Mr Sidebottom: The way the legislation is drafted you would file it with every body that's listed. So if you were a member of a township council and also served at the county level, then also on perhaps the PUC, you'd file the same document in each place.

Mr Eddy: Hopefully the same document.

Mr Sidebottom: Hopefully the same document.

Mr Eddy: I see. I've had several people contact me and the big problem is: "I have an appointment to the police services board of the town. We've reduced our recompense to $100. You want to know all this about me." They seem to be very concerned about it. Personally, you know, the detail that we have to file -- when you have to ask your wife how much money she's carrying in her purse and do it nicely enough that you can get an answer, it seems to me that it's beyond reason. This is light in comparison.

Interjection.

Mr Eddy: Well, I have gotten it so far. But I want to just comment too on the matter, and it's a very, very important point, of public information. I think you've hit it on the head. In a small municipality people tend to know what's going on and make it their business to knows what's going on. But when you get a municipality like the town of Haldimand, which is an amalgamation of one town, two villages, several small police villages and six or seven townships, you've got a problem. I think that's what the people from Norfolk naturalists were saying, which covered the old county of Norfolk, that it's almost impossible.

I don't know what system can be devised in rural areas where you have a weekly newspaper. Small signs are used, but it's an item that really needs to be looked at. I agree with that. People have got to know what's going on, because if they don't know initially, they're going to do something about it later on and cause problems.

If you have any suggestions along those lines -- and I realize you're at the local level, Mr Andrews is at the county level, and it's quite a different thing when you're covering the whole county perhaps -- but if you want to respond, you may.

Mr Andrews: Very briefly, I think that if there were any safeguards that could be developed that would prevent sort of witch-hunts─you mentioned mortgages and so on. But somebody again has to go to the registry office, they have to know the lot and the plan, so that they have specific information. What I'm afraid of is that you're putting the clerk in the position of dropping a book on the counter and saying, "Go and look at whatever you want."

Mr McLean: Yes. That's exactly what will probably happen. I had the opportunity last night in my spare time to review my financial bill that I got from the commissioner.

Mr Jackson: That was him crying in the room next door to me. That's why I couldn't get any sleep.

Mr McLean: That document very clearly states that I have to show the amount of mortgages that I have, the amount of mortgages that I own, the amount of money that I have in the bank.

Mr Wiseman: How much you get in your pocket.

Mr McLean: Yes. Everything is there. I'm curious to know from the adviser if the conflict-of-interest form for members of council is much similar to the ones that the provincial members have. If it's not, what is left out of it?

Mr Wiseman: There's a copy of it in our package.

Mr McLean: I got it.

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Mr Sidebottom: The amount of detail required of a municipal council member in their disclosure of financial information is much less substantial than is required of a member of the Legislature. There is a sample copy of the form provided in your information. It's in the green pages. It's probably about a third or halfway through that section.

You'll find a copy of that form 1 and you'll see it relates to property interest, business interest, liabilities related to those and just the sources of income. So the comments you're making about the amount of money that your mortgage is worth or the amount of money you have in the bank, there are no dollar values associated with municipal disclosure.

Mr McLean: The reason I asked you that question was I wanted it clarified for them so that they would now realize it's not as painful as what they think it is.

Mr Grandmaître: Do you have a copy of that, Al?

Mr McLean: Yes, I have a copy of mine in my briefcase. The time frame that you talked about is an important issue and it's been brought up with many of the people who have made delegations to us. You're talking about the time frame with regard to a small council that meets once a month. What would you like to see that extended to? Did you indicate in your brief 180 days?

Mr Skeoch: On which page?

Mr McLean: I guess 4 is where your answer is, 180 days.

Mr Skeoch: I would expect most municipalities could be able to make the 180-day period. That gives them approximately half a year to get in order. As I say, it depends too if it's going to be -- as long as there's no political uprising or whatever -- but I think for council six months should easily be able to handle it, I would hope.

Mr McLean: You asked a lot of good questions in your brief, especially where it comes to the separation of a spouse and family. That can be very complicated. That's the first time that's been brought to our attention, and you have some other questions in there that I would be delighted to see the answer that you get back from the ministry staff when they have time to deal with it.

Mr Skeoch: Very good.

Mr McLean: It's a good brief and thank you.

The Chair: Thank you for participating in these hearings.

NICHOLAS VARIAS

The Chair: I'll ask Mr Varias to come up. Welcome, Mr Varias. If you want the members to comment, you will have to keep your comments brief; otherwise we'll simply listen to what you have to say.

Mr Nicholas Varias: I understand. My presentation is brief as well. I'm an architect in London and I speak personally. Although a lot of my colleagues feel the same way as I do on the issue I would like to address, my comments are my personal comments.

As chair of the urban design committee of the London Society of Architects, I have repeatedly commented in the past on the reports of the Commission on Planning and Development Reform in Ontario. The recent package issued by the Minister of Municipal Affairs includes Bill 163 and a comprehensive set of policy statements. I understand that these incorporate to a substantial extent the recommendations of the final report of the Sewell commission. I strongly believe that these recommendations, if implemented in Bill 163, will contribute positively to the reform of the planning system in Ontario and consequently to better urban environments.

Nevertheless, I would like to address what appears to be a shortcoming of the amendments, and now I speak as an architect who feels very frustrated by looking at certain results of how our neighbourhood has been handled in the past. I can refer to many examples in London where urban design hasn't been addressed properly and we're experiencing some of the negative effects of lack of addressing urban design.

After a quick review of the policy statements and of Bill 163, I could not find any provisions for professional qualification requirements for those involved in the planning and development process. The Sewell commission's final report touches on this issue under lot creation and development control by recommending qualified planners and advisory committees with individuals with an interest in design.

Have these recommendations been omitted? I'm not sure. I didn't have the time to go in detail through all the text of the Bill 163, but after going through it, I could not find any reference that would sort of incorporate what the Sewell commission had in the final report at least.

The Chair: Do you want a quick response to that question that you're raising?

Mr Varias: I'd rather finish my reading first.

These recommendations from the Sewell commission were not reaching far enough, I believe, but they provided a good start in promoting better planning and urban design.

The goals of the policy statements, especially those involving intensification, cannot succeed without effective means to produce high-quality neighbourhoods. I could add here that that's where people will perceive planning. That's how planning is materialized in our lives at the neighbourhood level where we see the results of what kind of buildings go up and how they look, scales, how they're integrated into neighbourhoods, harmony and so on. The legislative measures proposed so far do not address urban design and professional involvement. These factors are required to successfully complete the planning and development process at the neighbourhood level.

It is time that Ontario follows the example of many other parts of the world and recognizes the fact that shaping cities is also an intellectual exercise, not only a political, economic and physical process -- I would also add administrative process -- an exercise that requires people with adequate training and experience in addition to public input.

In the public's interest the Planning Act should include professional requirements for the design of healthy and safe urban environments. This would be similar to the provisions of the Building Code Act for healthy and safe buildings that require the involvement of architects and engineers. As a minimum the Planning Act should require that planning authorities include people with training and experience in planning and urban design.

The Chair: Thank you very much. There is time for one question each. Some questions tend to be long at times, so why don't we do that? I think it's Mr McLean.

Mr McLean: You want to know if the recommendations have been omitted and you're talking about the lot creation and development control by recommending qualified planners and advisory committees with an interest in design. I can't tell you whether that's been met, but I could ask the ministry staff if those qualifications are in that document.

Mr McKinstry: Yes, the way we worked it was the way the Sewell commission recommended, which was that where a municipality, region, city or county was advised by a professional planner, qualified planner, they would be delegated. In fact we went a little further than the commission in this case and we gave subdivisions directly to regions and separated cities and we would continue to delegate to counties.

I guess the reason we did that was because we felt that having a plan, being engaged in planning at the political level was more important than being advised by a planner. A planner could resign, the budget could be cut, many things could happen. We felt the commitment of the political entity to planning was most important.

Mr McLean: Any of the municipalities that I've been involved in, and I spent 16 years in municipal government, most of the planners who worked for the municipalities and the county all had schooling in urban and rural planning. I'm wondering what you were getting at when you were talking about -- I don't know how anybody could hire anybody that wasn't trained in planning. Is it happening around here?

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Mr Varias: The way I see the problem is not that the planners who are presently -- or who would be hired as part of staff are not qualified as planners; the question is if the decision-making process, especially when focused down at the neighbourhood level, which sort of involves urban design -- if that decision-making involves people who have the experience or training and so on to make those decisions.

I can give you an example of London, which is a city of over 300,000 -- I think it is 316,000 at the present -- there's no architect on staff. There is no input at any committee level, planning committee or the kind of level where architects would have an input into the urban design of new subdivisions. The only thing where there are architects involved is the local architectural advisory committee that has architects that deal with heritage aspects. But again, this is an advisory committee to the planning committee and has absolutely no sort of political clout in terms of making decisions.

Mr White: Thank you very much, Mr Varias. I'm very impressed with your presentation. You have a very succinct point and frankly one that you do not personally, directly benefit from, and we're talking about land use planners and planners, and you're an architect. I think it really is commendable that you're saying there's a lack in our community, it affects me, but I wouldn't be involved directly.

I've certainly been approached in my area by a number of planners who say we should have requirements, we should have standards about who are planners, what kind of education and skills and training they have. They're saying that basically it's something Municipal Affairs should be involved in. Would you be in favour -- this wouldn't come here. Your profession of course is, I believe, regulated by the Attorney General's office, is it not?

Mr Grandmaître: No.

Mr White: Which ministry?

Mr Winninger: Attorney General.

Mr White: Attorney General, Thank you. Of course, you have a separate act that describes architects. Would you be in favour of those kind of regulations or laws that would specify what a land use planner is, what an urban planner is, so that this kind of work can be done in a more conscientious way?

Mr Varias: I may have not made my position clear. I don't dispute the qualifications or the input at the planning level, at least at the present, although a lot of smaller municipalities do not have planners on staff and I understand there will be some kind of mechanism for those municipalities. The Minister of Municipal Affairs will provide the planning support needed to implement the policies.

What I'm addressing here is the level of planning, that planners are not trained, or the planners are trained to deal with the overall planning issues of a broad nature, let's say putting together an official plan and looking at statistics and so on. What I'm addressing is if you start focusing on an official plan and you're identifying certain areas of a city, for example downtown London, or certain areas of downtown London, planners are certainly not trained to deal with that aspect. This is urban design, with different kinds of criteria for design and planning for such a thing and what I'm saying is that, at the present, this is not covered through any kind of regulation.

The building code covers buildings for safety of persons and property. The Planning Act may cover planning, a broader aspect of planning, but what is needed is to cover that intermediate level of urban design -- if the Planning Act would include provisions to deal with those aspects, urban design guidelines and how those are dealt with at design level and also at political levels so they can be implemented. As an advisory committee, for example, for a municipality, I would see members on that committee who would need to have those qualifications to deal with those issues.

If these things are not included in legislation, required by an act, they are left up to the local level and in a city which is lucky to have people with vision and recognize these things, then those are addressed. If not, people living in the municipality are less lucky. That's what I was trying to --

The Chair: Mr Grandmaître, quickly.

Mr Grandmaître: Don't you think it would be only natural for a planner or a municipal council, once the official plan has been adopted by the local municipality, once the implementation of this plan starts, that an architect would be involved? I think all municipalities do this at the present time.

Mr Varias: Not London. I don't know much about other --

Mr Grandmaître: They may not have an architect on staff, but once the implementation starts, though, I'm sure they go outside and talk to you or your colleagues.

Mr Varias: There is a requirement for an architect, as a professional, to design a building. But I am talking about looking at an area that involves several buildings, including existing buildings, integration of heritage areas with new proposals; new plans of subdivisions -- how are they integrated. There is no such a requirement of having architects involved because nobody hires them. It's beyond the scope of a particular project. That's why the city or the municipality would have to assume that role to have some kind of mechanism, that planning for that intermediate level is done.

Mr Grandmaître: That's a good idea.

The Chair: We ran out of time, Mr Grandmaître. Mr Varias, we thank you for coming and for the brief.

COUNTY OF OXFORD

The Chair: We invite the county of Oxford, Warden Edward Down and Mr Craig Manley. Just as a reminder, please, speak into the microphone so that we can record everything you will say to us.

Mr Ed Down: My name is Ed Down. I'm the warden for the county of Oxford and I have with me this afternoon Craig Manley, who is the director of policy and development for the county. We certainly thank the commission for the opportunity to make a presentation on behalf of the county of Oxford.

The county of Oxford has reviewed in some detail the package of documents released in May relating to the government's reform of the planning and development system in the province. The county has reviewed the Comprehensive Set of Policy Statements, the document entitled Understanding Ontario's Planning Reform, and Bill 163.

The county recognizes that Bill 163 revises the Ontario Planning and Development Act, introduces the Local Government Disclosure of Interest Act, as well as amending the Planning Act, the Municipal Act and other statutes relating to planning and municipal matters. The content, however, of this submission relates to the Planning Act.

This submission is divided into sections, with the first section outlining some issues of particular importance to the county. The second section contains the county's comments on various provisions included in Bill 163.

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To fully appreciate our concern relating to Bill 163 and the county of Oxford official plan, it is important to have some appreciation of the planning process in the county of Oxford. The county of Oxford has a population of approximately 93,000 people. The economic base of the three urban centres in the county -- the city of Woodstock, the town of Ingersoll and the town of Tillsonburg -- is focused on auto-related industry with the most significant of those industries being the CAMI plant in the town of Ingersoll. The county also has a very strong agricultural industry which is based on the fact that 91% of the land in the county is rated as class 1, 2 and 3 in the Canada Land Inventory.

The restructured county of Oxford was created in 1975 by Bill 95. Bill 95 provided for a variety of changes and responsibilities between the county and its area municipalities. The bulk of the authority for community planning was assigned to the county. The county was also given a mandate to prepare an official plan and that was done in the form of a one-tier plan which was approved by the Minister of Municipal Affairs in 1979. The planning and development department for the county was established in 1972 and, subsequent to restructuring, that department has continued to serve all eight member municipalities.

On October 1, 1977, Oxford was officially delegated subdivision approval authority and was the first county in the province to receive that delegation. Oxford received condominium approval delegation on November 1, 1980.

In May 1990, there was a decision by county council to initiate a three-year program of updating and reviewing the county official plan. That program began in the early fall of the same year and represents the first comprehensive review of the official plan since its adoption in 1979. Three years has expanded now into our fourth year, and we are presently reviewing draft policies for the updated official plan.

These series of highlights provide some background as to how community planning is conducted in the county of Oxford. The planning framework in the county may not be perfect but there is a political commitment in the framework and for the documents that form part of that framework. For these reasons, the administration of land use planning in the county of Oxford works very well.

Since the Commission on Planning and Development Reform in Ontario was established, the county has been very diligent in determining how the recommendations of the commission, and the government's response to those recommendations, would affect the county's program to revise and update the official plan. At various points over the last two and a half years the county has had considerable trepidation over how the Sewell commission and the ministry's response would potentially delay or derail the major revamping of the county official plan.

Bill 163 at least provides some certainty by acknowledging that the government is working towards a January 1, 1995, implementation for the legislation. That date becomes significant in relation to subsection 74.1(1) which refers to the transition provisions in the legislation. It is understood, however, by subsection 74.1(2) that an official plan would have to be adopted by a council for it to be considered "a matter or proceeding...deemed to have been commenced...." Knowing the target date is an advantage but recognizing, in the case of the county of Oxford, it is unlikely to be met, causes concern about the adverse effect that the implementation of Bill 163 could have on the new official plan.

The exercise of reviewing and updating the official plan is being conducted in accordance with existing legislation and the existing policy statements of the provincial government. A major concern arises on the part of the council of the county of Oxford if the new official plan is submitted to the province for approval in early 1995 and the ministry proceeds to advise the county that new policies now apply which necessitate new research leading to the development of revised county policies.

In previous submissions, the county has put forward some suggestions to resolve this problem. The county has recommended that the ministry could go ahead and approve the official plan even if not fully "consistent with" the new policy statements. In this scenario, the approval would stipulate that the county would have a defined period of time after this approval is issued to revamp and add the necessary policies to fully ensure that the new policy statements are implemented.

This approach allows some flexibility and permits the county to carry out a secondary exercise to ensure that policies dealing with, as an example, the economic, community development and infrastructure policy statement, are formulated and incorporated into the plan.

The county of Oxford stresses the need for implementation of the proposed policy statements to be flexible and recognize the practicalities of the policy preparation work that has already been undertaken by municipalities such as Oxford. A municipality that has worked within the confines of existing policy statements and guidelines should not be penalized at the 11th hour. A municipality's plans should be given the endorsement that was anticipated all along even if there are conditions imposed on that endorsement that require further work to be completed.

As a footnote on the relationship between the county official plan and the new provincial policy statements, the county of Oxford concurs with other submissions, and especially the submission by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, that the new Planning Act should acknowledged that an approved official plan should be deemed to be consistent with provincial policies and as such should replace provincial policies in guiding land use decisions in the municipality. The one-tier Oxford official plan would then become the pre-eminent document and reduce concerns about provincial applications of policy statements outside of what has been adopted in the official plan.

Subsection 59(2) of the County of Oxford Act states as follows: "The council of each area municipality is deemed to be a committee of adjustment under the Planning Act." This provision of the County of Oxford Act may be unique in the province of Ontario whereby the council acts as the committee of adjustment. Section 25 of Bill 163 sets forth the new provisions regarding the role of council and the review of minor variance applications and subsection 45(10) specifies that the decision of the council on an application is final.

If current practices in Oxford continued after January 1, 1995, there would be no opportunity, unlike the rest of Ontario, for council to consider reviewing the committee of adjustment decisions. In the Oxford case, the council and the committee are the exact same people with the only difference being the procedures that are followed at the respective meetings. The public would not likely appreciate appealing to the same body that made the original decision.

On the surface, the solution would appear to be for councils to simply assume the functions of the committee of adjustment, but that is not what is intended by Bill 95, the County of Oxford Act. The act stipulates that the area municipalities in the county will have committees of adjustment and those committees shall be comprised of council members.

The lack of an appeal mechanism in the case of Oxford county municipalities also raises a problem with the county council. At present, the decisions of the committees of adjustment in the county are reviewed by the county council in relation to their conformity with the county official plan. This review is important since the county plan is a one-tier document and therefore county council is the principal review agency in terms of determining conformity.

The county council, through its planning committee, takes this responsibility quite seriously and has, on several occasions, appealed decisions of local committees of adjustment when there were land use issues involved which did not adhere to the policies of the county plan. If there is no change to Bill 163 as presently worded, an area municipality in Oxford would be deciding the issue of conformity with the county official plan.

The preference of the county on this issue would be for Bill 163 to establish an appeal process to the county council or its delegate. This approach has the advantage of preventing an influx of applications for amendments to zoning bylaws as applicants seek to ensure that there is a means for further redress if the application is denied by a council acting as the committee of adjustment.

The following options are possibilities:

-- county council acts as the appeal body; or

-- a committee of council, such as a planning committee, act as the appeal body.

These options have the advantage of maintaining the decision on appeals within a local forum and consider the expected increase in time that would be involved in minor variance appeal hearings and suggest that a smaller group be involved; a group that can acquire some experience with these hearings over time.

In the background document entitled Understanding Ontario's Planning Reform that accompanied Bill 163, one of the three goals identified for the reform process was streamlining in order to reduce some of the delays and red tape associated with land use planning practices. The county of Oxford, based on our review of the provisions of Bill 163, has to assess responses as mixed. In some sections, Bill 163 contains provisions which do in fact assist in establishing planning deadlines which should contribute to a more efficient planning process. On the other hand, the act introduces some changes in public notice requirements and general time frames which seem to be quite regressive in terms of achieving a streamlining goal.

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An example of one of the more regressive steps is the introduction of a 30-day waiting period between the public meeting held on an official plan amendment and the actual adoption of the amendment by council. The question arises as to what purpose is served by this 30-day delay. In the case of Oxford county, there is usually some time lapse between the formal public meeting held by the county and the adoption of the amendment by council, but it is rarely more than 8 to 12 days.

Another time delay found in Bill 163 is in section 30 of the Planning Act, where a 30-day notice requirement is introduced for all consent applications. This is a particularly difficult provision in Oxford, where the county land division committee has been authorised by the eight local municipalities to handle minor variance applications that are directly associated with a proposed consent. Section 25 of Bill 163 also requires a minor variance application to be heard within 30 days of its receipt by the clerk of the municipality.

As pointed out by associations such as the Ontario Association of Committees of Adjustment and Consent Authorities, the combination of subsection 45(7) and subsection 53(4) will create real difficulties for our land division committee since it will probably necessitate the deferral of applications in order for them to be dealt with concurrently.

In Oxford one of the most positive examples of streamlining has been the ability of the land division committee of the county to deal with minor variances. The committee on administration of justice should look at the possibility of allowing all land division committees in the province to handle minor variances that are directly associated with the consent if the local municipality is prepared to delegate this authority to them. The public in Oxford has certainly benefited and there is no reason why the same advantage should not be extended to the broader populace.

Bill 163 does present another problem for Oxford and its land division committee by eliminating minor variance appeals. When a land division committee decides on a consent and minor variance combined, one decision is subject to appeal, the other is not. Real problems are likely to occur and the question arises as to whether this was foreseen and sufficiently thought through in terms of the complications created.

The county of Oxford would also support provisions in the Planning Act which would authorize down-delegation to planning officials if in fact streamlining can be achieved. There are certainly examples in the province where some of the administrative work associated with the processing of plans of subdivision has been down-delegated and the results show savings of four to six weeks. In Oxford, there has been down-delegation associated with the processing of site plans and especially amendments to site plans in some of the urban centres. Once again, the advantages have been worthwhile.

Another example of streamlining being defeated is the introduction of the requirement for a public meeting on a plan of subdivisions. The act does not make reference to "if required by regulation," but the county of Oxford would certainly go on record now as opposing this move which turns the clock back to bygone days. In many cases, this public meeting would merely repeat issues that have already been dealt with at official plan or official plan amendment meetings. If councils want to hold such a meeting, that decision should be left with the municipality and not be prescribed by provincial regulation.

Oxford's reaction to the various time limits and public notice requirements in the act are certainly not all negative. The county certainly supports section 10 of the act, which imposes a 30-day limit on official plan referrals. This new restriction is long overdue and fills a void of uncertainty which has been associated with the possibility of referrals in the past.

The county also supports time limitations that have been imposed on approval authorities with respect to plans of subdivision, an official plan or official plan amendment.

Oxford county council very much appreciates the opportunity to comment on the provisions of Bill 163 as they relate to the Planning Act. The county would ask that you give full consideration to the issues that have been raised in this submission, as well as the more detailed comments which constitute the second section of this submission.

The county of Oxford looks forward to reviewing the changes that this committee sees fit to make in response to the many submissions that have been and will be made. The overall objective of this committee and municipalities should be to achieve a planning system and process which achieves the goals of accountability, protection of the environment and streamlining. We want to assure you that Oxford county is prepared to play its role in achieving these goals. Thank you very much. I am certainly prepared to --

The Acting Chair (Mr Alvin Curling): Thank you very much for your presentation. I think we have about three minutes each for members to comment, and we start with the Conservatives.

Mr McLean: You started with me last time.

The Acting Chair: Oh. Mr Wiseman, we start with the government.

Mr Jackson: Well, don't start, Allan.

The Acting Chair: Here's your opportunity. Anyway, Mr Wiseman.

Mr Wiseman: I'll start, thanks. We certainly have heard a lot of very good things about Oxford and its planning over the last little while, so I commend you for that. I do have one question that seems to be a nagging one, and that is that the official plan, to me, takes a long time to come to fruition. It attempts to balance the various needs of the community: industrial, commercial, residential uses. During the process of the official plan and then its subsequent acceptance by the ministry and its signing off, this becomes a planning document.

On page 4 you would like to see the official plan, as it currently stands, to be deemed to be consistent with provincial policy and, as such, replace provincial policy in guiding land use decisions in the municipality. I have some problem with that because it seems to me that there are too many official plan amendments, too many changings of industrial sections of official plans to residential, or residential to commercial, and it would seem to me that this would upset what should have been a balanced plan to begin with.

My question is, if we were to accept this recommendation, would you in turn agree that the only official plan amendments that should be allowed to an official plan would be those that were consistent with the comprehensive policy statements and Bill 163?

Mr Down: I think there are probably situations where they should be allowed and probably situations where there would have to be some compromises made. That's not saying that all of the policy statements of the provincial government should not be subject to change periodically also, and that is probably one of the difficulties that we have today, that some of the policy statements do not reflect changes that are taking place, because certainly it takes a period of time to prepare an official plan for a county. It also takes a considerable amount of time for policy statements of the provincial government. They should also be periodically reviewed with consultation of municipalities and the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.

The Acting Chair: Ms Harrington has a quick question.

Ms Harrington: Certainly, your county does have a good reputation with regard to planning, and I am glad that you are supporting the streamlining attempts and such things as time limitations. You gave a couple of examples here of what you described as not streamlining but the opposite, and one was the requirement for a public meeting on a plan of subdivision and also the case of where you have a minor variance and a consent combined in a decision of the land division committee where one is subject to appeal and the other is not. I am wondering if the ministry would like to comment and respond to your legitimate concerns here.

Mr McKinstry: I think there were three, and I'm not clear on the third, which is the minor variance one.

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Ms Harrington: I just picked out two of them.

Mr McKinstry: Okay. The first one is the public meeting on the subdivision and I guess our sense there was that official plans are made and then some people are not aware of what's in them so that when a plan of subdivision comes forward they're not aware of the fact that this area has been designated for residential. This was simply an attempt to make sure that people, citizens, are aware of what's happening in planning.

Ms Harrington: You're saying that hopefully it would not cause a lack of streamlining. What about where there's the ability to appeal?

The Acting Chair: I think we've extended the time too much here now; your time is up. Mr McLean, I know you wanted to go, but I think it's the Liberals' time now.

Mr Eddy: Thank you for the extreme pressure we're under from the Chair. Thank you, your worship, for bringing forward the brief. I suppose it would be easier if more of Ontario was like Oxford county in the planning regard. I know you would agree with that.

I thought I was clear on the Oxford situation, but you talk about the county land division committee. It's responsible for severance applications, I expect, and then you talk about local committees of adjustments and that this has caused a problem. But there are other municipalities -- I don't know about other upper-tier councils, but there are other municipalities where the council has decided to be the committee of adjustment, I think. First of all, do you want to continue the status quo in Oxford, the special provision that the council of each area municipality is deemed to be a committee of adjustment under the Planning Act? Do you see that staying?

Mr Down: Yes.

Mr Eddy: The land division committee is optional at the county level with Oxford as well as other -- it is in other places. Is it optional with you?

Mr Down: Yes.

Mr Eddy: Oh. I really can't figure out what's the problem, but you're saying there is a problem with the new bill because of your particular setup in Oxford county, which is what I've gotten out of this, with the council being the land division committee and the local councils being the committees of adjustment. That presents a problem, but I'm not clear on why.

Mr Craig Manley: I believe that there are two issues associated with our particular setup. The first is that under the County of Oxford Act, with council as the committee of adjustment to hear variances, because it's all of council it would be a final decision. There's no mechanism for a council, if it was so inclined, to say, "Oh, we want some ability to review it." That's the first issue.

But the second issue, and I think it's much more important to us, is that our land division committee, which is responsible for creating new lots through the severance process, has been delegated the authority by our local municipalities to also grant variances associated with the consent. So if I want to create a lot that's a foot smaller, I don't have to go to the city of Woodstock and get my variance and then go to the county land division committee.

The situation under the bill would be that the variance decision would be final and the severance decision could be appealed. So if the land division said, "No, I'm not going to approve this new lot and I'm not going to approve the variance," I could appeal the severance but I couldn't appeal the variance situation. We found this ability for the land division to deal with both the variance and the severance to be an extremely efficient process.

Mr Eddy: So you see a provision in the act, an amendment to provide for this, possibly?

Mr Manley: We would like you to consider that.

Mr McLean: I guess if the ministry had used the Oxford model across the province and in 163 there probably would have been a lot of people a lot happier.

You don't have lower-tier planning, do you; you just have upper-tier? Would you like to see lower-tier planning? I mean, that's in Bill 163. It's going to be there. But now you're going to have to do that. Is that right?

Mr Hayes: No, that's not right.

Mr McLean: The lower tier is not going to have to plan?

Interjection: No.

Mr McLean: It says they "may."

Mr Hayes: Not in Oxford.

Mr McLean: No, no. But I'm talking about in Bill 163. In Bill 163 it says that the lower tier may plan; the upper tier is going to have to.

Interjection: "May."

Mr McLean: That's what I said; it's right in here. It says it may and it may not. But the minister may bring in regulations which perhaps could change that.

Interjection: Not unless you change the wording.

Ms Boeckner: The people from the county could correct me, but the County of Oxford Act only defines a single tier of planning, so you'd have to change the regional act, not Bill 163, to make a change to that system.

Mr McLean: Thank you. That clarifies it very well. The other aspect of the Oxford model has been that I guess the best part of it was that my friend Charlie, who was a warden back in the 1970s, had a two-year term. Does the warden now have a three-year term which coincides with the elected council?

Mr Down: Yes, the County of Oxford Act sets out that the warden shall be elected for the term of council, which at the present time is a three-year term.

Mr McLean: And you're in your last year now. I wish you well. Thank you for your brief.

Mr Eddy: Could I say that Charlie is, I believe, Charlie Tatham, the former MPP for Oxford.

Mr McLean: The designer of the Tatham report.

The Acting Chair: Thank you very much for your presentation.

LONDON HOME BUILDERS' ASSOCIATION

The Acting Chair: May I call the London Home Builders' Association -- Ric Knutson, Lars Bygdon. You have half an hour. You may leave some time, if you wish, for any questions by the members or you may decide to take the whole time. You may proceed.

Mr Ric Knutson: Thank you, Mr Chairman. I anticipate that we'll be somewhat less than half an hour, and some of the issues that we are raising hopefully will spawn a couple of questions from the committee.

I'm here representing the London Home Builders' Association both as a member of that body and on the request of Mr Bygdon beside me. By way of background, I'm a planner and have been so for in excess of 20 years, have worked for the province of Ontario, another province and a delegated municipality, and have been involved in consulting, almost exclusively now, to the development industry over the last number of years.

At the outset, I want to hopefully calm you. I'm not here to re-present the submissions that have been made to you already by the Ontario Home Builders' Association. There are a couple of specific issues that I want to speak to you about today and I'll be restricting my remarks to those. I do, however, commend those comments, concerns, criticisms and questions of the OHBA in its written submission, and I believe it's making a verbal presentation to you on September 13. They are extremely important matters. Please understand, it's as if I make them here as well in terms of the importance of many of the issues that are there.

There are two technical issues that I want to speak about in Bill 163. The first one is a proposal of an amendment to section 6 of Bill 163, which is an amendment to section 3 of the Planning Act. What I would suggest to you is the addition of a new subsection: "That implementation guidelines shall be prepared and reviewed as part of the consultation process in subsection (2) above."

I believe it's fundamentally important to be able to understand policies and distil their meanings and understand how they apply, particularly to this industry, but also for the municipalities, that they have not only the more general policy but how that policy is being interpreted and ultimately implemented.

It's unfair to go out on consultation, I believe, on strictly a policy basis without understanding some of the innuendo and thought processes which are going into that articulated policy. Many of the policies -- and I fully appreciate we're not here to talk about the policies before this committee -- are marvellous statements. They're important statements about natural environment and conservation of energy and mineral aggregate resources etc.

Where I believe there is a flaw in them is that we don't know how they ultimately will be implemented through these official plans and I think it's important to understand that a policy on an important issue in GTA is not necessarily of any importance or relevance in Thunder Bay or Windsor or London. It's a criticism that has been spoken of greatly with the Sewell commission over time and we again raise that and I would suggest very respectfully, Mr Chairman, that that subsection be added so that we can talk about a whole package.

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We note with interest that one of the impetuses of Bill 163 and the amendments was to ensure that there's accountability of the local councils in their decision-making, and this accountability is to have all matters related to planning decisions fairly before the public for review and that the decisions are made in the open.

We believe that having these implementation guidelines is no different than having an official plan amendment and its implementing zoning bylaw both before the public for review and comment at the same time or in a public forum so that they can be fairly debated and we can distil all of their meanings and understand how they impact upon our industry in particular. I believe this particular amendment and having that clear consultation process, as anticipated by the act, would avoid creating some of the conflicts that I believe will occur. There are conflicts or potential conflicts between the policy statements. How are these going to be distilled?

We have over the past number of years had the ongoing conflict between the mineral aggregates act and the Food Land Guidelines, although the Food Land Guidelines were not a ministerial policy, but there's this conflict. Which wins? Is it the aggregate underneath? Is it the ability of the soil to sustain agriculture? How do we deal with these things? How do we resolve these conflicts?

We talk about having efficient urban forums and affordable housing, but we talk about policies which may have very vague interpretations, and we've had certain instances in the past, actually many of them, where there are almost as many interpretations to a policy as there are civil servants to interpret it.

Interjection.

Mr Grandmaître: They are all on Rae days.

Mr Knutson: That can put you into a never-ending loop of more studies or clarifications where, if we had that policy implementation before us at the outset, we may be able to eliminate or at least reduce the number of these ambiguities. Having the implementation guidelines at the same time would enhance the understanding of those policies, and the understanding not only of our industry but by the consulting industry, by the municipalities and by the civil servants, so we would all be operating, if you would, from a similar songbook.

By having the policies there, as I previously mentioned, we could identify some of the regional differences, and certainly where some issues are not particularly important or there's less of a priority, that could be attended to, notwithstanding the fact that it is a matter of provincial interest.

Affordable housing I think is a principal example of that. In London, through their official plan, they have policies to track affordability. London currently sits at 62% of the available housing stock as being within the affordability guidelines. Therefore, the provincial policy, which specifies new housing being 30% affordable and 50% of that for the lowest 30th percentile, may not have the same relevance in terms of the affordable housing stock here as it may in GTA or in some other area where there's a significant concern. That may cause certain regional variations. When policies are being set down in local official plans, a policy, although of provincial interest on an overall basis, may have no local merit or bearing whatsoever.

You would also operate to give effect to the philosophy of streamlining through timely approvals. As I mentioned before, we get caught in these continuous loops of more studies, and oftentimes we have this very vague policy. When the wetlands policy came forward, many of the biologists were saying: "Well, we don't really understand this. We've got this term called `lands adjacent.' Does that mean a buffer?" Well, no, it doesn't, as it finally came out, but there was environmental impact statement after environmental impact statement required to talk about this, and evidence was given at an Ontario Municipal Board hearing I attended. A provincial employee said, "I know it says 120 metres, but I'd like to see one and a half kilometres as a buffer." The board then becomes very confused. We didn't have these. We had the policy; we didn't have the guidelines. Again, I commend that all of these be brought forward at the same time.

What we're concerned about is that the government wants to provide half the picture for consultation and then in fact prescribe the surprises in the implementation guidelines, which will have no scrutiny and no consultation and no ability for us to point out to you some perhaps practical flaws or pitfalls in going ahead in that way.

We've certainly been concerned with the linkage of policy guidelines and the term "be consistent with" for some time. Although we're not here to discuss these policies, we are being given these very general statements, awaiting guidelines into the future, and the term "be consistent with" is a complete unknown and in fact quite an ambiguous term which can mean many things to many different people. That whole concept is being more fully addressed in the Ontario Home Builders' Association presentation and I won't try to duplicate that here today.

We're very concerned that panacea policy cannot work unilaterally, as, say, GTA issues are not necessarily those of southwestern Ontario. Northern Ontario natural environment or resource issues, again, may not be of any interest or value in the GTA, period. In the absence of flexibility in policies, many interpretations will be possible, and I believe that will result more in chaos and delay.

Here's what I believe is likely to occur: Official plans will be delayed. Therefore, developments will not be policy-approved in official plan amendments. Zoning will therefore not be possible. Lot creation will therefore be delayed. Shortages will occur in lot supply, which will result in cost increases on a market supply-demand situation. These are not theoretical things. We're seeing them happen here in London right now. London is currently in a very precarious position in terms of lot supply. We therefore strongly recommend that the policy statements be reviewed with the guidelines.

The other technical section of Bill 163 that is of serious concern is section 68. It's on page 44. If Bill 163 were enacted as proposed, and dealing with subsection (34), it would eliminate the ability to do administrative red-line revisions to plans of subdivision. By subjecting any changes to a plan once it's draft-approved to the public, what in fact you are doing is taking something where the lot pattern is --

Mr Hayes: Excuse me. What section?

Mr Knutson: It would be section 51, page 44, at the top. We're concerned with this inability to do these minor administrative changes to plans of subdivision.

What I'm talking about are changes which conform to the zoning, which is there by way of public process, and the official plan, which is there by way of public process. I'm not sure the general public has an issue related to whether the lot to be registered is 45 feet or 48 feet or 50 feet, provided that the general intent of the bylaw -- or the bylaw precisely -- is maintained.

I do have a very current and practical London example of this. In May of this year, one of my clients received draft plan approval for a very comprehensive 630-acre development. It's a community. It'll house 12,000 to 14,000 people and will be built over the next decade. The zoning on the whole 630 acres addresses certain minimum standards regarding lot size, frontage and area. It is expected that this draft plan, however, will come to the market in 10 to 12 individual registered plans, or M plans. They will all be consistent with the road patterns. The road patterns won't change.

What is of great significance in this is that the market will change significantly over the next decade. Unfortunately, we don't and can't anticipate the ways that that market will change. The home building industry and the development industry in fact respond to change. We respond to market conditions. We don't anticipate and predicate market conditions.

Therefore, a change of lot size from draft plan to registered plan should not be a matter of public concern, provided again that the lots conform to zoning. If the red-line revision to a subdivision is one which requires a rezoning, well, that is a public process. Land use is set.

The effect of eliminating the administrative red-line revisions would be to subject a development to further public reviews and appeals where there is already conformity with an official plan, a zoning bylaw. The only possible purpose would be delay. There is no greater public good to be served in legislating that these cannot be done.

The last issue that I have to raise with you has to do with the timing of Bill 163. This legislation, I believe, including the provincial policies at the current time, is flawed. The implications of this legislation are far-reaching. They touch absolutely every individual in this province and many corporations and individuals outside this province. It would be a travesty for the economic and environmental health of this province to be compromised for the purpose of simply rushing an act through that is of this magnitude in terms of its importance.

We do not dispute the need for changes in the system. We don't dispute the need to avoid the duplication between environmental assessment processes and planning processes and integrate those. We don't dispute the necessity of putting in place sound practices that have respect for natural environments. Hasty legislation, however, can do far more harm than some of the benefit that's intended to be done.

As a consultant, I'm sitting here almost of two minds, and this is somewhat of a gratuitous comment. On one hand the studies and issues that are being raised are going to be magnificent for my consulting practice as I try to assist the builders and developers who are my clients. On the other hand, and a far greater issue, is being hopeful that we still have an industry that is healthy and vibrant and that there's a healthy competition between players and that there are more players as opposed to fewer players. What we're seeing right now is a concentration of lot generation ability among a very, very few large development corporations, and that's happening here in London as well as it is in Metro. It takes a significant amount of resources. The community I mentioned to you earlier was many million dollars in study costs to bring it to draft approval and in excess of seven years.

I have other issues I'd be happy to raise, but I think I'll stop there and open it to questions from the committee.

The Chair: Thank you. Mr Curling, four minutes.

Mr Curling: Thank you for your presentation. I'll just maybe focus on one of the points you made earlier on in regard to the proposed policy on affordable housing instead of the 30 percentile that is required. Maybe it's not you who can answer this question, maybe it's the parliamentary assistant or the ministry or if the minister will be here and then I catch his attention, in regard to the 30 percentile that we wanted, that is required by any new housing that is being developed in the municipality. As they have said here, in London 60% of the housing is affordable. How would we go about getting 30% on top of that in new housing being developed in the municipality?

Mr McKinstry: If I can make a clarification, I guess my view there would be that if in the London situation housing is already affordable, then it would in fact meet the requirements of the policy statement. That 30% would probably already be met.

Mr Curling: Well, you're not very clear then in that, because it talks about new, while being created, has to be 30%. I think, one, it should be specifying there that if it already exists, 30% affordable housing within the municipality, they do not need that.

Mr Knutson: If I can make a --

The Chair: I'm sorry. Is it in relation to that?

Mr Knutson: Absolutely, Mr Chairman. That's why we would like to have these interpretation-implementation guidelines there and fully available to review in conjunction with the policies, so these issues could in fact be dealt with.

Mr McKinstry: What I was trying to say is, it is the new housing. So 30% of the new housing. My assumption here is that in London, 50% would be in fact affordable in London in any case, so both the existing housing and the new housing would be affordable. Am I right?

Mr Knutson: My understanding of the proposed policy is in fact that all new plans of subdivision, all new plans of condominiums, must contain 30% within that affordability guideline and that, further, one half of that must be to the lowest 30th percentile of the economic field for that jurisdiction or for that housing market area.

Mr McKinstry: I don't want to get too deeply into a debate on the individual policies, but it's not each subdivision, it's each community planning area.

Mr Knutson: I raise it only as an example of how we can assist the policy by having the implementation guidelines in front of us.

Mr Curling: Could you comment about intensification? I know the government is very active in having more new housing develop in intensification, without sometimes the regard for some of the impact that is happening as we have housing intensification. In London, what impact has it got?

Mr Knutson: There are a couple of impacts. I think one of them is in the courts, related to Bill 120, and we're not here to talk about that. There are a lot of aspects of holus-bolus intensification without understanding what the impact of doubling the occupancy of a particular building or a particular development is, or doubling the number of units in a town house project without regard to the number of parking spaces that were there by design, the size and capability of those sewers, the size of the electrical distribution system and all those other very fundamental things.

Intensification is something that is important. It can certainly be done, but on a studied basis, and it doesn't suit every site. As a planning consultant, some things work better than others. Some of the former initiatives in terms of abandoned industrial sites make great housing intensification sites and they're marvellously successful in the marketplace, and London has a couple of very good examples of those. But it doesn't work on a general and across-the-board basis. Sorry.

Mr McLean: I want to welcome you to the committee. You certainly bring a different perspective to this committee from what we have heard from some others. I get from you that you don't really feel there's going to be much difference after Bill 163 is law than what's going on right now.

Mr Knutson: Oh, quite to the contrary. I believe that Bill 163 is fraught with all kinds of difficulties. It in fact will protract the process, as opposed to making it shorter, as has been set out as one of the principal reasons for Bill 163.

Mr McLean: You indicated briefly about local council decision-making. It appears from what I heard from you that you feel it's going to be more complicated than what it is now. Is that what you're telling us?

Mr Knutson: Decision-making that I'm familiar with in this general region is typically in public. I don't believe there will be any fundamental changes caused by that. What I'm concerned about is the duplication of that consultation process for no great advantage. If there is a public-good issue to be to advantage, then I wouldn't be here complaining about it, or at least in my mind.

But what we're talking about is a matter -- and we go back to the subdivision red-lining. It's an administrative matter that, as the market requires, a couple of years ago, 60- and 65-foot lots. Well, the market right now is 35- to 50-foot lots. We've been able to administratively amend the lot size down, fully in accordance with the bylaw, the side yards, the rear yards and lot areas.

Who benefits by having another go at the subdivision in another appeal process? We've seen many vexatious appeals and appeals that are for the purpose of delay. What's to be gained by it?

Mr McLean: I guess the question I have then, finally, is, why did the municipality want to annex about 34,000 acres around it if you're having trouble now getting --

Mr Grandmaître: It was 64,000 acres.

Mr Knutson: It's 64,000.

Mr McLean: It started out a little lower than that.

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Mr Knutson: It did. I'm not sure how we got to the full 64,000 acres, although someone involved in the process --

Mr Eddy: I can speak to that.

Mr Winninger: We know you can.

Mr Eddy: We would be here for a while.

Mr Knutson: In response, London was in fact running tight to its boundaries in terms of land that was serviced. There was a demonstrable need for additional lands. Whether those additional lands total 34,000 acres or whether there were some provincial reasons for wanting to have that to ease administrative boundaries or whatever, those questions I really can't answer. There certainly is a need for additional lands to come on stream.

As you know, London's in the process of Vision '96, its new official plan process, as a condition of that annexation. We're looking forward to some of the results of that and we anticipate a very different official plan from the one we've had in the past.

Mr Winninger: I think the opposition was reading my mind, and that's a very scary thing, because I too was struck by your comment about the unavailability of new lots. I thought that as of January 1, London became 80% the size of Metro Toronto. We added an inventory of 64,000 acres. So I was going to ask you, are we talking here about conventional new lots in conventional subdivisions as we know them now? Is that where the shortage really lies?

Mr Knutson: There's a shortage in a number of areas of lot and block supply for both medium-density housing and in fact for single-family housing. If we returned to the average development level of the last 15 years, London would very quickly be out of registered lots. I believe -- Lars, correct me if I'm wrong -- it's somewhere in the order of an 18-month supply, and in draft-approved lots I believe we would be completely out of inventory in approximately three and a half years.

Mr Winninger: You're part, I think, of the Vision '96 process; at least the home builders' association is, is it not?

Mr Knutson: We certainly have been making comments through various components of that. We do not actually sit on any committees that I'm aware of.

Mr Winninger: But as you said, Vision '96 was kind of a condition of passing Bill 75 and certainly part of the implementation. It seems to me, if we're looking 20 years down the road, which we are, at least with Vision '96, surely your concern, ie, building new homes to shelter people, has to be a very important component of that planning. It's quite distressing to hear that there's a shortage of lots, with all that land on our horizon now.

Mr Knutson: With the land there we will have an increased ability to look after that problem into the future. We do see short-term difficulty. Vision '96 is in front of the minister January 1, 1996. Typically, with appeals -- not everyone's going to agree with what's in there -- which will come from that process, Ontario Municipal Board hearings, some could be substantial. The last time the official plan was enacted, in 1989, it received approval, I believe, three years later. So that takes us from January 1, 1996, to January 1, 1999. We're in 1994; that's five years. We typically need, for a healthy market and competition and maintaining reasonably low lot prices, which we've had the benefit of in London, a minimum five-year supply at any given time.

Mr Winninger: You would agree there have been some interim approvals in the annexed area for building?

Mr Knutson: Yes, there have.

Mr Winninger: I don't know if we have time left or not. One minute --

The Chair: Ms Haeck would like to ask a question.

Mr Winninger: Certainly.

Ms Haeck: To suggest that I fully agree with everything you've said would be wrong. I would say that you did catch our attention on a couple of points.

I have to say that on behalf of my own constituents I would differ with you, rather strongly as a matter of fact, to the extent of your comment that some things are just sort of administrative approvals and nobody should balk at the fact that these things go through, for what you've referred to as a pretty substantial housing complex. I know in my area that people would just at this point be so much beside themselves that they would be excluded from talking about this kind of issue. I'm sorry, they are demanding to know, they are demanding participation, and that's one of the reasons we're here.

It was much more of a comment, but obviously you're free to respond. But people really and truly want the participation, and I will tell you, locally they are at the point of almost going through Municipal Affairs, the ministry reviewing municipal councils, because they are just so offended by what they see as the deals -- this is their quote, not mine -- the deals behind closed doors with the developers in order to move these things through, and they don't have the opportunity for putting their concerns forward.

So the public wants to know, the public wants the participation, and I think you should understand. Maybe it's different in London, but I suspect it's not. But definitely down my way they want the participation.

Mr Knutson: London is a great place. There's no doubt about that.

I think to focus my comments, I'm not talking about changes in a plan of subdivision where -- there are no road changes, there are no land use changes. I think it's important to identify the public issue involved.

Ms Haeck: Very serious --

The Chair: I'm sorry, Ms Haeck, we've run out of time. Finish your comments.

Mr Knutson: I think it's important to identify the public issue involved. If you're talking about changing road linkages, if you're talking about changing land use, by all means. That's not what my comments are directed to. It's whether we're talking about a 45- or a 50-foot lot and the ability to administratively make those red-line amendments to those lot sizes which conform to the zoning bylaw that was passed.

The Chair: Mr Hayes needs to make a point by way of clarification.

Mr Hayes: Real quickly. Thank you, Mr. Knutson, for your presentation. You commented on part III, section 6, about the implementation and the policies and not having input and not knowing what is coming out of these. My question to you is, are you familiar with the implementation and advisory task force? I'm really surprised to hear you say that because I see on here that you have two members of the Ontario Home Builders' Association right on top who are going to be working on that implementation committee to work on these policies.

Mr Knutson: Yes. I also believe there are two from the UDI and one from the Greater Toronto Home Builders' Association. I'm certainly familiar with that committee. The larger consultation process is what I'm referring to. In understanding the policy, it's necessary to understand the meanings of the policy through these interpretations, so I believe the policy should be open to interpretation. Let the task force do its work, based on draft policies, and bring the whole thing out for public comment when it's completed so that we have a complete package.

Mr Hayes: So you want to clear up the frustration that you've been going through for many years, right?

Mr Knutson: Yes.

The Chair: We've run out of time. Thank you very much for the presentation to our committee.

TOWNSHIP OF PUSLINCH

The Chair: We invite Reeve Archie MacRobbie and Deputy Reeve Brad Whitcombe.

Mr Eddy: While they're coming forward, Mr Chair, there was a question on why the London-Middlesex annexation proceeded. Would you like me to fill in and do that now?

The Chair: No.

Mr Eddy: On the bus?

The Chair: At the end of the meeting, once we break up.

Interjections.

The Chair: Welcome. Please begin.

Mr Archie MacRobbie: Thank you, Mr Chairman and members. On behalf of Puslinch township council, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the committee for listening to our concerns.

Puslinch is a small, rural municipality of 5,000 people, bordering both Guelph and Cambridge. The 401 runs through the middle of our community, and we are both blessed and cursed with abundant gravel resources. Our land is rolling and is of moderate value for farming. Due to our location and the scenic nature of our countryside, we have faced strong development pressures over the past two decades.

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It is not our intention to provide you with a detailed analysis of Bill 163. We are confident that other groups such as AMO and our county of Wellington will provide you with that input. We would propose to give you a small, rural community's view of the existing and proposed planning systems.

Negative perception of rural Ontario: We believe that the provincial bureaucracy holds a very negative attitude towards rural Ontario. You do not trust us to manage our affairs and have developed a heavy-handed set of policy statements which eliminate the ability of rural communities to make important planning decisions for themselves.

Most rural townships take a responsible approach to community planning. Puslinch has had both an official plan and a zoning bylaw for nearly 25 years and we keep these documents up to date. Ten years ago we zoned all our environmentally sensitive lands for protection, we have put a groundwater monitoring program in place -- and I'd like to say that's been in place for over five years now; I think it's maybe the only one in Ontario -- and we are now involved in our third watershed study. Council and planning committee consult extensively with the public, and we try hard to respect their views.

Despite our efforts to plan responsibly, we continue to feel a negative provincial attitude towards our community. Perhaps it is because rural communities have a healthy regard for private property rights which is not shared by provincial bureaucrats. We believe it is our responsibility as elected officials to use our discretion to ensure that new policy directions do not fall too heavily on individuals. We understand that Bill 163 intends to remove our ability to use that discretion by requiring blind obedience to provincial policy.

Official plans: When Puslinch began its involvement in planning, official plans were community-based documents which told council how our people wanted us to plan the township. People have been heavily involved in this process because it provided them with a meaningful method of shaping their living environment. The rules were ones which we imposed on ourselves, and this gave them strength.

Over the last decade official plans have changed dramatically. The province has come to see the official plan as the best means of achieving provincial land use interests. Initially, provincial agencies asked to have their concerns recognized in our official plans and we cooperated where our citizens were in support. Gradually, provincial agencies began to demand that their policy interests be incorporated into our plans and used provincial policy statements as a hammer to force their requirements into our plans whether our citizens agreed or not. Public involvement did not matter when it came to the interests of the provincial agencies.

Official plans are no longer community-based documents, but rather are largely provincially dictated documents. Bill 163 and the new provincial policies seem to legitimize this change in the nature of official plans.

Puslinch council is concerned that planning policies that are imposed from afar will not be as strongly supported as policies developed by our community and the commitment to planning will decline when people find that their input does not carry very much weight. You can legislate all the public meetings you want, but if the public does not feel that it can influence the process, it won't participate or it will be frustrated and angry with the government.

County planning: Wellington county planning began at the local level, and the county has taken an increased role over the years. The county has established the planning department, which provides day-to-day assistance to the 21 local municipalities in Wellington. The county planning staff provide a good service and have earned respect because they come to council meetings and public meetings and make an effort to understand the views of our citizens and work with the community.

The county has an official plan which Puslinch must comply with, and we support that plan because we had direct input into it and because it leaves room for local communities to apply discretion within the county policy framework. Wellington county is also the approval authority for severances in Puslinch, and we support this county function because the county land division committee follows our township policies and treats our citizens with respect. They also operate efficiently and are close at hand if an issue arises.

Puslinch council believes that Wellington county should be entrusted with greater approval authority for planning matters. We strongly endorse the position of AMO, the county planning directors and our county of Wellington that counties with approved official plans should be given the authority to approve local official plans and subdivisions. Wellington county has demonstrated the ability to manage these functions.

We would also suggest that there is no need for municipal planning authorities in counties actively involved in planning. Other levels of planning are the last thing we need if you are serious about streamlining and cost saving.

On behalf of Puslinch township, we would respectively recommend that:

(1) The province should restore community-based planning by drastically altering the provincial policy statement to leave more room for local planning policies and the views of the public;

(2) Bill 163 should be amended to delete subsection 6(2), leaving in place the requirement "to have regard" for provincial policy so that elected municipal officials retain some discretion in dealing with provincial policy;

(3) Provide Wellington county with the authority to approve local official plans and subdivisions by amending section 10 and section 28 of Bill 163 as proposed by AMO, Wellington county and the county planning directors;

(4) Eliminate the potential for municipal planning authorities in counties actively involved in planning by amending section 8;

(5) Make such amendments as are possible to place greater decision-making in the hands of elected and accountable local officials, rather than some special purpose bodies and the provincial staff.

Mr McLean: Welcome to the committee, Archie. I want to thank you for your brief. You make some very excellent points, and the one point that I want to try and find out is with regard to the counties being given the approval of their official plans, being given the authority to do that for the local official plans and subdivision. I'd like to try and find out from the ministry when those approvals are going to come. Are they only going to come at the direction of the minister, or are there going to be some guidelines laid out whereby when counties put on their official plans, they're going to be given the authority to meet that approval stage?

Mr McKinstry: The way it stands now, the legislation simply enables the minister to delegate to counties, and we haven't changed that. I don't know what the minister will decide in terms of when he wants to make the decision to delegate, so I'm not sure that I can give you a full answer.

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Mr McLean: Is there going to be anything in the regulations which would maybe indicate that once they had provided an update and an official plan that meets the ministry's approval, within a period of time there would be a delegation of authority?

Mr McKinstry: What I can speak to is the general principle that the government is working towards, and that is to get development approvals to the local level, to the municipal level. So as far as the government can do that, my view would be that the government would do that. In terms of the regulation, the regulation will set out which counties are required to plan. One of the advantages of having a plan that we see is that then we'd be able to delegate. But it is a discretionary authority and that's why I'm having some difficulty giving a definite answer of when.

Mr McLean: Wasn't that one of the recommendations that Sewell made, that the authority should be delegated to the local municipality once they had their official plans in place?

Mr McKinstry: That's right. The commission did recommend that, and I don't think we disagree with that. It's just not specified in Bill 163 that once that happens, the counties get plans.

Mr McLean: I guess the problem I have is that Mr Martin and Mr Sewell and Mr Penfold all were involved in politics and they all knew what's going on in downtown Toronto, but they just kind of forgot about northern and central Ontario when it comes to making the recommendations that you need in order to continue to do what you've done in the past.

What do you say with regard to the section with our environmentally sensitive lands for protection? You have some hamlets in your municipality?

Mr MacRobbie: Yes.

Mr McLean: What's going to happen to them under the proposal?

Mr MacRobbie: The only one we had -- well, we've got Aberfoyle. Morriston was a police village, and then Arkell. The police village is being deregulated as of January 1, 1995. We have that order now. All the police villages in the county are being deregulated.

Mr McLean: Really? That would be under your new official plan they would have to do that, would it?

Mr MacRobbie: No, that was done by order in council.

Mr McLean: Is that the only county you're aware of where that's happened?

Mr MacRobbie: Yes.

Mr McLean: I know the county of Simcoe was restructured and it happened there.

Mr MacRobbie: I think under the restructured system in Simcoe it did happen, but we did that in Wellington on our own.

Mr McLean: So it was a request by the county of Wellington, was it?

Mr MacRobbie: Yes. Well, it started out as a request from the local municipalities, the local townships.

Mr McLean: Thank you for appearing today.

Ms Haeck: Thank you for your presentation today. I wanted to turn to page 5, number 1, which you raised on behalf of Puslinch township. You want to "restore community-based planning." I guess my question to you simply is, what is your definition of community-based planning?

Mr MacRobbie: The closer you leave the planning to the community, the better it seems to work, in my opinion.

Ms Haeck: Okay. From everything in talking to people, Mr Sewell and Mr Penfold and a number of other people -- Mr Penfold from Guelph, if we may be so bold to say, not from the GTA -- who made some technical remarks to us about their years of work on what's being proposed here, they have definitely reconfirmed their belief, and obviously, to my mind, what this government believes and what the bill reinforces, that it is community-based planning, that the community will, through a whole range of consultations, have direct a influence on what the official plans are, what the plans of subdivision are. For myself, I have to tell you, I think the number of meetings required by Bill 163 isn't enough. I would like to see more meetings because I think that people in my area would be happier for more meetings to deal with the whole issue of what is being planned. So I'd be interested in what you think of that kind of public input into the whole planning process.

Mr MacRobbie: I think, number one, the local municipality along with the county municipality would make a better planning function than what it is now in the province.

Ms Haeck: But you do agree -- and I don't want to put words in your mouth -- that there should be lots of room for the average resident, your constituents, to actually have input?

Mr MacRobbie: Yes.

Ms Haeck: Then I don't think that what we're trying to do and what you really feel are very, very different.

Mr Grandmaître: Well, Christel, the difference is --

The Chair: Okay. I'm sorry, no. Ms Harrington.

Ms Harrington: Just a brief comment. I note that on page 4 you say, "the county land division committee...treats our citizens with respect." Well, that leads me to wonder, who is not treating you with respect? I would like to then go back to page 1 --

Interjections.

Mr Hayes: You should know better.

Ms Harrington: Maybe the gentlemen could comment as soon as I am finished. On page 1 it says: "provincial bureaucracy hold a very negative attitude towards rural Ontario. They do not trust us to manage our own affairs and have developed a heavy-handed set of policy statements which eliminate the ability of rural communities to make important planning decision for themselves."

I would like to tell you that the policy statements are developed by government, and government is -- that is, we are -- responsible for what those statements are. They are very important to the future of this province, but I don't think we have time to get into the actual details of what those policy statements are. I just want to end my remarks by saying that we now have a Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs which certainly puts a lot of emphasis on the rural affairs of this province, and all across southwestern Ontario our government has a rural caucus that spends a lot of time thinking about the concerns and needs of rural Ontario. So I would like you to know that, and if you have any comments, please feel free.

Mr MacRobbie: Well, the biggest problem I have is, whatever happens to the GTA, that becomes policy for the whole damn province. I don't think that's right, because what happens in GTA does not fit our bill out in rural Ontario.

Ms Harrington: I object to that statement.

Mr MacRobbie: That's very true.

Mr Jackson: A little more objection, Mr Chairman, but it's true.

The Chair: Mr Jackson, excuse me. Mr Eddy.

Mr Eddy: Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to calmly set forth my views too. Welcome, your worship, and thank you for presenting the brief. I think again we've seen the difference between urban Ontario and rural Ontario accentuated.

I have an example that I'd like to use that I think makes your point, and you're involved because under the Aggregates Act, municipalities must in their official plans recognize aggregate resources and allow for their development at some time.

Now what happens is, the township of Puslinch, the township of North Dumfries in my riding, South Dumfries, Brantford township, because we're located along the Grand River and have tremendous gravel deposits, resources, to a depth of 120 to 150 feet, the finest gravel in Ontario, and because your official plans have to recognize that and that's required by provincial directive -- and probably right -- because that's there, then those who wish to withdraw the aggregates can come in and buy this property, that property, this property, one over here. People get very upset when they see scattered aggregate extraction that is destroying the municipality: To hell with agriculture, to hell with everything else; it's aggregate production that's the big thing, and it's happening.

It's because it's provincially directed, and what they say in North Dumfries is: "We want more control over this and we want to decide. If it's aggregate resource, we want to say, `This is the area where the aggregate's going to come out, and we're going to do it progressively and we're going to do it before development takes place.'" I think that's where we're at cross purposes on occasion, and that one comes to mind.

Do you agree with that approach? You have to recognize your official plan, and then you don't have any control, because if any developer goes to the OMB, they get it; it's in the official plan. Is that one of the problems, and are there others?

Mr MacRobbie: I think, if you go back to the Puslinch official plan that came out in 1973, in the process of that, the gravel was recognized then. There was no testing done or anything, but we knew it was there. Just from living there all our lives we knew it was there. So that was recognized. That got into a hearing which was very extensive three years ago, but I still think these things have got to be recognized in an official plan. We've been doing this for years.

Mr Eddy: Right. But you need more control over what you do in your municipality.

Mr MacRobbie: Yes.

Mr Eddy: I think the policies need to be looked at from a rural perspective and see how they could be honed or changed to provide for rural Ontario more, to have more say about what happens and when it happens.

Mr MacRobbie: Yes, I could agree with that.

Mr Hayes: Agreed.

The Chair: Thank you very much for coming and thank you for the brief that you have made to our committee.

Mr MacRobbie: Thank you very much for listening to us.

The Chair: A pleasure.

Two reminders to the committee members: Tomorrow we start at 10, and our bus leaves at 5 today, so if all of us who are leaving on the bus can be at the bus at 5, we would appreciate that.

The committee adjourned at 1641.