OSHAWA-DURHAM HOME BUILDERS' ASSOCIATION
DURHAM REGIONAL LABOUR COUNCIL
AD HOC COMMITTEE OF THE ONTARIO WILDLIFE WORKING GROUP
ONTARIO FEDERATION OF AGRICULTURE
REGIONAL PLANNING COMMISSIONERS OF ONTARIO
DURHAM WETLANDS AND
WATERSHEDS
SAVE LYNDE SHORES
CONTENTS
Wednesday 7 September 1994
Planning and Municipal Statute Law Amendment Act, 1994, Bill 163, Mr Philip / Loi de 1994 modifiant des lois en ce qui concerne l'aménagement du territoire et les municipalités, projet de loi 163, M. Philip
Andrew Lauer
Durham Board of Education
Patty Bowman, chair
Lewis Morgulis, planner
Oshawa-Durham Home Builders' Association
Stephen Kassinger, first vice-president
Jo Casey, board member
Bob Annaert, board member
Suse Eggert
Chris Smith and Associates
David West, vice president
Jim McKee
Joy Wawrzyniak
Durham Regional Labour Council
Gillian Mann, representative
Ad Hoc Committee of the Ontario Wildlife Working Group
Liz White, director, Animal Alliance of Canada
Ontario Federation of Agriculture
Roger George, president
Bill Weaver, first vice-president and chair, environment committee
Alvin Runnals, board member and chair, land use committee
David Armitage, research analyst
Save the Rouge Valley System
Steve Marshall, chair
Regional Planning Commissioners of Ontario
Nick Tunnacliffe, chair and planning commissioner, region of Ottawa-Carleton
Sally Thorsen, planning commissioner, region of Waterloo
Durham Wetlands and Watersheds; Save Lynde Shores
Glen Rae, representative
Tom Moore, representative
Paul Walsh
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: Wilson, Gary, (Kingston and The Islands/Kingston et Les Îles ND)
Bisson, Gilles (Cochrane South/-Sud ND)
Chiarelli, Robert (Ottawa West/-Ouest L)
*Curling, Alvin (Scarborough North/-Nord 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)
*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
McLean, Allan K. (Simcoe East/-Est PC) for Mr Tilson
Mills, Gordon (Durham East/-Est ND) for Ms Haeck
Villeneuve, Noble (S-D-G & East Grenville/S-D-G & Grenville-Est PC) for Mr Harnick
White, Drummond (Durham Centre ND) for Mr Bisson
Wiseman, Jim (Durham West/-Ouest ND) for Ms Harrington
Also taking part / Autres participants et participantes:
Edwards, Tom, mayor of Whitby
Ministry of Municipal Affairs:
Hayes, Pat, parliamentary assistant to minister
McKinstry, Philip, acting director, municipal planning policy branch
Pilkey, Hon Allan, minister without portfolio
White, Peter, senior planner, Ministry of Natural Resources
Clerk / Greffière: Bryce, Donna
Staff / Personnel: Stobo, Carolyn, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 0919 in the Holiday Inn, Oshawa.
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'd like to recognize Mr Tom Edwards, the mayor of Whitby, who has kindly come this morning before his other meeting to greet us and say a few nice words about the town and what we're doing.
Mr Tom Edwards: Thank you, Mr Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity of speaking so rapidly. I do have duties and meetings taking place. I don't want to go into too much detail. A member of our local press is here who will want to know whether they were public meetings or not. Some of them won't be.
I do have some good news for you. The town of Whitby, despite the recession that we've all experienced, is doing very well. For instance, last year our building permit issue was $109 million. Already, as of August this year, we have passed $114 million worth of building permits, assisted to a great extent by the refurbishing of the Whitby Psychiatric Hospital. That obviously played a great role.
The town of Whitby is off and running. I have a report, which will soon become public knowledge, that has just come in in terms of industrial capacity. We had, as of the end of last year, a vacancy rate of 11% of our industrial buildings. That has now been reduced to 4%, all in small employee-employer relationships, 50 to 100 people.
Although we still have some difficulties and we don't always appreciate the efforts of the provincial government, who very often make decisions that affect us without adequate warning, essentially I say to you that we are, as a community, doing very well. We much appreciate, for instance, the infrastructure program that this provincial government, all of the parties and the federal government participated in. It was very, very helpful to our community, and I'm hoping to go to the Toronto Liberal caucus in November and persuade them to come up with something new.
Mr Chairman, in terms of the job that you have, we have submitted a response. It is not an official, detailed response, it was to the draft report, and I won't burden you with going over it. You've read that report. It was issued on April 19, 1993, and I'm sure that the various departments have had a look at our views on the draft report.
The main reason I came this morning was to welcome you to this area. I know that some of you spent some time in Whitby last night and I would hope you'll look around our community. I would hope, if you do, you'll give me a call.
But particularly I wanted you to know, ladies and gentlemen, we're in the process of the final stages of an official plan and, as of 2 o'clock this afternoon, you will witness, if you can find time to drop in, an array of deputations from developers, from private citizens, from environmentally interested groups, all having at us in the process that you are about to change.
It occurred to me that you won't get many chances of this. It's at the last stages. We're not new. Everybody knows what is in line and everybody's mind is firm about some measures. If you can find any time at all, the meetings will begin at 2 o'clock, and I'll be very surprised if they end before 10 this evening.
Generally speaking, I greet you. I commend you on your interest in making this attempt to share your information with us. As a representative of the community, we welcome you to the area. If any of you can find time to drop in and witness our official plan representations, I'll be very glad to take an opportunity to have you recognized. I think it would be of value to you, if that's at all possible.
The Chair: Mr Edwards, we thank you for your welcome and we thank you for taking the time off your schedule to greet us in the way that you have.
ANDREW LAUER
The Chair: We invite Mr Andrew Lauer to come forward. You have 15 minutes for your presentation. If you want the members to ask you some questions, please leave as much time as you can. Otherwise there may not be any time for questions.
Mr Andrew Lauer: I wish to thank you for giving me the opportunity to participate here today with respect to Bill 163. Legislation such as this can only do one thing municipally and that is to enhance the process. I appreciate how this legislation evolved as a result of the Commission on Planning and Development Reform in Ontario, which took two years to study many aspects of planning.
I wish to devote my presentation to two of the five items within the legislation: one, the Municipal Act and, two, the Local Government Disclosure of Interest Act, 1994. I also would like to offer a few suggestions that will augment the legislation and participation in local government here in Oshawa and the Durham region.
First with respect to the Municipal Act, opening the process of meetings further heightens the accountability of municipal councils. These changes to the Municipal Act will act as keys unlocking the shroud which has clouded the municipal scene. Councils should not be able to able to hide behind meetings that are considered committee of the whole or use any other means to subvert the process. Meetings should be open.
It is obvious that subsection 55(2) requiring the council and local board to "adopt a procedural bylaw for governing the calling, place and proceedings of meetings" has been put there because of councils denying open meetings. Subsection 55(3), which states that, "Except as provided, all meetings shall be open to the public", explicitly displays the need for opened proceedings. Finally, within the procedural bylaw, notice provisions for calling special meetings, agenda preparation and distribution, the allowing of delegations and general rules of order should also be established.
Citizens can appreciate that meetings require to be closed for items that are noted within subsections 55(5) and (6). Security, litigation and labour negotiations are legitimate reasons to close a meeting for discussion purposes.
It is interesting to further note that section 193 of the act was repealed with subsection (2) allowing for bylaws establishing the procedures and the giving of public notice governing the sale of real property. To put such an item in writing could only lead a reader to believe that some councils may have disposed of real property in such a way that was not of benefit to the public. Subsection (7) will put into practice the establishment and maintenance of a public register listing real property owned or leased. This will be of benefit in knowing the community's assets which are public assets.
Secondly, schedule B of the Local Government Disclosure of Interest Act states its purpose, which is "to preserve the integrity and accountability of local government decision-making." This statement provides a clear indication of the intent of the act to the public. It is time that our municipal office holders disclose any pecuniary interests they and/or their families have which may impact their performance on council. It is appropriate for members of council who appear to have a pecuniary interest to absent themselves from any meetings and subsequently provide a disclosure of interest as described within subsections 4(1) and (2).
The legislation will provide clear indications on gifts which are received in the course of the performance of a local politician's duties. I regard the addition of gifts as an item which is long overdue. However, clause 5(2)(b), dealing with a contribution to a registered candidate, has to be modified. When the legislation offering tax credits was extended to the municipal level, it offered municipalities and boards the option of providing tax credits. As we all know, just a small handful of municipalities and boards took this option. Tax credits for municipal campaigns must be a given. This will further strengthen disclosure of donations that is already within the law, and it will open the process to ordinary citizens who may not be able to absorb making a contribution to a campaign.
Subsection (6) of the act is also long overdue. It is now necessary for the public to be made aware of the financial holdings of elected officials. The public demands the right to be made aware of what a politician may own in respect to their voting habits on council or at the board level. This clears the way as members absent themselves from meetings and provide the subsequent disclosures. Knowing a dollar value is not necessary, just knowing a politician's financial involvements have not impacted a vote on council is what this legislation is trying to resolve.
Finally, I wish to offer two other items that I hope will occur in future legislation at the municipal level that will impact Oshawa and the region of Durham.
Governments at all levels have worked hard to find the necessary savings that the taxpayer demands, while also improving upon services that they provide. In a city the size of Oshawa, the time has come that we look at streamlining our local council. We have an extremely large council of 16 members for our population size and the five councillors who serve on local council are no longer needed. Our regional councillors who also serve on the local level should be able to perform the additional duties that would be required of them as a result of reducing the size of our council.
Another improvement that the electorate is now demanding to the region of Durham is the election of our regional chair. I hope that in the near future we will be able to see legislation that will make the office of regional chair more accountable to the electorate. The existing selection of the chair by regional councillors is so far removed from me personally as an elector that it causes me to have no faith in the person holding that office.
I wish to thank the committee for having given me the opportunity to offer a few words individually as to how I perceive this legislation.
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The Chair: We'll begin with the official opposition. Mr Curling. I would remind you there isn't much time, so we'll keep it to two minutes per caucus.
Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): I'll just ask a quick question so my colleague can get a chance. Thank you very much for your presentation. I think we were out in Chatham or somewhere where someone suggested that, in regard to conflict of interest and the disclosure of information, it should be extended beyond the wife or husband or children and go to brothers and sisters. Do you think that disclosure of information in regard to conflict of interest should be expanded beyond that?
Mr Lauer: I think currently the way it exists in the proposed legislation is adequate. I think that meets the needs of what we're looking at right now.
Mr Bernard Grandmaître (Ottawa East): As you know, procedural bylaws are not mandatory at the municipal level, and some five or maybe six years ago, a draft bylaw was sent out to our municipalities encouraging them to have their own procedural bylaw, but most of them shied away from this procedure. Do you think it should be mandatory for our municipal governments to have procedural bylaws?
Mr Lauer: I think it should and certainly the legislation, I would believe, implies that that would be the case. I think people expect to see ground rules, the way the game's played, just the rules of game. I think that the electorate and the population expect that.
Mr Grandmaître: So it should be mandatory?
Mr Lauer: Yes.
Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): Welcome to the committee and thank you for your presentation. The regional chair has been appointed by rest of the elected regional councillors here?
Mr Lauer: Yes.
Mr McLean: In many cases, such as in Metropolitan Toronto I believe, the chair there is elected and then elected among his people and that's what we do in the county of Simcoe. The warden's elected from among the county councillors.
Do you see that changing here? Who's going to make that change? Is it going to be the government or is it going to be the region itself?
Mr Lauer: Certainly I don't see the region probably wanting to go ahead with that change. I think obviously the change would have to come from the provincial level. I think we're in a modern time where the electorate is also demanding that our regional chairs are selected in a more democratic fashion.
Certainly, as I said, it's very far removed and I find that to be a problem. The chair doesn't have any accountability in that kind of an appointment system. I know across the province there are various ways of selecting, whether it's a region-wide election or, as you said, with Metro, where the individual actually runs and then is selected from within the elected politicians. But at least that person is still accountable to the electorate at the end of the day.
Mr McLean: I'd like to get your view on one other thing and that is, there's been a lot of discussion with regard to the Manitoba conflict of interest, how they would fill out the conflict-of-interest forms, which would be put in an envelope and held in the clerk's office. Nobody would see it unless there was somebody who complained and then that would be opened and it would be made available.
This method here, whereby people could come in and see what assets people had, what would be your observation on that? Do you see anything with the Manitoba model whereby they would put it in an envelope and, if somebody was talked about as being in a conflict, they would open it up and show it?
Mr Lauer: I'm not familiar with the Manitoba legislation, but I think just the fact that what a politician owns is there and there's access is important in considerations of how councils vote. I think that we've seen a lot through the media and through courts and what not, what's happened over the last few years in various municipalities with regard to conflict, and I think this will attempt to address some of the problems that have occurred.
Mr Drummond White (Durham Centre): Thank you very much for your presentation, Mr Lauer. You spoke at some length about issues around accountability and I want your opinion on a couple of matters, first of all, the issue of disclosure of assets. In this case, in these reforms we're talking about a very limited disclosure, nothing like the 45-page report that members of provincial Parliament fill out every year. Do you think that limited disclosure, which would happen after your election, would be the sort of thing that would stop you from running for municipal office?
Mr Lauer: No, it wouldn't stop me. I know there's some apprehension about the legislation from incumbents in the sense that they feel it might impact their involvement. I don't think it should impact anybody's participation at the municipal scene.
Mr Drummond White: What you're suggesting there is that if you are challenging an incumbent in ward 6 or whatever, then you would have access to information about their financial wherewithal: very, very general information, though.
The argument then is that you don't have to disclose yours but they have to disclose theirs. I would think that a municipal scene incumbency has its own merit, so if people are disadvantaged by having to disclose, they are also given a tremendous advantage by having had their name in the public for the previous three years. You don't think that would disadvantage them?
Mr Lauer: No, I don't. Certainly, obviously it exists at the provincial level. I think if anything, political parties probably neglect to go digging for what incumbent politicians may have in their own assets. I don't think that's something that we look at. But I think it's important to at least be made aware when it comes to votes on council and what votes may impact, what decisions are made. Just owning property, there are a lot of numbered companies that people may have involvement with, and I think it's just cleaning up the process and making things more aboveboard and open.
Mr Drummond White: Last is the issue about the election of the chair. You're in favour of election of the regional chair?
Mr Lauer: An election or -- obviously some changes have to be made to the way our chair is anointed, appointed, here in the region of Durham.
The Chair: Thank you for participating in the hearings.
DURHAM BOARD OF EDUCATION
The Chair: I invite the Durham Board of Education, Ms Patricia Bowman and Mr Lewis Morgulis.
Ms Patty Bowman: As you have heard, I am Patty Bowman, the chairperson of the Durham Board of Education. Joining me this morning is Lewis Morgulis, the vice-president of the Ontario Association of School Business Officials and also a planner with the Durham Board of Education.
This morning we would like to address you, as our portion on Bill 163, specifically on issues that affect the Planning Act. We'll focus our comments there. We're not here to touch on anything to do with or offer comment on conflict of interest.
I also understand you'll be hearing from the Ontario Public School Boards Association into the future, and while we are certainly members of that association and they do speak on behalf of all public boards in the province of Ontario, I just underscore that as far as not perhaps having seen representation by individual boards in each community, they do speak on behalf of all school boards.
The Durham Board of Education currently educates over 59,000 students in 112 elementary and secondary school facilities. As one of Ontario's fastest-growing school boards, the Durham board has seen an enrolment increase by over 11,000 pupils in the past decade. That represents a 23% increase.
This rapid growth has resulted in the escalation of portable classrooms and the need to transport many pupils at considerable cost. The Durham board accommodates over 12,500 students in 520 portable classrooms. During the next five years the board's enrolment is projected to increase by 12,000 students or another 20%.
The enrolment pressures that the Durham board has experienced in the 1980s will continue throughout the 1990s and beyond, predominantly due to residential development. The rate and location of residential growth in Durham will have a significant bearing upon the education of present and future Durham board students. Residential development greatly influences how students are educated, where they are educated and what types of facilities they have access to during their schooling years.
Budget dollars used for transporting students to holding schools cannot be used directly for educational purposes. Opportunities for extracurricular activities diminish when pupils are transported to schools outside of their neighbourhood. Access to school libraries, gymnasiums, washrooms and other essential facilities become limited when enrolment far exceeds the capacity of the school.
Well, so what? When we say we have 520 portable classrooms, we're saying in effect that we have over 20 elementary schools in portable facilities. We have those big yellow school buses transporting children across their municipality and across municipal boundaries on a daily basis. We're saying that we have in excess of $550 million worth of hard-core building space that we have built and continue to maintain, space which we have planned, developed and occupied in isolation of the overall vision of community development in Durham.
Of course, we are only one of the many partners consulted in the planning process and we have no objection to the fact that we have been. The objection for school boards rests primarily in the arena of the timing of that consultation. We in Durham have established a track record for community development through the use of our schools and educational programs.
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As an example, those of you who read the Toronto Star I'm sure are well aware of the misleading comments on the new education complex built recently in Durham, but we have just opened a complex containing a secondary school complete with playing fields, a child care centre and a community education centre, all on an 18-acre parcel of land, in addition to having municipal support for community use as well.
As you see, Durham already has a vision for partnerships in the planning process and a track record for delivering upon the foresight encompassed within those plans. The challenge, though, is to think that we're the only person we can partner with, because the only individuals who are consulted long-term on the long view of development in this community don't include Durham board.
Of course, there are no limits upon partnership after initial consultation, and we do so to the best of our ability with our local partners and have ourselves on record as seeking multilevel partnerships in community development that would encompass a vision for the principles outlined within the body of Bill 163. The concern, however, is that there's nothing in the legislation to recognize the joint responsibility of all levels of municipal government to communicate and construct a viable, environmentally sound vision of the future.
The Durham board is here today to express our belief that the Planning Act should reflect the fact that residential development has a significant impact upon school boards and the quality of education in Ontario. For the 1990s and beyond, two facts are obvious: residential development will generate school-age children and those same school-age children will be educated. Unfortunately, the Planning Act does not provide school boards with an appropriate role within the planning process.
School boards are required to respond to residential development and to accommodate pupils when generated but are not empowered to influence the development proposals that affect them so greatly while the proposals are in their initial planning process. Recognizing boards' responsibility to influence development proposals will enable boards to effectively and efficiently accommodate pupils and provide quality education for all Ontarians.
In February 1993 the Durham board addressed the commission's draft report, and I do believe you have the significant content items before you on that one page back and front. I am not going to go through those in detail this morning for you. I expect you may already be familiar with and, if not, can familiarize yourselves with the concerns that are raised there.
What I will say is that on February 15, 1993, the Durham board reiterated the concerns outlined before you in a presentation to the Sewell commission. Further in the consultation process, chairpersons of the greater Toronto area, through the Ontario Public School Boards Association, met with provincial staff to express the practical philosophy of the changes outlined in this report. The final report of the Sewell commission omitted all requests of the Durham Board of Education, except the request to be notified of residential development proposals.
In December 1993 the Ministry of Municipal Affairs circulated a consultation paper, A New Approach to Land Use Planning, based on the Sewell commission's final report. This paper dealt with general policies and not specific amendments. Ministry staff did inform Durham board that the ministry would be reviewing all comments submitted to the Sewell commission when preparing Bill 163. Assuming that was done, Bill 163 still does not include any of the amendments requested by the Durham Board of Education and does not, in our view, improve Ontario's planning system in its approach to education.
In conclusion, as the second-largest employer in Durham region and as the largest developer of public service facilities, it is imperative that the economic community development policies of the Planning Act provide school boards opportunities to work in partnership with those responsible for maintaining municipal development.
With that, I will respond through you, Mr Chair, to questions. I can certainly comment on the philosophical nature of our concern, and Lewis Morgulis will speak to any specific comments you have on the act itself.
Mr McLean: Welcome to the committee this morning. You bring a new perspective to what we have heard over the last 10 days or so.
The Planning Act, with regard to subsection 6(2) that you want amended, "A ministry, before carrying out or authorizing any undertaking that the ministry considers will directly affect any municipality or school board, shall consult with and have regard for the established policies and procedures of the municipality and school board," whereabouts in the act, and I haven't found it, unless it's in 50(4)(j) of the Planning Act, where it would speak about that very issue -- have you had any input into any meetings that have been held with regard to this legislation that you're aware of?
Ms Bowman: I've outlined the input we have had, which has been on four different occasions.
Mr McLean: Did you make a presentation to the Sewell commission?
Ms Bowman: Yes, we did, in February 1993, further to the greater Toronto area office in the spring of that same year on the philosophy of the development. To date, the requests you have before you are precisely the requests that went forward at that time and were again reiterated through the GTA office by our staff and were promised to be reviewed before 163 was complete.
Mr McLean: Could I ask the ministry staff whereabouts in this legislation it refers to that very issue of the school boards having some input into subdivisions and some of the aspects of the building that's going on? Could you update us on that?
Mr Philip McKinstry: Yes. Normally the way it works in the development process is that the approval authority circulates applications to interested agencies. The Planning Act does not specify who those should be, just that this circulation should take place. As far as I know, the school boards are regularly circulated on subdivisions and are given the opportunity to acquire sites, to purchase sites, when necessary.
Mr McLean: Thank you. You said 520 portables. What's your enrolment in Durham?
Ms Bowman: In excess of 59,000.
Mr McLean: So you would have about 15,000 in portables?
Ms Bowman: Yes, I believe we have roughly 13,000. I think my comment was 12,000 to 13,000.
Mr McLean: Have you done any amalgamation with regard to busing?
Ms Bowman: With the separate school board? Most certainly. In fact we offer joint services with our separate coterminous board on five different areas, transportation being only one; purchasing etc, others, computer and data processing.
Mr McLean: The consultation process: The ministry staff indicate that it's there for input and it's circulated to school boards. I know I'm a little more familiar with the Simcoe county board than I am with your board and we do meet periodically with the administration as local members. They tell me that they feel the same way, the board of education in Simcoe, that they don't appear to have the availability to have input that they feel when they're planning their schools. You appear to be of the same opinion.
Ms Bowman: We're really focusing and we have an excellent relationship with our municipal governments, regional government, and that goes without saying. I trust you understand that. The issue becomes that when you're talking about a vision for the future and when I reference the comprehensive set of policy statements on planning and development, we're talking about fostering communities that are socially, economically and environmentally, culturally healthy and make efficient use of land for new and existing growth etc.
All we're saying is that we're part of that initial vision. As the largest developer of public use facilities in buildings within this region and as having a proven track record for partnership, we believe our place in the process should be in the initial stage. Right now we are consulted with after the fact, after the initial stage of planning occurs, and we're saying, "Folks, we just want to influence that initial view so that we're not working at the back end of the process." In fact as far as public dollars go, we would spend more than any other public body in this region to develop those facilities.
The school systems, the first level of municipal government in this nation, have long been the providers of community facilities; they've long been the hub of the community. If we're to develop culturally sound, environmentally sound practices and use of space, we're just suggesting that we should return to that initial consultation through school boards as well.
Mr McLean: I have one final question before my time runs out. You talk in your brief about powers to delay development applications. That would be quite a power. Would you expect that you could issue an order to the minister to delay a certain application until the school site was established?
Ms Bowman: I'll ask Lewis to comment on that.
Mr Lewis Morgulis: Yes. I'll answer that as clearly as I can, sir. In terms of delaying development, there are many ways to delay it. We could look at or request phasing of a development such that all the plans in an area wouldn't go ahead until we had adequate capacity in schools. The process right now works by way of we submit to the Ministry of Education and Training for funding and some period later we have approval for some of our projects. Currently we've got requests in for 41 growth projects, that's projects required due to increased pupils in the region.
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What we're looking for is the ability not to defeat development, but at least to stage it and for us to be able to adequately house it. I guess when you get to the adequacy of a school site and you say "Is there adequate accommodation?" if you have 15 portables on a school site and you have a soccer pitch and you can put 15 more portables on the soccer pitch, yes, there's adequate accommodation because we could fill up the rest of the site.
As to the issue of quality of education, you probably run into a problem quite quickly when the 15 portables of kids don't have access to library, gym, all of the other facilities that go into a school. What we're looking at is an ability to stage or phase development and to make sure that facilities might be in place up front before 1,000, 2,000 units were to roar ahead in a region.
Mr Drummond White: I want to congratulate you on your presentation, Ms Bowman, and also to make note of the fact that the school board, given the increasing population, where it has been in the southern part of Durham region progressively a bedroom community -- I mean, you have done incredible amounts of work to accommodate those pressures, taken some real initiatives, the year-round school proposal that you worked through very thoroughly. It wasn't successful at the time, but it still shows that kind of initiative, that kind of response very responsibly.
The issues that you brought forth, you're basically saying locally with the municipalities and with the region, the school board is included very much in terms of the planning process. What you're suggesting is that within the act that should be across the board, across the province. It shouldn't be something which may or may not occur in a regional municipality.
Ms Bowman: If I might clarify, Mr Chairperson, through you to Mr White, school boards now function through the filter of municipal government, the other levels of municipal government. We're suggesting that we should function alongside cooperatively, obviously with the municipal government retaining the influences and responsibilities it has for development. Rather than going under through a filter, we're saying bring ourselves up to the same level of influence so that we can work cooperatively.
Mr Drummond White: I think, along those lines, the Durham board has been in the forefront, certainly in the greater Toronto area, in terms of involvement as partners at that level. Certainly in other regional municipalities there's not been that kind of involvement. I remember meeting with you and the minister responsible for the GTA at the time. You were the only school board chair who had participated at that level. I think that's emblematic of the partnership you have here. I think your points are very, very well taken.
Mr Jim Wiseman (Durham West): I have a number of questions. For example, on your document that you handed to us, you say that subsection 6(2) of the Planning Act should be amended to read as follows. You have the words "have regard for." "Have regard for" is a rather weak phrase. It says all that it requires them to do is to say they looked at it, had regard for it, and then ignore you completely. I would like to hear a comment from you about whether there should be some stronger wording in that section.
The second question that I have is that in the Planning Act parkland dedication is 5%. I'd like to hear your comments about whether you think that it would be appropriate that that be increased to, say, 7% or 8% with the schools playing an equal role in the division of that land for the use of new schools.
The third thing I'd like to hear about is infilling and whether or not you would feel that it would be more appropriate for planning and development to take place in the downtown cores where there are already facilities rather than having to go to fully greenfield creations of elementary and secondary schools.
Ms Bowman: I'll ask Lewis to speak to the last two and I'll cover the first and comment on this.
Mr Morgulis: As to the issue of parkland dedication, it seems ironic that I'm addressing it today because several years ago I, through my position in the Ontario Association of School Business Officials, had prepared a brief to go to the Ministry of Education and Training and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs requesting that a dedication of school site land be equal to parkland at 5% in a development or cash in lieu thereof. The reason was that the two largest providers of community facilities were the recreation department and boards of education or school boards. Yes, I certainly would concur with that, and that would certainly be a recommendation I would look to, to ensure that school sites would be set aside. So thank you very much. It's a wonderful opportunity.
Infilling, very quickly: Yes, it makes more sense. Obviously, as neighbourhoods continue to develop and get older, the number of students decline, and you're quite right, green-field sites do present a number of problems, requiring a site, getting the facility. Certainly we would look to more infilling taking place, and that would help the process of accommodating students. They would be in the place where the schools now exist.
Ms Bowman: If I might comment further on the issue of parkland dedication briefly, the whole area of multi-use facilities, as you well know, partnerships are difficult to arrive at, difficult to work through and we have, as I've already mentioned, models that support the development in early stages of partnerships.
One of the challenges we face is we end up with a 5% dedication and we end up with two schools on one site, joined at the back with a park. It's our first step at partnership: separate school on one end, public school on another and still only a five-acre park site or a six-acre park site, hardly enough when children are out at recess time to be combing the same area of parkland that they would if they were isolated on their own.
Now what that lends to is you have school boards saying: "Why on earth would I want to build with my partners when I don't get any more parkland and I compromise the quality of the facility for the community? If we were to separate that facility, we're going to end up with 10 acres of parkland roughly and obviously that's going to be better for the community overall." So in fact we impede partnerships. Now while it may not have to be double what boards currently receive, it certainly could be a higher percentage and would allow us to accommodate a multi-use facility easier.
In the area of strengthening language, anything you can do to strengthen our position we would appreciate. We expect to not be able to run the mile the first lap out, but this is our fourth round and I'm getting a little tired of travelling to Toronto and speaking to staff and to commissions. Not that I don't respect the process or the time you have taken today, but one expects that sanity should prevail when one speaks on things that would improve the quality of life and harmonize the development of a community. We again submit to you that if you wish to strengthen the recommendations we have provided, we would only wholeheartedly endorse that.
Mr Curling: Thank you very much, Ms Bowman. I think your presentation is to the point, precise and quite clear. I think what I'm hearing from you is if consultation is listened to and acted upon it could be most effective, and I'm getting from you that over and over you've made presentations and you're not quite sure -- I think you're convinced that they have listened, but they haven't heard.
What I'd like you to comment on actually, because you seem to have educated somehow that, and rightfully so, it should be a part of the process if there's any planning to be done, because it does impact upon the schools. Intensification is one of the things that the government is, I think, rightfully looking at, to see how we can utilize our resources better, but again, without much consultation it seems, and even if it is so, they are coming right ahead and have no regard somehow to the impact it has on the schools. Could you elaborate on that and say what impact you would say intensification has had on your board?
Ms Bowman: I'll start and perhaps Lewis would like to wrap. Let me speak about two things. One, we've just received approval for an elementary school site which will be built on the back end of one of our secondary schools. Intensification: We can't accommodate the pupils within. They're well beyond the capacity of the school they're currently attending. We are certainly, in and of ourselves, seeking land and a position better utilizing, as we shift, you know, to a more environmentally sound use of lands, to put more even on a site, to its maximum capacity. So we're doing that as one example.
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The other is a very broad issue and Mr White touched on it earlier. That's the issue of modified school year, school shifts. Intensification has its challenges. There are some areas of the region where that would not be a concern and we could accommodate that. In fact it would help our overall position for capital requests.
There are other areas of the region that couldn't accommodate intensification in a strong way in their downtown cores, in their older residential areas. When we look at changes to the whole philosophy of community development, then we have to be looking broader than the planning issues themselves and be saying, and I appreciate your question, "How does that affect the school culture?"
We appreciate the support levied by the Toronto Star on behalf of school boards to explore modified school year and the willingness of our Minister of Education and Training to listen to the voice of school boards six years ago. In 1988, when this board brought the issue to Canada for large school boards, there was no support, and I don't believe I would be inappropriate in that suggestion. Very little, if any, support across the province or the nation.
Again we have to be able to communicate on broader issues than planning, and the act covers that, the issue of harmonizing the philosophy of community development. Those are two specifics: modified school year is an example, school shifts; the second being the use of existing board facilities to redevelop.
That may mean the modification of a current facility, which we do, could mean the use of lands where we have already a secondary side, as an example, and using them to a better advantage through the example of our education centre, secondary school site, child care, community use, facility all on one site. Again, another way to look at it.
Mr Morgulis: Very quickly, I think one of the interesting examples of intensification we're going through right now is the addition of junior kindergarten to our board, which is adding 4,300 students predominantly in areas where we already have schools. We're finding in some of the older schools we're having the easiest job because we do have the facilities to redevelop and to renew. We're finding the biggest problems, of course, in the outlying areas where we're waiting for new schools, and it's adding to the problem of acquiring schools that are the right size in the time that we need them.
As we redevelop areas within the communities, in the existing core of the community, we're going to find that there are a lot of opportunities to renew some of our facilities and to fill them with students at a lower cost than having to truck them in from the outlying townships or from outlying areas within the municipalities. It makes for an efficient use of the facilities we already do have, and we have over 30,000 pupil places in existence in core building space in the board.
Mr Grandmaître: I'd like to address the cost of education in the province of Ontario. As you know, the provincial government, or Mr Laughren, some two and a half years ago initiated the Fair Tax Commission. This Fair Tax Commission was supposed to resolve all of the problems that this province is faced with. Not only this province, I think it's right across Canada, because, as you know, between 50% and 63% of the cost of municipal taxes goes towards education. This Fair Tax Commission recommended that a fairer, more equitable system be put in place, income tax. What are your thoughts?
Ms Bowman: I wish I'd written a paper on that one. Pulling back from the recesses of my mind --
Mr Grandmaître: Maybe we can have another meeting.
Ms Bowman: Yes, hopefully, it will come as it flows. As far as should there be a property tax for school tax, my suggestion to you is yes, absolutely, the reason being it's the only visible tax, I would suggest, broadly visible that Ontario residents have. We cause great conflict and great pain for ourselves in doing so, but people know what they pay for. If they don't like it, they let you know and they dump you or re-elect you on some of those issues, and finance is only one.
The issue of education development charges is another one that we're moving ahead on. Again that helps. The greatest help to school boards -- I would suggest two things. One is harmonizing the financial fiscal year to the school year, and I know that has federal problems attached to it as well in your financing structure. The second, if I can remember now that I've just said that --
Mr Grandmaître: Why don't you go to number 3?
Ms Bowman: Why don't I go to number 3 and come back? Very special.
Interjection.
Ms Bowman: To actually be pausing. I know, it's not normal for me. At any rate, you're finding me at a loss for words, which is a first, and my MPPs know it.
In the finance reform project, which I would suggest to you is probably a more accurate goal for school boards, we're talking about one education block grant divisible according to a board's own powers and responsibilities. That allows us to say, "Okay, in our area we choose to allocate those moneys for this purpose and we're still accountable at the local level."
Issues of transportation: We were well ahead of the province's requirement to reduce transportation costs further, having dropped in excess of $3.5 million over the last three years in transportation costs in this board. Again, being ahead of the province didn't exempt us from the penalties all would suffer if we didn't go down further.
We are working on complying on finance reform, if you like, but the issue of the extension of separate school funding and the requirement to confederate, if not amalgamate, certainly requirements to confederate would realize some savings, though not as significant as the public at large may consider now.
I would move to the education finance reform project rather than the Fair Tax Commission as a basis for a philosophy that probably would bring in a lot of school boards and be the first step for greater accountability.
Mr Grandmaître: You don't think it should be paid through income tax?
Ms Bowman: Absolutely not. Hidden tax, unless you --
Interjection.
Ms Bowman: Mr Chair, if I might -- unless you can provide that there is a guaranteed dedicated tax at the provincial level which will be identified for the public. There has never been a guarantee of that and it will be lost in general revenue no matter how it is collected on behalf of education, and it may or may not come back out the appropriate end.
The Chair: Ms Bowman and Mr Morgulis, we thank you very much for sharing the concerns of the educational system with this committee. Thanks for coming.
Ms Bowman: Thank you very much, and may I say we certainly appreciate the time here and, in particular, just to acknowledge the representation of our MPP since we're in Durham and those who are not sitting at the table but are present here as well. We appreciate that. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms Bowman. With that I had failed to mention the presence of Mr Allan Pilkey, the member for Oshawa, and would say that we're happy to be here, Allan, and happy that you are here listening to the concerns of the committee.
Hon Allan Pilkey (Minister without Portfolio in Municipal Affairs): Mr Chairman, if I just might, on behalf of the Oshawa riding, welcome yourself and all members of the committee and suggest to you what you've already found out, that you're going to hear some words of wisdom and some very thoughtful presentations from some people in this particular area who have a stake in the area and know what they're talking about. I know you will find it will be very valuable in your considerations. Thank you again for having me here.
OSHAWA-DURHAM HOME BUILDERS' ASSOCIATION
The Chair: We call upon the Oshawa-Durham Home Builders' Association, Mr Stephen Kassinger, first vice-president, Mr Bob Annaert and Ms Jo Casey. Welcome to this committee.
Mr Stephen Kassinger: I thank you for the opportunity to take the time to listen to our concerns with a piece of legislation which is well intentioned but unfortunately misguided.
My name is Stephen Kassinger. I'm the first vice-president of the Oshawa-Durham Home Builders' Association and a local builder-developer. With me here today is Jo Casey. She's a director of our local association. She's also chair of the Ontario Home Builders' Association's land development committee and she's also a developer in her own right. On my left is Mr Bob Annaert. He's a director of our local association as well and he's with D.G. Biddle and Associates, consulting engineers specializing in land development work.
We are here representing the Oshawa-Durham Home Builders' Association, the individual members, employees, suppliers, trades and so on. Our association has approximately 130 member companies encompassing the vast majority of the residential construction industry which, on a national scale, is the largest employer in Canada, responsible for more than $40 billion in annual revenue and 658,000 workers.
The ODHBA covers the regional municipality of Durham, including the provincial ridings of Oshawa, Durham East, Durham Centre and Durham West. Most importantly, however, we also represent the new home buyer, the individuals and families who wish to purchase a new home in the future who without us are without representation. It is all these people whom we see as threatened by this legislation.
As you well know, the planning process is in dire need of reform. World War II was fought in less time than it takes to run a parcel of land through the approvals process in Ontario. It was the Honourable Dave Cooke two years ago, then Minister of Municipal Affairs, who identified the problem and appointed a provincial facilitator to cut the red tape and get faster approvals.
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He stated that the province's planning approvals process does not work. It is too long and too confusing, and it is costing us jobs. Mr Cooke was dead on. The Sewell commission on planning reform was convened, met appropriately with representatives of our industry, met with the public and ultimately produced its report, and the end result of this whole process is Bill 163 as we know it today.
Unfortunately, Bill 163 as we know it today does not resolve the problems identified at the outset. The red tape has been cut. Unfortunately, it has been cut lengthwise. Instead of a simpler, shorter process, we feel that the bill is so vague in some areas, conflicting in other areas and misguided completely in other areas still that the unfortunate end result will be a more complicated, longer and more expensive process.
The persons affected will obviously be those associated with residential construction, but most affected will be the consumer, the new home buyer who will pay a higher price for a product with no appreciable improvement, and that is certainly not what the bill's authors intended.
We are here today to point out the inconsistencies, the vagueness and the incorrect assumptions so that the bill may be revised to correct the problem, not aggravate it. We feel that there is sufficient concern to warrant withdrawing the legislation and revising it wholesale. While our concerns are far-reaching, due to time constraints, we have selected two of the most contentious issues to discuss with you today.
The first of these is the section of the legislation calling for changes to the subdivision approvals process.
On the issue of public meetings for subdivision approval: The final report of the Commission on Planning and Development Reform in Ontario made no mention of a public hearing for plans of subdivision.
The first notice that the government intended to introduce a new public consultation process in the plan of subdivision approvals was when the bill was tabled in May 1994.
The bill introduces in subsection 51(14) the requirement for a public meeting never before required in the plan of subdivision approval process.
The bill provides that public consultation be required at the official plan and official plan amendments stage when major land use issues are decided in a conceptual form.
The public consultation process is again used when the changes in zoning on a property are dealt with to define and implement the land uses established in the official plans.
A plan of subdivision application cannot be processed if the plan does not conform to the official plan and the plan is implemented by the passing of a zoning bylaw. Both of these planning processes are open to public input as they involve decisions about land use that will have an impact on the enjoyment of the community during the usual course of day-to-day activity.
Generally, all decisions that would impact the general public and immediate neighbours would be open to the public during the OPA and zoning bylaw process. To introduce a further public meeting goes beyond the public interest in openness and accountability and introduces additional time and costs in the process.
The public interest is served during the subdivision approvals process by elected officials who have been delegated to review the comments and advice of professional staff of planners, engineers, environmentalists and so on. Certainly the effect that would be caused by this additional unwarranted public scrutiny is not the result intended by the reform process.
This additional and unnecessary public hearing process does not serve the public interest and introduces further impediments in the development process and is being proposed without the benefit of consultation with the building and development industry and must not be allowed to be implemented.
On notice of change: The legislation also proposes in subsection 51(34) that public notice be given of any change to the approved plan, regardless of how minor this change may be. Again, this proposal goes beyond serving the public interest in openness and accountability and will add delays and costs to the process.
It is certainly not in the interest of the public to allow delays for a much-needed housing project just because notice must be given for a change in lot size from 15 metres to, say, 14.8, or because a walkway or road allowance must be shifted a few metres.
Generally, redline changes to a draft approved plan are insignificant and will not impact the public in general, the abutting neighbourhood or even those who will eventually live in the subdivision.
This notice will no doubt lead to requests for appeals and even if the appeal is deemed frivolous or vexatious, costly time delays will not be avoided.
On lapse of appeal: The legislation proposes in subsection 51(21) that draft plan approval lapse at the expiration of the time period specified by the approval authority being not less than two years.
This provision of the bill is adding unwarranted risk to a development process which already has considered risks attached to it.
Currently land must be purchased not knowing fully if the land use will permit a reasonable return. Expensive studies must be carried out to determine the environmental concerns, if they can be satisfied and at what costs.
If all of the above goes well, draft plan approval can be granted subject to certain conditions which then must be satisfied. Further studies are finalized and expenses on land surveys, engineering and studies are accumulated.
If the arbitrary time frame expires prior to completing all of the above, all could be lost.
If the market changes during the process to warrant an amendment to the product or if the market demand declines prior to the arbitrary time frame expiring, all could be lost.
The government argument to allow draft approval to lapse so that the municipality can allocate sewer and water capacity to developments ready to go ahead is nonsense. Capacity for municipal infrastructure can be allocated with the execution of subdivision agreements as has been the case in the regional municipality for the past 20 years.
Once draft plan approval is granted, it should not be removed. This additional risk will only cause concentration in the development industry, and therefore this change in the legislation must not be allowed.
On streamlining and time frames: As indicated earlier, one of the intents of development reform was to provide streamlining in the planning process. The government described the system as too cumbersome and complicated, and decisions on what development should take place and where it should go take far too long.
Our association is in full agreement that the planning process is in dire need of reform, and I'll underscore this again. The Second World War was fought in less time than it takes to run some parcels of land through the approvals process in Ontario.
In its wisdom, the government has chosen two methods to try to implement the streamlining intent, these methods being the screening of appeals to the OMB and the establishing of time frames for certain phases in the development process.
It is our association's contention that these methods do not fulfil the intent of the reform process.
On the issue of screening of appeals to the OMB: We wholeheartedly concur that there are far too many appeals made that are intended to delay, are frivolous or vexatious, and that the Ontario Municipal Board should be empowered to deny a hearing on these grounds.
Denial of a hearing on the grounds of prematurity, however, should be removed from the legislation as the determination of prematurity can only be decided by due process.
The proposal in the legislation on OPAs, zonings and subdivisions to empower the approval authority to refuse to refer an appeal will certainly deny due process and the appeal process will effectively be lost. This fundamental right cannot be taken away by this legislation.
On time frames: Obviously the intent of introducing time frames into the development process was to streamline the process and this is welcomed by our industry. However, a review of the bill indicates that these time frames only deal with a portion of the process, and in some cases they will actually lengthen the process.
The time frames proposed in the legislation start upon receipt of the complete application. They do not include the pre-application time spent on ensuring a complete application. The additional requirements that the bill is implementing, to provide better protection to the environment, will no doubt add considerably to the current time frame.
The time frames proposed in the legislation stop at the notice of decision at OPA or a draft plan approval of the subdivision. They do not include the time for appeals after the approval authority makes a decision. Again, while the intent is admirable, the implementation fails to provide faster decisions.
The commission intended, among other things, that time frames deal with situations where municipalities ignored or did not take effective action to respond to an application. Currently, if applicants believe that their official plan amendment application is not being dealt with fairly, they have the right to request referral to the OMB after 30 days. With the proposed legislation, the applicant must wait 150 days for the approval authority to review the application and make a decision and a further 15 days for council to refer the decision.
The bill as proposed does not provide for determining if effective action is being taken, so it should not be allowed to be implemented. Let us take a step back and take the opportunity to consult on an effective streamlining process.
In summation, we are pleased that the government has taken heed of our concerns regarding a lengthy and complex planning approvals process, yet we are disappointed by the implementation of the proposed reforms.
For the reasons outlined earlier and for many others which, due to time constraints, we are unable to touch upon today, we feel strongly that this bill will impose more unreasonable costs, force many small firms out of business and strangle the largest industry in the province, which is only now slowly getting back on its feet after a most debilitating recession.
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We urge you to reconsider not only the items alluded to here but the bill as a whole. We agree with you that there's the need to reform the process, but let's not rush this thing through just to pass something. Let's work together to get it right so we can get on with our jobs, that is, providing the best housing in the world.
Thank you. That concludes our formal presentation. We welcome your questions or comments and we'll redirect them to the panel.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Just a quick reminder to the members: There are three minutes per caucus, but three minutes go very, very quickly, so I remind you about that time.
Mr Wiseman: I cannot tell you how fundamentally I disagree with your comments about lapse of appeal and subdivision. It seems to me that what you have here is a request that the developers get everything that they want and that the community have nothing in return.
The reason I say that is because subdivisions and official plan amendments often create anomalies in communities where an official plan is created where there's balance, there's phasing, there's a whole host of balanced approaches, and then along comes an official plan amendment that'll change, say, one section of high density to low density while leaving the adjacent property as high density. What you find is towers in the middle of medium- to low-density dwellings, and this is unacceptable to the community; or you find areas where pieces of land are sliced off because changes are made to the official plan or changes are made to the plan of subdivision, and that creates other anomalies which are completely unacceptable to the community and even to the local council as time progresses.
You're going to have to create a much better argument for me to oppose the lapse of appeal, because I would like to see this section strengthened, where any official plan amendment that is of major significance would have to have the entire official plan restructured and redone, because it just doesn't make sense and it's unfair to the residents in those communities who back on to these areas to have their land changed.
Just on that, there's one more comment. I think the staff would be able to say that their interpretation of redlining is not correct, if you could comment. You commented in Chatham on that, if you could just revisit that.
Mr McKinstry: The way the bill will work is that where there are changes to a plan of subdivision after draft approval, public notice is required. I guess the reference to Chatham is, there were some comments and I believe there were comments in London as well, about reducing the lot sizes in a subdivision after a number of years because the market had changed. I guess the government's view there is that where you're reducing lot sizes, that could constitute a fairly significant change and therefore there is some obligation to notify the public and allow some public input.
Mr Kassinger: But, you see, if there's no density change, the draft plan has already been approved and been consulted with the public at that point. It's approved. The process has occurred. What we're taking exception to is the fact that after the plan has been approved, if it's not implemented within the two-year time frame, then we have to go through the process again, which is not streamlining.
Ms Jo Casey: Apart from that, we're concerned about density. If the density doesn't change, we don't understand your hypothetical. But on the issue of lapsing, I can tell you that that condition in this bill will ruin me, and I'm a developer.
I'd like to go over the development industry and point out to you that the major builders, of whom we're very proud in Ontario -- Bramalea, Coscan, Monarch -- are not models of the development industries. Most of the builders in Ontario build 10 to 15 houses a year. The vast majority build this amount of houses. I myself close 35 houses a year. If you put in this lapsing of subdivision draft plan approval, I'll go under. Now if I go under, what happens to the guys who do 10 to 15?
I think the members of the Legislature are unaware of the industry. If you do some history, you'll remember that the Sewell commission was really started to handle the government's concerns about Muzzo, Bratty and the boys who were running around north Toronto. Those men are wonderful businessmen; they do business differently than anyone else in the province.
When you go down to the public-owned companies like Bramalea and Coscan, they still are not the model of the industry. The model of the industry is individual and small firms building 10 to 15 houses a year. The first thing that we have to do when we consider a project is go to our banker. If we have this lapse of draft plan approval, we will not get funded. We will not be able to borrow and the industry will just fail.
Mr McKinstry: If I could just clarify for the benefit of the committee, the lapsing of draft approval is an enabling provision which will allow the approval authority, if it wishes to impose a lapsing date and that lapsing date can be extended -- really it's intended to allow municipalities or approval authorities where developments are clearly not going ahead. But it is an enabling provision.
Ms Casey: It is an enabling provision, and a lot of this bill is in those gray areas, but -- making this presentation to you today, we submitted 30 copies of our submission. When we put in a draft plan of subdivision or a subdivision application where there's a regional government, we submit 50 copies; where there isn't, we submit 35 copies. That's a lot of people discussing a piece of paper, a lot of people whose opinions are different. We get then from the word "enabling" into the delays and the time frame problems, and it's just strangling us.
The Chair: Mr Curling, I remind you it's almost 10:30 and there are still other members to ask questions. Please be aware of that.
Mr Curling: I know my colleague here has a few, but he won't have time to say those words. One of the problems about these public hearings or these consultation processes is that there's not enough time to really get some of your concerns down generally to all parties. It's very sad democratic process. I want to make that comment. I'm not blaming the government. It's just how the whole thing is structured.
There are so many things here that I want to say, but I'll make just a general comment. Public participation is extremely important in this process of planning. However, if government has clear and precise policies up front and let's everyone know what's happening -- I don't want to say there will be less participation but they would understand where things are going.
It's when things are all confusing, at the end people are not quite sure what's happening to them in the neighbourhood or beside them. Then they want to have their input and sometimes they are terribly informed to the cost of many, to the cost of the individual and to the cost of the developer itself.
We also have to change our attitude about developers. We must. We can't feel that they're all gougers and what have you and decide that their housing policies are all rent-geared-to-income situations. It's all a housing policy that encompasses people like yourself.
One of the things I'd like you to define for me, and which we have not been able to get a definition on, is minor variances. You've mentioned here that this may help considerably, but we've got to know what is a minor variance to you. What do you see as a minor variance so that that could be cleared up and not be held up in hearings from time to time?
Mr Kassinger: I'll refer that to Mr Annaert. He gets involved with minor variances quite often.
Mr Bob Annaert: The minor variance section in the bill is clear enough and we didn't bring that up as a point of argument. Minor variances are set out to make minor adjustments to the zoning bylaws, make minor adjustments to land uses. We as an association, I think, agree that this is a very small process in the planning process.
I think the point that we were making is that the act will allow the referral to the OMB to be handled by the decision-making authority. We encourage that because that, in our opinion, will free up the Ontario Municipal Board to make the more complex decisions on the official plan amendments and some of the bylaws.
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Mr Noble Villeneuve (S-D-G & East Grenville): Thank you very much for your presentation. The screening of appeals to the OMB, I think, needs to be looked at very, very closely. I think the time has come. I've run into problems in my riding, which is way east of here, with the Ministry of the Environment taking six months or more to reply, not costing the government anything, simply to reply and to make comments. It has been suggested by certain people at Queen's Park that if nothing happens from a government within 30 days, it would be an automatic green light.
Mr Kassinger: That sounds fine. We'd have green lights all the way if that were the case.
Mr McLean: The intent of the development industry and the ministry streamlining the process: We yesterday had met some consultants and planners at Midhurst. I asked the question, will this new process speed up the approvals or slow them down, and they both said it would slow the whole system down.
The other question I had with regard to referral and amendments to review the application: The minister can make a referral at any time that he sees fit. After you've spent a million dollars, it can still be referred. So there are some major concerns here in this supposed to be, so-called streamlining of the planning process, and all indications that I seem to be getting are that it's not going to be streamlined.
Mr Kassinger: We wholeheartedly concur with your observation, sir.
Mr McLean: Thank you for appearing before the committee.
The Chair: There are some comments here by way of clarification. Mr Hayes.
Mr Pat Hayes (Essex-Kent): On page 4 of your presentation, where you mentioned, "With the implementation bill upon us, we find that there are a number of issues presented in the bill that were never considered by the commission," you were talking about the process and plans of subdivision and you say, "Nowhere in the final report of the Commission on Planning and Development Reform in Ontario is there a mention of a public hearing for plans of subdivision."
If you have a copy of the final report dated June 1993, section 77, it says, "To encourage public involvement in the planning process through public meetings, the Planning Act be amended to require that," and then I'll go to clause (c) of that and it says: "For rezonings, lot creation and minor plan amendments, at least one public meeting be required when final reports to the council are being considered. Reasonable opportunities for public comment will be permitted at the public meeting." So it certainly is in the report.
Mr Kassinger: I don't see how that is defined as at the subdivision draft plan approval stage, sir.
Mr Hayes: You're talking about lot creation in this section, and lot creation certainly falls under subdivisions, so it's there.
Mr Kassinger: Well, without the benefit of the document in front of me, I cannot respond directly. But it does not specifically say a draft plan approval stage, sir.
Mr Hayes: It's page 110.
Ms Casey: But even if you are correct, it's an example of listening but not hearing us. It's not going to work, it's causing us problems, it's delaying the process, and we really do believe you've cut the tape lengthwise.
The Chair: Sorry. We have run out of time. We appreciate your sharing your concerns with this committee. The members have heard your presentation.
Mr Kassinger: Thank you for the opportunity to speak today, and I hope that we've made some impact on you.
The Chair: Thank you. We invite the Durham Environmental Network, Mr Steve Leahy. He's not here, I guess. We'll move on. Chris Smith and Associates? Mr David West?
SUSE EGGERT
The Chair: Let's check with the next person. Ms Suse Eggert?
Mrs Suse Eggert: I'm here, but this is an hour early, isn't it?
The Chair: This is true, but if you're ready to go we are quite prepared to hear you.
Mrs Eggert: I'm Suse Eggert and we are a small environmental group. I know some of the gentlemen, but not very many. We actually are not against development, we are for the environment, strictly the environment. That's what we have done since 1988. I wrote this and I typed it myself last night and it's longer than seven minutes so I guess I better just talk. You don't have that much time. Didn't the people come? Can I read it or shall I just talk?
The Chair: Whatever you feel comfortable doing. You have 15 minutes.
Mrs Eggert: This is 10, I guess, if I talk fast.
I'm the mouthpiece of a small environmental group in the town of Whitby. We are a small group of concerned citizens, friends and relations. My husband and I are retired. He has been an accountant-manager. I worked with him and then alone for many years. The younger ones of our group are professionals, too busy to put in much time, but always willing to give information and advice. The only exception is a lawyer who attends OMB hearings or mediations with me.
Our group contains a lawyer, a federal crown attorney, a scientist-professor, a vice-principal of a Durham secondary school, former head of English, and some of their secretaries. My husband edits our letters; I don't think he did this one. As you can see, we are no environmental experts. Our education led us to it. For our work we use the implementations, guidelines, policy statements and recommendations of ministries and agencies.
We have been involved in the protection of the three creeks of Whitby from 1988 on, which means most of the environmental definitions set out in alphabetical order in the Comprehensive Set of Policy Statements sent to me for this Bill 163 deputation. In a way we are happy that finally some government body set out to give help, but unfortunately we think this intended help is not enough.
For trying to preserve some natural heritage features and areas etc -- I mention everything, woodlands, whatever; we looked into everything -- we have been threatened in council chambers and have been told: "All of these environmental matters are your hobbies only. They represent a waste of time and money. Besides, you do not live in the 120-metre radius prescribed by the Planning Act. You are not allowed to speak." This was for the environment, not for something down the road where we live.
When pointing out the implementations, guidelines, recommendations and policy statements produced by the ministries and authorities, also the Regeneration book, the product of the two royal commission hearings conducted by the Crombie commission, we were nearly laughed out of rooms or halls. When, by asking further why they did not want to accept any of these, lots of taxpayers' money has gone into producing them, the answer was: "They do not have any teeth. There are no bylaws. They are not enforceable." Enforceable bylaws are what we need, no pussyfooting around.
I come back to Regeneration. Unfortunately, after reading all of the literature we received for Bill 163, we realized that some of your newly planned sections are contradictory to Regeneration and also to parts on environmental matters in the new region of Durham official plan, where MMA used some parts of Regeneration. That's why I became involved. I have been attending meetings, everything concerning both the region's and the town of Whitby's official plans.
When in front of our town council trying to change some development plans destroying a creek valley even though it did not have full MMA and CLOCA approval, I was asked, "Where were you when all of this was discussed? This is all your fault. You should have stopped the official plan" etc. That's why our group was formed. From then on I was there every week speaking up and sending written submissions. Now they wish they'd never asked that question.
Per se, we are not against development as long as it follows prescribed lines and does not encroach, destroy, damage or intrude on the environment and/or social environment. This has been proven in OMB hearings and mediations.
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To come back to contradictions: We started to work closely with the MMA, MNR and CLOCA regulations. After Regeneration, we used it all we could, and we're thankful for the help it gave us in our work for the environment. Regeneration uses the Toronto Don as an example. Therefore its recommendations, which have provincial cabinet approval and is meant to be morally binding, about treatment of what in your comprehensive set of policy statements is called natural heritage features and areas, also corridors and wetlands, were seen by us as some success.
But the Crombie commission statements, quoting what I read in the Regeneration book, were: no more channelling or burying of creeks with engineering techniques, grading or dumping of fill, and only approved fill could be used if necessary to stabilize.
We used this for Pringle Creek of Whitby, which was half dead at the time, no good for fish, bad for water renewal and wildlife, after being buried and channelled. This engineering technique did not prove to be successful for the environment, fish, creek or humans. We give this as an example to show how well-intended implementations or guidelines can be abused.
Then I quote more from rules and regulations. But CLOCA states that not all fill can be inspected to be safe. Therefore, when the Sewell commission followed Kanter and the Crombie commission and its findings are supposed to be used now, we are distressed.
Development 1, 2, 3 of the comprehensive set of policy statements.
The new treatments of corridors, hazard lands and river valleys proposed in Understanding Ontario's Planning Reform, "New Planning Legislation," pages 9 and 10, to give methods and measures for mitigating such impacts. That is directly against what has been found out in Regeneration.
I state again what the Municipal Act, under section 223.1 states: soil to be dumped, dumping of fill, or alteration of the grade of land. That's against Regeneration.
Out of our experience, we know that of these will be abused.
I went to a CLOCA meeting, with its councillors present. Even though the director of the authority gave its findings, the planner was also against part of this development in an area you would call corridors, along a meandering creek valley with a wet meadow. That's why we deferred it to the OMB. The authority council, as a whole, voted for the development. This development will need at least three or four ponds to pick up the extra storm water, and the lower creek shows heavy signs of erosion already, before development. Eventually, in a mediation hearing, we won back some concessions, but our lawyer did not cross-examine the authority people because of fear of repercussions.
Ponds: In Whitby, because of its typographical situation, development cannot take place without ponds any more. These ponds, with their sleeping dangers, are mentioned veiled only and seldom in Understanding Ontario's Planning Reform and the comprehensive set of policy statements.
In a given situation, two newly developed ponds in Whitby were not working properly. They could be deadly, because they because old-fashioned open sewers. They could produce leptospirosis, called Well's disease, caused by a virus coming from rodents. Dead rodents were found in these ponds. I have a copy of a letter to Robert Short, director of planning, Whitby, from the MMA, by Milena Avramovic, about this. She asked for pursuance of this matter, but ponds were not mentioned in the new recommended official plan for Whitby either.
Since part of southern Ontario is situated under the Oak Ridges moraine on sloping grounds, ponds are of importance to mitigate heavy runoffs and should have recognition and procedural bylaws. These runoffs are increased through development by per cent impervious water runoffs from roofs and parking lots.
Wetlands: We know our Lynde Creek marsh and wetlands are a lost cause, because in spite of our OMB deferral, we were told that since the big Ruth Grier has waived an environmental assessment for the area, what did a small Suse Eggert think she could accomplish? We were forced in a friendly way to withdraw.
Reading all new statements on environmental safety and special preference for class 1 wetlands of Ontario, even though most of our wetlands are located on government lands, we should have had a chance to receive at least the 120-metre setback required as a barrier between the marsh-wetland and the developments. Hazard lands along the marsh are planned to be altered with acceptable engineering techniques -- you know those -- also low-hazard lands called ditches. I was invited to see one of the ditches, but after the heavy rains nothing materialized.
These places are not included in the amendments. They are waiting for that still. Since we have been objecting from the start, never giving up, in word or writing, on hazard lands, we feel you should have different bylaws for these situations, because your findings state also that this will have to be protected.
Since in some cases the public did not have a chance to object, no public meetings, or we did object to the use of hazard lands, it is not fair to use this section with everything lumped together under one umbrella.
Institutional land uses: Whitby residents were told never to stop on the roads around the mental hospital to pick up people, as a safety precaution because of murders and many other unsavoury matters. These lands around the hospital and marsh-wetland areas are supposed to pick up 6,700 new habitants now, including small children. How does this compare with the safety measures for people proposed in the comprehensive set of policy statements?
In our second try for an OMB approach, we proposed school development or any other kind where nobody stays after dark along the marsh and the mental hospital. Everything was declined, but the comprehensive set of policy statements seem now to see it as we did -- and do still. At the time we were convinced not to pursue the matter.
How can this negative, outdated, dangerous, government development approach happen today, in spite of all new approaches written for today now? Who will be held responsible in case of disaster? Hopefully, not the taxpayers of Whitby.
By the way, we would like to know the continuances of these newly planned sections to the divers acts, if new governments will come and go in the length of time. Will there have to be a new reworking, as this one, or can a new government negate all new sections? Or is there a set time limit for reworking of the acts? You see, in spite of our complaints, we do appreciate some of the new ideas.
Also, it is stated that under the OMB act there is a prescribed fee one has to pay at a deferral. We have paid for everything else, but did not pay a fee for an OMB hearing. Is this new, and how much would this be? In the case of the environment, a fee would surely discourage people to come out either to help us or to do something on their own.
Environmental impact studies, developments 1 and 2: These should be done only by independent recognized companies picked from a government list and not paid directly by the developer. Preferably two studies should be done, and then the medium between the outcomes of the two should be picked. Our survival and that of future generations to come is too important.
Built heritage resources, cultural heritage landscape and intensification: Unfortunately, the intensification idea, which is good where there is room for it, is now planned for downtown Whitby. It seems that the little of Whitby's identity left after experiencing the tearing down of many of the oldest buildings of the district is planned to disappear for downtown also. Not just new houses around old buildings with the same height and exteriors are planned -- no. New and higher ones are planned, instead of our heritage. Heritage is to be torn down.
There again one can see how new, well-intended ideas can be abused. Some sections of the comprehensive set of policy statements urge the safety and protection of heritage, but we did not see enough sections in the new act to prevent what I just described to you. The new recommended Whitby official plan wants to give bonus provision bylaws. For doing something good at another site, they want to give the developer the right to high-rises instead in town, get rid of our heritage.
Areas of natural and scientific interest, ANSI: Whitby used to be known in the scientific world as the land of trilobites. Our son found this out only in Alberta, after 30 years living in Whitby, at Drumheller's Tyrrell museum. These Whitby shale formations were mainly destroyed by boulders propping up the shoreline at the mental hospital in Whitby. They come down from the Collingwood-Georgian Bay area, underground, and surface along the many arms of Lynde Creek and mainly at the mouth of the Lynde. Now there are so few of them left that it was thought to give these Whitby trilobites a different name. This coverup is not fair. We should try to save our oldest ANSI heritage. Scientists use them for research in the development of plant and human life on our planet, and most likely for the different ecosystems now.
Since the invitation to this hearing stated that you were interested to hear what environmentalists have to say about this new legislation, we hope that you will listen somehow and that there is still room and time for some changes. We believe strongly that it is everybody's duty to save our environment for us and future generations.
The Chair: Mrs Eggert, unfortunately there's no time for questions, but I want to congratulate you for your activism and wish that it will endure for a long, long time. Thank you for coming today.
Mrs Eggert: We did have quite a lot of success in spite of everybody against the environment.
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CHRIS SMITH AND ASSOCIATES
The Chair: Mr David West is here from Chris Smith and Associates.
Mr David West: My name is David West. I have a master's degree in urban planning, just as a background, although I'm not currently working in the planning field. I'm currently working as a consultant in the field of non-profit housing, and I've been in that field for over 10 years. We have worked in Durham region, York region and Metropolitan Toronto. Working as a consultant in this field with cooperative and non-profit housing groups, we have experienced a great variety of situations involving our development applications and the planning process in a variety of municipalities.
As you can imagine, many of these situations have been negative, because not only are we struggling with the planning approvals process, we are often fighting a NIMBY attitude in the community as well as stickhandling through the Ministry of Housing at the same time.
This presentation will be short and represents the thoughts of a few of us who work in the field of non-profit housing in the firm I work with.
We wish to express support for Bill 163 and all the hard work undertaken by the Sewell commission. In our opinion, the bill is definitely moving in the right direction and addressing the right issues. We speak largely from experience.
Some of the main issues we see it addressing are: the length of time for planning approvals. One of our projects, and we know we're not a special case in any way, took four years to work its way through the planning system, and this was not a complicated subdivision but simply a simple town house development. We know it's not unusual for development applications to take several years to complete. It often seems there is no accountability on the part of various jurisdictions to deal with applications in a timely manner, so the direction of the bill in creating time accountability we think is moving in the right direction.
In regard to the environment, we support the bill's efforts to integrate environmental matters into the planning process.
With respect to integration and coordination in the planning process, we think again that's a major issue that's being dealt with in the bill. We have experienced, more than once, significant delays when various levels of jurisdiction and provincial ministries are involved in the same project. In many cases, each of these has a different and perhaps conflicting agenda.
We support the setting of strategic goals by the provincial government as long as these are clear, enforceable and followed up.
We support giving municipalities greater control and responsibility in the planning process. But a slight note of caution: Because of the type of business we're in, we're not always welcomed with open arms in a given municipality or by a community or even by planning staff, who may not want non-profit housing in their community for some reason. Does this mean we will always end up at the OMB? If a municipality has no land for medium- or high-density housing suitable for non-profit housing, or, as in other municipalities we've had experience with, where the cost of land is too expensive for non-profit housing, does that mean that municipality will always be able to shut out non-profit housing developments? We have experienced that.
So in general we support the thrust and the direction of Bill 163, and we ask that the province be diligent and persistent in making it effective and fair.
Some more specific comments on the housing policies:
Again, we support the housing policies that are related to Bill 163, because these are moving in the direction we have been moving in for some time, such as:
-- Intensification and infill. These kinds of sites are often very valuable to non-profit housing groups.
-- A more compact and less costly urban form.
-- A greater variety of types of building form and density mix. We feel there's a great deal of creativity in the architectural and development industries that is not being used effectively because of zoning bylaws or development standards or whatever.
-- More efficient use of land.
-- Less costly development standards.
We support the more specific housing policies because we believe they will result in a more balanced community, more efficient use of resources, and provide a greater range of housing types, tenure and affordability, including non-profit housing, which we feel is important. We feel these housing policies will help to create a fuller range of housing and also, specifically, the 30% affordable housing is obviously moving in a direction we support, half of it to be geared to the lowest 30th percentile of income, which is currently missing from the old provincial housing policy.
With respect to the province's role, Bill 163 reduces the direct provincial involvement in planning decisions. However, we feel the province needs to be diligent in clearly defining its policies, monitoring and enforcing these policies, ensuring that municipalities interpret the policies consistent with the provincial intent, and should play a role in integrating and coordinating the policies.
As an example, will the Ministry of Municipal Affairs or some other body take a lead role in coordinating approvals where more than one ministry or more than one jurisdiction is involved? We're sure there have been countless cases where development applications have spent months and years caught up in a quagmire of overlapping levels of jurisdiction. It is often up to the proponent to follow their application through a maze of bureaucracy. The setting up of planning teams within the bureaucracy has been successful in dealing with this issue. Some municipalities are starting to do this.
In the municipal role, we support the requirement that municipalities have official plans. In some respects this is a bold step forward because it forces municipalities to spell out their plans and and not to handle planning matters on an ad hoc, "Let's make a deal" basis. Perhaps this runs counter to the notion that many people and even many communities still hold that an individual has the right to do whatever he or she wants to do with their property, that it's their absolute right to do anything they want, whether the community agrees or not.
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This is a noble goal, but it will take some time to put into practice the process where most of the discussion and perhaps controversy occur at the policy and official plan stage rather than at the development application stage. We think this is a good intent, but it will take a lot of working out. Most of us seem to react when we're faced with something real, a real development application across the street. The key is to streamline the process so that all those affected can be heard and timely decisions still made.
We support the goal of clearer, more consistent and well-defined official plans. Without this, the proposed system doesn't work very well. Official plans need to be more detailed and act as a lead document. We support Bill 163's efforts toward more open local government processes.
Legislative changes: A number of time lines are proposed in the bill. For example, the time lines for OPAs and plans of subdivision seem somewhat optimistic, but they are good goals. We strongly support the requirement of all parties involved in the planning process to respond in a timely manner. However, the bill is not clear, or at least what I've read is not clear, about what happens if those time lines are not met. Is there a consequence? We think it should be clear about the consequences of not responding or acting within a specified time period.
We support the proposal that municipalities let planning approvals lapse if they are not acted upon within a specified time period. Unused planning approvals can tie up sewer allocations or other resources, or simply be no longer relevant in the municipal context if not used for several years. But I do think there has to some flexibility in that the time period relates to the magnitude, perhaps, of the project. It seems unclear whether the bill leaves this at the municipality's discretion or whether it is a requirement, and whether there is any appeal or review process which could be created.
We strongly support a clear and fair system for parkland dedication. We also wish the planning process to be fair in terms of contributions from the development proponent regarding cash or work-in-place contributions to the municipality. Municipalities should be fair and not take advantage of their approval authority.
The OMB: We strongly support a more streamlined OMB process. More than once we have waited several months for an OMB hearing date and then months again for a decision. The OMB should be required to adhere to reasonable time deadlines. OMB hearings need to be shorter, less formal, less legalistic, less costly, and less arbitrary, and by that I mean subject to the whim of any objection whether it's valid or not. At the same time, ordinary citizens should not feel intimidated by the OMB process or shut out because it's too costly to participate. If possible, OMB hearings should be held at convenient locations close to the site in question.
The OMB should make clear and fair decisions based on planning matters. If the OMB's scope of decision-making is to be expanded, this needs to be made clear and proper accountability made for it. By this, we mean we have experienced recent decisions by the OMB that made reference to matters that we did not think were planning matters, such as the suitability of a site for social housing or low-income people, or, in another case, where a decision was made on the basis that a project was economically viable at a smaller size than was originally intended. These are not strictly land use matters and they seem to us beyond the OMB's jurisdiction.
In conclusion, we support the general direction of Bill 163 and its concrete steps towards making planning more timely, more accountable, less cumbersome, less costly and more what it should be, namely, a way to plan the urban fabric of the province with a vision and a strategy.
Mr Grandmaître: Mr West, you say you approve of the housing policy of the government and also the time frame. Now, we've heard differently from different groups, that they don't agree, especially with the time frame. When you go through the comprehensive set of policy statements, housing policies, where in this policy do you see a favourable turnaround for non-profit housing in the province of Ontario with this new bill? You say it's adequate, that it will give municipalities more power to provide more affordable housing. You're a consultant, if I'm not mistaken, in non-profit housing.
Mr West: Yes.
Mr Grandmaître: Where do you see in this bill the policies that will provide more non-profit housing or the opportunity to provide more non-profit housing?
Mr West: There's a general and there's a specific. The general is that if it's one of the policies the Planning Act has to have regard to, it then means, I would assume, that municipalities have to have regard to it. As I said, all the policies in the housing section are things we would support and would go along with the creation of more non-profit housing. It would mean a greater variety of urban forms and urban density, but there is also a very specific part there about the 30%, and then half of it being geared specifically to what's called the lower percentile of housing, which was actually taken out of the provincial housing statement that's currently in effect.
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Mr Grandmaître: But it refers to affordable housing. "In the case of smaller sites where only one project can be accommodated, the opportunities will be for the development of not-for-profit housing."
Mr West: But that's government land; you're in the section for government land.
Mr Grandmaître: So you think Bill 163 will provide you with the necessary tools to provide more non-profit housing?
Mr West: It provides the tools; it doesn't provide the will. If there are tools to work with, if there's a policy that is related to the Planning Act and the act has to have regard to it so the municipalities have to have regard to it, what I'm saying is that we can, as a non-profit housing consultant, say to a municipality, "We think you need to help us create more opportunities here," and if we have a specific development application, they can have regard to the policy as a way of fulfilling their mandate in creating more housing.
Mr Curling: Let me just follow up on that. As a matter of fact, when I see the government presenting this and it says at the top of it, "Comprehensive Set of Policy Statements," and says housing policy is a comprehensive policy statement here, this is not comprehensive, really, about housing policy. I think what the government is dealing with here is more or less what they call affordable housing, at a certain level of income, providing housing for those people.
My colleague asked you a minute ago. As you know, statistics and some of the studies have shown that social housing is costing more to build now than in the private sector. Do you find it that way too? I know one of the factors that causes increased costs is the delay, what they're also suffering from too, which they were screaming about a long time. Do you feel that if all this red tape, or what they call redline -- the fancy name they're giving it -- all the bureaucratic delays is eliminated, it will bring it much cheaper on the market if these things are eliminated from the production costs?
Mr West: If the process is more streamlined, do I think non-profit housing would be less costly? The simple answer is yes, just because in any business, time is money, and the more time things take, the more costly it is, in two ways. One is just the manpower that has to go into it, but the other factor is the land component. The longer the planning process takes, in a sense, the more costly the land is.
Mr Curling: Isn't it the same cry the private sector is saying too, that that's what is causing the cost of housing to go up? If that is dealt with, do you see the necessity of having a separate group of people building social housing or non-profit housing when the private sector could provide it on the market at the same price?
Mr West: I can't agree with that totally. It will bring the cost of housing down in the general sense, but non-profit housing is geared to a specific market, which is people who can't afford it. There will be more people at the upper end or the middle income who could then perhaps purchase, but you're still going to have people who cannot purchase.
Mr Curling: The fact is that here we are then, we have two builders in the system: the non-profit and the private sector. But hidden costs, basically, is a supplementary part of it, where the other ministries support social housing. Do you feel that if we resolve all of that -- again I'm going to ask -- would it necessitate having another sector building non-profit housing or could the private sector provide it at that market level? That's what it's all about, that the private sector will gear it to the market and build homes accordingly.
Mr West: That's a big question for me to answer. That's part of the whole global discussion about whether there should be any non-profit housing at all. I think what you're saying is, could the cost of housing be brought down far enough that you wouldn't need to build non-profit housing at all.
Mr Curling: No, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying --
The Chair: Mr Curling, if we do that, we won't have much time left for the other members. Mr West, do you want to try and answer?
Mr West: I think it's too big a question for me to try to answer.
Mr McLean: My question is to do with the plans. You said, "Official plans will need to be more detailed and act as a lead document." Do you believe there should be two-tier government in official plans, that the lower tier has an official plan and the upper tier has an official plan too?
Mr West: I guess I would answer that from a more personal perspective, and in that sense I would say yes. But I'm not answering on the basis that I'm a non-profit housing consultant, I'm just answering on my own.
Mr McLean: But you say in your brief that you think it should be more detailed.
Mr West: I talk about that simply by the direction of the bill. If the bill is saying that official plans are going to be relied on more to provide the framework for development decisions to be made at the local level and that there won't be as much decision-making or monitoring going back up to the provincial level, it would just seem logical that you would need to have official plans that are very clear as to what this municipality is going to look like or what direction it's going in, in order that you're not going to hassle with development applications and go over the same ground all the time.
Mr McLean: The bill states that the lower tier must be the same as the upper tier, and the upper tier is the one that will make the decisions, not the lower tier, so to speak.
You talked a little bit about a fair system for parkland dedication. How could it be more fair? There's an alternative now: They can take it in parkland, whether it's 2% or 5%, or they can take cash in lieu. Are you saying you don't believe the cash is proper, that there should be more parkland provided?
Mr West: No. In one of the documents or reports I read there was this issue of double charging, and sometimes municipalities seem to ask for more than just either 5% or cash in lieu. You feel like you're over a barrel, like you're being held up for ransom by a municipality or some other jurisdiction. That's all I'm getting at, that we think it should be a very clear and fair system in dealing with the municipality on parkland or any kind of contribution to the municipality: "Build this and we'll approve your application," or "Include this in your development and we'll approve your application," that sort of thing.
Mr McLean: Briefly, just what is your definition of non-profit housing?
Mr West: My definition of non-profit housing, because of the field I work in, is fairly specific. We deal with CMHC and the Ontario Ministry of Housing in building housing developments within their programs, so that's my specific definition of non-profit housing.
Mr McLean: Non-profit housing: Is that for people who can't afford their own home, their own apartment?
Mr West: When you talk about non-profit housing, there are people who cannot afford their own home but can afford to pay what we call the market rent or the going rent, but then there are other people who cannot afford even the market rent in the community.
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Mr McLean: What's it cost the taxpayer a year to subsidize non-profit housing?
Mr West: In the whole global sense? I don't know.
Mr McLean: It's about $954 per home, and it's almost $900 million a year now.
Mr West: But the thing that I think many of us forget is that, in a sense, over the course of the mortgage of each of those non-profit housing projects you're building equity, you're going to have something at the end of the day, whereas in other forms of subsidization you don't have anything at the end of the day, you're just paying out money all the time.
Mr Drummond White: Thank you for your presentation. There are many points you are making in terms of the value of non-profit housing and the comprehensive set of policy statements with regards to housing.
You are primarily involved, Chris Smith and Associates, in the development of co-ops, though. Certainly in my municipality there have been some excellent developments and a range of different kinds of developments: the Pringle Creek co-op; the one on Ash Street, the Marigold; and the Otter Creek one. They're all quite different in nature: The one in the Otter Creek area tends to be primarily a sort of infill, housing intensification, another is an apartment, another is a town house development.
There's no specific mention in the housing policies of the distinction between co-op and other forms of non-profit. I'm wondering if you can comment on that a little, whether that will be helpful for the co-op movement, and, second, if you can comment on any specific problems you've run into in the development of communities, which co-ops of course are involved in, at the same time as you're looking at a land use application.
Mr West: With your first question, whether there should be any specific reference to co-ops in the housing policy, it simply would be nice, as a matter of recognition, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary. It is a form of non-profit housing in the legal sense. Other than the fact that it would be nice to have it recognized as different, I don't know whether it has to be in there. It would be nice, is all I'm saying.
The second question was related to what have we experienced in municipalities, the problems we have come across?
Mr Drummond White: When you're developing a community at the same time as you're developing a land use application, a site application, I wonder if that would not cause some problems.
Mr West: The biggest problem we run into, and it's common to most non-profit housing applications, is reaction in the community, and it's usually based on total misinformation, meaning that people tend to associate non-profit housing or co-op housing with Ontario housing. I don't want to run down Ontario housing, but it doesn't have the greatest reputation. The new non-profit housing and co-op projects that are being built now are all mixed income, but there's an automatic reaction in the community to one of our applications coming in. As much as we try to provide clear, up-to-date information, it doesn't always get through to people. In the case of Otter Creek, it is a beautiful project and I'm sure two years from now everybody will have forgotten the big reaction there was to it.
Mr Drummond White: It's just a matter of education.
Mr West: Education, and I think the housing policy takes steps to recognize non-profit housing.
Mr David Winninger (London South): Thank you for your presentation. I was going to ask you initially whether you thought the changes to our legislation and our draft policy statements went far enough in encouraging the growth of non-profit and co-op housing, which you have considerable expertise in. You may wish to answer that, but since the members of the opposition raised the issue of social housing and non-profit housing and how cost-effective that is, I thought I might put another question to you as well.
It seems that the more successful our non-profit housing program is and the more jobs and enduring accommodation it creates, the more valiantly the opposition members attack it as being not effective, either in terms of cost or government funding. I think you quite properly pointed out that as the main cost, which is the mortgage, comes down over the years, you're left with an enduring asset, and the cost compared to comparable private sector accommodation is very competitive, if not lower.
But there's another aspect to co-op and non-profit which hasn't been addressed, that it creates a more inclusive and integrated neighbourhood for housing. I wonder if you could comment on how non-profit and co-op housing also help to serve the kinds of objectives which are detailed in the policy statements, such as residential intensification, compact development, environmental protection and so on. Is that too broad?
Mr West: It's pretty broad. Are you asking me whether the policies promote co-op housing?
Mr Winninger: That was the first part of the question. The second one was, how are these policy statements and changes to the legislation served by the growth of non-profit and co-op housing?
Mr Grandmaître: You can't give him the same answer as you gave me.
Mr Winninger: You don't have to. His question was ideological.
Mr West: The legislation and the policies, as they're stated there, as I said before, are moving in the same direction that we are moving in. You could always say that they could be more aggressive -- whether that's politically saleable, I don't know -- by just having municipalities be required to provide more non-profit housing or a fair share of non-profit housing. I think that's been the intent with the original provincial policy, going back to what I call the 25% policy, but I'm not sure it actually has in fact happened. I know there are certain municipalities that just shut non-profit housing out altogether.
The community aspect of non-profit housing is one of its strengths, especially with co-ops. To me, housing co-ops strengthen a community by creating a community within a community. That's a strength to the residents. We find that for people who move into co-ops, and I'm using a generalization, it's a very empowering type of experience in that it helps them get back on their feet in many ways, not only by participating in the activities of the co-op but also just by having a supportive community. They are then able to get their lives together and often will go on to other things. I'm not sure I answered your question, because I'm not sure how to answer that last part.
Mr Winninger: My time has run out, so that's okay.
The Chair: Mr West, thank you for taking the time to come before this committee and thank you for participating in these discussions.
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JIM MCKEE
The Chair: We invite Mr Jim McKee. Welcome.
Mr Jim McKee: Thank you very much. I've got good news for you folks. I'm not going to talk for very long.
Mr Curling: That's bad news. Those guys will talk longer.
Mr McKee: I'm not a builder. I'm not in the real estate business. I'm a retired pensioner, a resident of Ontario, and my concerns really centre around the environment and the rights of property owners.
Everyone has a responsibility to protect and enhance the environment. That much is a given; I don't need to say any more about that. My concerns are for the interpretation of the policy, the rights of property owners and the need to pay the cost of downloading and distributing responsibility between two levels of government.
As I understand it, the Ministry of Natural Resources has been responsible for identifying properties that require environmental protection. They have the expertise. The municipalities don't. Will some of the people in the municipalities be given this training, or will some of the trained ministry people be transferred to the municipalities? What's the advantage of dividing this responsibility between two levels of government?
I don't have any expertise in these things, so I'm asking questions, really, more than answering them.
Page 1, paragraph 1.2 of the policy statement, reads, "Development will not be permitted in significant ravine..." etc, etc. You folks are very familiar with it, I'm sure. The words "significant," "vulnerable," "endangered" and "threatened" pop up throughout these paragraphs, and these are judgmental terms that are subject to widely different interpretations. Is there a danger that some overzealous crusader will declare a property significant for some marginal reason and create a need for an environmental impact study? And if so, who's going to pay for it?
Have all of these provincially significant properties been identified? A lot of the wetlands have, I know. Categories 1, 2 and 3 have. But what about all the properties that may be classified as significant because they're found to be a habitat for a rare bird, animal, some flora or fauna? If they have not been identified, when will they be identified, and how many might there be? And how will the property owner be notified?
Is it conceivable that a person could buy a property tomorrow with the intention of building a house on it and then be denied the right to do so because the land is subsequently classified "significant"? If the property owners lose their right to erect a building on their property, the property is of little value to them or to anybody else. Will they be compensated for their loss of market value?
Will all of these protected lands qualify for 100% property tax rebate? To what extent will this loss of tax revenue impact municipal governments? If all the tax is to be rebated, why not exclude it from tax instead of playing put-and-take with it?
Page 2, paragraph 2.2 of the policy, says all jurisdictions "are encouraged to protect other wetlands that are not" classified as provincially significant. I assume that protecting these other wetlands means denying the right to build on them also. Why are there two levels of government involved in making the decision that these lands require protection?
Page 11, paragraph 2(a) reads, "Opportunities will be provided for no less than 30% of new dwelling units created through development and intensification to be affordable housing." As well intentioned as this may be, we simply can't afford it. We can't pay for what we have now. Spending has to be reduced, not expanded.
Bill 163, under disclosure, page 99 of the act, reads, "All documents in the register are public documents and may be inspected by any person upon request...." There's a need for conflict-of-interest controls, of course, but this seems like a bit of overkill and may very well scare away the best-qualified people from seeking office.
In conclusion, let me say again that we all need to sacrifice something to protect the environment but, if I'm reading these documents properly, this act confiscates the rights of property owners. The value of a property is greatly diminished if the right to erect a building on it is denied. If this denial is necessary, the property owner shouldn't have to bear all of the cost. All of society should contribute.
The cost of producing these three documents and the others that will flow behind in the municipality, holding public meetings to inform the public and the cost of retraining municipal employees has to be quite significant when viewed in today's economic climate. I don't have all the facts, so I can't make an informed judgement, but my gut feeling is that this is not the time to be spending this much money. That's it.
Mr Villeneuve: Thank you for your presentation. I represent a riding with 23 municipalities, and the average population is 2,500 per municipality. You've touched on one of the most important problems they've brought forth: the designation of wetlands. It's effectively turned into being expropriation without compensation, and property owners' rights have been effectively steamrollered.
We fully agree that wetlands are important. However, in the part of eastern Ontario I represent we have tremendous amounts of wetlands, some of them natural, most of them created by beaver. They are turning the situation into a very, very anxious one for land owners.
One of the previous speakers said that the wetlands in this area are primarily owned by the crown, with some individuals owning some wetland but that the majority of wetlands is owned by the crown. Is this your experience?
Mr McKee: Not in Fenelon. I live in Fenelon township and that's certainly not the case there. Most of them are owned by private land owners.
Mr Villeneuve: You're saying there should be no tax assessment on these wetlands, and presumably the buffer area also because the buffer area is considered the same as wetland.
Mr McKee: That's right.
Mr Villeneuve: Where would the tax base come from in these small municipalities?
Mr McKee: Precisely. That's it.
Mr Villeneuve: We haven't got that one answered either. It's a dilemma.
Mr McKee: It's much more here than wetlands. Any land that is considered to have some rare bird or any form of plant life can also be declared environmentally protected. For instance, in talking to a planning member in Fenelon township, Victoria county, he spoke of one location where there's a rare orchid been found in Ontario and another location where a rare woodpecker's been found -- I can't name either one of them -- so they want to protect those lands as well.
You can buy a piece of land today and it can be found to have some rare species of whatever, an endangered species, over and above wetlands, and then have your land declared ineligible to erect any kind of building on it.
Mr Villeneuve: As class 1, 2 or 3 wetlands, and seemingly with very little option for the land owner to reverse that.
Mr McKee: That's right.
Mr Villeneuve: We have a major problem with that in our area. On a task force I was co-chair of, the rural economic development task force, that was the primary concern of people who made presentations. I'm glad you touched on it. I think the Sewell report emphasizes the importance of wetlands without giving any recourse to the rights of property owners, and I think that's a travesty.
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Mr Gordon Mills (Durham East): Thank you for coming this morning. I made a note when you were speaking, and you said, "Affordable housing: We can't afford it." Right now the province of Ontario is paying out $2.5 billion a year in shelter allowances, so if we can't afford affordable housing and we're affording shelter allowances to the tune of $2.5 billion a year, wouldn't you agree it makes more economic sense to build the houses, pay off the mortgage and provide the housing a lot cheaper? In fact, I think there is some affordable housing on the market now that is costing the taxpayers about $280 a month because the mortgage is paid off. I'd just like to know your comments. Is $2.5 billion affordable?
Mr McKee: These kinds of numbers confuse me. I can only say that anything I've ever read about any government-operated business has not satisfied me. Talk about the Workers' Compensation Board, or Unemployment Insurance, or Canada pension plan, or affordable housing, or non-profit housing, all of these things: The auditors get in there and they find they're a complete disaster. I really think the private sector could do a much better job.
People in need need to have adequate housing. We're a civilized society, we don't like to see people on the street, but there's a better way of doing it, I think, than all these non-profit housing arrangements.
Mr Mills: I'd be so grateful if there were no disasters in the private sector, and there's lots of them.
Mr McKee: There are some of those too, of course. Not as many.
Mr Ron Eddy (Brant-Haldimand): Thank you for your presentation. There are several matters we should take some time to discuss, but your views on affordable housing are certainly -- I would say we need to do it much better than we're doing. It's as simple as that. I've been talking to my friend here, who's a former Minister of Housing and would like to have made some changes probably, but his tenure was somewhat shorter than he counted on.
Interjections.
The Chair: Order, please.
Mr Eddy: He says that we do arrangements like rent-to-own with so many other things, why not do it with public housing? But we need to do it better than we're doing, and you're right on what government does when it get into business: It doesn't turn out quite the way it's planned initially. Government needs to be in the policy field but not in the service field to the extent we are.
You mentioned the property rights, and you're so right. With a significant wetland or something, you know when you buy the property that it's useless from a development point of view and you won't be able to develop it anyway. It's finding out afterwards and the changes that are made, that all of a sudden you're robbed of your rights. That's where the big problem is, and of course it happens in many areas. Also, the floodplain mapping in some places is incorrect; later it's found that the mapping is incorrect. I appreciate the views, and I think we have to do that much better.
And we must save the wetlands, more than the significant wetlands. Developers must be required to save it. When we find something rare, endangered, it's got to be saved, but we have to have a mechanism to deal with the property owner and convince them to work with whomever, and compensate in some way if they require it. You're right about that, and I appreciate your views very much.
The Chair: Mr Hayes is going to make a point.
Mr Hayes: Thank you, Mr McKee. From the comments being made about the way things have been with MNR, I can certainly understand your feelings, but this piece of legislation is turning that around. What has happened is that landowners were not consulted properly at all, and other authorities came in and designated areas. Now, with this legislation, there's going to be a consultation and the landowner is going to be one of the first ones to be noticed. The Ministry of Natural Resources will be setting the criteria and the local municipalities can be doing the designation. Also, MNR people and our ministry are even talking about going back and looking at some of the designations. It's certainly going to be a lot cleaner than what you've been dealing with in the past, I can tell you that.
The Chair: Mr McKee, we thank you for your submission and for taking the time to come before this committee.
Given that there was a cancellation this morning and that we have approximately 13 minutes, I want to ask a question in general. Is there someone in the public who would like to address this committee? One person? All right.
JOY WAWRZYNIAK
The Chair: What I would like to do is to give you five minutes to give your views to this committee. Is that acceptable to you? Okay. Please come forward and tell us who you are and then begin.
Ms Joy Wawrzyniak: I want to thank you for this, as I didn't know the procedure and I didn't know I should have written ahead or phoned ahead to get my name on the agenda. I'm learning.
The Chair: The committee puts advertisements in all the dailies and it's from those we get the submissions from the people we've heard today. Of course, some people missed them, for a variety of reasons, but given the cancellation we thought we could fit you in, and that's what we did.
Ms Wawrzyniak: Thank you. First of all, I'm glad to see you here in Oshawa. I do follow a lot of these things in the paper and --
The Chair: Your name, please.
Ms Wawrzyniak: I'm sorry. Joy Wawrzyniak. I live in Oshawa and I notice that quite often Oshawa is passed by, so I'm glad to see that you're here in Oshawa today. It's much more convenient for the people in the area to come and attend locally.
Mr Hayes: Thanks to your local members.
Ms Wawrzyniak: I would just like to point out that I've come across something in the last year that is very important to our group. We found a need just at the end of last year to form O'Neill Community Ratepayers' Association and to become incorporated. We will be going to the Ontario Municipal Board because there is a very important, we feel, hearing coming up affecting land planning.
I would just like to stress that what we're finding is the need for intervenor funding. The parties involved are both large and publicly funded, one being the hospital, one being the city and the region. We're just finding that as everyday taxpayers we are definitely at a disadvantage in being able to present a case on a level playing field to get all the issues addressed. I would just like to mention that here today. I notice that was eliminated. It's not in Bill 163, and I'm very disappointed that it was taken out. Yes, it was in the Sewell commission, in the book New Planning for Ontario.
The other thing I'd like to mention is the need for more policy and that it be enforced, that the city official plans and the regional official plans be reviewed regularly. In the Planning Act it mentions that they should be reviewed every five years, but what I'm finding is that in fact very seldom are they ever reviewed in the five years and quite often they go quite a distance beyond that.
In this particular case we're looking at, we have an official plan of the region which is fairly up-to-date and very good, but we have a city official plan that is very lacking in many areas. So now what we've got is the powers being transferred, more power to the municipalities and the lower tiers, but they're not yet in a position to fulfil their mandates because their plans are so outdated. There's a real gap there.
One example I can give you is intensification. In the Durham region official plan, 20% that has been allocated through future development is to come from intensification. If you go to the city plan, intensification isn't mentioned at all. In fact, hoping I would find something in their municipal housing statement, very little is even mentioned or addressed in the housing statement itself.
Intensification is very important: as we've discussed here, affordable housing. One of the main reasons for intensification is that it has been determined that it is far less expensive if a home owner were to put a small apartment, an accessory unit, into his house, rather than the cost of building one subsidized unit in affordable housing. It's clearly a good direction to go, but the policies are not yet in place. And I realize there's always a transitional phase.
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The other area that concerns me: Why we're going to the Ontario Municipal Board is to try and protect parkland, and the allocation for parkland has not been mentioned. I can only think that is remaining the same: Under the Planning Act, I believe it's one hectare per 300 dwelling units, and under the OPs they can either accept that as a measure or go to units -- I'm not sure, it's left me, but they figure it out differently; I think it's per acre or per hectare per number of population.
When you've got areas of quite mixed densities, apartment buildings mixed with single-family houses mixed with row housing or what not, it becomes very complex to try and figure out. What is happening is that now we have intensification coming along on top of that and no additional parkland requirement has been allocated to support intensification, while in the regional plan we've said 20% has to come from that. So we are in fact sometimes at risk, for one reason or another, of losing existing parkland, while there's no requirement in there now to raise our parkland requirements due to things such as intensification.
I would just like to submit something to you, and this is my last comment. I think Bill 163 is great. The purpose of the bill, right at the front, is to make the planning more understandable, accessible, open for everyday Joes to try and understand where we are and where we're going, to go down to get involved locally, when they have the open forums, to go see what your block is zoned, to become involved. I just started with one little thing and I'm building on that. I think that is excellent, and don't let the policies be watered down.
Here we have a case where the official plan has been approved for Durham region and now, just yesterday, we are fearful that an amendment is being put through and that it will be watered down. We will be objecting to that.
I just want to say that I think the direction you're going is excellent. Thank you for giving me the time.
The Chair: Mr Hayes has one remark to make with respect to something you mentioned.
Mr Hayes: Just a quick clarification: On the issue dealing with the parkland, that is still in there. The only thing that changes from that is the part about disallowing the double charging to developers. It's there. We haven't completely changed the whole act; there are pieces in the previous act that will stay in this act. It's just not stuck out in front of you there, but it is there.
Ms Wawrzyniak: The basis as in the Planning Act, the level of parkland, is the same, is that correct, the 5% or the one hectare per 300 dwelling units?
Mr Hayes: Yes, it hasn't changed.
Ms Wawrzyniak: What I'm saying, though, is that that is staying the same, it's not being increased, but on the other hand, we're having perhaps an increase in our parkland needs because of intensification, for example. That's what I would like to stress here today.
Mr Hayes: I hear you.
The other part is about the intervenor funding. There was a reason, because people felt it shouldn't be an adversarial type of situation. The other thing is that people themselves, the public, are going to have input right at the beginning rather than after the fact, which is the way the situation has been, so that will be changing. And we figure they can certainly negotiate or work things out by sitting down and being up front right at the beginning, and that should take a lot of the --
Ms Wawrzyniak: Are you talking about as the plan comes through?
Mr Hayes: Yes.
Ms Wawrzyniak: Because there are certain things. This application right now was open to the public process and we did that, but, for one reason or another, we don't agree and we feel it hasn't been looked at factually and now we are going to the Ontario Municipal Board. We're having a difficult time, coming out a recession and that we're in one of the older, stable areas of Oshawa. We have a lot of pensioners, a lot of people on fixed incomes, and they just cannot afford to give very much. You could use up, I don't know, $10,000 in one day at the OMB hearing to try to present your case. We're finding it a real disadvantage.
The Chair: Ms Wawrzyniak, we thank you for showing interest in these hearings and for taking the time to come here and participate in these discussions.
The committee recessed from 1158 to 1330.
DURHAM REGIONAL LABOUR COUNCIL
The Chair: We have the Durham Regional Labour Council, Ms Gillian Mann. You have half an hour for your presentation. Leave as much time as you can for the members to ask you questions. Okay?
Ms Gillian Mann: First of all, my name is Gillian Mann, as you've announced, and I am taking the place of Mr Art Field, who was going to present for CAW Local 222. They are an affiliate of the Durham Regional Labour Council, so that's why I was lucky enough to get this brief at the last moment. I'm here to represent the views of the CAW and the 47 other affiliated trade unions that make up the Durham Regional Labour Council. On behalf of the council, I wish to thank the committee for allowing us the opportunity to present at this hearing in Oshawa.
My first reaction to the information package I received from the committee was that this was a very dry subject matter contained in the bill.
Mr Grandmaître: Still is.
Ms Mann: But when I got beyond my first impression, I realised it was a very important piece of legislation, even though it is not exactly in the media-grabbing category.
The premise that the planning and development process must be streamlined to meet the needs of today's rapidly changing economy is totally understandable. The bill is the result of a very thorough and intelligent royal commission headed by John Sewell, and it is therefore a well-researched and well-thought-out piece of legislation. We, the Durham Regional Labour Council, commend the committee for incorporating the majority of Sewell's 98 recommendations.
What is most commendable and acceptable to labour and the public at large is the inclusion of the revisions to the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act. Any legislation that requires stronger conflict-of-interest guidelines, more disclosure of information on assets of elected officials and the promotion of more open and accountable local government is very welcome by the people I represent.
It is no surprise that the Association of Municipalities of Ontario has stated its opposition to these requirements, although it is sad to see that this body is unable to understand the need for change. Even with the proposed revisions, we have a situation in the Durham region where our regional chairman holds no elected office, and despite the future requirements for disclosure, this local politician is shielded from any public accountability. It's been a subject matter at our labour council that we wish to promote the acceptance of this being an elected position, for future reference.
We would strongly urge that this committee not give way to pressure from the AMO to water down this aspect of the bill. The argument that these disclosure provisions would affect efficiency and discourage candidates from seeking election actually supports the public's perception that local government is an old boys' club and needs to be exposed to public scrutiny. Our labour council is active in promoting candidates to run in municipal elections, and none of the candidates that come from labour have any problem with disclosure of this sort.
The next most commendable and important provision of the bill is the inclusion of the comprehensive policy statements in section 3. There again we urge the committee not to have these provisions whittled down to meaningless rhetoric. Without these policy statements, all the quality-of-life issues that this bill will affect will not be safeguarded.
I do have trouble with the notion that speeding up the process will still allow adequate public input into planning and development, but I understand there have to be tradeoffs with respect to the interests of the developers and the rest of us. With the ability to extend time limits, we have a compromise. Please remember that it's harder for the public or interest groups to research, compile and present their case, all within very tight time limits. Most of us do not have the type of resources that the developers have to back up their proposals.
It is also a fearful proposition to see that the provincial government will divest itself of powers to empower local levels of government without knowing that there will be safeguards to the interests of the citizens of Ontario as a whole. I have in mind examples where the federal government has divested its powers. They've deregulated the airline industry, they're going to dismantle the department of Transportation, and of course they are working slowly to dismantle, or the previous government was working slowly to dismantle, our health care system.
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Revision of the Ontario Planning and Development Act has obviously been developer/consumer-driven. Comments like "a one-window approach" to applications and "the government intends to focus on efficient delivery and excellent customer service," which were used in the briefing package sent out by the committee, have me thinking that sometimes your approach has been narrow. You are legislators, not customer service providers. You were elected to draft legislation that provides service to all Ontarians. Yes, the approval for planning and development must be streamlined, but without these comprehensive policy statements, the quality-of-life issues will not be serviced by this bill.
It is hoped by labour that the results of the streamlining of the process will produce more construction jobs. The Durham Regional Labour Council represents labourers, pipefitters, sheet metal workers and electrical workers. We represent approximately 40,000 card-carrying trade unionists, so approximately 40,000 households in the region of Durham. These workers have borne the brunt of this recession to a disproportionate degree, and any steps that promote the recovery of the building industry are very welcome.
Our council also represents public sector workers. Between the private sector workers, who are basically controlled by the CAW locals, our biggest contingents of trade unionists are public sector workers, that being OPSEU and CUPE. Our council has to speak to these workers, and they are the municipal workers who work for the region, the city of Oshawa, each town, village and township of the region of Durham. This bill should -- "should" is the operative word -- ensure that their jobs will be secure and that their labour will be considered a valued component in the future development in the region of Durham. Our other affiliates are from all other sectors of the region's economy. As you can imagine, with 40,000 homes, that covers just about every sector of the region's economy, and obviously an increase in development would result in benefits to all.
It is hoped the government members of this committee -- and that is the government members of this committee, I repeat -- keep this scenario in mind if they are seduced into any future dismantling and privatizing of public services. We do not want to see more urban jungles with no public services in place for the average citizen when there are enclaves of rich and privileged who can buy their services from the private sector. This is the urban reality in the United States today. Please don't let it be the reality in Ontario.
I had discussions with a planner on our political action committee who said that to his knowledge at this point, he doesn't feel developers kick in a fair portion of the funds for the infrastructure development. I know this bill doesn't cover all these things, but I hope there's some consideration to that in the future, that developers do have a responsibility to see that their developments are serviced properly and in an equitable manner.
The housing policy in the comprehensive policy statements sounds good, but without publicly funded services this could become our worst nightmare. Developers could come in to make quick and easy money under the guise of providing affordable housing and efficient land use. Obviously the trade unions that I represent have no argument against the policy, but it must not be used as a mandate to create more urban ghettoes of disadvantaged people. Will the money saved by developers in lowering the cost of approval of development be passed on to the consumers? If so, we hope that we can look forward to the lowering of the average house price for the Canadian dream home, which is detached and with a garden. Why is it always assumed that blue-collar workers prefer to live in high-density "affordable" housing? Another inaccurate assumption, I feel, is that high-density land use will somehow save farm land from going under concrete. I've never understood that.
My last comments with regard to this bill are that these very important, if not exactly perfect, comprehensive guidelines may only prove to be a safeguard to the interests of Ontarians if the government of the day does not change its political complexion with the intent to dismantle the policies one by one under pressure from the business community. Also, if the fee structure and present bureaucracy of the OMB are not brought into line with the accessibility provisions of the bill, the intent of the bill will be watered down considerably.
Lastly, the empowerment of local government must go hand in hand with the provisions for openness, disclosure and strict conflict-of-interest guidelines. It is a sad commentary on the present system that this infusion of integrity into local government is necessary before it can be vested with more power. The public is dependent on their local politicians to interpret the plans of any proposed development, and it is a sobering thought that the public has no way of knowing whether or not their local politicians are dealing with them honestly.
These hearings deal with an issue that is often of little concern to most people until a developer wishes to construct a 20-storey apartment building in their backyard. In some cases, people receive notices in the mail that talk of variances, of official plans, secondary plans, density etc, and in most cases, they're at a loss to understand it all. They have to depend on the local politician to interpret and explain. For this reason, the changes dealing with open government are very important. If we cannot have a system that ensures that both debate and disclosure of financial interest are conducted publicly, then access will be restricted to developers, planners and other professionals who act on behalf of powerful interests. Therefore, the provisions for openness in the bill are important to ensure community input into planning.
The argument that the setting up of local disclosure-of-interest commissions will contravene the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms cannot be supported when those local politicians who are elected accept that they could be, in some cases unknowingly, breaking the existing law. Certainly they will find these disclosure provisions etc a reassuring feature to their terms of office. No more will local politicians have the burden of having to look over their shoulders to see if some vigilant taxpayer has set the Ontario Provincial Police municipal fraud department on them. It is also a logical provision within the bill to have the interests of the collective policed by the public, and not to expect the individual to protect the public's interest at his or her own expense.
The redirection of powers from the provincial government to the local levels of government must be tied directly to the accountability of the elected officials at the local level or we will go back to the 19th century when towns like Oshawa were annexed from their historical county roots to become renegade places designed and run by big business interests. Oshawa is still haunted by its past, as evidenced by its dead and dying downtown core.
In summation, the notion that this bill will actually prove to be user-friendly to all is possibly a bit naïve. However, if the bill is as fairminded when it becomes law as it appears to be in its first draft, the people of the province will have a good piece of legislation in place. Thank you.
Mr Grandmaître: On page 2 of your brief, the fourth line: "It is also a fearful proposition to see that the provincial government will divest itself of powers to empower local levels of government without knowing that there will be safeguards to the interests of the residents of Ontario...." and I could go on. Why are you so reluctant to give municipal government that power of decision-making?
Ms Mann: I think in my last paragraph, if you look at Oshawa, it is a town that suffered from rape and pillage by basically General Motors interests in the past. It has no vibrant downtown core any more. The development that took place around Oshawa was geared to having high-density affordable housing for workers to service the GM plants in the north and south end. Oshawa was butchered from that point on, as a holistic plan. So from where I stand, and taking direction from people who are more versed in planning, we could go back to a 19th-century model where if there isn't this disclosure and openness, local authorities could end up just creating towns and municipalities that suit business interests, or limited interests; let's put it that way.
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Mr Grandmaître: But this morning at 9:15 our very first presentation before this committee was a Mr Andrew Lauer, who told us that things were just rosy in Oshawa; in fact, they've issued $140 million in building permits, and things were just rosy.
Ms Mann: It depends what you're basing your roses on, what criteria.
Mr Grandmaître: Assessment, more assessment.
Ms Mann: Building permits are fine, but as a community with a vibrant centre it has disappeared. As a community that knows itself and feels that it's a place, that has definitely disappeared. We have no core. The Oshawa Centre is the core of this city now. The core that used to be, which was the joining of Simcoe and Bond and King, the four corners, if you take a look down there, it looks derelict. We have so many businesses closing. We have small businesses that open up for a short time, but they don't have a sustainable clientele that keeps coming back to them.
We do, fortunately, still have our civic centre in the core, but as for vibrant businesses, really there aren't any. We do have the Ministry of Finance, but there again, they are people who just spend their lunch-hours in the core of the city and then disappear away to actually other jurisdictions. They don't even live in Oshawa. We've lost our identity as an identifiable town, unlike Whitby, for instance, which is only a few kilometres up the road, which has an identity in the core of it.
Mr Eddy: Thank you for your presentation. I'm going to review it in detail. I must say, though, that Oshawa is not alone in what's happened to its downtown. I come from an area, the city of Brantford, which is very much the same. What do you think is the answer to restoring the urban centre, the core? Because of what's happened in Brantford, and maybe it's here too, the large shopping centres on the outskirts and the rezonings to permit the large estate homes to become the commercial offices of the area, the downtown is abandoned. It seems to me that to bring the core back you have to treat it like a shopping centre. It's got to have the free parking, acres of free parking, and do it somewhat similarly. Do you have any comments?
Ms Mann: As you've obviously detected, I did originate from Britain, and I go there regularly. In Europe, that is a way of revitalizing the downtown core. They make the inner-city pedestrian, and they bring boutique-type development in.
It goes back to planning, doesn't it, planning and development? It goes back to people who live in the community, who care about the planning and development. It goes back to the people you elect who are making those final decisions, that they do intend to spend the majority of their life there and bring up their kids there and have their grandchildren there and that there's a broad range of interests that go into planning. We don't all want to shop till we drop in mile-long malls. We don't all want the West Edmonton Mall in our backyard. Some of us would like something a little different. It's hard to tell developers that sometimes when you're not represented, when you're not at the table or when your representative has a vested interest in not telling the developer what you would like him to tell him.
Mr Eddy: So you're very strong on disclosure; I see that.
Ms Mann: Yes, I think you'll get better community involvement. You'll get better candidates. You might even get more candidates, because you might get, you know, the middle-aged housewife who's decided that she doesn't want a career any more and she'll take more interest in municipal politics.
The way I've observed local politics to go over the years that I've been in Oshawa is that there are a select few who turn up every municipal election and the incumbents just get their seats, just by acclamation. We've got to educate the public and educate people to realize that it is their town and they have an input into what development goes on in that town.
Mr Villeneuve: Ms Mann, thank you for your presentation. Rape and pillage by GM: I come from an area in eastern Ontario -- Cornwall is not in my riding -- but they would appreciate a little bit of the rape and pillage that GM has brought to Oshawa. What do you mean by "rape and pillage"?
Ms Mann: If you remember your labour history, the riches that came to Oshawa came out of a lot of pain and suffering. It came out of basically the activities of Local 222, the CAW. Business is not the business of morals; business is the business of profit and loss. I have no problems with business people wanting to make money. When business people try to tell me that they're there for the good of mankind, then I become a bit sceptical.
Mr Grandmaître: It's better than starving.
Ms Mann: A lot of money has come from General Motors to Oshawa, basically because the labour union has wrestled that money from it, but also it's gone away from Oshawa as well. They have, as you know, put their plants in jeopardy here many, many times. We have an assurance now, I think maybe three or four years staying at status quo. This town goes into apoplexy when there are any signals from GM that it may leave.
Mr Villeneuve: That's understandable, though.
Ms Mann: If you saw the movie Roger and Me, that could be Oshawa's story. But we are connected to the outside because we are becoming a dormitory suburb to Toronto. But when this town was developed, they put in cheap row houses along most of the arterial roads in the south end to service labourers who worked at the plant, and basically the roads don't match up. They're all potholey. We have this thing called the Albert Street Bridge, which is an eyesore. The railway tracks cross Oshawa and truncate the roads. You can see who called the shots in developing the interior core of Oshawa. They didn't do a good job of it.
Mr Villeneuve: Did I hear in your presentation correctly that you anticipate that the Sewell report would reduce land prices?
Ms Mann: Well, no. I was hopefully under the impression, being naïvely optimistic, that maybe if the process becomes more streamlined and developers don't have to put out such -- and I do understand -- inordinate amounts of time getting through the planning, through different levels of government, maybe there would be a savings at the bottom end of it. I very much doubt it. We hope that streamlining ends up with benefits for everybody, and it would be nice, at the end of the full scale of benefits, if perhaps the lowering of prices would be there without having high density. I'm just hoping. Obviously, there again developers are in the business of making money.
Mr Drummond White: Thank you, Ms Mann, for your very full presentation. I was impressed with the issue of accountability that you bring up, and I think the issue that you were just discussing about the downtown area has to do with accountability, accountability to the comprehensive policy guidelines, to adherence to one's official plan. That's certainly been a major issue of controversy locally in our city, when we look at how businesses and regional government have moved out of downtown Oshawa despite the official plan.
The accountability issue I want to pick up on, though, was, first of all, you mentioned the issue about the regional chairman not being elected and the issue about whether or not the conflict of interest, the disclosure of assets, would dissuade people from running for public office. I know Mr Grandmaître and Mr Eddy came from a municipal background, and they aspired to a provincial background, where they had to disclose their interests. It didn't seem to dissuade those very worthy gentlemen. Myself, I don't have any interests to disclose. I wonder if you could elaborate upon that. Do you have a sense of the interests of local politicians?
Ms Mann: I think it would be a relief to someone running in local politics at this juncture, where there have been so many provincial police investigations into municipal corruption. From where I'm sitting, I can't see that it would be anything but a relief for a local politician to have this mechanism at hand to say to the public, "This is it." They don't have to disclose the amounts, they just have to disclose their interests and their family's interests. It doesn't mean to say they're villains when they disclose it. It's just that it's a burden off their back. They don't have to know that someone is going to go on a witchhunt, and it clears the air.
I think you'd get a better calibre of person, because anybody who is interested in keeping secret their interests and going into local politics has obviously got a hidden agenda. To me, I think you'll get a better quality of person. You'll get a more community-minded, community-spirited person with more moral fibre. This area of whether they are pork-barrelling at the local ratepayers' expense won't be an issue for them any more; it will be disclosed. Every level of government has gone this route. I can't understand any right-minded person having any problem with it.
Mr Gary Wilson (Kingston and The Islands): Thanks very much for your presentation. I certainly found it and the discussion that we've been having very enlightening. In particular, I like your emphasis on the public participation that this bill allows for. I would like, if we had more time, to hear your views about how you generate that kind of participation, given your experience with the labour council, because of course it's a similar body that requires volunteer participation.
I just wanted to highlight your commending the bill, or at least looking forward to the increased job production that is related to the streamlining, not only in the private sector among the trades workers but among public sector workers. It concerns me a bit that we might lose something here in your reminder to the government members of this committee, as you put it, about the importance of public sector jobs. I was wondering, while you're singling out government members, do you think that the opposition members are impervious to that kind of seduction, or is there something we can learn from them about the protection of public services?
Ms Mann: As a victim of the social contract myself, I direct those comments particularly to the government members because they have been seduced into thinking that the policy of "beggar thy neighbour" is going to somehow balance the budget and decrease the deficit.
I represent these people. These are, in the main, CUPE workers who are municipal workers. They do a fine job of clearing the roads, sanding the roads in the wintertime, fixing potholes and drainage problems. You can't sustain good development and have a vibrant development business without knowing that once all the development is in place it's going to be serviced properly.
When you do contract out -- I've seen it in Britain -- you get patchy, piecemeal servicing. You get enclaves of areas where people pay for services because they have the money, and then you get areas where the people are working class and can't pay for the services and don't get them.
It's incumbent upon the government members of this committee to keep in mind that the municipal sector is very important to successful planning and development. We will have wastelands.
Mr Gary Wilson: Well, I'm pleased to see the opposition members listening very intently to that as well, and I'm sure that they support that thoroughly.
The Chair: We've run out of time. Mr Hayes wants to clarify a point.
Mr Hayes: Mr Grandmaître made a comment earlier, and I know that he would want the record cleared up also. He had mentioned that it was Mr Andrew Lauer who talked positively about development and things of that nature. In fact, it was not Mr Lauer; it was Tom Edwards, the mayor of the town of Whitby, who made those comments when he was welcoming the committee into the area.
Mr Drummond White: With respect, Mr Hayes, the development he referred to was in the town of Whitby, not in the city of Oshawa.
The Chair: We thank you for taking the time to come before this committee. Thank you for your participation.
For the record, I'm just going to check to see if the Ad Hoc Committee of the Ontario Wildlife Working Group is here. Obviously not. The Ontario Federation of Agriculture? They're not here either. Okay, this committee will recess for 20 minutes.
The committee recessed from 1405 to 1432.
AD HOC COMMITTEE OF THE ONTARIO WILDLIFE WORKING GROUP
The Chair: I would invite the Ad Hoc Committee of the Ontario Wildlife Working Group to make its presentation. Welcome, Ms White.
Ms Liz White: Hello. My name is Liz White. I'm with an organization called Animal Alliance of Canada. We're a Canada-wide organization and we participate in a number of issues with regard to the protection of animals, wildlife issues, environmental issues etc, and a number of years ago participated in a committee that was formally set up by the Ministry of Natural Resources called the Ontario Wildlife Working Group. The reason why I'm here today is simply to submit the final document from that report. You have it in front of you. It's A Proposed Action Plan For "Looking Ahead: A Wild Life Strategy for Ontario."
This is a document that is a culmination of five years of consultation with a number of organizations in Ontario of differing and disparate opinions vis-à-vis wildlife. There are a number of recommendations within this document that I think overlap with Bill 163. I'm simply here today to table this particular piece of information and ask that the committee take a look at this in conjunction with any changes that will go through with regard to Bill 163 and attempt to incorporate some of these particular situations.
If you take a look at the book, the areas that would be of most applicability to Bill 163 are: the whole area around the ecosystem approach; an area with regard to the protection of biodiversity, and it deals with land use planning, protection of waterways, protection of wetlands, all sorts of things which are also incorporated into Bill 163; and the section that deals with the rehabilitation of degraded ecosystems. Those are probably the three sections which would have the most impact on the amendments that you're looking at to the Planning Act and other acts. I'm simply here today to table that and to ask you to take that into consideration when you're thinking about making any changes to Bill 163.
I have to say that for somebody who's interested in wildlife and the protection of habitat for wildlife, Bill 163 actually goes some distance in doing that, and I feel greatly encouraged by what is actually incorporated in the statement of principles and other components within Bill 163.
The one final thing I would like to say, not wanting to take the committee's time in any great detail, is that this is an incredibly comprehensive document. It has drawn upon resources from a large number of very well educated people across Ontario, but being complicated, it is difficult to integrate on a clause-by-clause basis into the piece of legislation that you're looking at today. So I would suggest that if there is any interest on the part of the committee in terms of incorporating some of this material, we would be quite happy, as representatives of the ad hoc committee, to participate in any side discussions that might need to take place in order to determine how to incorporate certain components of this particular document and what might need to be prioritized in terms of what could be incorporated. So I just offer that as a suggestion and I'll leave it at that. It's really quite a simple presentation.
Mr McLean: I want to thank you for appearing before the committee and presenting us with this document. I'm going to find it very interesting. There are a lot of things here that touch on a lot of the things that I do, as a sportsman, as a farmer and as a politician, dealing with private lands and a whole array of things. I don't really have any questions for you. I will have some probably in a week.
Ms White: My number is here. You're welcome to call. If anybody needs any further of those documents, they are available through Peter Evans at the Ministry of Natural Resources who is now heading the Ad Hoc Committee of the Ontario Wildlife Working Group. So if you want to pass that around for comment to your constituents -- I would suggest that the more comment we have on that document, when it comes to the government taking a position on that document as well, the better able we'll be to deal with it.
Mr McLean: I haven't had a chance to look through it, but you said there were many people involved in putting it together. Are they named in here somewhere?
Ms White: Yes, they are, at the back and at the front. It includes, for example, what I would say are probably two entirely divergent opinions, like the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters and organizations like ours would have, or the fur bearers or the trappers. All of us sat on the committee. In fact on the ad hoc committee there's a trapper and myself and a number of other people who are working through this.
Mr McLean: Did the Ontario Federation of Agriculture have any input?
Ms White: Yes.
Mr McLean: Good.
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Mr Villeneuve: Thank you very much, Liz, for your presentation. Bill 162 you address quite extensively in this presentation. This is of great concern to many farmers.
Ms White: Yes, I understand that.
Mr Villeneuve: The ownership of -- I see you've touched on it here, to amend the Game and Fish Act -- animals that are considered wildlife, domesticating the production of deer or deer farming: Do you think it fair that you would actually describe in legislation, Bill 162, what a farmer is?
Mr Grandmaître: Bill 163.
Ms White: Just for people's clarification, Bill 162 is an amendment to the Game and Fish Act which is touched upon in the ad hoc committee and does deal with land use planning but not totally.
Is it fair? I don't know. It was a culmination of probably 160 people's opinions that came down to a consensus being that -- and to which the Ontario Federation of Agriculture was indeed opposed. What we have tried to do in the interim is to have a meeting with the deer farmers and a number of other organizations to see if we can come to some kind of compromise on that basis to protect our own wildlife from injury and disease that might be in non-native deer species, and how to protect our own native wildlife from those without damaging that particular industry.
Mr Villeneuve: And you're aware that the province of Quebec, the province of Saskatchewan -- two for sure that I've looked into -- have gone in the completely opposite direction as it encompasses deer farming?
Ms White: There are a variety of different approaches across Canada. Some have put a complete moratorium on the importation of all of what would be exotic animals into Canada for the purposes of intensive farming. Some have encouraged it. In fact, Agriculture Canada, as I understand it, has not yet taken opinion on it, although there are very divergent opinions even within Agriculture Canada as to how this affects populations.
It's not an easy issue that one can grasp and I think a very contentious issue. What we've tried to do is to take the contention out of the issue and move it into a situation where people of different opinions can sit down and talk about how to deal with compromise. What I don't want to see is an increase in the number of farming of exotic animals. I don't want to see alligator farms. I don't want to see snake farms for skins. I don't want to see any of that. That is a coming trend in some other states in the United States. I think we should put a limit on that.
Whether we should affect the deer farmers specifically, I don't think so. From my point of view, I wish they wouldn't do it. But given that we have the industry there, we need to have some degree of control over it, I think, at a minimum.
Mr Wiseman: I will read this with some great interest as I have a private member's bill before the Legislature, Bill 174, which deals with threatened, endangered and vulnerable species. I will be very interested in reading it.
Interjection.
Mr Wiseman: Mostly Tories.
Interjection.
Mr Wiseman: I used to teach and I can hear very well. I heard what he said.
What we're dealing with here, as we deal with any legislation, are checks and balances and how you can accommodate a variety of opposing interests. What we're hearing from the development industry, the developers, is that they want to be able to speed through the process. What we're hearing from individuals and from other groups that represent environmentalists or preservation-of-agricultural-land people is that they want to have a part in the process, that they want to be able to be included in creating the checks and balances.
But underlying this is this whole question of property rights and people being able to do whatever they want with their property, as opposed to what I would consider the opposite end, which is that we live in an ecosystem and therefore we don't really have property rights to the extent that you may have thought you should have, because what you do there is going to affect me. Therefore, we need to work this out. I think that's a very complicated problem that we're dealing with here. We're dealing with it in this bill. I think that one of the things that we have to look at is how do we do that and how do we make sure that people can still be enfranchised even though they've given their vote to somebody at a council level.
In your investigations and in your discussions with people about your book, how was that debate resolved about property rights and individual usages of land as opposed to community uses of land?
Ms White: As you understand by this book, there is nothing in legislation at the moment, so this was a matter of discussion. If you look through this book, there are a number of committee structures that are proposed in a number of different, what I would call contentious, areas: development areas where they are adjacent to lands that may house vulnerable, threatened or endangered species; or class 2, class 1 wetlands; a Carolinian forest, a small area of Carolinian forest, or whatever the protected area might be; or where you have agricultural situations where a number of activities on the agricultural lands have caused environmental degradation for whatever reason. What those structures were intended to do was to provide a forum for people of opposing points of view within the community to come together and try and work something out.
I think the one thing that became quite clear of this meeting that we had of the 120 or so people -- we were totally and completely in opposite camps -- was that although one might like to force their opinion down somebody else's throat -- I would like to do that sometimes; other people on the other side would like to do that to me sometimes -- is that in fact the bottom line is, it doesn't work, and that if you can provide a forum for discussion about issues that people can come together and begin to understand where the other person is coming from, in many situations you can come to a compromise that maybe not everybody is pleased with but I think will end up being better for the environment than in the long run would be the contentious issue.
The only thing I would say is that in terms of Bill 163 or the Planning Act when it's ultimately amended, where there are violations, if there is not an enforcement component to actually make sure that certain things are done, there's a tendency for that sort of stuff to erode. My sense, being on the wildlife side of issues, is that wildlife is the very bottom of the ladder in that it will be the last to be dealt with, and if there's any contention between a development and a protection of a particular species, for the most part the species will not be protected.
That's why I'm here today, to say there are processes in this book that will perhaps allow developers, environmentalists, animal people, municipal councils, boards, whoever is making the decision about the development at the time, to come together and resolve those issues, and I think the structure, having been through a number of these over a period of five years, has quite remarkable potential.
Mr Wiseman: Thank you.
Ms White: Did I answer your question?
The Chair: If it were a brief question perhaps and a brief answer, that would work.
Mr Wiseman: No, you know me; I can't be brief, not on this topic.
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Mr Curling: Thank you very much and I know you will want us to comprehend this in a few minutes or so.
Ms White: No, I don't. You can take some time to read it.
Mr Curling: Just by a quick look at this, it's quite involved. I just want to caution, and who am I to caution Mr Wiseman on this, but the fact is that we've got to bring both people in play, the developers who are looking at developing areas for human beings, and I noticed that your guiding concept is that humans are an integral part of the ecosystem, and human beings live somewhere, so while we may do this by depleting some of the areas, we must also take into consideration that there are areas where people have to live, and sometimes we have to have that kind of balance.
What I'm saying really is that this is quite involved and very well done, and on the other side of it all, if we could get more people coming together to work it out in a good way of saving our ecosystem and also human beings to live, then we'd have good planning, and this is not being done.
Do I get the feeling too from you that the hearing is a bit rushed, that we shouldn't really rush this hearing, this process, but to make sure that all are heard properly who are part of this plan and that we hear their view well enough so we can have a good plan and act?
Ms White: I'm not so sure that you need to hold up the process. I think what is possible to happen in this whole thing, with staff or whomever, is to have a parallel activity that goes on. There are already principles within the Planning Act, as I see the amendments around the environment, that do incorporate kind of the sense of this document, but there are specific activities that I think would help clean up the process a little bit and allow for community participation in a much easier way perhaps; I'm not sure. I'm not sophisticated enough in terms of the Planning Act to be able to say yes, you could do all of this in the Planning Act, so what I'm asking is that while the committee is hearing submissions and talking, a parallel process be going on with staff with regard to this document to see if some of the actions can be incorporated relatively easily within the Planning Act amendments.
Mr Curling: Why would you feel it is something being held up? I think what I am suggesting is that this was done and it took a lot of time to put this all together and well researched and all that. On the other side of it too, the side I don't think has been heard properly, the planners and the developers in the housing area and all that, because we are hearing policies are coming out -- intensification; we're hearing all this -- but we haven't seen a sort of collective presentation as effective as this, I would say. I'm saying both things have to come together in order to have an effective plan. So I don't see it as held up in any way.
Ms White: I would have to say that when we went through the five years of this document, many people who were involved in planning issues in various ministries within the province of Ontario participated in this document, knowing there were planning objectives affecting how a community might develop.
The truth is, in this document, if you're concerned about the environment, you will have to address urban sprawl. You have to address it. You can no longer allow four units per acre density. You can't allow communities where everybody in the house has to get into a car to go and get milk. You can't allow communities that just sprawl out into all kinds of wetlands and woodlots, because in southern Ontario woodlots and wetlands are precious few, and whether the woodland is a small woodland or not, it may be a very important component to the kind of wildlife that is indigenous to that area.
I'm not sure that we need to hold up this process. There have been lots of planning people involved in this document. So I think what we need to do is to take this information, if at all possible, and incorporate it. But I wouldn't suggest that we have to hold up the committee to do it. What I think is that it's possible to do a parallel kind of activity while the committee is meeting and talking about this stuff.
This is open for circulation. It's been out since December 1993, and I would suggest that we move the process along as much as possible.
Mr Eddy: Could I ask, was it the Ministry of Natural Resources that got this going, or who?
Ms White: It was the Ministry of Natural Resources, yes.
Mr Eddy: The Ministry of Natural Resources commissioned and got the committee together, the people?
Ms White: They appointed a committee in 1989 called the Ontario Wildlife Working Group, which brought together 10 of sort of the top environmental wildlife sorts of people, who then brought together a whole raft of other people, including planning people, agricultural people, trappers, all the people who might possibly be involved with planning and developing an ecosystem approach to wildlife and to the environment.
Mr Eddy: I really regret that I haven't had a copy, as a member of the Legislature, before this. I know I'm a backbencher in opposition, but, damn it, I should have the information that's prepared by ministries, I think, and know what the hell is going on on occasion. I will study the brief completely.
Mr Hayes: Quit your damn swearing.
Mr Eddy: It's not right. I'm an opposition backbencher, but that doesn't mean I should be kept from knowing what's going on.
The Chair: Mr Eddy, I'm not sure any one of us has had access to those documents.
Ms White: Can I just say one thing for clarification?
The Chair: Yes.
Ms White: There has been no formal position taken by the minister as yet. This became available in about February, I think. It was printed in December, but I don't think I actually got a copy of it until February. It has not been circulated virtually to anybody, but there are 200 or 300 copies within the Ministry of Natural Resources, and I've just been going to committees, as I was directed by Mr Hampton to do, to submit this document and say if there are --
Mr Eddy: My point is, I'm a member of the Legislature. If Mr Hampton has it and the government has helped pay for it, then I'm entitled to have it. I'm not blaming you in any way. I'm just saying Mr Hampton -- he's not the government, for God's sake. We're all members of the Legislature.
The Chair: All right.
Ms White: I don't have control over the document.
The Chair: We realize that.
Mr Eddy: I would have been able --
The Chair: Mr Eddy, please.
Mr Eddy: -- to respond intelligently to you today if I'd had the opportunity. Maybe not intelligently --
The Chair: Mr Eddy, we heard your point.
Ms White: I would be happy to answer anybody's questions if anybody has any questions. My telephone number is on this piece of paper.
The Chair: Well, Mr Eddy, that's fine.
Mr Eddy: You see, that's the point. I can't --
Interjections.
The Chair: Ms White, we thank you for coming today and participating in these hearings.
Mr Eddy: As an elected member of a local council, you know everything that's going on, whether you're for it or against it, and in the Legislature I'm a dummy in the back row.
The Chair: Mr Eddy, it would be wonderful if all of us could have access to the information when we want it.
ONTARIO FEDERATION OF AGRICULTURE
The Chair: The Ontario Federation of Agriculture, please. Welcome to this committee.
Mr Roger George: Thank you, Mr Chairman. My name is Roger George. I'm the president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture. With me in the delegation I have Bill Weaver, our first vice-president and chairman of our environment committee; David Armitage, from our research department; and Alvin Runnals, a member of the OFA executive committee and also the chairman of our land use committee.
Mr Villeneuve: From Dundas county.
Mr George: From Dundas county, that's true. Thank you.
We are pleased to be here today. I believe our brief has been circulated. I'm not going to read it per se, but as the representatives of 38,000 individual farm families and with organizations at the local level in 47 areas across this province, we believe the farmers of Ontario who manage and have custody of 14 million acres have a vested interest in Bill 163.
Our submission essentially touches on four areas of concern, the first one being the omnibus nature of the bill, the second one the difficulty we have with the words "be consistent" with the provincial policy statements, thirdly, the issue of property rights and, fourthly, the area of rural development.
The omnibus nature of the bill really bothers us. We find it somewhat complex. We feel that this has made our approach to looking at this bill a lot more difficult for us to understand and we feel that separate statutes would have been far more appropriate and that the many amendments in the single bill has resulted in substantial sacrifice in detail. This lost detail will presumably be covered in regulations and policy statements and implementation guidelines, none of which are before this committee. So we think the process is wrong, because we have grave concerns with many of the provincial policy statements. Where do we go and take those concerns?
I think the fundamental problem we have with this bill, and we hear it time and time again from virtually all of our county federations, are the words in there "be consistent with" as opposed to "have regard to" in the old section. The OFA views this proposed change as a prime example of excessive provincial regulation. To insist that municipal decisions be consistent with provincial policy statements severely hampers the ability of the local decision-makers in controlling their own destinies.
Indeed, this is why the OFA actively encourages its members to participate in local municipal politics. We're actually into that process right now. We just wonder how many of our members are going to actually get into that democratic process, given the fact that they're going to feel that their hands are tied anyway in so much as any decisions they make have to be consistent with policy statements that are already basically there and that there's no discretion for using them as guidelines. We believe, and we've argued many times, that good land use planning should be achieved locally, so we have some major, major problems with this section.
The policy statements we've always believed should act to guide decisions, not to ensure a particular outcome, and we cannot possibly support this amendment calling for these planning decisions to "be consistent with" provincial statements. As I've said, it's our view that this amendment will reduce local planning initiatives to nothing more than a paint-by-numbers exercise. The first page of the Sewell commission's final report states that in their consultative process, they found general support for "better, more local planning." Clearly, this is the public voice the commission was so anxious to hear, and it has not been listened to.
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The third area of concern for the OFA is the issue of property rights. I think it's fair to say that as we have travelled around the province this summer, the one issue that's consuming farmers right now is their property rights. They are sick and tired of interference by many arms of government around the land that they own, that they pay the mortgages on and that they pay the taxes on. That erosion of their property rights is leading the OFA into some major rethinking on its policy statements as well. We have some issues before our board of directors, and we feel that Bill 163 provides further reason for concern in proposing in section 20 the following amendment to section 34 of the Planning Act, which would say:
"3.1 For prohibiting all or any use of land and the erecting, locating or using of all or any class or classes of buildings or structures on land that is contaminated, that is a sensitive groundwater recharge area or headwater area or on land that contains a sensitive aquifer.
"3.2 For prohibiting the erecting, locating or using of all or any class or classes of buildings or structures within any of defined area or areas...." It goes on and on and on.
We strongly objected to the provincial policy statement dealing with agricultural land on the basis that it prohibited development within "prime agricultural areas," and Bill 163 will now ensure that virtually all rural land that is not protected as a prime agricultural area is protected either as a sensitive area or a natural feature. There's no doubt in the minds of many of our members of this organization that they will have their land basically frozen without compensation, and I've been using the expression "expropriation without compensation."
It's certainly not our vision to see our rural land inappropriately developed, but we do maintain that the remedy to inappropriate development is good planning, not prohibition of and any all development in builtup areas.
Our final comments deal with rural development. The OFA firmly believes that agriculture can co-exist in harmony with a multitude of land uses. We don't see rural Ontario as 100% agrarian any more. However, to prohibit growth and development in parts of the rural province through the Planning Act is to deny rural residents the opportunity to manage their own communities. It's our experience that some rural communities themselves may impose strict land use policies that discourage uses other than agriculture, and that's fine. Other areas of the province, though, may wish to diversify their local economy and that opportunity must be left available. Flexibility and common sense remain the key areas.
Finally, we would just like to re-emphasize a point we've often made. There will always be land use conflicts with respect to agricultural practices that have occurred in the past and will probably occur in the future. What is needed are workable conflict resolution mechanisms, preferably in the form of stronger right-to-farm legislation. We already have some, but we feel it is not strong enough yet, and to attempt to deal with these conflicts or potential conflicts by prohibiting all but agricultural uses is not only unimaginative, but it will ultimately destroy the communities it sets out to protect.
Mr Wiseman: I'd like to start with the section where it says "have regard to" and one of the problems that is being experienced. I'm not sure that the Ontario Federation of Agriculture experiences it quite the same way that we would experience it in these urban areas. I'm not sure that this bill or the amendments to this bill are going to have the kind of substantive impact on the rural community that you're outlining, but to have regard to in terms of a policy is very weak. It doesn't do anything at all.
In my experience, what it means is that it's equivalent to this: You would like me to have regard for your document. I've had regard for it. That's what it means in the Planning Act, that local councils, regional councils, can have official plans, and in this wording of it they say that you will have regard to provincial policies, you'll have regard to the protection of wetlands, you will have regard for the preservation of agricultural land.
None of it happens. None of that happens. They continue to fill in wetlands. They continue to take out productive woodlots. They continue to get reports on the need to preserve Carolinian forests, and then they rezone them and have them wiped out.
So I guess my question is, given that in the urban areas in particular "have regard to" is not a strong enough statement, how do you balance that against what you see as the need for the rural area? This is really quite the conundrum that I think Mr Eddy will probably be going after as well, but I don't think to "have regard to" is anywhere even close to being strong enough. I said to a developer in London when we were there, I personally think "will conform to" is a better phrase than the policy statement. My own thinking on "shall be consistent with" is that it is weaker than it needs to be in terms of what's happening in the urban areas.
Mr George: At the same time that you think "have regard to" is too weak, we believe "be consistent with" is too strong. We're not interested in solving your urban problems on the backs of rural people, and that's essentially what you're saying when you get us to buy into this one. If you've got an urban problem, don't try and make the rural people pay for solving that problem.
Because I tell you, you made some allegations about draining wetlands and whatever. I can stack Ontario agriculture's environmental responsibility up against anywhere in this country, or in the world, for that matter. We have got our environmental farm coalition and our environmental farm plans in place. For a minimal $9 million of public money, we have got a world-beater there, and I contend, sir, that Ontario agriculture is leading the pack when it comes to environmental and land use issues.
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Mr Wiseman: I didn't contend anything to the contrary, but what I am asking is, how do you reconcile what you just said with what I just said in terms of "be consistent with"? This is a really important issue within the context of what's happening in my community and the way things are developing in terms of having an official plan, for example, that's less a year old and already a multitude of amendments are coming forward that are changing the very nature of the official plan, changing commercial-industrial zonings to residential zonings. This is in a plan that's not even a year old.
What we're looking for here is, how do we solve this problem? In the context of the rural community, we've been told that hamlet development, infilling in hamlets and the growth of other industrial parts to the hamlets are all possible.
Mr Bill Weaver: I think we referred to part of the answer to your question in the document. I would expect that a number of your colleagues have served on municipal councils, rural or urban, and I think the way to ensure that you get good representation at the municipal council level is to ensure that they have the ability to make meaningful decisions. If my municipal council is going to be told that it has to concur with the legislation that has been meant to solve Toronto and Hamilton and Ottawa's urban problems, and I say, "Well, I can't make any other decision," I'll tell you, I don't want to run for that municipal council, and I don't know anybody else who would.
We are very strong on the responsibility, first, of municipal councils to be able to make the proper decision that's going to lead their municipality, lead the particular people they're representing. If you take that away, what have we got left? If there's a problem with the municipal structure, if there's a problem with too many and too small municipalities, which some would put forth, deal with that one, but don't solve the agricultural problem by urban solutions.
Mr Winninger: Do you acknowledge that there are some provincial objectives and priorities that might transcend regional priorities, either urban or rural; that there may be provincial interests that transcend local or regional interests having to do with planning objectives?
Mr George: I will concede that clearly we need some long-term provincial policies, but don't constrain the local people. There has to be that flexibility there. It's one thing to have some overall planning, and we can all agree here that, yes, we need to save agricultural land, by and large. However, there will always be exceptions to that rule, and I just don't want to be put in a straitjacket where my local people haven't got the ability to make some decisions which are right for that local area, regardless of what the provincial overall policy may be.
Mr Winninger: That's what concerned me, because if you had regard to a provincial policy statement and then you elected to disregard it and proceeded with an incompatible course, aren't you then putting provincial interests at risk?
Mr George: No. There may be very good reasons to go against those policy statements, and I think we can take the old Food Land Guidelines of 1976 as a good example which are still in use. They're still the guidelines, and yet some of those decisions that are now based on those guidelines are just totally out of touch.
Mr Winninger: Some would argue they don't go far enough.
Mr Grandmaître: That's what you did in Middlesex.
Mr Eddy: That's a particular problem. We should return to that and discuss that fully one day, and hopefully we will.
Thank you very much. As usual, you were very clear in your presentation; concise, direct and very forthright. We appreciate that and that's what we need. You've put your finger on the whole thing: the difference between rural Ontario and urban Ontario. Urban Ontario for the most part has destroyed the fine woodlots, the bushes, the ecosystems, the wetlands, the streams. We've seen it all. Now it's up to rural Ontario to save it.
Now, there is a difference, a tremendous difference, and we've got to look at that. We cannot do it on the backs of the rural municipalities.
You mentioned the wetlands, and I well know what's happened in the town of Haldimand where everything is to be saved because of the fear of what's happened in the urbans, the large areas. So there is big difference and we have to look at the difference, and we have to deal with them differently, I think.
You mentioned about rural councils and you're right.
Omnibus bill: I agree with you, there are too many things in here. The sorry result is that when people come forward, they have to choose what they're going to discuss; they can't discuss it all. There isn't time, and there isn't time for us to respond to those and ask questions.
The policy statements: Given that the bill is going forward as it is and the clause "have regard to" -- by the way, you should feel very good about this because the government says the wording "be consistent with" gives flexibility. So I want you to remember that. It's stated in Hansard: It gives flexibility. We've got to see that.
But given that this wording is going in, the policy statements are here before us and they're part of the act and you're going to have to follow them, did you have a lot of input to the preparation of the agricultural land policies brought forward now as part of this bill through the OMAF route? Did you have a lot of input? Because you are the rural people and should have had a say. I'd like to know to what extent you assisted the ministry in bringing in the agricultural land policies that rural Ontario's going to have to live with.
Mr Alvin Runnalls: We feel that we haven't been consulted. It's lack of consultation and lack of compensation.
Mr Eddy: That's a terrible shame. It's wrong. No wonder you're saying, "When and how do we review the policy statements?" That's this one in particular, and there are some others that certainly affect you.
I want to also take the opportunity to commend and thank the association for what the farmers in Ontario are doing in so many ways: minimum tillage, zero tillage, conservation practices, the environmental plans and it goes on and on. They are doing things, and it's excellent.
I don't know why you haven't had the input into the agricultural land policies, because you must have that. Did you have input into that? Have you a got a copy, and have you responded to that? If so, can we get a copy of your response? We just got this.
Mr George: We did have one of our members on that working group, yes.
Mr Eddy: So you'll have a response to it?
Mr George: We haven't analysed that document yet.
Mr Eddy: Okay. Well, I'll be looking forward to your response to it. I agree with your concerns about the Planning Act. We've got to do rural Ontario differently than urban Ontario.
Mr Curling: My concern too is about your comment about this omnibus bill. This is the kind of pattern of this government, to lump everything together, give you 15 minutes or seven minutes or five minutes for you to interact with the legislators on this.
Mr Hayes: Fifteen minutes more than the Liberals.
Mr Mills: Hasn't it always been like this?
Mr Curling: The comparative all the time is to state that previous governments didn't, but that's not the point. The point is really that they call it a comprehensive, an extensive and a wide bill, and the fact is that you haven't had an opportunity to even speak about the conflict-of-interest aspect of this.
Do you see actually where we would be able to complete this legislation -- there are two questions I'm going to ask -- within the time frame they talk about? Furthermore, do you feel that your comments here were right on and consistent, having regard to the fact that most of it will be left to regulations, which we haven't seen?
Mr George: I think that final point is a concern we raised in our presentation, and that's whether you have time to do this or not. God knows. How quick do you people work? I know how quick I can work.
Mr Curling: Good. What about the regulation aspect of it? Do you feel that it will be adequately addressed in things that we haven't seen? It's a "trust me" government which we never see.
Mr George: That's always a concern. This is an issue where when you say, "Trust me," I'm not prepared to trust anybody at the moment on land use issues given the past record and the current record of some ministries.
Mr Curling: That's right. Thanks.
Mr Villeneuve: Roger and your OFA, thank you for being with us. This is of great concern to me right here, where the Minister of Natural Resources is telling us what a farmer is and what a farmer will be producing, both livestock and otherwise. What we have in Bill 163 is a one-size-fits-all, and that's of great concern. I think we have at the table there Alvin coming from Dundas county, Bill from Kent, a totally different area, and you're from the north, Roger. I think you're a living example of the divergence. Then we add the urban areas to the semi-urban areas and to the rural areas.
I think the two-tier effect has to come into play, plus we have to differentiate between Alvin's area and Bill's area and Roger's area, and I would suggest that there are probably two other areas in between there as well. Maybe we can get your comments on that.
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Mr George: Well, I think that's absolutely correct. We've always said that when it comes to land use policy, it's impossible to have one policy for the entire province, and it's clearly shown. We have the issue of the tender fruit lands, we have the issue around Waterloo, where they're very conscious about land use and there are some very strict guidelines.
The Ontario Federation of Agriculture can go along with both those things because it's local autonomy and the local people know what they want. They've lived there for generations, and I think that's the way it should be. Don't try and give a one-size-fits-all prescription to deal with every problem that's out there. Leave some flexibility in there and leave it with the people who know most, the local people. They're the ones with the common sense in this business.
Mr Villeneuve: I won't comment on your "common sense" approach. That comes up from time to time, and it does make a lot of common sense. However --
Mr George: I didn't call for a revolution.
Mr Villeneuve: How about a small revolt?
The wetlands policy: I was vice-chair of a task force that travelled the province for the last year, and that is probably the most serious area of concern, peoples' rights. And this is not only farmers now; it's people who happen to own rural land. In the area where Alvin comes from, which I very proudly represent, we have a lot of wetland, a tremendous amount of wetland. We're finding now that people are only finding out third hand that indeed they've been designated either buffer or wetland or both.
Mr Wiseman: It shouldn't happen.
Mr Villeneuve: Well, it has happened.
Could you comment on that? Because I know, of your 35,000-plus members, that's got to be one of the major concerns.
Mr George: Well, it is. As I say, I think it is probably the major concern this summer. As we've all travelled around the province, all we hear about is wetlands and ANSIs, areas of natural and scientific interest, and that type of thing. It really is somewhat bothersome to a farmer when he goes, in some cases, to sell a property to find out that there is, unbeknownst to him, a designation on there which restricts his land use. As I say, the Ministry of Natural Resources isn't paying the taxes and the mortgage on this land. It's a terrible thing.
Let me just tell you that we've sought a meeting with the Premier on this issue. We believe it is that important that the Premier of Ontario should be giving some direction to his cabinet ministers on this. The OFA is involved in a very unlikely coalition with the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, Ducks Unlimited and the Ontario Cattlemen's Association. That is a very unlikely group, with over 200,000 members, and each one of those groups feels absolutely vehemently that the province of Ontario is going berserk when it comes to adulterating rural peoples' property rights.
Mr Villeneuve: The amazing thing that I find, Roger, is that in my area at Lake St Francis, some of the prime waterfront property anywhere, bar none, erosion is occurring very extensively, 10 feet a year, and yet it's wetlands and it's been designated by the Ministry of Natural Resources as a spawning area. Local people tell us it's not a spawning area. They're losing 10 feet of ground, the trees are into the water, and yet they cannot come in and shore up their land.
They can't even go and build a house there, and yet it is some of the prime waterfront property that happened to be kept that way because someone wanted to keep it that way to be able to put up a home for themselves and their family getting close to retirement. They're being prevented from this right now, and I think that is a travesty.
Mr George: We've even got farmers who can't even clean out a drainage ditch which they helped to pay for because somebody from MNR spotted a fish swimming in the thing and so now it comes under the Fisheries Act. That is ridiculous too.
If we're going to keep a competitive agriculture in this province and if we're going to be able to face the world and be global traders and feed the nation and feed the world, then we have got to take a hard look at how many hoops we can ask our farmers to jump through. We'll jump through a few hoops, but if you keep on lighting hoops, and flaming hoops at that, then we've got some big problems and the farmers of Ontario are going to say, "To hell with you."
Mr Villeneuve: The South Nation River was a very slow-flowing river prior to being cleaned out. We now have a vibrant aquatic life. It was cleaned out some seven or eight years ago, nine years ago possibly. This is a prime example of what rejuvenating a watercourse can do, and yet our bureaucrats cannot accept that. I have major problems with that.
The Chair: Mr Hayes would like to make some comments.
Mr Hayes: Yes, just that I was rather surprised when the question was asked if the OFA had been consulted with or had meetings dealing with the agricultural policy and the response we got back here pretty well indicated that they were not. I'm being told that there were three months of consultation by Municipal Affairs, and also the commissioner of course for two years, and there is some input. Also, isn't the OFA actually part of the implementation task force, on the technical committee?
Mr David Armitage: We're on a rural task force.
Mr Hayes: Which is part of it. I'm just saying that because it's --
Mr McLean: That's where the problem is. Do you think you consulted them?
Mr Hayes: No, no. I'm sorry, Mr McLean, but I think that the people who are here, Roger and others who are making this presentation, know that I certainly believe in consultation and input from people. I think we showed that very clearly when we did the agricultural finance review and we made sure that all stakeholders had some say and input into the situation, and I'm asking the question. It was almost indicated that there was no consultation or input from the OFA, and I'm led to believe that there has been. That's all I'm saying to you.
Mr Eddy: I would change my question --
Interjections.
The Chair: Mr Eddy, please. We've asked all the questions.
Interjections.
Mr Hayes: I don't think it's an unfair question. If that's the case, I don't like it.
Mr Eddy: No, I just ask that if they have comments on this, look at it.
The Chair: Mr Hayes said he feels that you've been consulted, and some of you may want to comment on that.
Mr Armitage: I think the question we're responding to was whether OMAFRA had consulted with us in developing the agricultural policy statement, and that was not the case. We did comment, as an organization, on the Sewell draft and on the document on land use planning from Municipal Affairs, and we are on the rural task force, but we have not been consulted and sat down directly with OMAFRA in developing that agricultural policy.
The Chair: Mr George and others, we thank you for taking the time to come and give your views and your brief to this committee.
SAVE THE ROUGE VALLEY SYSTEM
The Chair: We invite Save the Rouge Valley System, Mr Steve Marshall. Welcome to this committee, Mr Marshall.
Mr Steve Marshall: Mr Chairman, I'm not familiar with the format. I provided two briefs to be distributed. I just wanted to specify that there are two briefs: One is somewhat more involved, it's nearly 60 pages, and it is in fact an information brief for members of the land use caucus. I'm providing it as background information in case anybody had questions about what concepts framed the recommendations I'm about to make.
The Chair: I think what you might want to do in 10 or 15 minutes is give the major highlights of the two reports that you want us to respond to and leave the next 15 minutes for members to ask you questions.
Mr Marshall: Yes, I'll follow that format. The other brief is a little shorter -- it's six pages doublesided -- and it's essentially a précis of the recommendations as they pertain to Bill 163. I would just go briefly through that. There are a dozen recommendations.
One comment I'd like to make is that there's a large number of technical amendments that could be proposed for specific wording on specific minor issues that have been raised by a number of parties. I won't be getting into those in detail because of the length of time it would take but rather focusing on the larger questions.
So the question I have is, would it be useful for the committee and would the committee desire a follow-up written contribution on the minor and very technical amendments and the recommendations we have for those on minor questions of wording that have been raised by a number of parties?
The Chair: I'm sure the members would like to have a copy of that.
Mr McLean: I'd like a copy of the recommendations and amendments.
Mr Marshall: The recommendations I have before you today are the larger ones, and the smaller, technical ones would follow.
Essentially, I think it would be useful to explain our perspective, being a little different from the group that was before me. We are a watershed-based group and our watershed covers nine municipalities, six local and three regional, within and around the largest urban centre in Canada. It also includes quite an extensive rural area and parts of the Oak Ridges moraine. It's very varied and distinct and the municipalities all have their own characters.
Over the last nearly 20 years we've been occupied in trying to protect the cultural and natural heritage with the existing planning system and also the one that prevailed before 1983. So the comments are based on more or less in-the-trenches experience of the problems that are being faced with the current, as it is now, planning system.
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Therefore, when we came to Bill 163 we were very pleased that the initiative is being undertaken and we consider it essential that it proceed. So in the comments I make noting deficiencies or absences or making recommendations, I don't want it inferred that we are in any way opposed to Bill 163, find it sorely lacking or grossly deficient or anything like that. We're very positive and very supportive of Bill 163 in general. So my comments then would flow from that perspective.
The first one I wanted to make -- and unfortunately it's not paginated, but the third typewritten page of the short brief has the recommendation in bold, and just to briefly say that we had commented extensively throughout the commission process and on the consultation paper released in December and our feeling is that "consistent with" is really not strong enough. That's based upon an examination of the dictionary and also a consultation with the government officials who have cast their own interpretation of how it would be used. Therefore, our recommendation was to be clearer and to suggest the wording should be "shall be consistent with and conform to."
We're also quite well aware of the concerns of a number of municipalities and groups about the undue rigidity that may encourage in the planning system, so we suggested here briefly that there is an element of flexibility in three different degrees, even with this wording. I'm involved in the task force on the guidelines and it's quite, quite clear that there's an ample amount of flexibility, and this becomes clearer when you get down to trying to explain the policies with guidelines or viewing somebody else's explanation. There's a broad variety of interpretations. So there is considerable flexibility yet.
One of the concerns we have with the bill as it's written, particularly subsection 3(5), to follow on from the question about policies, was that the application of the policies in the new proposed wording is limited considerably from the previous wording, which was "have regard to." We are concerned that intentionally or unintentionally this may exclude a wide variety of municipal activities and agency, commission, board and ministry activities from being required to be, whatever the wording comes to, consistent with the policies. This would be problematic if one hand of the ministry wishes to do this and the other wishes to do that, and one has requirements to be consistent with and the other has a free rein, so our recommendations were to use the original wording from the existing bill in relation to whom the policy should apply and under what activities. The wording there is contained in it.
To back up to the general purpose of the act, and that's contained under the section that's headed "Legislation" and "Recommendation 3," it was our feeling that in dealing with lawyers at the OMB there's often a wide range of interpretations of what should be and some ambiguity, and it would be as well to reduce the ambiguity as much as possible to make clearer what the purpose of the act is, what the intent, what the drift, what the will is of the province and of the people of the province as expressed through it. So we've made some recommendations about wording in section 2. One of them is to drop "economic" from the definition of "sustainable development." This is simply based on the commonly used definitions of sustainable development which incorporate economic, social and ecological considerations. The rationale's contained there, so I won't elaborate.
The other is to make changes in clause 2(a), specific changes about what the objective is in protection of ecological systems and also the introduction of the concept of ecological integrity and biodiversity, which are well-established in federal and international statutes and have been applied across the world, and also to emphasize the concept of restoration and enhancement.
Our perspective is, I guess, based on working with other groups that have looked at these issues, like the Federation of Ontario Naturalists, and simply making the measured and studied assessment that in southern Ontario -- and I must admit we have -- it's embarrassing to admit it, but it's true because of the location of our watershed -- a somewhat Toronto-centred and southern Ontario-centred focus. So I couldn't interpret our comments as being universally applicable to northern Ontario.
However, it's our observation, and it's substantiated by a lot of simple fact finding, that southern Ontario is equivalent to the Amazonian basin after the rainforest is cut down, because that's pretty much what we've accomplished already. There's very little, about 0.5%, of the original Carolinian forests left. A shocking amount of the wetlands have disappeared, and on and on and on. We've been described as an ecological disaster area by the IGC in referring to chemical contaminants and so on. It's a really gloomy picture when you sort of stack it up and take a look at it.
Our contention is, the perspective of the Planning Act should not only be protection -- that is one of the goals, recognizably one of them -- of natural systems, but also the recognition that we haven't got a whole lot left. It's sort of like protecting your car after somebody's gone through it one dark night and taken all the parts off. If you really want to go somewhere, you've got to restore it. Our assertion is that the act should clearly indicate the objective of restoration. We've indicated in our recommendations various places these words might be introduced to accomplish that.
One of our concerns is the actual implementation of ecosystem planning. It's in the descriptive material that comes with the package released May 18. We're presuming that it is the goal -- although there may not be a universal description of it -- of most of the parties involved. Our analysis is, to actually achieve this, certain amendments to the act are required. They are covered under recommendation 5. That stipulates a process by which an official plan would be prepared.
At first blush, certain groups or perspectives may say, "My gosh, that's awfully rigid," but on second blush, it should be, "This is, in a sense, the normal process." It could be left to regulations to identify and describe. Our concern is that regulations can be readily altered, but if the act is amended consistently, then there's a security in the tenure of an act. It's not easy to tinker around with it. You have to stop and think very carefully, as this legislative process indicates, and therefore, it would be better to indicate how official plans should be prepared in the act as well as in the regulations. That is recommendation 5.
Flowing from that suggestion of a description about how official plans may be formulated to achieve ecosystem planning, among other objectives, is the question of: What on earth for? If you don't know what for and what you're working with, it's rather difficult, so recommendation -- I think I've done two recommendation 5s. That's okay because they speak to the same issue -- 5b put it -- that the official plan "shall contain" -- not "may," but "shall contain" -- "a description of" and so on and so on.
The comments under that indicate that there are different ways to do it. If you say, "Thou shalt do it this way," it may not necessarily apply as well in northern Ontario as southern Ontario. The wording we've suggested leaves considerable flexibility for how to achieve that, but the gist of it is to describe what is there. Surely the basis for your actions is an understanding of what you have to act with. If you don't have a description of, for instance, the environment in which you live, then it's a little difficult to plan with objectives because you don't know where you're going because you don't know where you are. So this is the basis of this recommendation.
The next section speaks to zoning controls, which are essentially the tools that a municipality would have to try and accomplish ecosystem objectives or ecosystem planning or simply planning. There are amendments in Bill 163 which speak to this. They seem to have a distinction between certain areas: Some, the municipality control all or any use of land, and some, only the type of building.
The concern we have is that if you can't control the use of land, you can't control or protect the actual natural features; ie, if you have a significant archeological site and you're able to control the buildings on it and somebody puts a golf course there, you're finished. The archeological site's gone and there are no buildings. You obviously need to be able to control the use of the land and certain key areas that you really want to protect. If you can't control that, you can't protect them. So it's a reasonably minor amendment that would have a major impact on the ability to achieve the objectives stated in the policy statements in the bill itself. The wording is there, plus the sections for, I hope, some clarity.
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Recommendation 7 pertains to an addition to Bill 163 which should address -- in other words, make a continuous address of the questions raised through the subdivision process as well.
Recommendation 8 speaks to the protective bylaws which are conceived to be enabled under the Municipal Act. I'm sure this is going to raise a storm of concern across the province with the prospect of municipalities being able to tell you what to do, where, how and when, wherever you live and whatever you have. It is possible to take the viewpoint that if there could be a problem, there will be a problem.
We'd like to suggest that the protective bylaws under the Municipal Act, section 7, controlling the clearance of vegetation and so on and so on are tools that the municipality should use, but the definition of where they should use them and how they should use them can be phrased in such a way that there's no risk of arbitrary or illogical or excessive attempts to control the use of private land, and there's obviously a suggestion for some wording there. In the larger brief, there's some description of the context and an elaboration on this issue, but that's available for sort of research, if there's any question about that recommendation as well as the others.
Our proposal is also that municipalities be required to implement these bylaws. How and where, in what fashion and so on, this is the discretion of the municipality, but they will be required to do it, because it's been our unfortunate observation that although it is required, suggested, requested by the government, by the people, some municipalities refuse to do it. To refuse to protect provincially significant features is in essence an assault on the future provincial priorities on neighbouring municipalities and often on the people within the municipality who are affected by destruction on land other than theirs.
One of our concerns has been through experience with nine different municipalities and the processes they follow, that it's often very difficult to act in the planning process if you're excluded from decision-making meetings, if you're denied access to information and if the decisions and the processes, however long and complex they may be, are not accessible to the public. It seems like an affront to our democratic traditions that this should be so.
Just to give you an example, it is possible in some municipalities that any information pertaining to an application not be available to the public, any discussions, decisions with agencies, boards and commissions, with a proponent, with the councillors, with the staff, be inaccessible to the public until everything is finished, everything is done, and then and only then at the statutory public meeting is the public ever aware of the processes that have gone under way and the decisions and so on. What they have been presented with are the fruits of that process, without any opportunity to be involved, and that really makes a mockery of public involvement in the planning process.
Then we have made some recommendations in section 2 to emphasize that the province is keen on effective, public involvement in the planning process -- and I don't think anybody would have an argument with that -- that they have access to information, and we don't have specific wording on where to place an interpretation of the term "meeting." Often meetings can be held in camera and not called meetings, and then all of a sudden, it's an official meeting and the decision is made, but any discussion or any deliberation or anything is just out of touch with the public, and it doesn't seem like the right way to operate. Unfortunately, we don't have specific wording to recommend how to address that, just to flag the issue.
Recommendation 11 does get into some detail about the different sections of the act that could be amended in a very simple form to ensure that information is available to the public and to agencies which are required or requested to comment so that they can make a substantive contribution to the planning process.
Another major problem we have with Bill 163 is the introduction of the concept that a regional or senior municipality would be able to dismiss an application to the OMB. Throughout Bill 163, those six reasons are repeated again and again; I didn't type them out here. The concern we have with this is that, as it states in clause 17(29)(a), "...the approval authority" -- senior municipality -- "is of the opinion that," and any of the six reasons could apply, there's no recourse. There's no revelation or explanation required. In other words, it seems a grossly quixotic and undemocratic suggestion that the council could decide that it doesn't like you and therefore your appeal was out the window, whatever its apparent merits, because it's simply the council's opinion that counts.
Our suggestion is that the OMB has a process: a process of appeal, a process of consideration. It's a well-established process. Modifications are suggested here that we don't have a great deal of disagreement with. This should be the venue where the merit of an appeal is decided, even under the broadened ability the OMB to toss it out, not the very council that often resents your contribution to the planning process and doesn't want to listen to you in the first place.
The introduction of the concept of the council tossing out a referral to the OMB in this fashion, as far as I know, was not recommended by any of the members of the public and agencies that consulted with the Sewell commission. So it seems like it popped out of somebody's head and I don't know whose, but I suggest it be popped back into some grey space somewhere and not be applied in Bill 163.
The conclusion could be read, so I simply won't try and précis it. I'll turn it over to any questions that may be raised.
Mr Curling: Thank you for your presentation. The kind of work that you have been doing in Save the Rouge has just been tremendous. It's been long going and sometimes rather frustrating, as you know, so I presume you would welcome some sort of formal strategy in how the Planning Act is done. As you said, you're in strong support of this Bill 163.
Mr Marshall: In general.
Mr Curling: In general. Oh, good, in general, because I didn't hear --
Mr Marshall: If we were in strong support wholly, we wouldn't be here to say, "Hey, change it."
Mr Curling: This is what I was going to say. I notice you said "strong support," and then there are some things that you'd like to see being attended to and changed.
Mr Marshall: Yes.
Mr Curling: That's of concern, because we have no problem at all with the fact of the description of the problem. What we have problems with -- and I'm talking about my colleagues here -- is the prescription of the process here.
One of the things that we're concerned about too, and I think John Sewell mentioned that too, is that his report and what he has presented has come down to some rather weak legislation, in putting in place some of the things that he'd like to see changed. Not that we are in full agreement with what John Sewell had said, but the fact is that some of the things you've said, we had thought that it would come in legislation, and this has been left up to regulation; things that we have not seen. We appeal to you again, Mr Chairman, to say to your minister and your government that it would be nice to see the regulations since we're coming forward like that.
What is your feeling, the fact that most of the important part of this legislation, as is the practice of this government to do, is left to regulations? Again, as we said to the previous presenters here, it's a rather trust-me situation, "When we're all through we'll show you the regulations," when it's too late to see that it has been properly defined and has some sort of instructions which to follow. How do you feel about that?
Mr Marshall: We feel that it's problematic and that it could and should be addressed by amendments to 163, which would not be substantive or out of line for the committee to suggest. The problem we attacked in relation to the question of leaving things to regulation was the process and the content of the official plans, because we feel that with the proposal to have a comprehensive policy system, and a strong one to be consistent with, that the process of developing an official plan and the basic contents should be described in the legislation that describes the intent of the legislation. To go into too much detail would be inappropriate. The detail could be left for regulation, but the intent should be described in the legislation.
To that extent, we had suggested wording which I believe was very similar to what Mr Sewell has suggested, or vice versa -- I was right the first time -- and that if this is incorporated into the Planning Act through amendment, Bill 163, I think that would address the concerns with relation to the most important issue that's currently proposed to be covered by regulations.
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Mr Curling: Let me see if I interpret you --
The Acting Chair (Mr Gary Wilson): Very briefly.
Mr Curling: Very briefly, yes. You have no great concern about the fact that most of it is left to regulation, but just a little bit of changing in the legislation may adequately give you a comfort zone in that things are adequately looked after. Am I hearing you right?
Mr Marshall: Okay, to keep it real short, the clear intent should be expressed in the legislation. The details could be covered in regulation, but the intent should be clear in the legislation. We should know where it's going and what it's talking about, what the direction is and what the objectives are. The wording we suggested here --
Mr Curling: Yes, like minor variances.
Mr Marshall: But if you're talking about the detail, how it's to be implemented, and the specific wording, that would reasonably be left to regulation.
The Acting Chair: The third party, Mr McLean.
Mr McLean: We all can very clearly tell the difference between "may" and "shall." But in recommendation 2, "shall be consistent with and conform to" for "shall have regard for," if you had three different lawyers, you would probably get three different definitions out of that, wouldn't you?
Mr Wiseman: How about six.
Mr Marshall: First of all, it's excellent that it's being strengthened to be "shall be consistent with." Pick any dictionary and you get different definitions too, or at least a different number. In the Concise Oxford that I have, it's three different definitions, and they go different directions. So our proposal, "consistent with and conform to," does tend to narrow down the objective. The less you leave up to lawyers to waste all our money with the better.
Mr McLean: That's probably the reason why it's put in there by the government, so that the lawyers will have lots of leeway to dicker and fool with it.
You talk about the purpose of the act:
"To promote sustainable economic development in a healthy natural environment within the policy and by the means provided under this act;
"The term `sustainable development' is widely used if not understood. The term `sustainable economic development'" -- you said here -- "is either entirely new, begging a definition, or an oxymoron." Which is it?
Mr Marshall: I'm not a scholar, but I haven't seen the term "sustainable economic development" widely used and accepted. It's sort of a mutation of "sustainable development." Supposedly inherent in the concept of sustainable development are economic considerations, social considerations and ecological considerations, jointly, unseverable, because they belong together. To throw in "economic" is like trying to turn a car into a dump truck; it's a little hard.
Mr McLean: That's something like this legislation. Thank you.
Mr Wiseman: Thank you for your always thorough presentations of issues. I want to pursue that economic question as well, because I see the "economic" as narrowing it as opposed to keeping it a broad definition of what sustainability should be all about. That, I think, is an important issue, and I'm pleased that you raised that here.
I'm also pleased that, other than me, you're the only person who's talked about "will conform to" or talked about that kind of an approach to the question of "shall be consistent with," and it's nice not to be alone sometimes.
When we deal with councils -- and that's not to imply that they willingly or knowingly do anything wrong; they genuinely try to come to solutions to problems -- this whole question of where they hold their meetings is really quite difficult to nail down. For example, there have been allegations made in the local papers in my riding that certain people had dinner with certain people and certain people didn't go, so they're making allegations and that kind of thing.
How do we nail down how people relate? Is it possible? Does the legislation go far enough to include these types of meetings, to really give the public a handle on what actually happens in council?
Mr Marshall: It's not specific enough. I think that's been picked up by staff at the Ministry of Municipal Affairs as well. We didn't have any suggestions about where to tuck it into the act. I guess I would make the observation that if you're conducting town business, and especially if town staff are in attendance, then one can presume it's a meeting in the sense of fulfilling your responsibilities as a councillor, and that could be anywhere or anything. If you're having a private discussion with another person, that's nobody's business but yours.
In Markham, for instance, they sometimes have what they call "work sessions." All the staff are there, all the councillors are there, they're dealing with town business; it's not public, because it's a "work session." Then when they've done all of their business and all they have to do is rubber-stamp the decision, poof, they open up the meeting. This doesn't seem to fulfil the spirit of the democratic process. So I'm not really sure what definition would fit, but it is a problem.
The Acting Chair: You've got about 30 seconds left, Mr Wiseman.
Mr Wiseman: Then I'd just like to thank Steve and the Save the Rouge for all of the invaluable contributions they've made to the province of Ontario in helping to establish the Rouge park and the agricultural preserve; it's in my riding.
Mr Marshall: Yes, and in Alvin's too, in part.
The Acting Chair: Mr Marshall, I'll speak on behalf of the committee and thank you very much for your presentation. Did you want to add something?
Mr Marshall: The only thing I'd like to repeat is that I'll be forwarding the technical suggestions about wording changes on a host of minor issues soon.
REGIONAL PLANNING COMMISSIONERS OF ONTARIO
The Acting Chair: I call forward Mr Nick Tunnacliffe, representing the Regional Planning Commissioners of Ontario.
Mr Nick Tunnacliffe: My name's Nick Tunnacliffe, planning commissioner of the region of Ottawa-Carleton, and today I'm representing the Regional Planning Commissioners of Ontario. On my right is Sally Thorsen, who's the planning commissioner for the region of Waterloo.
I think you've had distributed a copy of our full brief, which is several pages long, and a copy of the remarks which I'm going to make.
The Regional Planning Commissioners of Ontario represent the planning departments of 12 regions and districts in Ontario and the restructured county of Oxford. Approximately 70% of the population of Ontario lives in our municipalities, and I'll hazard a guess that probably about 90% of the development and growth going on in Ontario takes place in those municipalities. Our municipalities are responsible for providing major infrastructure such as water, sewers, roads and transit, which have enabled our cities to grow and prosper.
Fundamental to making things work are the planning and financing of our cities. By any standards, we believe the regional government system in Ontario is a success. Thanks to farsighted and creative planning, Ontario communities are the envy of the world, and thanks to conservative financing arrangements, most regions have better credit ratings than the province. My point in providing this background is to stress the importance of building on this legacy.
While planning has done much to create livable communities and workable cities, as practised in Ontario, we believe it can be improved significantly. The Regional Planning Commissioners of Ontario contributed to the Sewell commission by submitting five briefs. We salute the province for initiating that process, we support many of the recommendations of the commission and we congratulate the province for moving forward expeditiously with Bill 163.
However, we have serious concerns about the bill, which are discussed in detail in our brief to you, which has 26 recommendations, numerous detailed wording changes to the bill in annex II and a detailed commentary on the Sewell commission recommendations in annex IV. Time does not permit me to deal with all the points we wish to make. Instead, I want to deal with three highlights.
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First of all, the question of Metro Toronto: The bill rightly and properly assigns the power to approve local official plans and subdivisions to most regions. We support this. We also support the view of county planners that the power should also be assigned to counties. However, the bill has a great anomaly: Metro Toronto. Of all municipalities in the province, Metro Toronto deserves better. The largest in terms of population, the oldest regional government, recognized worldwide for its planning -- and I'll just say that John Gartner, the planning commissioner for Metro Toronto, can't be here today because he's entertaining planners from Chicago and showing them how we plan -- it's already got its own directly elected councillors, and yet the province sees fit not to give it the same powers as the other regions will have. Logic tells us otherwise. This should be changed.
The government recently enacted Bill 143 to change responsibilities and the method of election of regional councillors in Ottawa-Carleton, where I come from. Locally, there was significant opposition to this move. However, the provincial government stuck to its guns and did the right thing. This time, we urge you again to do the right thing: Give Metro its due and amend the bill to give Metro the same powers as every other region.
The next point I want to raise relates to procedure and timing. This may be a bit complicated, but it is a very important point to us. The Regional Planning Commissioners of Ontario supports the province's desire to streamline the planning process and, within defined parameters, to increase opportunities for consultation with agencies and the public as part of that process. The importance of a speedy decision-making process relates to economic development in Ontario and our ability to compete nationally and internationally.
The main way streamlining is introduced in the bill is, first, by setting time limits, which we support, and second, by having the approval authority give notice of its decision at the end of the process, which will then be subject to automatic appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board. We see three main flaws in this process.
Firstly, there is no provision in the bill to ensure that everyone's position is on the table so the approval authority can deal with the issues until the end of the process, ie, when the notice of decision is given. In fact, the bill specifically exempts public bodies from giving their position early in the process.
In our alternative process, which you'll find on pages 10 and 11 in the detailed brief, we suggest a requirement for early circulation prior to adoption for official plans and circulation and notification with a defined date by which all comments and objections should be submitted to the approval authority for subdivisions. The object should be to give the approval authority four months to solve problems and negotiate issues.
Secondly, the bill as written requires notification of the decision to all those who have been part of the process and anyone who may have an interest in the proposed decision. At the moment in Ottawa-Carleton, we circulate 38 agencies. For a major official plan amendment, we will have perhaps 20 community associations plus assorted individuals. For our last comprehensive official plan review, the mailing list was in excess of 4,000 people and groups. The amount of paper and the tracking of the responses within defined time limits boggles the mind. If you agree to amend the bill along the lines suggested in paragraph 1 above, we suggest you also agree to amend the bill so that only those public bodies and individuals who maintain their objection should be notified of the decision at the end of the process.
It is common practice for public bodies, once their concern has been addressed through, let us say, a condition in a plan of subdivision or a modification in a local official plan, to send a letter confirming that they are happy with the outcome. In this eventuality, we believe there is no need to circulate notice of the decision.
Thirdly, the bill provides that where notification by the approval authority is given, public bodies and individuals can have an automatic appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board. We are concerned that this will lead to a substantial increase in the number of Ontario Municipal Board hearings.
In other parts of the bill objectors may request a referral to the board, and the tests to which this request is put have been considerably strengthened in the bill. We support this strengthening and in fact, in the body of our brief, suggest two other tests which we recommend be added.
In order to reduce the number of OMB hearings, we recommend that in cases where the bill now provides for automatic appeal to the OMB, eg, when the approval authority is dealing with local official plans and subdivisions, this automatic appeal be changed to a referral request and the referral request be subject to the tests set out in the bill.
The third major point that I want to deal with is the responsibility for subdivision approval. The bill provides that regions, except for Metro Toronto, and separated cities are responsible for subdivision approval. However, the explanatory brochure on the Planning Act reform package refers to the possibility of further delegation to local municipalities. We believe that this should not take place for six compelling reasons.
First, the system is working very well.
Second, subdivision and conditions associated with draft approval is one of the main ways of implementing provincial policy. Having a limited number of regions, districts, counties and cities to work through will be easier and more efficient for the province as compared to dealing with 846 municipalities.
Third, experience has shown that efficiencies to be gained from economies of scale and experience are significant. A planning operation dealing with, say, 20 to 50 subdivisions a year is infinitely better prepared to deal with the nuances and difficulties that arise in each application compared to an organization dealing with, say, less than 10 applications a year. To have an upper-tier municipality or city with dedicated staff dealing with many subdivisions will result in a much more streamlined operation than if each municipality were to deal with a small number of subdivisions a year.
Fourth, we believe the level of municipal government responsible for water and sewer systems and treatment plants should be responsible for subdivision approval so that the approval of subdivisions can be tied to the availability of capacity in the treatment plant. Regions are responsible for these services, and they should be responsible for subdivision approval.
Fifth, beyond the efficiencies to be gained by a large operation are the fundamentally different responsibilities of the two levels of municipal government in a two-tier system. Each is entirely legitimate; each has its role to play in providing the citizens of Ontario with the best possible service. In our view, the role of the upper tier is to define planning policy for its municipality, having regard for provincial interests and policy, regional circumstances, goals and objectives, and to provide the conditions and opportunities for development. These conditions and opportunities, in our view, include the provision of infrastructure and the blocks of land in a state ready for development.
On the other hand, the role of the lower tier is to approve the specific development on the blocks, its design and layout, its standards, and to provide the services it requires, which are the responsibility of the lower tier, for example, parks.
Sixth and finally, conditions associated with subdivisions are integral to the achievement of regional objectives and policy. Passing the function to the lower tier will make it extremely difficult to implement these objectives and policies. It will result in a fundamentally more confrontational process with more appeals to the Ontario Municipal Board as both province and upper tier seek conditions to implement their policies.
We understand there is considerable pressure from some lower-tier municipalities to amend the bill to allow delegation of subdivision approval to the lower tier. If you want an efficient, streamlined planning system, if you want the province to retain the ability to implement its policies through upper-tier official plans, we urge you to retain the link between responsibility for subdivision approval and the direct approval power the minister retains over upper-tier official plans. Therefore, we strongly urge you not to amend the bill to provide for further delegation of subdivision approval.
I've touched on three main highlights. However, all 26 recommendations are important to us. We congratulate the province for moving forward on Planning Act reform. This is a valiant effort which needs some refinement. If the changes we recommend are not made, reluctantly we will not be able to support the package. We support the policy statement -- not every word, but we realize a decision has been made and we all need to move on -- but we believe you are not empowering municipalities sufficiently and you are not streamlining the process sufficiently. Therefore, we recommend you improve the package by incorporating the recommendations in our submission.
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Mr McLean: This morning we had the board of education in. The board wants to have some input into the approvals with regard to subdivisions and planning. There does not appear to be anything in here that gives them any input or allows them to have the input other than what they want to do on their own.
The other area I want to zero in on, and there has very little discussion about it, is our connecting links and our road systems.
When I drove down here yesterday, I said to myself, "If this area doesn't do something with regard to the road system, where are we going to be in 10 years with the development that's taking place," as there is now. I'd like your opinion with regard to future development with regard to roads and how they could be part of the overall planning system, because there's nothing in Bill 163 that really relates to planning the roads and future transportation systems. I'm wondering how that can be worked in.
Mr Tunnacliffe: Okay, on the first matter, the boards of education, it's common practice for regions, acting under the delegated approval of the ministry, to circulate all boards of education with proposed developments. We certainly do, and get comments back on requirements for school sites. The conditions of the subdivision approval provide usually for a three- or five-year period for the boards to exercise an option to pick up the school sites.
I haven't heard any complaints. I don't know, Sally, if you've heard anything in Waterloo. So I was surprised to hear that they've got a concern.
Mr McLean: What are your thoughts and considerations with regard to the road links, the connecting links and the road systems that we're going to be -- with the traffic sitting now, what's going to happen if we allow subdivisions and approvals to give the municipalities the approval authority? What's going to be in there with regard to our road systems?
Mr Tunnacliffe: There are several aspects to this, but within urban areas I think the policy statements that go along with the package speak very well to the need for -- I don't think it uses the word, but a more "balanced" system of transportation with more emphasis on transit, walking and cycling.
Our experience in Ottawa-Carleton is that it's extremely difficult to find the money to build all the road facilities that might be required for expanding urban areas, and therefore it's important to adapt the urban area so that more of the load can be taken off the road system and put on transit, walking and cycling.
The interurban travel is something else, which is something that by and large the province is responsible for, and again that's a matter of funding and you have to address it in terms of the 407 and tolls and user-pay and other ways of creating financing.
Mr McLean: The last question I have is with regard to the lower tier and the upper tier. The lower-tier planning has got to coincide with the upper tier, in order. Really, what is the sense of a lower tier having an official plan and zoning bylaws if the upper tier is going to have the final approval on the decisions anyway? What is the advantage? I mean, I always thought the lower tier was closer to the people; they were where the decisions were made. We seem to be taking that away now.
Ms Sally Thorsen: I think the difference is that the upper tier is responsible for developing the major policy. They don't get into detail. Upper-tier plans deal with policy issues and set the framework within which the local municipalities do the detailed planning.
Mr McLean: Do you think there should be both?
Ms Thorsen: We think there should be both. It's just that there's a difference emphasis.
Mr Villeneuve: Thank you for your presentation. You represent the group known as the regional planning and planners' commission of Ontario.
Mr Tunnacliffe: Regional Planning Commissioners of Ontario.
Mr Villeneuve: AMO has come out pretty strongly against Sewell across the board.
Mr Tunnacliffe: I don't know whether I agree with that. They've come out against certain aspects.
Mr Villeneuve: Certainly the smaller municipalities are very concerned, and primarily because in Bill 163 it says that the Planning Act, which states all planning decisions, "shall be consistent with" provincial "policy statements." That is regulation, and we're not of course dealing with regulation. Does that concern you at this particular point? We have 163, a multi-tentacled bill, an omnibus bill. Regulations could be very, very stringent here.
Mr Tunnacliffe: There are two aspects to your question. There is the question of regulations, and yes, we're concerned that we haven't seen regulations, and we certainly would like to see them and have input into them before the bill is promulgated.
The second question really relates to the "shall be consistent with," and it sort of gets to the nub of the relationship between the province and its constituent municipalities. The province has talked in its explanatory brochure about empowering municipalities, and one of our concerns is that in fact this bill doesn't empower sufficiently. I mean, empowering, in my mind, means an ability to give away responsibility so people can make mistakes.
Municipalities have been too tightly controlled, and that's why on pages 2 and 3 of our detailed brief we in fact are suggesting a couple of changes to the bill to address this matter of "shall be consistent with" to give what we think will be -- I don't really want to use the word "flexibility" -- more ability for the municipalities in the different parts of the province to interpret provincial policy as they see fit for their particular area.
At the top of page 3 we're suggesting that we add to the bill some lead-in words. We'd like you to add, "...as may be prescribed shall be consistent with the spirit and intent of the policy statements issued under subsection (1)," and the third recommendation would be to add to the bill, "Policy statements provide certain strength of direction but may be tempered by reasonable flexibility in local application." Those words came directly from the Sewell commission, and it was the Sewell commission's explanation of what "shall be consistent with" means. We would like to see those in the bill itself.
Mr Villeneuve: AMO's concern is loss of autonomy. I think that may be the word you were looking for here.
Mr Tunnacliffe: Yes.
Mr McLean: Could we have a definition of the word "spirit"?
Mr Tunnacliffe: I think you have to read it, "the spirit and intent." The "direction" I think would be a synonym.
Mr Mills: Thank you for coming here this afternoon. I listened and read your presentation with some degree of interest, and there are a couple of things I'd like to say on the record. You say the regional government system in Ontario is a success. Well, that's a matter of debate in this area. I can tell you that a lot of people have serious problems with the regional government of Durham per se.
I'd also like to point out that I like those conservative financing arrangements, and I'm sure my friends across the way like that. They have better credit ratings than the province. I think that's true, but at the same time I think you should agree -- I hope you will -- that the credit problems with the province are far more severe and problematic than they are with the regions. I'd just like to put that on the record.
I understand and I hear your support for what we're doing, Bill 163, and apart from your 26 recommendations, which are a little monumental, I hope that in the long run your association of planning commissioners of Ontario will see fit to be able to support this if not all is done but if most of it is done, or that you may have some change of heart in this, because I think -- and I think you've already said that -- this is good government and it's a good bill.
Mr Tunnacliffe: Regardless of whether we support it or not, we're going to be the ones on the front lines who will have to implement it, and our concern is that we are creating a more bureaucratic process and a more perhaps litigious process, with more appeals to the OMB. That's really a fundamental concern that we've got, because that, in my view, wouldn't be in the best interests of the province or the people who live here.
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Mr Mills: I, like my colleague over there -- sometimes I do agree with those fellows over there, believe it or not. Having spent a number of years on municipal council, I do believe that municipal councils have that hands-on, grass-roots decision-making and I don't like to see it taken away from them, to be quite honest. That may be contrary to what is the government's position, but I still think local municipalities and the politicians really are close to the feeling of the people and I don't like to see them taken away one step up to a higher tier of government to make these decisions.
Mr Wiseman: It's interesting that the hearings are breaking into two groups of people: Those who think regional councillors and official plans and the system should be streamlined in a way that gives that group of people more decision-making power and authority; and the other group of people who do not trust them, don't like what they've seen in the past, don't believe that official plans have any kind of teeth in them and find themselves disfranchised when it comes to trying to make any kind of presentation to a council because they see themselves as being impotent in that council because they're elected and have decided what's going to happen. That's what's happening. I tend to lean to the latter as opposed to the former.
I think what has to happen is some way that people as a group, when they feel threatened by official plans -- I'll just tell you quite bluntly. The developers get everything and the community gets nothing when it comes to official plan amendments. It seems that everything that they want, they get, and planning does not take on a holistic, sustainable --
Mr Curling: There you go bashing developers again.
Mr Wiseman: It's not the developers. The developers are there to ask what's in their economic interest. Councils are there to act as the check and a balance in the process to make sure that the public good is carried out. And whether you agree or not, the view of most citizens is that the balance has been tipped in favour of the developers and that what happens, on more than one occasion, is that subdivisions are changed, official plans are changed; that there is no way that the citizen can know for sure that when they buy a piece of property and the zoning next to them is in place, that's going to be the zoning when they move in, because the council will change it, and if it doesn't, then maybe it goes to regional council and it changes it or it goes to the Ontario Municipal Board and it changes it.
For me, that is the element that we need to deal with in this bill. So I don't agree with AMO and I don't agree with this "shall be consistent with the spirit and intent of," because that's just as watery as "will have regard for," in my opinion. I think it should be, at the very least, "will conform to."
Ms Thorsen: I think this was a point that was made on numerous occasions before the Sewell commission. People came before the commission and said: "We want no meaning no. We want some recognition that policies should be consistent and we know where we are." I think it was on that basis that the commission formulated the policy statements that have been largely adopted and published by the province. The fact that those policy statements are very clear and set out quite strongly what the province sees as being important and as policies that should be carried forward through upper-tier plans and in turn through the local official plans I think is one way that we can ensure that people do have some consideration or some feeling of safety that policies will remain consistent over a period of time.
I think you have a very good point, and it was recognized by the commission, but there was also an understanding on the part of the commission that there needs to be some recognition that it's hard to define for every eventuality, so there needs to be some opportunity for interpretation.
Mr Grandmaître: Mr Tunnacliffe, you claim that you did appear before the John Sewell commission. Is it five or six times? I forget exactly.
Mr Tunnacliffe: We had five briefs, yes.
Mr Grandmaître: And I'm sure that, as the chair, you were speaking for all regions and districts in the province of Ontario, right?
Mr Tunnacliffe: Yes. It's quite amazing the sort of consistency of views that we had among us.
Mr Grandmaître: What was your argument before Mr Sewell, to include Metro Toronto, or to treat Metro Toronto like any other region? What was your argument?
Mr Tunnacliffe: In terms of an argument before Mr Sewell, I don't think he made a recommendation that's come out as we've got here in the bill. But I think it really comes down to the fact that Metro is a large municipality, with dedicated planning staff. Consistently, it's planned well. It's world-renowned for its planning. Yet here we have a situation where the government appears to be saying it's not fit to plan. They want to retain the control, and to me it just seems a ridiculous situation.
Mr Grandmaître: And no explanation was ever given.
Mr Tunnacliffe: No, not at all.
Mr Grandmaître: Very good. You say on page 4:
"Subdivision and conditions associated with draft approval is one of the main ways of implementing provincial policy. Having a limited number of regions, districts, counties and cities to work through will be easier and more efficient for the province as compared to dealing with 846 municipalities."
I hope you're not promoting the abolition of local government.
Mr Tunnacliffe: Not at all. We recognize regions are two-tier municipalities, but we believe that the function of the upper tier is different from the function of the lower tier, and I address that on the same page in point (v). If the upper tier provides for the infrastructure and the subdivision into blocks, then the lower tier can concentrate on the detailed development approval, the design of the building, where it's located on the lot and so on, and then providing the services for which it's responsible.
Mr Grandmaître: Yes, and on page 5 -- I'm sorry, I left this out -- "On the other hand, the role of the lower tier is to approve the specific development," so on and so forth, "the responsibility of the lower tier, eg, parks."
Mr Tunnacliffe: Yes.
Mr Grandmaître: So you're diminishing the role of local government.
Mr Tunnacliffe: I see great improvement if the two levels of municipal government were able to separate their responsibilities and concentrate on what each is good at.
Mr Grandmaître: Yes. I agree with you.
Mr Tunnacliffe: And as Sally said, the role of the upper tier is to provide the infrastructure and that urban structure and the overall policy direction, and then the lower tier can get on and approve the development on those blocks of land. They issue the building permits and the design and so on.
Mr Grandmaître: Thank you. I've got to pass on.
The Chair: One minute and a half.
Mr Eddy: Well, I'm short-winded, as you know. Thank you very much for your presentation. You certainly brought forward some very important recommendations that should be considered, and I, like you, don't understand the Metro Toronto thing and would be interested in the government's view on whether they will or will not name Metro. We'll leave that to them.
I'm interested in two-tier planning. Of course, the act does not require two-tier planning. It requires plans at the upper tier and they're optional at the lower tier.
I'm very interested in the Waterloo region system, which does not, as I understand, and correct me if I'm wrong, have an official land use plan at the upper tier but a policy plan, it's described as. I really think that upper-tier municipalities should be given the option of having a land use plan or a policy plan. How do you feel it's working in Waterloo? Are you the only upper tier that is that way -- other than Middlesex county, which is a county of course -- and what would your view be in relation to the new act: to continue or not to continue that way? I hear good reports about it, by the way.
Ms Thorsen: We've found it works well. We've operated with a policy plan since 1976 and we are now on our third regional plan, which continues to be a policy plan. I think our relationships with the local municipalities are, on the whole, extremely good.
Mr Eddy: That's what I note.
Ms Thorsen: We do not get into land use issues. We concentrate on policy, and that, I think, is what the new act is aiming at, to ensure that the policy issues are covered by the upper tiers and that it's up to the local municipalities, the lower tiers, to put those policies into action through land use.
Mr Eddy: Yes, I see. Thank you. On page 4, just a clarification. Pages 4 and 5 --
The Chair: We ran out of time.
Mr Eddy: -- it says, "having regard for provincial interests and policy." Do you mean "be consistent with"?
Mr Tunnacliffe: If that's what the legislation's going to say, yes.
Mr Eddy: Yes. I didn't know whether that was --
The Chair: We find your brief very informative and we thank you for coming before this committee.
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DURHAM WETLANDS AND WATERSHEDS
SAVE LYNDE SHORES
The Chair: We call upon the Durham Wetlands and Watersheds, Mr Glen Rae and Mr Tom Moore.
Mr Glen Rae: Thank you. There was a bit of a mixup today with one of our groups cancelling, but we're representing two groups: Save Lynde Shores and Durham Wetlands and Watersheds. On behalf of our groups, we thank the Legislative Assembly of Ontario for the opportunity to speak today.
Our group formed in the spring of 1991 with great concern over the protection of a class 1, provincially significant wetland, Lynde Creek and its watershed, and a proposed development of 6,000 people immediately adjacent to this sensitive area.
We have found that the wetland policy lacks one of the main considerations, that being the importance of the adjacent lands as a wetland function, as many species depend upon both water and land throughout their life cycle. As we know, we have lost 70% of those valuable areas and can't afford to lose one more.
Regarding Bill 163, we found that the Ministry of Natural Resources and conservation authorities base their comments on each specific proposal and generally don't relate it to previous or potential developments and their associated impacts. Also, a number of issues affect the ability of conservation authorities to work effectively in ecosystem conservation. Their limited regulatory powers -- focused primarily on flood and erosion control -- are among several factors that severely restrict the ability of conservation authorities to protect natural areas and systems.
Also, most members of an authority are appointed by municipal council and are frequently municipal politicians and staff. In most areas, it means that few authority members have the appropriate training or commitment for ecosystem-based planning and natural resource management. More consideration should be given to habitat in planning and assessment and the construction and maintenance phases of development which will impact habitat. We must set up an urban wildlife program, the key being provision and care of habitat.
Society needs to move to an anticipate-and-prevent approach to environmental problems rather than the conventional react-and-cure.
Mr Tom Moore: I'll jump right into the sections that I want to make comments on so that we will have lots of time for you to ask questions, and I hope you will.
Starting with number 2, just as a preface here, I should have put an explanation at the beginning.
Number 2: Improving fundamental protection of the environment. I see there's an error already in there. "Economic" should be crossed out. So what I'm saying is, how it should read is, "1.1(a) to promote sustainable development compatible with a healthy and sustainable natural environment...," the reason being that imposing the descriptive use of economic developments as written creates an incompatible position between forces of development and the environment. The intent of the subsection will not change by removing any economic references. Also, there is a need to place the environment on an equal playing field with development by defining the environment as also sustainable.
Again, these reference sections are as per the act or the bill.
"1.1(b) to provide for a land use planning system led by provincial policy statements that achieve their intended goals." The additional phase mentioned about this subsection is needed to increase information to the users of the Planning Act.
"2. The minister, the council...shall provide for, among other matters" rather than "shall have regard to." "Shall have regard to" is not emphatic enough to ensure the list of matters (a) to (q) are adequately addressed by those who are required to act. The change to "provide for" will ensure results on the matters mentioned.
Subsection 3(5) is a very popular one and I believe this is a direct quote of CELA, who I believe are -- I'm not sure when they're making a deputation. Again the purpose is to ensure that all councils, ministers, local boards and the municipal board comply with the policy statements. They are all listed. I think the inference is that not all the ministries have to comply with all of these policy statements.
Subsection 14.1(4), remove any limitation to the composition of the planning authority. There is a need to keep options open and not limit the planning authority to just municipal councillors. There are many experienced and educated resource individuals who should be considered rather than limiting selection to a non-specialized councillor.
My section 3: Optimizing the preparation of official plans. Again it's just a general statement because I found it difficult to really put words in. Just as an aside here, it was rather laborious reading, I'm sure you'd all admit, and unless you're a lawyer, I guess you're not too thrilled at this.
There is a general yet important need to see that official plans are prepared with some form of permanency. This is especially true when addressing land types that reflect the natural environment. Two specific types are open space and hazard lands. All too often, these are only temporary designations which can be changed through amendments to official plans. The open space may be developed into urban areas when it previously was agriculture. The hazard associated with hazard lands can be removed through improvements and subsequently developed. We're finding out that this is exactly happening in Whitby at this point in time.
Protection of lands that are categorized as having environmental significance can only be protected through -- whoops, there's something missing. I'll have to think about that and I'll come back to it.
Section 4: Citizens' input to the planning process: The general impression from citizens who try to be involved in municipal planning, whether for their own benefit or others, is one of extreme difficulty and who meet numerous planned and unplanned obstacles by planning authorities and councillors.
A major improvement in understandable communications is necessary to encourage participants in municipal affairs and will result in a community that is informed and not one that is complacent, such as we have in many instances today.
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Notification: The general public, whether they have a specific interest in ongoing municipal activities or a general one, find that the onus is put on them to become aware of what is happening in the community, ie, the municipal government. Some communities give notice of regular planning and council meetings, including agendas and minutes, or by law give notice by local papers. However, there are many activities that are not announced, except a few, so therefore the public cannot attend.
I would endorse the Sewell commission's examination of this problem and the recommendation to have a public registry created to help remove these problems. Recommendations 75 and 76 are also needed to encourage public participation. Recommendation 79 has numerous proposals identifying the need for public meetings that should not be overlooked. Appropriate time limits must also be addressed to give time for individuals to prepare responses -- see information access below.
On public meetings: More affairs of the community should be heard by public meetings. Requirements to hold public meetings as in recommendation 77 by the Sewell commission, should be adopted and incorporated into the bill. The community should also have the right to attend councillor and planning meetings whether they are public or not. Why should there be any secrets held from the public? The council must also be accountable for its decisions.
On information: Access to relevant information as soon as an application is made is important to the public. Therefore, maximum time is made available to the public to allow for research and compilation of comments and arguments. Freedom of information is not the appropriate tool to use when time is of the essence. As electronic communication becomes more available to the public, access to information through the user net could be a way of improving the timeliness of getting information. The committee should carefully assess where this is needed in the bill. The old adage "governing by the people for the people" is most appropriate here.
Under appeal rights, it is difficult to know whether the bill makes adequate appeal options available where there is a need. Sections 29, 38 and 41 do not appear to provide for appeals. Also the prerequisite to have attended a public meeting is far too stringent. The Sewell commission's recommendation 79 is also supportive of the need for the right to appeal and should be adopted. Recommendation 84 should also be examined again to consider incorporation in the bill.
Finally, on intervening funding, many small concerned citizens' groups need access to funds to allow them to become a voice in municipal affairs. The public officials appear to have unlimited budgets to present their case and to push their bias down everyone's throat. The elected ones forget that they got there by the very people they may be opposing. Only reasonable costs should be imposed on the public when requesting information. A charge of 68 cents a page for a photocopy is really unreasonable.
Most of these things that I've mentioned we've experienced just over the last year within Whitby.
Mr Eddy: Thank you for bringing your concerns to the committee for discussion. I noted your concern in the statement about open meetings. Many councils do follow the rule that all council meetings are open except for very specific items, three items, and committee meetings are as well. It's a concern that you'd find that is a concern in your area, that meetings are not being held in open meetings.
Mr Moore: The one fact is that we've been told at some meetings we've attended, "This is not a public meeting." We don't literally get kicked out, but you certainly don't have an opportunity to say anything.
Mr Eddy: Oh, I see what you mean. So you're not on the list to speak.
Mr Moore: No. I know they've held private meetings. In fact, they've even been announced, that there are private meetings. It just makes you question what is being discussed that might be of specific interest to the public.
Mr Eddy: You mentioned the designation of some land as open space and hazard lands. Open space is indeed a holding zone, as I understand it, for municipalities to use it, but when you're preparing an official plan and have a lot of open space, it leaves it open, as the term says.
Mr Moore: Could I use an example? The region has an open space situated halfway between Whitby and Ajax -- I think it's approximately half in each -- and I'm told that space was squeezed when the original plan was being put together. The purpose was to provide a link between the Ontario shoreline and especially the Lakeridge moraine, and there's also the Iroquois shoreline. What's going to happen down the road if all this open space gets blocked up with development?
Mr Eddy: Right.
Mr Moore: That certainly is not meeting the intent of the region's plan. If you see the definition of "major open space," it's certainly not called a holding place for further development.
Mr Eddy: I like your proposal that for planning purposes there be committees of council with citizen membership on them to deal with planning matters. We used to have planning boards in Ontario, but a previous government in 1983 eliminated them. It was because it was seen that control was in the board and not in council, but I think there's room for a variation of that.
Mr Moore: Yes. I was aware of that too. That's why I'm bringing it up now.
Mr Eddy: Is that a better system in your opinion, the other way?
Mr Moore: I think there has to be some way for public interests to be voiced, and if that means maybe the public suggests people or canvasses the community, such as they've done -- there's a monitoring committee that they're setting up right now for one area.
Mr McLean: Thank you for your presentation. I want to find out what ministry is charging you 68 cents a page to do this.
Mr Moore: The region of Durham.
Mr McLean: It's unbelievable. Anyhow, that's a real concern and it's just totally not right.
If you owned a 100-acre farm near Lake Scugog and somebody came along and six months later you found out that 50% of it was designated as wetlands, do you feel you should be compensated for that designation or do you feel that would just be something that would be natural?
Mr Rae: I feel that we all have to give a little bit back to the land. I don't know if we're exactly owners of the land.
Mr McLean: Well, I'm saying if you owned 100 acres and they came along and zoned 50% of it wetlands, do you feel you should be compensated for that or do you feel you should have no say in that?
Mr Moore: I think the public should be well aware when they're making purchases where they stand on official plans. You might not have been able to do that yesterday, but maybe today you can, so you know what it's coming to. That's why I'm pointing out "major open space." If it's identified as where there are agricultural lands in the area, if they're identified as permanent agricultural, they stay there for ever; as long as our lifetime, anyway.
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Mr McLean: "The hazard associated with hazard lands can be removed through improvements and subsequently developed." Do you feel strongly that that can happen?
Mr Rae: It's happened.
Mr Moore: It's been done. Whitby has it written specifically right into one of its areas. They call it a low-hazard land. How they can differentiate, I don't know. They're saying they want it to be developed.
Mr McLean: "Protection of lands that are categorized as having environmental significance can only be protected through...." You didn't finish that sentence. You said you'd maybe get back to it. Have you thought yet of what the rest of that sentence may be -- "through zoning" or "through some process in planning"?
Mr Moore: I think one of the things, as Glen said in the beginning defining what a wetland function is -- and the adjacent lands, in our view, are certainly to some extent a part of the wetland function. There's water charging of the marsh and if they remove that by controlling stone water runoff, we know how that's treated. It goes into one point in the stream; it doesn't feed all of the stream, so all the boundaries are --
Mr McLean: I liked your suggestion with regard to the appointment of -- whether it's a councillor, or who it is from the public, that they should have some background in whatever they're being appointed to. I think that's important. We used to do that 20-some years ago when I was the head of a municipality.
Mr Gary Wilson: And look what happened.
Mr McLean: Yes, it's one of the better municipalities in the county of Simcoe today, sir.
Mr Wiseman: Lagoon City in the middle of a marsh.
Mr McLean: Obviously you have no idea where the municipality was that I represented, so you shouldn't be making remarks if you're not too sure.
The Chair: All right, all right.
Mr McLean: The fact is that I think it's a good point and it's well taken with regard to appointing people who are qualified to be --
Interjection.
Mr McLean: Thank you for your presentation.
Mr Drummond White: Thank you very much, gentlemen. I'm very pleased to see you coming forth today. Of course, you know the issues that you're speaking of are issues that are very dear to my heart and Mr Wiseman's as well with the wetlands policy.
The issue of the wetlands policy and whether it applies or not, my understanding is that you're concerned about lands that are adjacent to the marsh and that form a nesting area for many of the birds and the natural habitat area that's important for the preservation of the wildlife in the marsh. Is that fairly accurate?
Mr Rae: Yes. The Ministry of Natural Resources, Ducks Unlimited, anglers and hunters -- it's not stated in the wetland policy statement -- have all stated that the adjacent lands are part of the wetland function. For example, frogs don't spend their entire life in water and with some birds it's the same thing. Hawks and owls that depend on food bait, snakes or frogs -- that is also considered a wetland function.
Mr Drummond White: So even while the present plan for that area may preserve the marsh per se, it'll be a narrow sense of preservation because the marsh may be there but much of the wildlife may not be able to sustain itself.
Mr Rae: Yes. There's no habitat there. With the present development, the way it's proposed for Lynde shores, I've seen turtles nesting in the wood chips. That's going to be habitat loss for them and what they've planted there is a thorny barrier that's only 15 metres wide. In time, when that develops, it'll be so thick that it'll be only suitable for small mammals. So they're limiting the species for that area.
Mr Drummond White: The issue of an environmental advisory board has come up before, a group that would be able to inform the municipality or the region in regard to the environmental impact of proposed development. Have you any thoughts about how that would be formed, because I know there was something planned along those lines in Whitby?
Mr Rae: They are forming a group, but they haven't addressed any of the concerns of bylaws to be put in place if there are problems down there.
Mr Drummond White: How would you like to see that group formed, though, to be effective?
Mr Rae: I think you have to look first at the issues of the land, to have something to monitor, and then also look at cats and dogs, the intrusion of people, pollution and noise. I think they have to deal with all those issues before they even think about a committee.
Mr Drummond White: Thank you very much.
Mr Moore: Drummond, I'm not sure if you're aware that --
The Chair: If you don't mind, Mr Wiseman has a question or two.
Mr Drummond White: Mr Moore was still trying to respond.
Mr Moore: I lost my train of thought.
The Chair: Perhaps we can come back to it. Mr Wiseman will ask a question or two, and once you think of it, we can come back to that question.
Mr Wiseman: I'd like to turn your mind to the recently done Durham region official plan, and ask: Did you participate in the public hearings on the Durham region official plan?
Mr Moore: No.
Mr Wiseman: Thanks. Now you can answer.
Mr Moore: Can I put another question forward, or a comment?
The Chair: Sure.
Mr Moore: Some of you are probably aware that the region has been delegated the minister's authority to approve plans as of September 1 of this year, and that's very concerning to us because Whitby's official plan is just in its final phases and they're going to push this through. Is it going to even be close to what the bill is going to ask for? Yet the minister chose to give this delegation to the region.
Mr Drummond White: I think it would be an appropriate question. Would the region's overseeing of the Whitby official plan be in line with Bill 163 if it's done in the next several months, prior to the passage of the bill?
Mr McKinstry: Bill 163 won't come into effect, likely, until possibly January 1995, so therefore it would be consistent with -- and the policy statements would not come into effect either. However, I would make the comment that many of the policies in the comprehensive policy statements already exist in some form as government policy, so many of those policies would already be required to be implemented in any official plan approval in the next few months.
The Chair: Okay?
Mr Wiseman: It would also have to conform to the Durham region official plan.
Mr Moore: Yes. My feeling right now is that as much as I dislike some of what I see missing out of Whitby's plan, it's probably better written than the region's, and yet they only have to meet the region's plan.
PAUL WALSH
The Chair: I'd like to ask Inclusive Neighbourhood Campaign, Fiona Stewart, if she's here, to come forward. If not, we'll move on to the next deputant, Mr Paul Walsh.
Mr Walsh, please begin any time you're ready.
Mr Paul Walsh: I just want to thank the committee for allowing me the opportunity to come and present my views. I do not represent my employer, which is the county of Hastings. You will be hearing from them on Friday in Napanee. I'm not able to attend that day so I made the opportunity for today.
Among my peers, the general consensus is that the Sewell commission did a very fine job. What he was selling, we generally bought, principally that, "The province was getting out of the approvals business," and "County reform is not a term of reference for this commission."
I'm happy to answer any questions the committee might have, other than my two main points, and in fact I'd encourage you to do so, but I'll stick to those two points. Those would be the role of approvals, section 10 and section 28 of Bill 163 and, secondly, county reform in the form of municipal planning authorities, section 8.
The role of the approval authority in the province under the new act presents some problems such as the following:
The time taken to approve or deny approval of a plan of subdivision or an official plan is far too excessive, and I think that's been more or less granted on face value. When the ministry had their official plan hit team in to clear up the backlog of some of the approvals, they were very effective and it was very refreshing to see. However, when many of the contract staff are now gone, it seems that the old patterns are resuming somewhat. This is discouraging.
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A second problem might be described as the apparent inconsistent patchwork of delegated approval authority throughout the province. Some counties have received authority while others who have equally competent staff and an upper-tier official plan in place have not. Bill 163 proposes to delegate approvals to regions, not all of which have official plans. This is confusing. This isn't consistency. It lacks or takes away from the clarity of role.
This is a third problem that might be cited: Counties have been criticized as being too geographically diverse, too large or too removed from the voter to provide meaningful planning services such as approvals. This has some truth.
Solutions:
Make a consistent and principled decision to delegate approvals of plans of subdivision and local plans to counties. This may come with different conditions, depending on the state of planning in a given county, but this is a problem of implementation; it is not a problem of principle. The principle must first be established in law, and it should be.
Secondly, the provincial role, once a bundle of toothy policies are in place, should be -- and this is what people like me need -- a technical adviser, a researcher and innovator, and a sponsor of skills development and training for municipal staff. I think the resources demanded to perform this role that is needed by municipalities would necessitate getting out of the approvals business. I would also suggest that once a comprehensive set of policies are in place, it would be redundant for the province to remain in an approvals role since the remaining task at hand is shaping local circumstances to the policies that have been issued. Something like this can only be done locally.
The third solution offered: Once counties have the authority to approve local official plans, whatever flexibility is needed to address geographical diversity etc will be established. Many services, such as assessment, school boards, social services, health units, among others, all operate on a county or multicounty or a greater county basis. In fact, recent fact-finder reports to the Minister of Education call for administrative and other functions for school boards to occur at a multi-school-board level in the form of consortiums. It would appear to me that other ministries are reinforcing the idea of a county role, not undermining it with the introduction of new rigidly incorporated creatures at a part-county or lower-than-county scale called municipal planning authorities.
Recommendations:
(1) Section 10 of Bill 163 should be amended to establish counties the authority to approve local official plans. We need that flexibility to incorporate variation in local values, particularly in Hastings county which is very north-south in orientation geographically, and we have a mix of urban and rural type communities.
(2) Section 28 of bill 163 should be amended to establish counties the authority to approve plans of subdivision.
(3) Section 10 and section 28 of Bill 163 should be amended to permit the minister to attach conditions for the delegation of authority of approvals to counties. This would give the province the flexibility it needs.
Municipal planning authorities is the second main item I wish to address. I'll refer to them as MPAs.
Problems:
(1) Municipal planning authorities would effectively unilaterally initiate reform of counties without a comprehensive review of implications and alternatives.
(2) Criteria outlined by the final report of the Sewell commission with respect to municipal planning authorities have largely been ignored. There are no real conditions except the minister's approval of the local municipality bylaw to initiate municipal planning authority.
(3) The vehicle of an MPA could be used by frustrated municipalities in dealing with county reform for purposes other than good planning, and I'll expand on that later.
(4) John Sewell publicly stated on several occasions that county reform was not a term of reference, yet permitting MPAs in the present form of Bill 163 is tantamount to this. I think this seriously undermines the due public process that was taken by the commission.
(5) The very idea of an MPA would tend to isolate the local ratepayer and remove the accountability of planning matters from an elected council. It's an old style of governance that to my experience the public has been showing a great deal of philosophical animosity. By way of description, it's not the policy; we've heard about wetlands. To my experience, people want to protect wetlands. They understand that; it's the who and the how that is really bothering them.
(6) MPAs would not be able to effectively address broad planning issues since they would likely be formed with a limited geographical scope. Consider, for example, the recent report in the Toronto Star that commuting distances now average 48 minutes and the implication that would have on growth and settlement policies. Clearly, to address broad planning issues you need a broad geographical scope. Municipal planning authorities, by the nature of this legislation, would not establish that.
(7) Section 8 of Bill 163 is openly discriminatory towards counties and, as such, does not exemplify any basic underlying principle of good governance. The appearance is that an agenda has been written that needs the legal substance to be implemented. This point becomes pronounced when considering that the commission's final report dealt with the idea of an MPA in seven paragraphs, in contrast to the substantive proportion that Bill 163 deals with MPAs. This seriously undermines the good work by the commission.
(8) The motives of those advocating MPAs, at least as I have learned by way of discussion at the local level, is, after formation, the members intend to delegate the approvals downward. So it will be business as usual with a veil called a municipal planning authority. This would be the antithesis of Sewell's emphasis on broad-based planning. You wouldn't have it.
(9) The public does not want a new form of arm's-length government. What is needed is simplification of service delivery by means of integrating as many disciplines and issues as possible at the county level, or in the case of regions, a broad level. An MPA would effectively isolate itself from having such flexibility by its incorporated arm's-length status.
Recommendations:
(1) Delete section 8 of Bill 163. It appears to be poorly thought out and attempts to deal with county reform when it is not an issue. Granted, county reform should occur -- I don't think anybody would disagree with that, really -- but only on a comprehensive basis, not on a hodgepodge basis. Dealing with but one service -- planning -- would only serve to remove an issue that would otherwise motivate counties to reform.
(2) Priority and emphasis should be made to enhancing joint planning rather than establishing MPAs. Consideration should be given to the idea of consortiums among counties, something that appears to be intended to be used by school boards and hospitals in the future, if not already being used. We need a broader scope, not a smaller one, that would be established by an MPA.
(3) Permit the minister to order special studies for local areas that would determine the terms of reference for the development of a number of official plans. This would set the broad basis from which a number of official plans could be developed and direct development thereafter. For example, in Hastings county there was an appeal by the city of Belleville to Sidney township's secondary plan. The ministry came in with a greater Quinte growth area study. It didn't have much substance before the Ontario Municipal Board because it was just a study and it had enough flaws in it that it tended to contain some discredibility, although generally it was all right. But I think there should be some status given to that and I think it would be a very good mechanism for doing what the province wants to do.
(4) If MPAs are to be retained in Bill 163, ensure that they are going to be established for purposes of good planning. Therefore, permit them to be established only in areas where upper-tier planning is not presently occurring and only permitted by the affected county by virtue of county bylaw. These were two of several criteria recommended by the Sewell commission.
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I don't know about you, but I only have page 6, and I know there's page 7. Do you have page 6 only?
Interjection: Yes.
Mr Walsh: Okay, oh well. I do have a bit of an addendum here that's not on the report. It's just basically more or less a case scenario. We'd like to send home a few of those points that have been previously mentioned.
Hastings county is composed of 27 municipalities: eight are urban and 19 are rural. It stretches from the Bay of Quinte, which is a finger of Lake Ontario, up to Algonquin Park.
Mr McLean: Over 100 miles.
Mr Walsh: Yes, and two thirds of the north is pre-Cambrian, one third is -- of the south, of the remaining -- St Lawrence lowlands where most of the agriculture occurs, although the north has its fair share of farms on the sandy knolls etc.
There has been upper-tier planning in place since 1974. It is applied to the whole of the county with the exception of Sidney township, which has a standalone plan. They started their official plan because of some of the problems that they had there, and more or less still do, but didn't finish until some time later. As a result, consent authority remained vested with the county. They had it, but then they lost it. That's a bit of the history of planning and the nature of the geography in Hastings county.
At the south limit of Hastings county you have the city of Belleville and the city of Trenton: Belleville around 40,000 and Trenton around 17,000. Sidney township is 17,000. It makes up maybe about a quarter of the population of the county and about less than a third of the assessment.
So you can see why perhaps some municipalities such as Sidney township would not like to be made up of a broader planning structure called county when they have, for all intents and purposes, great underrepresentation. Representation by population, for all intents and purposes, does not exist in Hastings county. This is a problem, but it's not a planning problem.
Sidney township has a recently approved secondary plan that will phase in and allocate growth beyond 20 years. Hard services are being supplied by the construction of a new water treatment plant and by servicing agreements with abutting municipalities. Official plans of secondary plan that will address broad planning issues beyond a normal time frame, ie, 20 years, have either been recently approved or are in process.
In short, broad planning issues in my area have already been addressed. Yet at the same time, Sidney township, for an example, is a strong advocate of municipal planning authorities. Clearly then, since there are no more broad planning issues over at least the next 20-plus years, their advocacy of such a structure is for non-planning matters. It's really to address in an incremental and piecemeal fashion the problem of county reform towards representation by population.
I can empathize. I do not blame Sidney township for its frustration in being part of Hastings county, but the solution is not a municipal planning authority. This would only serve to further the fragmentation of the delivery of services at local level. The problem is county reform and this issue must be given more respect and more consideration than simply dealing with one service called "planning." Once municipal planning authority is established, it will bring with it a great deal of inertia and preclude the optimal solution for county reform.
I beg this committee to assert its authority, its responsibility and leadership and strike section 8 from Bill 163. That concludes my presentation. I'd like some questions.
The Chair: Unfortunately, there's no time for questions, but if somebody wants to make a brief, 30-second statement, that would be all right. Do you want to do that?
Mr Eddy: I would agree with you completely on the MPAs. Every county that's come forward says, "We don't want it." I don't remember one deputant saying: "It's good. We want it." I agree with you. Good point.
Mr McLean: I appreciate your brief. I have one short comment I wanted to make with regard to giving the approval of local official plans. Do you think that will ever happen, that there will be approval for local official plans? I know there will be approval for counties to be able to delegate the subdivisions and the approvals for that.
Mr Walsh: I don't see any reason why not. We're already doing zoning bylaws. In the past, official plans have been glorified zoning bylaws, with a number of designations put in place. Secondly, we really can't control the vision of a municipality and its intent by virtue of a zoning bylaw; it has to be done by way of policies by the local council.
As it's such an important tool and it's such a local matter, I think it's imperative that county be given the authority to grant local official plans, perhaps even local official plans that may apply to more than one municipality. Then that municipality would be able to have representation by population on a planning advisory committee that would be dealing with the local official plan.
In Hastings county, for example, I'd only want to see two: one in the north and one in the south; one in the north to deal with shoreline development. That's a big concern. They're very progressive thinkers in the northern part of Hastings, despite what some may think. Some of the values are very much converging. There used to be a diversity of values, but they are now converging.
The Chair: Mr Wilson, please a statement, not a question.
Mr Gary Wilson: Thank you very much for your presentation, Mr Walsh. It certainly gives the committee a very appealing foretaste of what we can expect in North Fredericksburgh, actually, when we go into the area farther east. It's regrettable we don't have the time to go into the two issues that you so clearly and thoroughly outline. Certainly, it highlights an issue, not only in our area; that is, how you balance the county interests with the municipal interests, which can often appear divergent, at least. It's something I'm sure we'll hear again and we'll look to see that the legislation, with ideas like yours, will be as strong as possible in this area. So thanks again for coming.
The Chair: Thank you for coming and for your brief.
Mr Peter White: Mr Chairman, I wonder if I could offer a clarification on a remark that was made earlier.
The Chair: Please identify yourself.
Mr Peter White: My name is Peter White. I'm a senior planner with the Ministry of Natural Resources. Mr Eddy raised a question related to why the minister hadn't circulated a certain document. I've sought clarification on that for the committee, and if I may, if you refer to the letter submitted by Miss White, in her letter she says, "Our participation in this process is the result of a request made by the Honourable Howard Hampton, Minister of Natural Resources, to submit the...report to the various...legislative initiatives," that were occurring. One of those is this committee, the other one is Bill 171, and a third one was the Crown Forest Sustainability Act.
The minister wasn't able to deal with the entire report within the time frame to meet all of those committee requirements, so he asked Miss White and members of that ad hoc committee to ensure that you, your committee in particular, but the other committees as well, had the benefit of that report for their consideration without it coming through him in a very, if you will, formal sense. Also, since they wrote it, they could answer the questions better than the minister could. So that was what the minister had intended. We hope that's acceptable.
Mr Eddy: My only point was that if I'd had it some time sooner, I'm sure -- you can't get into it, but I'd have got through some of it, not all of it, and been able to ask questions. But we still can.
Mr Peter White: Yes, and the minister and members of the ad hoc committee are available to discuss that report. But the minister didn't feel that he could be prepared to discuss it with you, so that's why he left it with that committee.
The Chair: Thank you. This committee's adjourned until 9:30 tomorrow morning in Peterborough.
The committee adjourned at 1719.