COUNTY OF LENNOX AND ADDINGTON
PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY FEDERATION OF AGRICULTURE
CONTENTS
Friday 9 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
Van Meer Ltd
Arnold Vandermeer, president
Quinte Labour Council
Douglas Sword, president
Robert Blackadder
Eric Batten
County of Prince Edward
Brian McComb, planning director
Bill Bonter, reeve, township of Ameliasburgh
George Vincent, warden
David Hahn
Theresa Kellaway
County of Hastings
Dr Allan Leal, member, planning advisory committee
Niall Carney, planning director
Township of Sidney
Carl Cannon, planning director
Jack Arthur, reeve, township of Sidney
James Pine, chief administrative officer
County of Lennox and Addington
Jim Sova, county planner
Prince Edward County Federation of Agriculture
Keith Matthie, president
Jim Taylor, board member
McCrae Danforth, second vice-president
City of Belleville
Brian Smith, councillor
Stewart Murray, planning director
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: Haeck, Christel (St Catharines-Brock ND)
Bisson, Gilles (Cochrane South/-Sud ND)
Chiarelli, Robert (Ottawa West/-Ouest L)
*Curling, Alvin (Scarborough North/-Nord L)
Harnick, Charles (Willowdale PC)
Malkowski, Gary (York East/-Est ND)
Murphy, Tim (St George-St David L)
Tilson, David (Dufferin-Peel PC)
*Wilson, Gary (Kingston and The Islands/Kingston et Les Iles ND)
Winninger, David (London South/-Sud ND)
*In attendance / présents
Substitutions present/ Membres remplaçants présents:
Carr, Gary (Oakville South/-Sud PC) for Mr Tilson
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
Johnson, Paul R. (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings/ Prince Edward-Lennox-Hastings-Sud ND)
for Ms Harrington
Perruzza, Anthony (Downsview ND) for Mr Bisson
Villeneuve, Noble (S-D-G & East Grenville/S-D-G & Grenville-Est PC) for Mr Harnick
Wiseman, Jim (Durham West/-Ouest ND) for Mr Winninger
Also taking part / Autres participants et participantes:
Ministry of Municipal Affairs:
Dewar, Diana, manager, municipal planning policy branch
Hayes, Pat, parliamentary assistant to minister
Clerk / Greffière: Bryce, Donna
Staff / Personnel: Stobo, Carolyn, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1002 in the municipal offices, North Fredericksburgh.
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): Call the meeting to order, please. Before calling the first deputant, we'd like to have Mr Johnson greet us here. Mr Johnson, please do that.
Mr Paul R. Johnson (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings): Thank you, Mr Marchese.
Mr Ron Eddy (Brant-Haldimand): May I ask why? What's happening? I don't know.
Mr Paul Johnson: Mr Eddy, if I can answer, if we were in your riding, I have no doubt that the Chair would ask you if you would just like to greet your fellow colleagues of the Legislature.
Mr Eddy: It's never happened in any of the other meetings.
Mr Paul Johnson: Oh, it's happened on many occasions in my opportunities of chairing committees.
Mr Eddy: I have no objections.
The Chair: It's not a big deal, Mr Eddy.
Mr Eddy: No, I didn't know what was happening, that's all.
Mr Noble Villeneuve (S-D-G & East Grenville): Can we question the deputant when it's done?
Mr Paul Johnson: I appreciate this very short opportunity, as I guess I've already said, to welcome the standing committee on administration of justice to my riding, and indeed to a part of rural Ontario where committees don't often come, and on probably the first time a committee has ever been to the hall in North Fredericksburgh township.
I simply want to take this very, very short opportunity at the beginning of these proceedings to indeed welcome my colleagues to this venue, and for all of us who come from rural Ontario as members of the Legislature, and we represent all parties, we certainly collectively advocate on behalf of rural Ontario. I was indeed pleased that the committee chose to come to my riding and have at least one hearing in rural Ontario and in North Fredericksburgh. I thank you very much.
VAN MEER LTD
The Chair: We are ready for our first deputant, Van Meer Ltd, Mr Arnold Vandermeer, president. Welcome, Mr Vandermeer. You have a half an hour for your presentation. Please leave as much time as possible for the members to ask you questions.
Mr Arnold Vandermeer: I don't think I will be a full half-hour. But I want to bring some points across and appreciate the opportunity to let me speak to your committee. As you said, my name is Arnold Vandermeer. I'm president of Van Meer Ltd.
I am also a director of the Quinte Home Builders' Association, which sort of operates around the Bay of Quinte area, centring around Belleville. I am on their liaison committee. I am also a member of the Ontario Home Builders' Association. I'm on the land development committee and a member of the Canadian Home Builders' Association. I'm a professional engineer. I've been practising for over 23 years in the land development business, from construction to design to acting as land development manager for small builders and minor land owners, let's say, who are providing residential housing to the area.
I also do some work in regard to the development of industrial and commercial lands. I'm also a member on the implementation advisory committee of the Bay of Quinte remedial action plan and also working on their land use planning working group. So I'm involved with a fair bit of the effects of the development industry and feel that some of the changes that are suggested in your Planning Act being brought forth should have some improvements or give consideration to our area.
Basically with our industry certainty is a big issue. We have to make commitments. That has always been the problem of finalizing the development process to be able to bring on affordable housing. When commitments are to be made to banks to pay back mortgages or payments of loans on lands through the development process, any delays set up alarms, and that's what we've been dealing with. I find that one of the concerns I have with what's being suggested as the lapsing of the draft plans of subdivision was not the solution that we were looking for in regard to certainty in planning.
This is an issue that's being addressed trying to satisfy concerns from other agencies in regard to availability of sewage capacity, water commitments etc, and I think there should be another solution to it, possibly forewarning or conditional draft plan approval. That capacity has to be made available before you can proceed with your development.
Everybody seems to be obtaining draft plan approval, and on that basis they've got a commitment to capacity at that point in time. Then going on, nothing happens to the project. Now we have numerous projects at a standstill. For new projects, small infill projects that we are involved with, let's say -- are you speaking to the microphone here? Everybody's busy talking around here.
Mr Eddy: That's not correct. Not everybody is busy talking, sir.
Mr Vandermeer: Okay, thank you. I've taken time out of my busy work schedule to be here to make a presentation of the concerns that I have.
Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): Everything you're saying is being recorded by Hansard and we all can review it later as well.
Mr Vandermeer: It's distracting my presentation, sir.
The Chair: Please go ahead, sir.
Mr Vandermeer: On that basis small projects are being held up. There is available capacity in treatment plants normally for further growth and commitments are allocated to types of uses that are not marketable at today's time frame. On that basis no development has been proceeding. Commitment is made available and there's no contingency made to adjust for what could be allowed to proceed.
At the same time, what has been approved -- you wouldn't really want to pull away. If a project is for apartments today, nobody in the present climate is going to be building apartments. At the same time, the land use designation for that area should probably still be of a medium- or high-density use. I don't feel that a draft plan should be withdrawn on that basis, to take that away.
The public, the neighbours in the surrounding area should be forewarned of what the type of uses will be: provisions for zoning, withholding designations, also for that to ensure that the public is forewarned and no surprises come out. Everybody feels that vacant fields can be parklands in a sense. The documentation is there and it can be made available so they are forewarned of what is happening in that area.
I feel that draft plans should be looked at with conditions to be allowed to be approved for development of the property. But there's no guarantee that there's capacity. Through development charges etc, funding is being provided to make capacity available to let development proceed. These are some of the planning issues, economic development issues, that have to be worked on with municipalities to have their strategic plan in place to allow it to happen.
I feel it's important that the planning process is there, and the documentation is in place, and reasonable response times to reply to this to get approvals in place, and not just at the initial planning stages when planning is being done. We can go through the approval process and finally get draft plan approval, but there's still a long hurdle afterwards just to get clearance letters from agencies because of their own resource commitments.
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We have projects that were committed, were tentatively looked at to be approved for June or July of this year that have still not been draft plan approved. Just taking through little minor changes to studies, from draft plan to final approval, a review of engineering, minor modifications have to be looked at and so reports, mapping has some minor adjustments and it's not clear to them.
On that basis, I would like to see that draft plans are approved and that there are implementations put in place that if there are too long delays, we've got to move on ahead, because when you have short periods for the development industry to respond to providing the needs of the public for housing, two to three weeks is a long period of time.
When you look at little time frames of bringing projects on stream in the spring for your summer construction industry and closings that happen, let's say, around August, prior to people going to school, your next stage goes on in sort of November or December again, so we have these little activity periods. So a month in a six-month period of time in a year when our industry is very active has a big impact and the responses are not there.
I realize that they're resource allocations as well, but when we're dealing with agencies who want to be involved with the process, then they should also have a better commitment to respond. It goes without saying that it's some of our crown corporations that are creating the delay.
That was one of my concerns that I felt was not the solution with the way it's being presented now to overcome it as the lapsing of draft plan approval, and I think it should be looked at that a solution of a condition of draft plan approval would be available so plans can stay in effect.
My own feeling in regard to what's been proposed as supportive of is the municipal planning authorities. I feel it is good for this area, the way our county structures are, and we do have groups of growth areas that I feel if municipalities are cooperative it would make this venture work. The old planning boards had difficulties, but I feel that the process being set with commitments from municipalities to develop municipal planning authorities could work very well around some of the major municipalities in the Quinte area, and I am supportive of that.
The only other concern basically that I see happening is that there's no appeal period on the variance process, and I just find that the reactions I get many times from getting involved, the decision can be very biased, political and I think there should be referral on that basis.
These are my basic concerns. I sense that we've been getting more involved proactively and we can have green groups being developed, being concerned with issues, we can have chambers of commerce working on, but all of a sudden we create a group of land owners, businessmen, and you end up being labelled. All of a sudden they're saying we're trying to help the political process be involved, get the public informed, that we have to find a balance between our economy and our environment and our social lifestyle, and the balance is always there. But if it gets weighed to one side, then I think we have to pull it back in line. I feel that our industry had pulled back and was not that proactive in our local communities.
I don't want to become a politician, I've been asked to many times. I don't want to follow up and have to deal with complaints at 11 o'clock at night about potholes or whatever in roads, because I do live in a township as well. I've been involved on committees and I feel I can be involved that way more, but sometimes when we want to influence it, it looks like we're lobbying and that's not the intent. I'd like to feel that a politician should be well informed, and that's why I want to take a brief moment of my time to present my views here on behalf of the industry and the private sector who, I feel, is generating the funds.
It's very difficult when you have a project that I was working on, which was delayed for over six weeks for an approval. It was supposed to come on this spring, had the potential to bring in $12 to $15 million over its first phase. It had a very low priority when it was private sector commitments of home buyers coming into a subdivision. Meanwhile we're working off trying to spend $500,000 here on a infrastructure program and things like this out of our tax dollars.
I was pushing for that, and when we get put on a low priority of getting a clearance of a study that's been done and all we're asking for is compliance to it and we send a letter off, that letter takes three weeks. Three weeks in a two-month time frame is a big, significant number and it has affected people dealing with financial institutions.
That's the gist of my presentation.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We'll begin with the official opposition. Monsieur Grandmaître, and after that Mr Curling. Five minutes per caucus.
Mr Bernard Grandmaître (Ottawa East): I'll have one question, and then Mr Curling. I agree with you that time is money and delays are very costly, and I suppose from the tone of your presentation it seems that you agree with the principle of Bill 163. If you were the minister or if you had the power of the minister and you wanted to make some changes to Bill 163, what would be your priority? What changes would you bring about or what amendments?
Mr Vandermeer: Part of the legislative process I'm not that experienced with is somehow deadlines. We're dealing with deadlines up front at the planning process and responding to draft plan approvals etc. It's very easy when you go through the stages to say you've got so much time to respond to a draft plan submission for development of land or an official plan as established policy, but when you go through the rest of the process -- it's very easy to pick apart a study and say, "Let's have some more work done on it." I sort of have the philosophy if I can meet with somebody and respond within an hour, I'm going to get his reply the next day. If I respond to him a day later, he's off on to something else and it's going to be a week. If I take a week, it's a month. That's the delay problem of the mechanism today.
Mr Grandmaître: Do you agree with the time frame of Bill 163?
Mr Vandermeer: As part of the initial planning process, I can work with that time frame, yes. It's the follow-up later on and approvals that have delays that are not being addressed.
Mr Grandmaître: Very good.
Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): Mr Vandermeer, when you were reading off some of your involvement, you said you were quite involved with the home builders' association at a Canadian level and an Ontario level. I'm sure you would then observe from Bill 163 whether or not you would agree with some of the comments we have been hearing, that it is felt it is more or less urban planning being forced upon rural planning. Do you feel this bill is reflected that way and that things have to change in order to recognize that they plan differently in the rural areas than in the urban areas?
Mr Vandermeer: I won't differentiate between urban and rural, but I do think -- let's put the name to it, the Metropolitan Toronto area. We have urban areas here too, an urban and rural intermix that goes on between townships and cities that we have, but I do feel we're being asked to implement Toronto solutions to our area. My view is that basically there is resentment.
Mr Curling: I was about to say that too, and I think you hit it right on, that people are saying too that it's a Toronto plan enforcing upon the other areas of Ontario. So it's worse than even I've described it, from rural to urban or from urban to rural itself.
Mr Vandermeer: Yes. I guess that's one of the reasons why I thought the municipal planning authority is what could help become a solution for our area. If I'm comparing the Belleville area, let's say, we have a county structure, Hastings county. The city of Belleville has its own planning structure. Sidney township is adjacent to Belleville. It's sort of semirural-urban. It's being serviced in with the adjacent municipality plus their own. So we're getting that sort of mix that's occurring.
I feel you've got a planning authority for the county which reaches way up north into the Bancroft area and the total interests aren't all the same. We have to give regard to each other, but there should be sort of a subcommittee planning authority down there that can take care of your official planning as well as your draft plan approvals, instead of having to deal with maybe the county level.
Mr Curling: I will turn this into something that I hope you can expand on. You have also indicated that delay is really something that costs you in some respect. We've heard that from many developers themselves. As a matter of fact, they approached the government now. It's the developers now. We call them the not-for-profit developers, and then have the other private sector saying that delay and the price of land and infrastructure costs are so great. Do you see that this kind of a delay itself has been driving up the cost of affordable housing and therefore the creation of another sector of not-for-profit developers is out there now?
Mr Vandermeer: Oh, yes. The cost has gone up considerably in delays from the development aspect. The project I'm comparing to right now has been delayed about three months. On the time basis that was being established, there's a million dollars sitting in the ground that we want final plan registration on. We're waiting for one more clearance letter.
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Mr Curling: From whom?
Mr Vandermeer: This one is from the Ministry of Environment now, but there was a crown corporation involved as well. I found them even worse at this point in time.
Mr Curling: Which crown corporation was that?
Mr Vandermeer: It was the railways.
Mr Villeneuve: Thank you, Mr Vandermeer. I think I detect a fair bit of frustration in your presentation and I think that's fair game. That's why you're here. The OMB, you've had an opportunity of dealing with them quite extensively, have you?
Mr Vandermeer: Yes.
Mr Villeneuve: How have you found them to this point, prior to 163 and to Sewell?
Mr Vandermeer: Up until recently we knew where the parameters were dealing with them because you are doing your homework. Our philosophy in developing land was, with our clients, we could put up front what the hurdles are and how they had to be addressed. If you did your homework, presented your studies and supported your evidence, it was weighed reasonably fairly.
The last hearing basically was we found the Ontario Municipal Board was taking the same role as the Minister of Municipal Affairs and was reviewing all the information. If it was one-sided information, they were basically turning down the approval when they weren't hearing the negative side. They're trying to say it's incomplete, which caught us off guard.
But that's the direction it's going in, that they want full documentation to support the recommendation instead of weighing the objector. If the objector has withdrawn, and we had a situation -- there was one localized concern, but not a planning concern, and we had to take a deferral on the board and redo additional planning documentation. The hearing has been adjourned and it should come back in later this month, to try to establish with the Ontario Municipal Board the status.
Mr Villeneuve: One of the major problems, and you've mentioned the Ministry of Environment, in my travels to and from Toronto, from my riding way down in southeastern Ontario here, I've many times stopped in Kingston to attempt to get comments. All they have to do is to comment, and it's a very frustrating situation when they're telling you that it's going to take six weeks or six months to comment. It's one of the most frustrating things of all.
Minor variances, a major thorn in the side of some of the developers. The mechanism is being done away with in 163. What's a minor variance? We're looking for guidance here.
Mr Vandermeer: There have been various decisions on minor variances, what is a minor variance. You really can't quantify it, we feel. It's sort of looking at, can you encroach into your side yard or into your front yard? You have a 25-foot front yard and the zoning bylaw sets up it's 25 feet and you built your house, and by accident, because you're doing it yourself and you didn't want to pay the surveyor to come and stake it out for you, it was going to cost you $500, you're ahead two or three inches. The legal department looks at it and says, "The bylaw says 25 feet," and the surveyor goes in and says it's, let's say, 25.2 feet. They say, "You're out by 0.2 feet and you need a variance." Some surveyors will say: "Let's round it off. The degree of accuracy should say 25 feet."
I think there should be some mechanism in there to give you some flexibility. I've always suggested, you know, I don't think it's fair, you say 25 feet in the front yard and 25 feet in the rear yard, and you expand the house one foot, six inches either way, then you're trying to cheat. But if you buy -- honestly, what is a side yard requirement? It was set up to give you a sort of quality of separation and now we're trying to quantify it.
Mr Villeneuve: Okay, you've described a minor variance. We've also been told in this forum that minor variances have changed the use of the land. Have you seen variances that are minor to that point or major to that point?
Mr Vandermeer: I have seen specific uses put in, yes, on a variance basis.
Mr Villeneuve: Do you agree with that?
Mr Vandermeer: No, not from a land use perspective, because that's a major change. Now, there are short-term bylaws that can be implemented that you can have a use established for, let's say a one- or two-year period, which I would rather see done. But for long-term use it should be put in a zoning bylaw.
Mr Villeneuve: Thank you.
Interjection: Zoning bylaw, did you say?
Mr Vandermeer: Land use zoning, yes.
The Chair: There are three speakers on the list, just a reminder: Mr Wiseman, Mr Johnson and Ms Haeck, if there's time.
Mr Jim Wiseman (Durham West): I'd like to go over a couple of your comments and to get some comments from staff, if the Chair would allow. You said that plans of subdivision will lapse. My understanding of section 50 of the Planning Act now is that the town or the local planning authority could repeal a subdivision approval.
The other comment that I'd like to have some comment is on page 36 of bill, under section 50 of the act that is amended, on expiration, where it states that "The council of a local municipality may, at any time before the expiration of a bylaw under subsection (7), amend the bylaw to extend the time period." Does that section allow for the local municipality to extend a plan of subdivision under this bylaw, or is there an automatic suspension of subdivision planning?
Ms Diana Dewar: I can respond to that. I'm Diana Dewar from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. The bill provides that a municipality may provide that a draft plan of subdivision will lapse. The minimum period would be two years, but it could certainly longer be than that. This is enabling legislation. The bill also allows that the municipality can provide for an extension of that draft approval. So there certainly is a lot of scope there for the municipality and the developer to negotiate.
The other section that you referred to --
Mr Wiseman: Section 50 of the current act.
Ms Dewar: I'll just have to look that up and I'll get back to you.
Mr Vandermeer: Could I just comment? The word you used there was the word "negotiate," and that's what we're always coming back to the table on, which brings back the uncertainty: Where do you stand in the future every time? I feel that the issue at hand here, if you have sewage capacity available in your treatment plant and it has been committed to somebody's draft plan and somebody else comes in and says, "Why should he have it? I'm going to go tomorrow. I want my draft plan approval," how do you weigh the fairness at that point in time? It's going to be very hard.
He may just say, "Register my final plan," and he could sit on it. You could take the final plan and just change it and have it registered. Then you go into the deeming process of undoing a plan. I've seen subdivisions registered and still sitting there with sewage capacity committed to it and nothing has ever been done.
Mr Wiseman: Under that circumstance then it would either benefit or not benefit, depending on which camp you were in.
The other question I had is, my understanding is if an official plan is drafted and the zonings and densities are put into place, that even if the draft plan of subdivision lapses, those zonings will not change, so communities will in fact have some security of knowing the official plan has designated it, although my own opinion is that official plans aren't worth the paper they're written on because councils change them like that. Where I come from the official plan isn't even six months old and there are already five major official plan amendments. Somewhere there's balance and the other perspective on the official plans is they don't really mean anything anyway.
Mr Vandermeer: I look at an official plan as a policy for direction and too many people are using it for enforcement. We're starting at point A and we're heading 20 years down the road to another area. But I think we can wave around on that line and we're trying to interpret literally the issues at hand in interpreting an official plan.
The zoning bylaw will maybe designate your land use, but any time you go through a draft plan of subdivision process, many times to control it, if you had your land zoned, you should be able to develop on it. So normally you'd have a holding zone on that piece of property, which still opens you up into the public process again for an objection, and if you get referred to an objection, you're again waiting for a year down the road possibly before you could have a hearing to get it resolved.
If you can put the public at ease about what is going to happen in their backyards and the commitment is fully from the land owner/development sector to move on ahead -- it's his money, out of his pockets, depending how deep they are -- at least he's in control. But if he's going to objected to because they don't like the land use that was there and they'll try to find some technicality to defer it to the board, you're into another 12-month, 18-month delay, and that's where no commitments can be made.
Mr Wiseman: I have to defer.
The Chair: Mr Johnson, it will have to be very quick because there's hardly any time left.
Mr Paul Johnson: I don't get to go into the detail I'd like to, but you lead into the point I wanted to make, and that was about public participation. One of the things that can cause a lot of grief for provincial members, municipal politicians and indeed developers is the fact that there is a perception that developers are doing something underhanded from time to time.
If there was continual public participation in planning, in ensuring that communities are developed in the way that the community, in a broad sense, wants that to happen, then that would probably reduce or eliminate some of the possible interventions that cause you all the grief with delays. Would you agree with more comprehensive public participation in planning?
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Mr Vandermeer: The public doesn't show up until it happens in their backyard.
Mr Paul Johnson: You see, if they were there in the beginning, that may --
Mr Vandermeer: But that's where your big picture comes into play. You're trying to plan your community and so you say, "This is how it will be growing." But the minute that growth occurs in their backyard and you have to go for zoning on it, then all of a sudden they became aware of it because they're not involved with the process and they're not interested in it.
Mr Paul Johnson: But isn't it true, though, that --
The Chair: Mr Johnson, I'm sorry.
Mr Vandermeer: I do feel that the public is involved with the process throughout, at least I find in this area and I don't think there's anything underhanded, but many presentations now -- you do an official plan amendment and a rezoning and draft plan concurrently, so that people know what's going to happen. It used to be you did an official plan amendment. I went for high-density use on a block of land or a residential use of some form and further down the road, the plan came in and you found out what the use was. But now I think all the information is brought up front more to the property owners.
The Chair: Ms Dewar, you had an answer to a question?
Ms Dewar: Yes. Subsection 50(7.1) allows for the expiration of a part lot control bylaw and that really wouldn't have any effect on a draft plan approval. There would be no scope there to provide for the lapsing of a draft approval.
Mr Wiseman: I guess my question then is, do local councils have at this current time the right to repeal a draft plan of subdivision?
Ms Dewar: A draft plan of subdivision can be withdrawn under the existing act, yes.
Mr Wiseman: By the local council?
Ms Dewar: By the approval authority.
The Chair: Thank you. We need to move on.
Mr Eddy: No, by the approving authority, whoever they are.
Ms Dewar: By the approval authority. That's right.
Mr Eddy: They've got the authority, yes, but if it's the province, then it's on recommendation of the local council.
Mr Wiseman: No, you don't have to require ministry approval to do it under the current legislation.
The Chair: All right, Mr Wiseman. We can get these clarifications in a different way.
Mr Vandermeer, we thank you very much for sharing your ideas and your concerns with this committee.
Mr Vandermeer: Thank you.
QUINTE LABOUR COUNCIL
The Chair: We invite Quinte Labour Council, Belleville, Mr Douglas Sword, president.
Mr Douglas Sword: Good morning, Chairman Marchese and members of the committee. I would like to say at the outset that the Quinte Labour Council appreciates the opportunities that have been presented to the citizens of this province over the past four years to attend hearings like this and put forward their views.
The Quinte Labour Council welcomes the opportunity to appear before this standing committee on the administration of justice and to present our concerns based on our Belleville experience regarding municipal conflict of interest, be it real or perceived. That's what I would like to address specifically this morning, the aspect of the act that will deal with the conflict of interest.
Speaking as president of the Quinte Labour Council, representing in excess of 8,000 public and private sector members from over 40 local unions in three eastern Ontario counties, which incidentally include the cities of Belleville and Trenton and the town of Picton, let me state quite candidly that we are of the opinion that while most elected people are principled in the conduct of public business, they are nevertheless, most unfortunately, tainted by the practices of those who operate in the shadows and are sensed, from time to time, not to be working in the best interests of the total community.
Because of the adventures of some elected officials at the federal, provincial and municipal levels of government, most unfortunately the fingers of cynicism, suspicion and mistrust are pointed at all of you. When a local or national newspaper seeks to discredit any one of you, you are all held in disrepute. How many times have you heard, "They're all the same"? That's most unfortunate because, living in a democracy like we do, it's unfortunate those things occur and those allegations are made.
Necessary to local governments, in our opinion, are requirements that secure public accountability, enhance effective leadership and administration and promote representative and informed citizen participation. While endorsing the proposal that the minister be empowered to appoint a commissioner as set out in schedule B, sections 7 and 8 of Bill 163, as recognition by all municipal councils that full disclosure, with appropriate exclusions, must be appropriate with conducting public business, we strongly recommend that all citizens have greatly improved access to information through the creation of public information centres, and by that I don't mean in the neighbourhood of Queen's Park and Toronto. This centre should be administered by the city clerk who should ensure that all public libraries are aware of the documents available at this centre and, where practical, more formal documents are available.
In 1991 a politician fell from grace in British Columbia and, to paraphrase this official, it perhaps isn't a conflict of interest if nobody else knows about it. We're convinced that secrecy is the camouflage used by politicians to curtain their involvement in certain issues invariably leading to some type of tangible reward for self, a family member or an associate. While within the law, the cloak used to mask these activities is, for the most part, numbered companies and companies using coded names whereby the names of the major shareholders will probably never be made public.
As we have already stated, the Quinte Labour Council considers it important that the public is fully informed and the information is readily available. With regard to any person holding elected office, that person must be obligated to make public any and all holdings owned in whole or in part by himself or herself or family member. It is only appropriate that some control is exercised over senior administrative staff who may, by themselves or working with others, be in a position to capitalize on insider information. All of the foregoing information would then form part of the documentation available for perusal at the public information centre. Blind trust is no longer the answer.
Please allow me to cite a recent example of the disdain in which even the possibility that a conflict exists is held. It's unfortunate I couldn't show you this tape of the August 15, I believe it was, meeting of the Belleville municipal council. In it you would be shocked at the indications that this sort of thing goes on in an elected council.
To let you know a couple of things that happened, during the August 15, 1994, meeting of the Belleville city council it was asked by Councillor Meeks if the chairman of the council- appointed committee, Belleville 2000, declared a conflict of interest as a majority owner of a property abutting a heritage property for which funding has been applied for under the federal-provincial infrastructure program.
Another councillor, Councillor Bochnek, stated there have been other violations that have been far more serious. Councillor Tausenfreund, in what might be judged as a cavalier attitude towards the act, stated he was a shareholder in Century Place, the abutting property, and he would, in spite of this, be voting on the question.
How do we deal with such conspiracies of silence and, again, such arrogance? I would leave it to you people who draft and pass the laws in this province to look into such things and empower the citizens of a community to react in a way that won't lead to extensive legal fees.
As it now stands, and not to allege things among -- oh, another thing. The taxpayers were reminded there is a procedure under the act, and this was stated by the mayor of the city, as it now stands, not to allege things among each other; in fact telling them not to do this in public. "Don't wash your dirty linen in public." We are sure that a commission is the only answer to the old boys' clubs which appear to flourish in some municipalities.
We also have concern that some members of municipal councils languish far too long as elected members and gain re-election under the recognition factor. Those who read the Toronto Star, and I think a lot of us probably do, would have read some time ago that a woman was running for her first election in the city of Toronto and she said that is one of the factors that makes it most difficult for new people seeking public office to get elected, that people look down the list -- maybe not at the provincial level; I'm not quite sure how you people make out -- but in the municipal people look down the lists, and if they have any knowledge of that person at all, be it a store owner who advertises on the radio or through other means, being a ball player, hockey player, whatever, that's a familiar thing to see and they generally get a vote. We strongly feel there should be a termination period and we recommend two three-year terms.
We have on the municipal council of the city of Belleville, as an example, people who have been there 17 years, 20 years and they will probably get re-elected through the factor that that is a name that has become known, one through the fact that she is involved with a fund-raising committee through the Belleville sports community and that person seldom speaks, practically never speaks at a council meeting. Surely people like that must have opinions.
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Over a period of time it has been found that a watchdog press provides an invaluable service in any given community. However, in its absence, we depend to a large degree on the integrity of all elected members and, where integrity is questionable, we must be able to readily identify breaches of public trust when they occur. To this end an amended act must be explicit and carry adequate penalties.
I'll refer back to the statements that were made at the city council meeting in Belleville on August 15, and a watchful press would have noticed those allegations of conflict of interest that flew around the council table and done some investigation, would have looked into it and come up with something probably in print. However, one of the articles that came out in print of the council meeting was how many times members of city council referred to the mayor as "your worship." Total balderdash, I believe.
The Belleville Intelligencer, however, in its editorial of August 31, did state that "Bill 163 is a good piece of legislation -- provided it works as well in practice as it reads on paper." It further states that: "Councillors will also be restricted from accepting presents or benefits. In the past, there have been rumblings that some politicians may have made lucrative land deals while on Belleville council." Again, an alert investigative press would have done more delving into what may or may not have happened.
Also in a letter to the editor in the Toronto Star, dated August 31, 1994, the writer James Cass of Stirling -- just north of Belleville incidentally -- stated, "Secrecy has long been the cloak to keep us uninformed about projects and deals that affect our quality of life -- and our bank accounts." He concludes by saying that, "We must fight for knowledge and insist on playing an informed role in our own community affairs." The Quinte Labour Council asks this standing committee to support our recommendations for more open municipal government.
We do have some recommendations. We haven't, as I say, gone into the land use planning part of the new act, but we are restricting ourselves to the one question:
(1) That local registers be established and maintained in each public information centre of all disguised companies, whether by number or name, and identifying all officers and principals.
I don't think that would be difficult for those people who hide behind the fact that they're part of a numbered company or a company that may bear the name of Wellington Inc or Jenrob or whatever other name.
(2) That all assets be declared and filed with the city clerk and the public information office within 30 days of assuming office and in the event assets are in communities which the municipality negotiates, for example, sewer and water, that these assets must be filed with both municipalities.
(3) That a means of appointment to boards and commission be part of amended legislation and that it be consistent from one community to all communities.
(4) That a person be appointed and, most importantly, given authority to investigate any conflict of interest when petitioned to do so.
We have a small part of a quote from Bertolt Brecht, which states, "And where you have recognized an abuse itself, please provide a remedy."
All of which is respectfully submitted on behalf of the Quinte Labour Council. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
Mr Villeneuve: Thank you, Mr Sword, for putting forth, and I guess your entire recommendation revolved around providing information. You're suggesting that a commissioner be more or less in charge of all municipal officials. Is that your recommendation?
Mr Sword: I don't think I meant that and it's possible that you misunderstood what I did mean by that. I would think, due to cost itself, that a commissioner would have a larger area to cover than, we'll say, the city of Belleville. He would only respond to petitions by people from a given municipality with regard to conflict of interest.
As an example, as Councillor Bochnek said and I referred to in my submission to you, she alleged that more serious violations of the conflict-of-interest act have been conducted over the past several years in Belleville. I think you heard me say that. That being the case, then it should be quite simple to get a list of petitioners in the amount required to ask a commissioner to come in and interview that councillor and see just what has gone on.
Then there exists the extreme possibility that that person who I would say has had a breach of trust with the people in the community not be supported in the next municipal election. That way it would be giving the opportunity to people or the electorate to know who they're voting for and, the other one, for people to display arrogance and to almost dare people to lay a charge under the current act. I certainly don't want to go through that. However, in the event we had a commissioner, I would have no fear. As I say, lawyers don't come too cheaply. I don't know how many of you are, probably one or two.
Mr Villeneuve: The city of Kingston had a rather sad experience with conflict, and, you know, pretty well everyone can be perceived to be in conflict on just about every decision, from Sunday shopping to the opening of stores if you're a business person.
The township of Vaughan made a presentation to us yesterday in Peterborough and they're having the problem of everybody being so gun-shy that they are declaring conflict if it's even remotely -- and it evades them having to take a decision. You can get involved too far the other way on that kind of deal.
Mr Sword: Yes. I think, with all respect to what you're saying, Mr Villeneuve, that this afternoon you will be having more explicit examples of conflicts of interest that have gone on in the city of Belleville when a friend of mine appears here this afternoon
There are, and I agree with you, people can become nervous with regard to conflict of interest, especially those people who deal in the purchase and sale of properties. I have sympathy with regard to that. However, you people, I'm quite sure, can come up with something leading to their protection. They themselves have a very powerful lobby group.
Mr Villeneuve: One final question: Would you allow everyone and anyone to go to the commissioner and find out the interests of a particular councillor or would you want it to go through the freedom of information system whereby it wouldn't be simply frivolous questioning?
Mr Sword: Just one other thought occurred to me with regard to your previous question. I think the commissioner, whomsoever would be appointed by the government and someone outside the tentacles of government, if I can put it that way, somebody not attached to a political party, would be that well versed and intelligent not to entertain a challenge for any specious question at all. Yes, we would have to have some intelligence, especially in a commissioner. Your other question, I'm sorry, that was, if you wouldn't mind?
Mr Villeneuve: Going through freedom of information to obtain the information, or would you make it widely available to everyone and anyone at any time?
Mr Perruzza: He just answered it, Noble. He said you have to use good judgement.
Mr Sword: Yes, that may be part of it. But also, what harm is there if we have an Ontario limited-numbered company? What harm is there in having that information available at the local level for me? Are the people that nervous? They also give the indication, when they become that nervous to disguise the name of their company or whatever with a number or, with apologies to the committee, a bastardized name to the public that they are covering something up. They don't want it known that Mr So-and-so down the street is a co-owner in a strip club. This is an extreme example but, however, something that would embarrass. I think the intelligence of people would override the specious things that are put forward.
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The Chair: Mr Sword, let us continue with some questions. There are three people on the list. Ms Haeck is first and then Mr Johnson.
Ms Christel Haeck (St Catharines-Brock): Thank you, Mr Sword, for your comments, and in fact you reflect some of those that have been made in my own community. Just as somebody who worked as a public librarian for 16 years, on page 2 of your presentation you make some comments about materials that should be available to the public within the library realm. Actually I think in some instances small public libraries haven't had the resources to buy some of the materials that in fact would answer very much the concerns that you already have. The material is there. It's just basically knowing the name of the publication for which to ask. That's really more, I think, in answer to your question at the top of the page.
But towards the bottom of the page, you make an interesting recommendation, and one that I feel should be seriously considered, and that relates to the senior administrative staff within a municipality also in some respect being required to fill out, if not the full conflict-of-interest form but at least indicate where they may have some concerns, some of their own financial interests and, when in fact they make recommendations, how that may affect the larger picture. I welcome that recommendation, in light of some concerns that have been happening in my own community. I will defer to my colleagues.
Mr Paul Johnson: Thanks for your presentation before the committee today, Mr Sword. I just want to say that it is on the public record now. Mr Ian MacInnis, a councillor from Kingston, was before this committee in Peterborough yesterday and what he had to say to this committee, if any municipal politician in the province of Ontario was paying attention, they've got be shaking in their boots, because it would appear that almost regularly they're in conflict of interest.
I would say, as a result of that then, that they would welcome this legislation and they might even welcome stronger legislation in so far as, I think, if they had access to a commissioner for free advice as to whether they were in fact in, or not in, conflict of interest, given that the commissioner had information on the individual, it would be very beneficial.
One of the biggest complaints we hear -- and my question is coming -- is that, given the legislation as it is and how it will affect municipal politicians, there's a hue and cry from some that we won't get good candidates. Well, I just want to ask you, Mr Sword, do you think, given the population from which we draw our candidates, that this will indeed exclude good candidates?
Mr Sword: No. I certainly don't think so. If I were a land owner in the city of Belleville and I felt that people would be after me on a conflict of interest, I wouldn't stand for council.
But the other thing, when you talk about getting well-qualified people, the mayor made a notice of motion two city councils ago. They should be bringing forward a motion to once again go back to the ward system in the city of Belleville. That was the argument that was put forward by an article in the local newspaper, much the same as you're saying, that if we split the city of Belleville into wards, some of the wards wouldn't have qualified people.
I take that as a direct insult personally and on behalf of every citizen in the city of Belleville. Of course we've got qualified people and of course it's not right to have the majority of the representations on the city of Belleville council coming from one section of the city, which is the east end, which is the affluent part of the city of Belleville. I come from the west side of town and there has always been an east side-west side rivalry, going back to my childhood. No, it's an insult to imply that. If that were true, then we would take the province of Ontario and say that we couldn't get a qualified person from Mr Villeneuve's riding or Mr Grandmaître's riding. We would have to throw it open to the whole province and maybe get them all from Toronto. No, it's an insult to people. Thank you.
Mr Villeneuve: Heaven forbid.
Mr Sword: Or Kingston and The Islands, as an example.
Mr Curling: Thank you, Mr Sword, for your presentation. I think it is commonly said that democracy is not the best --
Mr Villeneuve: It's not perfect.
Mr Curling: It's not a perfect process, but is the best one that we have so far.
Mr Sword: We've never tried any others, though, Mr Curling. We don't know that --
Interjection.
Mr Curling: Well, the fact is that I feel it has worked pretty effectively so far, until we are bold enough to try other processes than the democratic process itself. Even I, who have been in politics just about 10 years, find myself just getting the strides of things in order to represent the people properly, to understand the very complex process that is there. Limiting people to run for a time, I think, would be somehow restricting them to performing at the level that could be more effective.
In other words, I am just saying I would disagree if they would say people can only run two or three times, especially in your very democratic process of the union itself. I'm sure people would like to participate, but as soon as they get their strides and understand what's going on, they run for president, like yourself, and they run for other positions. People would really like to go forward, but they're not able to do so unless they get a sense of what's happening.
I just want to ask you a question. You said, "...municipal conflicts that full disclosure...." I just wanted to know what you define as full disclosure, and I'm going to repeat something we heard yesterday. Someone said, "If I have any assets or whatever outside of the jurisdiction of my duties within my community, should I be declaring that, if it has really no bearing on what I do here?" Should that person disclose that kind of asset within that community?
Mr Sword: Do you mean within the geographic community?
Mr Curling: Yes, outside of your riding or constituency, or whatever.
Mr Sword: Where necessary, yes. I will give you an example. The city of Belleville is now making it possible for some of these smaller municipalities just outside of the edges of our town -- as in one example, across the bay, piping water over from our filtration plant. Now, if I were a politician in the city of Belleville and I were to capitalize on the water going to Rossmore, to put water into property that I own over there so that I could build, of course there would be a conflict, because he would then be enabling that community to have water, which would benefit him as a land owner. So there are examples that can be used.
Mr Curling: So there are pecuniary interests there. One other question: You also stated that one should declare whether "himself or herself or family member." What is your definition of a family member, and where does that stop? Does it stop at wife, husband or children, or does it go with uncles or cousins? I know that may have a brother's wife who has an interest, has no control why you ran in politics. Then all of a sudden, they themselves would have to be declaring all of their assets because you decided to run in politics. Where do you stop that family-tree span in declaring conflict of interest?
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Mr Sword: I would see no great problem with that.
Mr Curling: How far, I say? Brothers and sisters?
Mr Sword: I think a person's conscience should be somewhat of a guide for them. We're all adult, intelligent people, and if I'm going to see that a nephew of mine capitalizes on something I can do, then why should I do it?
Mr Curling: I'm not asking that. I'm asking a question here, if you decide to run, does your nephew declare his assets?
Mr Perruzza: The answer is you should stop with good judgement.
Mr Curling: I didn't ask you. I'm asking the gentleman here.
Mr Sword: Not just by the fact that I decide to run, no. Not by the fact that I decide to run or not by the fact that I might get elected, but by the fact that something may come to the council table that will affect him through me.
The Chair: Mr Sword, we've run out of time. We thank you very much for participating in these hearings.
Mr Sword: I appreciate the opportunity of appearing, and as always, I find the members of the Legislature most congenial and open for suggestions. Thanks very much.
ROBERT BLACKADDER
The Chair: The Greater Kingston Home Builders' Association cancelled, so we'll go on with the next deputation, Mr Robert Blackadder. Welcome to this committee. We welcome you here.
Mr Robert Blackadder: Thank you very much. I would like to say I appreciate the opportunity to make my views heard on Bill 163. I'm appearing as a private citizen. I would also like to apologize for the rough appearance of my written brief.
Although the purpose of Bill 163 is superficially to revise the planning and development procedures in Ontario, its main purpose is to revise and enhance those parts of the Planning Act which pertain to the natural environment, and to this end Bill 163 contains many desirable elements.
However, the concentration of attention on the environmental aspect of planning and development implies that the economic and social effects of this bill are of no consequence. An immediate effect of this bill would be the cost, to taxpayers of course, of the multiplicity of effort in having so many planning authorities. This would inevitably lead to immediate and large municipal tax increases to establish and maintain an increased and growing bureaucracy. My presentation explains my views.
While Bill 163 pays lipservice to various aspects of Ontario life and land use planning, it is obviously an environmental protection bill and appears to regard all of Ontario as being composed of the greater Toronto area, period. There are already something like 150 pieces of legislation currently in effect in Ontario protecting the environment either directly or indirectly. This bill, biased as it is towards the large urban centres, certainly does not do justice either to the environmental, human -- population and ethnic -- economic or geographical diversity of Ontario.
The obsession of this bill with promoting urban growth and discouraging rural development is shocking. To me, rural development means improved economic conditions for the smaller centres, towns and villages of Ontario. This is unquestionably feasible without destroying or even harming the natural environment. Urban population intensification will mean that the large cities will get larger, quickly. Since the largest cities in Ontario are mainly located in the prime agricultural area of the province, increasing pressure will be put on this agricultural land for recreational purposes.
Population intensification brings with it intensified problems too: traffic, policing, firefighting and crime to name a few.
The people of Ontario are intelligent and loyal to their province. Incentives and assistance to land owners to improve and protect their land environmentally would do more to protect and enhance the environment and sustainable economic return than more laws.
This bill is, in effect, punitive not only because of the penalties involved with non-compliance, but penalties that can befall a land owner through no fault of his or her own. For example, in 1980 a couple in their late 40s buy a small acreage 16 kilometres from a smaller city and near a village. They set out to improve it, all at their own expense and labour, by reforesting part of it, improving the area of about 1.5 hectares in front of their house -- it was all rough unimproved pasture -- and also started planting trees for a small choose-and-cut Christmas tree farm. This acreage is an investment for them. They expect it to appreciate and that its sale will help them in their later years.
Along comes Bill 163 with roadblocks to rural development, promotion of urban intensification, and its almost unlimited scope in the definitions of "woodland," "wetland," "wildlife habitat" and "significant." The owners of this property could suddenly be facing severe limitations on the use to which this land could be put. Who will buy undeveloped rural land? Only those who are prepared to spend large sums of money, if necessary, to secure the approvals necessary to comply with Bill 163, and the selling price of the land will have to be lower because of it.
My wife and I are in this situation and, with small variations to the story, so are thousands of other Ontarians, and urban real estate prices will be inflated even more than they are now.
Well over half the population of Ontario lives in the area bounded by the western half of Lake Ontario, the southern tip of Lake Huron, Lake Erie and the US border. In other words, over half of Ontario's population lives in the land area of less than one tenth of that available south of the Trans-Canada Highway east of Sudbury. I am amazed that this government does not see the advantage of encouraging population drift away from the large cities and towards the smaller centres.
Being of the school of thought that says, "Don't bring me problems, bring me solutions," I would like to offer some suggestions.
Considerably more thought should be given to Bill 163. I believe that it would have a severely negative effect on the home building industry for one thing.
Rural, small-town and village residents have aspirations too. They want their properties to appreciate and they want to have job opportunities closer to home for themselves and their children. This would be of economic benefit to the whole province.
The planning authorities should be established at the county level or higher, not at the lower-tier level. Duplication of effort at the lower-tier level would make it very expensive indeed and the county is financially and administratively better equipped to handle this function.
Educate and assist, not only for the protection of the environment but for simultaneous sustainable economic development and to show Ontarians and the world that the two are compatible to the advantage of all. A system of assessment could be set up and grades issued to enterprises measuring the degree of success each has had in integrating environmental and economic considerations. Good grades would be bragging points and might be of interest to concerned customers.
Clarify the definitions of "woodland," "wetland," "wildlife habitat" and "significant." One of these terms in their present definitions could easily apply to many if not most residential front lawns or backyards.
Any financial loss or loss or limitation of use of all or part of a real estate property must be compensated for by the province if the loss or limitation is due to some feature of the property being designated as significant under Bill 163.
I would like to suggest infrastructure enhancement assistance by the province to the smaller centres north of the presently heavily populated centres, but beyond commuting distance to the large centre. This would encourage population drift towards the less populated areas.
Bill 163 does not move the decision-making process to the municipal level or closer to the people as it claims. The decisions are already made by Bill 163. What the municipality is left with is the yes or no and all the costs involved. If this is not so, then why is it imperative that the wording of subsection 3(5) of the act is changed to read "shall be consistent with" instead of "shall have regard to" as it reads now?
Finally, to anyone who does not feel that we already have enough government, I would suggesting reading page 2 of the Ontario government publication booklet, Put Yourself in the Picture. Attachment A is a copy of page 2. Do we need more? Or is this the Jobs Ontario program at work?
Thank you very much for hearing me. That's all I have.
The Chair: Thank you. We have a few moments for questions, approximately one minute or so per member. Mr Perruzza.
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Mr Perruzza: Thank you very much. I followed your presentation and it would seem to me that by following this that the question that is answered implicitly in your presentation is that planning the way it's happening in Ontario is good now, and the second implication and answer here is, we have 150 pieces of legislation currently in effect to protect the environment and that they are in fact effective and are in fact protecting the environment.
Therefore we don't need any more, because what you're saying is that some people are caught up in situations and there's a perception being created that that situation may be aggravated by Bill 163, or people may be limited, and I look at Bill 163 as a window of opportunity that is opening to all Ontario residents, as the gentleman was saying earlier.
You know for us it's better when the rules are made clearer up front in order to move along, and I suspect that some people when some of these policy statements come down, and I don't expect they'll be down tomorrow and I don't expect the official plans to be firmed up next year, and so on, that some people in that process will be hampered and they may not be able to do things with their properties that they perhaps were planning to do, you know, 10, 15, 20 years down the road.
Really it's not so much a question. It's just a comment that I want to make. I don't believe that all of the environmental laws that we have are in fact protecting our environment. The disasters are far too many, far too obvious, and quite frankly, far too consistent, and is planning happening well in Ontario now in the way it's being done now? Just drive around and I think you can answer that question quite readily as well. Thank you.
The Chair: Did you want to respond to anything that the member raised?
Mr Blackadder: I understand that obviously there have to be planning controls and procedures and I don't claim to be conversant with the ins and outs of them at all. One of my concerns here is that because of ambiguity in some of the respects of the bill, we have, for example, improved our land, tried to improve it. We've done a lot of planting of trees on it and so on. Now this land could in effect be almost taken away from us if it's declared to be significant woodland or wetland, or wildlife habitat or something like that. You can't do anything with any of that land.
Interjection.
The Chair: I'm sorry. There's no time for further dialogue on that. Mr Wiseman, there's no time for that kind of exchange. I'm sorry. Monsieur Grandmaître.
Mr Grandmaître: As a follow-up on the definitions of "woodland," "wetland," "wildlife habitat" and "significant," if I can use you as an example, you say that you and your wife are going through some difficult times, possibly because of Bill 163 if it's implemented the way we read it today. Do you think there should be compensation to people like you that do lose the use or maybe have the possibility of losing a sale of your land, because it's been designated woodland or wetland or wildlife habitat without your knowledge -- because the government will do this without consulting you. Do you realize this? Do you realize that tomorrow morning you can wake up and receive a letter -- I'm giving you a possibility -- you could receive a letter that says,"Did you know that 50 acres or 50 hectares of your land is now wetland?" You've never known this?
Mr Blackadder: No, when I bought that land, I certainly did not know that this could be done without my knowledge.
Mr Grandmaître: And now it's been designated wetland and you can't do a thing. You can't sell it.
Mr Blackadder: And I don't believe I'm alone in that, sir.
Mr Grandmaître: Oh, absolutely, I know. Do you think you should be compensated?
Mr Blackadder: I read several newspapers and so on, and there are too many people who are suddenly being hit. Now whether it's a law that has been recently passed or a law that was passed away in the past, it shouldn't be happening. There's no question about that.
Mr Grandmaître: Do you think you should be compensated, because you've been paying taxes for the last 75 years on it?
Mr Blackadder: I purchased that land, not because it was a toy, it was an investment, but in the meantime I felt that I could use it for recreation, for a hobby, a hobby farm, if you want to put it that way, and we were improving the land to make it more pleasant for ourselves, for the neighbourhood and so on. If the time comes when I want to sell that land and I find that because it has been designated, unknown to me, that nobody wants it because, "Hey, what can we do with it?" why should I take it on the chin?
Mr Gary Carr (Oakville South): Thank you very much for your presentation. You've given us some good indication of some of the things you'd like changed. I take it, if the bill remains the way it is and, as you know, there's an opportunity to change it, but if the bill remains as is now and you were a member of the Ontario Legislature, how would you vote on the bill?
Mr Blackadder: Well, the bill covers a lot of ground and for me to vote no, I mean, I might be putting down a lot of good things in the bill. To vote yes, I would certainly be agreeing to the things that I disagree with here. Some of these points that I mentioned there, I think, are not big items to improve on. For example, the wildlife habitat designation or definition here covers every living thing but fish.
Mr Wiseman: There's the fish act for that.
Mr Blackadder: Okay, but it covers every living thing but fish. That includes bacteria and bugs and things.
The Chair: Mr Carr, do you want to follow up quickly?
Mr Carr: Yes, I was just going to say, one of the problems we've got is we don't get to say maybe when we vote. It's yes or no, and it is difficult on all these issues, but I was just trying to get some guidance.
Mr Blackadder: I'm drawing attention here to some of the things that -- I feel like it's such a broad definition that, like I say in my presentation, it could be used to cover the average front lawn. Wetlands are anything that has water either on the surface or close to the surface and so on. At what time of the year? In the springtime, practically everything in Ontario is covered with water.
Mr Carr: So what you want is just a clear definition?
Mr Blackadder: I think that the definitions could be used for the wrong purposes with the broadness of those definitions, for example.
The Chair: Is there a clarification to be made? Mr Hayes.
Mr Pat Hayes (Essex-Kent): In regard to designating significant areas like wetlands, for example, I don't want anybody to try to lead the people to believe here that this is what is happening in this particular bill. Those are some of the things, maybe disregarding the property owner with consultation or sitting down and meeting with him are things that may have happened in the past.
But to say that the Ministry of Natural Resources is just going to come in and designate your property as being a significant piece of property that should be preserved, is not the case. The Ministry of Natural Resources will be mapping areas and then that information naturally would go to your municipality. The only way it would be designated is if your municipality put it into their official plan. That's the way it works.
Mr Blackadder: But would they not have to approach the land owner?
Mr Hayes: After public meetings and consultation with the land owners and with other people, other interested bodies in the community. That's the way that it does work.
Mr Villeneuve: But the fact that the man reforested his land has changed the designation of it. Had he left it as farm land, it would be such.
Mr Hayes: No, no. It's just not the case.
The Chair: Mr Blackadder, we've run out of time. We thank you for your sincerity and we thank you very much for sharing your views with this committee.
Mr Blackadder: Thank you very much for hearing me.
Mr Paul Johnson: Mr Chairman, on a point of order: I'm not certain that it's a point of order and you may rule me out of order, but I'd just like to remind the members of the committee and the public who are here today that the reason we're holding these hearings is because the bill as it is right now, in its exact wording, may be amended somewhat. To ask any presenter before us, "Would you vote on the bill yes or no today?" obviously that's why we're undertaking these proceedings in the province of Ontario.
Mr Eddy: Mr Chair, that is not entirely correct, because the policies are not subject to review, and it's the policies that are the strongest part of the bill, in my opinion, being imposed and being the law. The policies are God Almighty, so to speak, and they are not subject to review. It doesn't matter what you say about them, they are not under review. So I think I agree with you somewhat, but we have to be clear.
The Chair: Mr Eddy, I'm sorry, this is not the forum for that kind of debate.
Interjections.
The Chair: We're going to move on. We'll check to see if Mr Eric Batten is here. All right, we will recess until 11:45 to give Mr Batten an opportunity to get here.
The committee recessed from 1123 to 1144.
ERIC BATTEN
The Chair: I'd like to call the meeting to order. Welcome, Mr Batten. Just as a reminder, you have 15 minutes for your presentation.
Mr Eric Batten: I think I'll even be shorter than that.
The Chair: That would be good, because then members can ask you a question or two if there's time.
Mr Batten: Mr Chairman and committee members, I'm a councillor or a deputy reeve in Dummer township in Peterborough county. I happened to be down here today on another mission, so I took this opportunity to meet with you.
Under the conflict-of-interest part of the bill, I'm a little concerned with the disclosure of your assets, your liabilities and what not. I agree with the bill in principle; I think there should be disclosure, I agree with that. But my concern is that someone could go into a local clerk of a municipality and frivolously just ask for this type of information.
I think there should be a purpose for that person asking for the information. I understand that there is probably going to be a commissioner. Maybe they should have to go through that commissioner to get that information, because if that opens the door, we're going to have a lot of people not be too willing to run for local councils.
Again, I fully agree with that. Yes, you have to disclose the conflict of interest -- it's time; it's needed -- but the part of my submission that I look at very seriously is that there should be some conditions put on the disclosure part that you just can't frivolously go in and ask a clerk to hand out that information, because I don't think that's right. That's really my submission.
Mr Grandmaître: Thank you for coming down. We had an earlier presentation from the Quinte Labour Council, and I'm going to read you their recommendation:
"We strongly recommend that all citizens have greatly improved access to information through the creation of public information centres. This centre should be administered by the city clerk who should ensure that all public libraries are aware of the documents available at this centre."
Do you agree with this?
Mr Batten: I agree to a certain point, but I don't think, again, that the information should be just handed out or open to the public like that. If someone wants to find out if I have -- let's say I have an interest in ABC Paving Co and they feel that ABC Paving Co has done some work for that township and I voted on it, then I think they should be able to come forth and explain why they're doing this. There's nothing wrong with that. But just to go in and say, "Eric Batten's sitting on council. I want to know his assets, I want to know his liabilities, I want to know this and that," in a frivolous nature, I think that's wrong. I think there should be some onus.
Mr Grandmaître: You agree that we should have a commissioner responsible for, let's say, accepting or rejecting these appeals?
Mr Batten: I think there should be a provincial commissioner and I think if a person wants that information, they should state to the commissioner why they want that and then the commissioner can address the clerk.
Mr Grandmaître: And it should be operated just like the freedom of information office.
Mr Batten: That's right.
Mr Villeneuve: Thank you, Mr Batten. You're probably aware of what's happened to some municipally elected people in the city of Kingston with a conflict-of-interest situation. Have you ever considered declaring pecuniary interest for whatever reason, as you're deputy reeve of Dummer?
Mr Batten: Yes, I have.
Mr Villeneuve: And you have backed away from the table?
Mr Batten: Yes. In our township, when you declare a conflict, you leave the room. That's a policy our council has.
Mr Villeneuve: We had Vaughan township representatives yesterday who came to Peterborough and told us -- Vaughan's a very rapidly expanding municipality and there have been some problems, but we're now finding that the elected people are getting very gun-shy and in case there might be a conflict, they're declaring conflict, sometimes in a position that avoids them from taking a tough decision. Would you see that as a possibility coming up?
Mr Batten: No, I don't. I agree with the legislation 100%. I think it's time we should have this and we should have had it long ago. I think if you're going to sit on council, you should know, and if you have some doubts there are legal people you can talk to. You know, if you have them kind of doubts, then find out. You've got to be cautious, but I fully agree that this legislation should be passed.
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Mr Villeneuve: Access to the information that will be recorded would cost a fee under the freedom of information. You're satisfied that it's not an exorbitant fee, but it would cost a fee. You're satisfied with that?
Mr Batten: Yes, that's right because across the province we got land registry offices and we got different things that you can now go in and pay your fee and get a lot of that information. I think that people don't purposely try to abuse this, that they should have to go to a commissioner who understands the totality of the legislation and can advise that person and then advise the clerk. I think that's the way -- and then the clerk would have the necessary information.
In other words, in my own case if I owned ABC Paving Co, then the clerk could say, "Yes, Mr Batten has registered with us that he's got a share in ABC Paving Co." That's information they should have. That's the purpose. I agree with that 100%. There's got to be some reasons though.
Mr Carr: Just a quick question. We're actually in the process now of doing our conflict statements. I actually kind of enjoy it because it's the first time. My wife does most of the work and does most of the finances. Once a year I actually see what we've got. Actually it's been going up. She's done a good job. As I said to the Treasurer, we should make her the Minister of Finance at some point. Maybe she will.
But there are a lot of conflicts that have arisen over the last little while. One of the concerns is that some of the things that have been put forward in this legislation are even tougher than we have provincially. I take it you're probably not aware of what the provincial members go through. Would you be able to comment on the situation, what we're doing as provincial members versus what we're asking you to do?
Mr Batten: No. I understand that the provincial members have to declare. We've discussed this. I'm not just sure what your legislation is provincially. I agree that, yes, it should be there provincially the same as ours. I think that legislation is needed. I don't think people should be sitting in any jurisdiction or any board or anything and voting on their own interests. I think they're there to serve the public.
Mr Carr: Quickly -- very, very quickly -- we do immediate family: wife, in my case, kids, minor children. Would you go beyond that or what is your feeling? Would that be acceptable?
Mr Batten: That would be acceptable, yes: wife, minor children, yes. That should be about as far as it goes.
Ms Haeck: I appreciate your comments. Some of the municipal representatives who've come before this committee when I've had a chance to sit on it before have indicated that they were concerned because they felt that when they declared their interest, they had to also indicate their liability as in a dollar amount of a mortgage that they either owed to the bank or that they held and were obviously receiving as some sort of income. Are you aware that that's not the case, that in fact it's just that you have a particular interest? There are no financial figures actually; there are no amounts as part of the statement itself.
Mr Batten: Yes, I'm aware. I guess I should try to explain how I understand the bill. I'm not totally familiar, but I understand that if your wife or you have a liability you say, "Yes, we have a liability with such a bank or such a company." If you've got assets, "Yes, these are our assets." You don't put a value to them as much. I think that makes sense. My understanding of the total reason for this act is that people declare what they have so it's known and they don't try to violate the act. They don't vote on something that they've got a conflict in.
Ms Haeck: Very good.
Mr Batten: That went on for years and I'm glad to see this happen.
Ms Haeck: Thank you, Mr Batten. I think you echo a lot of concerns of residents from my area as well. I don't know if any of my colleagues have additional questions.
Mr Wiseman: I just want to clear up something that Mr Carr said. He said that your conflict of interest would be more onerous than ours. In fact that is not the case. I have the charts here. Have you seen these? These were mailed out to the disclosure of financial information.
Mr Batten: I don't think I've seen them. I have a lot of papers before my desk.
Mr Wiseman: Then it has a comparison of who has to declare what. This is what the MPPs have to declare. This would be what councillors would have to declare. We have to declare a lot of other things, including putting dollar figures in the whole process. I just wanted to clarify that --
Mr Carr: Which isn't made public, by the way.
Mr Wiseman: Yes, but this part of the discussion will take place later. I see this as a useful tool if the commissioner is set up in a way that would allow you to phone them and ask them if it's conflict of interest.
Now, since most of the councils in the regions have solicitors, are you able to ask them if you are in conflict? Are they a useful source, or do you think that's not a good place to be able to get information?
Mr Batten: We have solicitors from Peterborough. What we do is go through the clerk. You'd go to the clerk and say: "Would you find out if I've got a conflict. I think I may, and here's why I think I may have a conflict." But if there's a grey area, we'd have the clerk find out from the solicitor.
Mr Wiseman: So then they would give you an opinion.
Mr Batten: That's right. It's simply an opinion. But I still think there should be a commissioner in charge of this. I feel it's important to control it properly.
Mr Wiseman: The other comment you made is that you leave the room. As soon as you declare a conflict you're out of there; you don't participate in any of the debate or anything like that.
Mr Batten: No. It's a policy within our council. I mean, you can go and sit in the crowd and you can probably try to intimidate the people by doing something, but we feel that you should leave the room. There's no law that says that; it's a policy we have accepted, that it should be done.
Mr Wiseman: That's something I would think that we should take a look at, because I know that in some jurisdictions they declare a conflict, then they sit there and participate in the debate and then say, "I can't vote," but they're part of the debate.
Mr Batten: Yes, and that can be very persuasive. If you've got a conflict, you should be out of there. That's my own feeling.
Mr Wiseman: Thank you for that.
The Chair: Okay, Mr Batten. We've run out of time. We thank you very much for taking the time to come from wherever you were to make the presentation to this committee today.
Mr Batten: I thank the committee for the opportunity, and it's good seeing you.
The Chair: This committee is recessed until 1:30.
The committee recessed from 1159 to 1332.
COUNTY OF PRINCE EDWARD
The Chair: I call the meeting to order, and I invite the county of Prince Edward, Warden George Vincent, Mr Brian McComb, and Reeve Bill Bonter. Welcome.
Mr Brian McComb: Good afternoon, and thank you. To introduce our delegation, my name is Brian McComb, the director of planning for Prince Edward county, and with me are Bill Bonter, the reeve of the township of Ameliasburgh, who will follow after some brief comments from myself, and Mr George Vincent, the warden of Prince Edward county and the deputy reeve of Hallowell township.
I've provided documentation of the presentations you're going to hear. I've also provided a copy of a letter from Mr Ken Cunningham, a planner with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, which helped to clarify one of the issues we had with the bill, which is whether our newly adopted county official plan would be considered under the old Planning Act or under the provisions of Bill 163, depending on the timing of what gets adopted or approved first. That letter is there for clarification purposes.
I wanted to be brief. The comments are provided to you in writing. I wanted to emphasize what I felt are the major points. Then Mr Bonter and his municipality have points of departure with the opinion of the county planning department and the county planning committee on a couple of issues, and he wishes to speak to you with regard to those. Then George will follow up with comments from his planning experience on local politics for 20 years or so.
I don't know if you've got my written submission, but the first point I want to make to you is on page 5 of my staff report, which follows the letter from the warden. When you read Bill 163, it's very clear that when planning in Ontario you're to have regard for provincial direction. The two stated purposes of the act are to provide for a land use planning system led by provincial policy and to integrate matters of provincial interest in provincial municipal planning decisions.
Absent from this section, section 4.1.1, is any reference to the importance of interpreting or adopting provincial policies to the local circumstances by locally elected politicians with the input of the local people. We feel that a purpose of Bill 163 should be to clarify this and state this clearly, that there is a role for local input, local decision-making and interpreting the provincial direction into something that fits the local circumstances and meets with concurrence by the local politicians and people.
The second point is with regard to municipal planning authorities. There is a concern that the legislation as drafted with regard to municipal planning authorities could have the effect of disempowering county governments, county plans and county planning programs as opposed to the goal of empowering, as being enunciated by the province.
Allowing the creation of municipal planning authorities that do not have to contribute to the county planning levy, that can form their own land division committee and constitute a body corporate, could be detrimental to county planning. If, for example, one or two municipalities decided to depart from the county official plan in Prince Edward, it would have a drastic effect on our budget and would also have a drastic effect on the county plan.
When looking back at the Sewell commission final report, there were criteria there that I felt were appropriate, including that affected counties that have an official plan shouldn't have municipal planning authorities established therein, or at least that the county should be approving the absence of one of its municipalities going into a municipal planning authority.
The third point is that when you read Bill 163 it seems clear that counties are not being empowered in the same manner as regions. One example is this whole issue of municipal planning authorities. You don't see that as an option within regions, but it is an option within county structures.
Other examples are that regions are the approval authorities in respect of the approval of an official plan of a local municipality, and regions are the approval authorities in respect of the approvals of plans of subdivisions, whereas counties generally are not, unless they've already been delegated and unless they're in the county of Oxford. Section 17(2) should be amended to add counties which have an official plan as an approval authority with respect to local plans. Furthermore, section 51(1) should be amended by making counties which have an official plan as an approval authority with respect to plans of subdivisions.
The other point I wish to make is the whole emphasis on upper-tier planning and county planning. I believe a county official plan is something that all counties should be striving for. The reason I say this is because there is a lot of concern that Bill 163 and the comprehensive policy statements that accompany it are very much a top-down form of planning. I feel that the only way counties and municipalities can grapple with that is to develop their own county official plan.
Our municipality developed an update of our current official plan last year, and we feel that we benefitted from not only reviewing and upgrading our document but also coming to terms with the provincial agencies about what our county consists of. In many respects, the people who live in the community know their area better than the provincial staff do.
I think county planning should be something every county should be striving for. A county official plan is important in identifying what the community thinks is significant and what the community thinks is important in terms of natural environments to preserve and protect. That should be with the input of the provincial agencies, not just dictated by them.
The last point I wish to make is just from a general point of view, on page 8 of my report, at the bottom. From my overall reading of the bill and from my first glance at some of the guidelines that are starting to be generated to interpret this, I think we're creating a system that's going to complicate planning in Ontario. People are going to be more confused than they currently are. There's a fear that owing to its size and sometimes confusing wording, Bill 163, together with the Planning Act, is going to be open to even more interpretation and more confusion. I'm not sure that was the direction this whole exercise was supposed to take.
Those are the comments I wish to provide. Bill Bonter, township of Ameliasburgh.
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Mr Bill Bonter: Thank you very much for entertaining my submission today. It's simply in regard to section 14. Our township diverges from the county's critique on this matter. We believe that flexibility should be left in the act as it's presently written in regard to the formation of, and the fledgling groups that are forming around, communities of interest.
We are a member of the greater Quinte area, and in that group we represent a population that is far greater than the county. There's Ameliasburgh, with around 5,500 people; Sidney, with a population of 17,000 people; Belleville, with a population of 35,000; Trenton, with a population of 15,000; and Murray, with a population of 7,000. We have come together out of necessity to answer needs in regard to planning, community development, community policing -- a number of issues that are not being delivered to what we think is a standard our constituents deserve. We think these fledgling institutions could develop a planning body if the flexibility remains in the planning document to consider these groups.
The basis of our presentation is to stay with the flexibility in the document. I think the 1990s and beyond are going to require that kind of approach to deal with the problems of circles of interest that have formed. Even though we have a county system that was developed as much as 150 years ago, there's been a tremendous change in the commercial and in all aspects of our culture and society, and we believe the flexibility that you have built into the document will address this in the future. It will allow the fluidity and evolution that's required in planning in a modern society that's moving as fast as we find ourselves today. Thank you very much.
Mr George Vincent: Mr Chair, members, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the opportunity of speaking to you today. I guess you haven't had a chance yet to read the letter we circulated regarding our concerns about Bill 163. I would like to point out that I have been involved with the planning process, in one form or another, for over 30 years. I started in our township council in 1962. We at that time were part of a joint planning area with adjoining municipalities. We went from that to having our own township planning board, to having a county planning committee that was an appointed committee, to what we have now, which is a planning committee made up of members of county council. This committee plans for the whole county.
I have to disagree with my friend to my right, Mr Bonter, in that I feel the situation we have now, the system we have, while it's not perfect, is the best of the four that I've been involved with in the past. It has representation from all municipalities, large and small. In this time, when the impetus seems to be along the way to larger units in municipal government, Bill 163, when it reflects on planning -- my version is that it's making it possible for smaller units, is advocating smaller units of planning.
I don't feel this is in the best interests of the county, and I'm speaking as warden of Prince Edward county, because it's a small county and there is some difference of interest within the county. I don't think it's that serious to require everybody to go off in a different direction with the planning process. You drive down a road and you have a different rule on one side of the road than you do on the other side because there's a different municipality.
Also, I think it's more economical in terms of cost to the taxpayer with a county system than it is with a local system. One municipality in the county, that had its own planning system in place after the county system was active, was spending more money from that one municipality in total cost to the taxpayers than the county system was costing.
For over 20 years, Prince Edward county has had a county planning system, a county planning board. It has functioned well. We produced an official plan in 1974, which was sent forward to the minister, and finally approved and came into effect in 1977. We have now produced a second, new official plan, which went off to the minister to Toronto in November of last year.
I think we have tried our best, and we have a system that is working for Prince Edward county as efficiently and as economically as is possible. I personally think it's a regressive step backwards to start splitting the planning process down into individual municipalities. I thank you for the opportunity to make my feelings known.
Mr Eddy: Thank you, your worship and members of the delegation, for presenting your views today. You've accentuated the views and concerns that many others have. I wanted to be clear on planning in Prince Edward. Is it a two-tier system of planning or is it a county official plan? Some local municipalities have their own plans? All of them have their plans? Does the county do district plans for them? I just want to be clear.
Mr McComb: We have a county official plan, and there are secondary plans which constitute part of that county official plan for the village of Wellington, Picton township, Hallowell urban area, and the village or hamlet of Rossmore. But those are secondary plans and they constitute part of the county plan, so it's pretty well a one-tier official plan.
Mr Eddy: That's probably simpler than what will be in many places.
You've mentioned the wording "be consistent with" versus the present "have regard to." A person who appeared before us the other day suggested that the words could be changed and might be better changed to "maintain the spirit and intent of provincial policies," viewing that that would give local communities or counties etc a bit more flexibility. We're told that the words "be consistent with" does give some flexibility, but there's concern that there wouldn't be flexibility with those words. What is your view of this other proposed wording?
Mr McComb: From first reaction, I think that's excellent wording. I haven't heard that run by me before, but that does maintain the spirit of the concerns our council has had up to now. The other thing I've read or been exposed to with regard to this issue is a draft report of the AMO, and it references the planning system in Manitoba, where once you get your official plan, that supplants the provincial directives within the planning act in Manitoba. In other words, if you develop your official plan and you develop your principles and priorities and goals and objectives with regard to planning, that's clearly the system you work by, and not necessarily the overall general ones within the comprehensive policies.
I would think that both of those things would be complementary to each other.
Mr Eddy: Your concern about the fragmentation of county planning is very real also. Every county that's come before us has spoken against allowing the organization of municipal planning authorities. I understand your views on that and support them.
Mr Bonter: I would like to add that fully 80% of our taxpayers commute to the Belleville-Trenton area for their jobs, and this is one of our arguments, that we are part of that community of interest. For a document to become too inflexible for us to consider the attributes of a planning body that would have in excess of 100,000 people in it is not fragmentary or destructive in any way.
We're trying to address the problems, the modern problems that have manifested themselves, in a well-planned way, and the greater Quinte area is trying to deal with those problems. We're not trying to dismantle or destroy any good planning.
Mr Eddy: I see the advantage of a municipal planning advisory committee that would include Trenton, Belleville and some of the other areas. Could that work and still have county official plans?
Mr Bonter: I don't know. I think there needs to be the flexibility that's in the present document.
The Chair: Mr Carr.
Mr Eddy: With its own official plan?
The Chair: Sorry, Mr Eddy.
Mr Eddy: That's okay.
Mr Carr: Thank you very much for a very comprehensive presentation. It was very detailed.
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In the interest of time, because you each brought a different perspective, depending on your qualifications, I wanted to ask a very simple question of each of you and then maybe start with the warden and move right across. If this bill remains as it is and you were Gary Carr and got to vote on it in the Legislature in the next reading, would you vote for or against the bill?
Mr Vincent: I'm afraid without amendment I would have to vote against it.
Mr McComb: I would vote to slow it down and review it more closely, especially when you look at the full package, because there's also a lot stuff you don't know yet in terms of the guidelines and regulations that are being generated. It's not a comprehensive package right now, and that's what you're supposed to be striving for, so I'd say slow down.
Mr Carr: We can't say, "Slow it down."
Mr McComb: Well, that means no.
Mr Carr: That means no.
Mr Bonter: I find myself in a similar position. I like the greatest part of the bill. I like the flexibility that's been built in to address a modern society in the 1990s and beyond. There are a few issues that might be reworded but basically I'm quite comfortable with it.
Mr Carr: So, two noes and a yes.
Mr Bonter: Yes.
Mr Carr: It's ironic that the elected person said it shorter than the two people who aren't elected, and politicians --
Mr Bonter: I'm elected.
Mr Carr: Sorry. Okay. But you were in the planning as well. So we got two noes and a yes.
The part about the confusing legislation that you outline here, I think most people would say that if anything that made it more confusing, because quite frankly it is to all the people right now. When you talk about it being more confusing, we're going to take a step backwards then in terms of -- I guess I should ask this to the warden because his name is on the actual document. What did you mean when you said it's going to make it a little bit more confusing?
Mr Vincent: I should add that besides being a politician I've been in the real estate business for nearly 25 years. I'm a broker and I've been involved in real estate sales in jurisdictions other than in the county of Prince Edward.
When you get into some of these other areas and each local municipality has its own official plan, it's bad enough when you've got one zoning bylaw on one of the side of the road and another one on the other side, and there are two properties for sale across the road from each other and what's allowed here may not be allowed over there. But then, when it comes to the planning stage and you've got one municipality and another municipality, it becomes more confusing and more irrational. You've got identical properties here and there and there's just a 66-foot right of way roadway between them. Why do the rules for this one have to be so much different from this one?
This is what manifests itself when you get into local planning. We've got municipal councillors in our area who I think would expect us to amend the official plan to create a lot where the owner had to climb down a rope to get to it.
Mr Carr: Thank you very much, all of you, and good luck.
Mr Paul Johnson: Thanks very much for making your presentation before the committee on behalf of Prince Edward county, and of course the township of Ameliasburgh. Exactly the reason why we're holding these hearings is so that individuals like yourselves can come before this committee and offer us suggestions as to where you see weaknesses maybe in the legislation, things that you would like to see amended. Indeed, from time to time I hear people say that they wouldn't support this legislation unless there were some amendments, and that's what George said.
One thing that wasn't mentioned -- I'm curious to know this, because I must admit that many elected representatives, and of course, Brian, this will exclude you, although most certainly you may have an interest -- what do my friends from Prince Edward county think about the conflict-of-interest disclosure issue part of the bill? Are there some opinions, and if you have them I just wonder if you could share those with the committee today?
Mr Bonter: Refer them to the warden.
Mr Vincent: Okay. We've got about six or seven weeks to find out, but I know some present members of council, good politicians, good members of local council who have said they will retire from politics before they will conform to the rules of the conflict-of-interest legislation.
Mr Paul Johnson: I've got to interject and say that the other thing I'm aware of, of course, is that there is some misunderstanding about what exactly the details of the disclosure are. I think that creates some unnecessary fear of that. However --
Mr Bonter: I might ask you a question. In the first part of the act, and I don't know if that's been changed, the exact financial disclosures have been eliminated.
Ms Haeck: Yes. There are no amounts.
Mr Bonter: I think that goes a long way towards making people more comfortable with it.
Mr Paul Johnson: I get the sense the public really wants to know whether its municipal politicians, whether any politicians are indeed in conflict of interest within their jobs.
Mr Bonter: I am not a studier of the act, but on our initial review of the act, when it was first brought before the readings, it was that concern that worried us the most, that it was too invasive on a personal level and not necessary to ensure the integrity of a politician.
Mr Wiseman: I'd like to take up the comments that you made about "shall be consistent with" as opposed to "will have regard for." We have heard people who have said it should be even stronger than that. We have heard people say that it should be "will conform to"; we have had some environmental groups say that if you're going to water it down as far as you are to "shall be consistent with," then it should be "shall be consistent with and conform to."
This issue seems to be breaking into very clearly delineated camps. The public, ratepayers, environmentalists and John Q. Public who is not associated with anybody are in favour of "shall be consistent with." Councils, planners and developers want "will have regard to." My own personal experience is that "will have regard to" -- you can drive a Mack truck through any of the regulations. The reason you have on opposite sides of the road these different zonings is because of the different interpretations and different latitudes within the context of "will have regard to."
The issue for me is, so that the public, so that ratepayers and so on can act as a check and a balance in the system, how do you get rid of the kinds of ambiguities that exist when you say: "Maybe this council will have regard to it; maybe that council won't. Maybe we'll do this; maybe we won't"? What I am hearing from the public is, "Get rid of the `maybes' so that I know what my role in the whole process is."
Mr McComb: It's kind of a difficult question but I'll try and approach the subject. I think where the trouble begins is in a reliance on a provincial document in terms of, "These are the rules." I think planning is an evolutionary, educative, progressive thing. Planning was at a certain state in Prince Edward county in 1977; it's at a different state now. It takes exposure to the document, it takes exposure to seeing severance applications, rezoning applications, official plan amendments, to get comfortable with the planning process, to get comfortable that yes, there is some logic as to why there are regulations and some time to become familiar with what those regulations are and maybe how they should evolve and develop.
I think it eventually has to be a community thing. It has to be a community official plan and it has to be community decisions. I think that's where we're coming from, that if you take a provincial document and, depending on who the staff of the day are and how they interpret "consistent with" or "regard to," it's the local autonomy, the local ability to make decisions. If there are people within that local group who disagree with the decisions the council of that day has made, they have an appeal process, and then you have an OMB hearing to decide what is the best planning interest here. Is it this appellant or is it this county council decision? So I think the framework is there, together with the Ontario Municipal Board, to address issues that ratepayers can have.
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The Chair: We've run out of time, unless there are other responses.
Mr Bonter: I'd just say that I agree fully with that. In my experience in municipal politics I have watched the planning aptitude of the constituents improve considerably from, "This is my property and I can do whatever the hell I want with it," to the 1993 consensus that we have community concerns. Most people come to this system with that kind of education and it should be, "Leave the flexibility to the local people." We are making the environmental considerations and in most cases we are doing excellent planning. If you put edicts down, you cause more backlash and you get the opposite effect: less good planning.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We've run out of time. We appreciate your coming and sharing your views.
DAVID HAHN
The Chair: We invite Mr David Hahn. Welcome, Mr Hahn.
Mr David Hahn: Good afternoon. Thank you very much for the opportunity to come and speak to you. I have to say I don't have a printed version here and I'm sorry that you're going to have to listen to me and not focus on anything in front of you when I talk. I'd like to make a fairly brief presentation and then engage in a dialogue with you, if you are so inclined, about some of the matters I'd like to raise.
First of all, I'd like to introduce myself. I am speaking as an individual today but I have been a politician in Frontenac county. I'd like to tell you about some of my experiences of planning in this rural eastern Ontario and then I'd like to mention some of the changes that I think would improve this package of legislative and administrative reforms.
I live in Bedford township in Frontenac county. Frontenac is said to be the county of 1,000 lakes and Bedford may be the township of almost 100 lakes. It's a township that has more cottage residents than any other township in eastern Ontario, so tourism and cottaging are quite important to us in our township. Our lakes have attracted a summer population of about 5,000, which sort of multiplies the winter population by about five times.
I've served on the council of Bedford for six years, including three years as reeve. I've served on the county planning committee of Frontenac county and served on a committee that's considered developing a planning department, an OP for Frontenac county. I've also served on the steering committee of the Rideau Lake study under the auspices of the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority. I've served on the board of the Napanee Region Conservation Authority, the Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority and the Kingston, Frontenac Lennox and Addington health unit. I've chaired the Collins watershed steering committee for the Cataraqui conservation authority. I've also chaired the Bedford planning advisory committee during a two-year-long process of developing a new official plan there.
In my experience, I've seen deteriorating environmental conditions in the region, including lakes where tourist operators now fear future loss of business because tourists just aren't coming back to the lakes, because by late summer the lakes are in such miserable shape that nobody wants to be around them at all any more. I've seen, in some areas more so than others, particular deterioration of some of the most important environmental assets, in particular the lakes.
Unfortunately, these negative environmental impacts extend beyond the boundaries of the municipalities responsible for planning decisions. Natural systems don't respect municipal boundaries. We tend to get things spilling over from one lake down through the watershed into other jurisdictions. Furthermore, the impacts extend to future generations' enjoyment of natural heritage.
For all these reasons, I think it's essential that the province declare an interest in this area and declare the policies to protect our shared natural heritage, as it is are attempting to do in this package of reforms.
On the other hand, I've also seen the frustration and the economic loss felt by people who wish to develop their land and see their proposals tied up for years by bureaucratic approval delays. To me, it's clear that the present planning system neither protects environmental resources adequately nor promotes development in a reasonable way so that people can have clear expectations about how their applications for development are going to be dealt with and what kinds of outcomes they can expect from them.
I think that the government's package here is a worthy and responsible initiative. It's bold and imaginative and it offers hope for a much more effective planning system for Ontario. I'm hopeful that the policy statements will ensure more protection for our environmental assets and I hope that the devolution of planning authority to upper-tier bodies will reduce bureaucratic delays and expedite careful approvals.
Nevertheless, I do see several serious weaknesses in the package. The risk I'm concerned about that I'll focus on here, I think, is that adequate citizens' rights to appeal these planning bodies' decisions will be prevented by what I see as three elements in the package.
First, citizens will no longer be able to appeal minor variances to the OMB. Minor variances, it's suggested in the little planning book here, will deal with things like porches and minor adjustments to lot lines. In fact, minor variances deal with a whole lot more than that out in Bedford township. In Bedford township you can minor-vary a 100-foot setback from a lake down to a 40-foot setback from a lake, and that happens all over the place. Also, you can vary the size of a lot. If you have a requirement that a lot in the zoning bylaw be 0.8 hectare, you can vary it down to whatever the committee thinks is a reasonable and minor variance consistent with the whole thing.
In fact, now I think there are some constraints on what minor variances are allowed because there is an appeal to OMB possible by citizens. If citizens lose that right, I think there'll be one less constraint on municipal governments requiring them to be responsible in their use of minor variances. I fear you'd get a sort of ready recourse to minor variances and you may produce a whole pattern of development which contradicts the goals and objectives of the official plan. That's something that I would have no doubt in predicting would happen, in particular in some jurisdictions. I know some planning jurisdictions are more, perhaps, responsible than others, but some of them would definitely do that, I think.
The second area that I'm concerned about is that in the proposed legislation it says the approval authority may refuse to refer a requested appeal to the OMB for any of four grounds that I would take to be very subjective. This is section 29, clause (a). I won't read them all, since you're familiar with them, but I think that any one of them can be subjectively interpreted to consider a particular attempted appeal unworthy of going on to the OMB. I would like to strongly recommend that this whole clause (a) be deleted. I really can't see any reason for it.
On the other hand, I think it's very important to expedite the matters of appeals to the OMB and it's perfectly reasonable that the OMB should do some more dismissing of frivolous and vexatious appeals. I think there are far too many appeals going to the OMB. I don't have any doubt in saying that, but I don't think it's appropriate that the body which originally made the decision should be the one that makes the original ruling, the first ruling on whether or not it's a serious planning matter that underlies the objector's complaints here.
The third area that I'm concerned about is that there is no provision for intervenor funding for appeals to the OMB. I know this has been a contentious issue and it arouses a lot of concern when the idea is raised. I too don't want to see everybody's appeals funded, but I think there are ways that the OMB can set priorities and develop a system for assessing which appeals are meritorious and can consider funding from the government.
As we're developing a new system that places more authority in the hands of municipalities, devolves more responsibility down to them, it becomes even more important that citizens have adequate recourse to an appeal body such as this, not less, so I think it's important that there be some improvement in the package in this regard.
In general, it's my experience that full citizen rights to appeal to the OMB help keep councils more responsive to citizen concerns about planning and development issues. I think if this right to appeal is weakened, councils may feel freer to act more arbitrarily than they do even now.
I could have commented on a pile of other things but I thought, given time constraints, I'd just pick out those particular concerns. If you'd like to ask questions, I'm finished.
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The Chair: Okay. Mr Carr, there's just about four minutes, so it's literally one minute per caucus.
Mr Carr: I'll be very quick then, although the answer may not be.
You talked about the OMB and you talked about some of the problems. As you know, with the backlog, everybody's upset with it. With your experience, how will we deal with the problems? You wanted the ability of people to appeal, but the backlogs are such that people are frustrated with it.
Mr Hahn: I think there are all kinds of new procedures under way now at the OMB. Alternative dispute resolution mechanisms are the obvious thing. We should promote alternative ways to resolve disputes even before it gets to the OMB, and then when it does get to the OMB, the OMB should be involved in different methods of resolving things so it doesn't actually get to a full OMB hearing.
Furthermore, I also support the OMB having discretion and exercising more discretion to not hear all kinds of cases which I think are frivolous and vexatious and not made on good planning grounds.
Ms Haeck: You're actually mirroring a number of concerns raised by my own constituents, particularly in relation to minor variances. One thing that I have advocated as part of these hearings in discussion with deputants is that there should be a very clear definition of what a minor variance is so that everyone is clear that it's not just doubling intensity. It should be minor, as in three inches of a porch being an overhang or something like this. How do you feel about that proposal, that it should be much more clearly outlined than what it is today?
Mr Hahn: I think it sounds like a nice idea, but I also know that there are a lot of cases where in fact because, for example, a lot on the lake has been created some time back and now doesn't conform to the current bylaws, you have to give a minor variance that would exceed this sort of fine definition that you'd give. So I think you'd probably have a really hard time trying to define it that way. I don't know what the answer is, except to maintain the right to appeal.
Ms Haeck: Okay. I appreciate that.
Mr Eddy: I'm glad you said those last words, because I was looking for a solution. So you think the right to appeal minor variances should be maintained because municipalities sometimes are dealing with not minor variances but indeed major variances.
Mr Hahn: Yes, I think so. I think that if a neighbour comes and objects to a minor variance of 10 feet and it seems pretty clear to the OMB that it's frivolous, then they should just dismiss it immediately.
Mr Eddy: Because of your concern about deteriorating environmental conditions, I think I heard you speak in favour of planning on a watershed basis.
Mr Hahn: Yes.
Mr Eddy: Do you think the conservation authorities should be involved more with watershed planning? How do you think it can work so that there's more input into municipal plans?
Mr Hahn: I think the conservation authorities have a very significant role to play. The only reason I think we'd hesitate to recommend that they are required to do that is because they don't exist all over the province. But everywhere that they do exist, I think they have a very important role to play here.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Hahn, for sharing your views with this committee and for coming today.
THERESA KELLAWAY
The Chair: Ms Theresa Kellaway. Welcome, Ms Kellaway.
Ms Theresa Kellaway: How do you do? Mr Chairman, members of committee, ladies and gentlemen, I have been observing municipal politics for several years and have on many occasions been appalled at the abuse and, in some instances, the total disregard of the conflict-of-interest act. The present act indeed puts a politician above the law. The financial burden that it puts on the citizen is such that only a very few can afford to see justice done.
In 1988, I got a legal opinion from an expert on municipal law, Mr John Judson of London, Ontario, regarding the sale of city-owned property in the core of our city. Three members of council owned property in the same area, but no disclosures of conflict were made. Mr Judson stated in his letter: "I have no hesitation in giving my opinion that the persons in these circumstances have a conflict of interest pursuant to the act, which they should be disclosing." There was no way that I could fulfil my civic duty, because the costs would have been astronomical.
I am pleased to have the privilege of addressing this committee on this issue, which hopefully will remove this heavy financial burden that has been placed on the citizens.
In this bill, Bill 163, under section 6 of schedule B, I fully agree that full, written disclosures should be filed with the clerk, including any and all connections with numbered companies, and certainly if the politician is the "in trust" which appears on so many deeds and documents.
In section 7 of schedule B, I would strongly suggest that the commissioner's position be advertised and hired through an interview process by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and that the provincial member of the area is not consulted in any way, thereby eliminating any perception of favouritism or nepotism. The hiring process should be done at arm's length or we will end up with patronage appointments such as we have on police services boards. The last one appointed in our city did not even know what time the meetings were held. The commissioner must be unbiased, understand the act explicitly and not be a political puppet.
I disagree with the Association of Municipalities of Ontario's position as stated on pages 4 and 5 of the April 15, 1994, bulletin, Municipal Alert: "It is the association's position that if municipalities are going to pay for policing their own members, then they should have control over the body delegated to perform this duty. Once the commissioner has completed his or her report, the association believes that a tribunal of municipal members of council and local boards should be created to deal with it."
The municipalities are paying, they say. Well, that is the citizens, not just members of council. It is the citizens who foot all the bills, not the municipal council. If this committee follows AMO's position, you are indeed putting the fox in with the chickens.
At a city council committee meeting on July 20, 1994, a councillor made a motion regarding an official plan and zoning bylaw amendment. The motion was seconded and passed. Immediately following, the committee then went into a planning advisory committee meeting where the councillor disclosed a conflict regarding the issue he had made the motion on. At this meeting he seconded a motion on the issue, and not one word was said by anyone. The councillor is in his third term on council, so inexperience could not be an excuse. I would have to question the viability of a tribunal of municipal council members in judging one of their own.
In part IV of Bill 163 regarding section 55 of the Municipal Act, which deals with open meetings, I would like to inform you that in our city there is a closed meeting before every biweekly council meeting, and on several occasions they return to a closed-door meeting after the public meeting adjourns.
In December 1991, the council met behind closed doors to appoint members to committees and boards by secret ballot. After doing so, they declared it a public meeting at approximately 11:30 pm, nearly midnight, and they passed the resolutions confirming these appointments. The city hall doors were locked to the public. So much for public meetings.
When questioned by a citizen regarding the validity of the resolution, the council got an opinion from the city's solicitor. He stated: "Council may wish to consider refraining from taking a secret ballot in the in-camera sessions on the basis they are prohibited by the Municipal Act and may give rise to the appearance of fettering council's decision, even if not actually binding on council." It sounds like a Scotch verdict: "Not guilty, but don't go out and do it again."
Citizens are sick and tired of the excessive secrecy of governments, and hopefully Bill 163 will curb some of it on the municipal level. Patrick Henry, an 18th century American statesman, said it all in his statement: "Public business is the public's business, and to cover with a veil of secrecy the common routine of business is an abomination in the eyes of every intelligent man."
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In closing, I would like to say I do not agree with delegating approval authorities to municipal levels and would like to congratulate the people involved with drafting Bill 163 and not giving too much control to municipal councils.
To add something to my deputation, I would also like to include a letter to the editor in this morning's Toronto Star. It's very short.
"Paradise lost while folks asleep: There is a disheartening postscript to my September 6 Opinion page article, `Eden Mills: There's trouble in paradise.' In the early hours of that very morning, even while the copies of the Star containing my piece were being printed and distributed, at 2:15 am to be exact, the council of the township of Eramosa passed a motion to demolish the old bowstring bridge in Eden Mills and to effectively widen the road through the village.
"It would have been less difficult to understand if the decision was taken with full disclosure to and input from the public. Instead, it was done in the following circumstances:
"The matter was not on the agenda;
"The motion was brought to the fore under the guise of `unfinished business';
"The reeve had announced several days earlier that no representations would be entertained from the residents of Eden Mills if and when the issue was revived;
"No formal notice was given to any of the interested parties that this motion would be revived on this day;
"The motion was delayed until 2:15 am, a time of the morning when members of the public tend to be in bed and unaware of what their elected politicians are up to.
"What is there to hide? Why under cover of darkness, metaphorically and otherwise? I can think of only three possible reasons. Shame. Vested interests. Lack of due process."
This is from a Mr Singh in Guelph, and I think it says it all. Thank you very much.
The Chair: It's time for a few questions.
Ms Haeck: I very much appreciate your comments. You echo those of many people in my own area, and I know these kinds of concerns are definitely part of a larger community, as you've just read there. I personally want to thank you for your presentation. I think, Mrs Kellaway, you've been extremely explicit. There's not an awful lot more I think I personally could add to it.
Mr Curling: Mrs Kellaway, I also want to thank you for your presentation. Your concern should be well noted. I think that politicians must be accountable, and of course revealing exactly, as you said --
Mr Perruzza: How about bureaucrats?
Mr Curling: Also, people who are responsible for public funds and public investment should be accountable. I agree with that, and specifically, as you say, about politicians being accountable, we're dealing with that part of it.
However, the question was asked earlier on today, and I just want to put it to you too, that when someone declares an intention to run for political office and they say that more than the immediate person involved should declare their interests, do you feel that aunts and uncles or brothers and sisters should also declare their interests if they are relatives of the intended politician who is going to run?
Ms Kellaway: No. I don't think that people that far out should have to declare. I think the candidates themselves, their spouses and children should have to declare. They should have to declare, as I stated in my presentation, if they are involved with numbered companies, and I've put enclosures in with my deputation where you will see one transaction where it is "in trust." Those are two words that are hated by anyone who is trying to get some justice in this municipal business.
I think if I were a politician on the municipal level, I would declare what I had and what my spouse and my children had, but if I were at a meeting where I thought something was going to be discussed that an aunt or an uncle or someone was going to benefit from, I think I would declare. I would make a disclosure of conflict because there could be a possible chance that people would think -- and we must have it so that there is no doubt, that there are no backroom deals being made.
Therefore I think it would be up to the individual politician, that if they felt that some member of their family outside of the immediate family was going to benefit or lose from it, they should decline from voting or discussing it.
Mr Carr: Thank you very much for a great presentation. You did an excellent job and a great presentation. As a matter of fact, as I was sitting here I was thinking, "Here's probably somebody" -- you were talking with such passion -- "who would be great to run for council." I don't know -- it's coming up -- if you've decided whether you're going to run or not, but --
Ms Kellaway: Well, I will tell you from my own personal experience, to run for council, when you sit behind that panel, you have one voice. I can go to the podium on the far side of the railing and I can say many things. I probably might say them if I was on the other side, but I'm sure I'd be squashed by everybody else who's there.
They refer to me in the local paper as an activist. The saddest part of it all is that you have to take the brunt of all the remarks from most newspapers because they feel you are nothing but a disturber and all you do is find problems. And when they ask me if I would I run for council, I say I haven't been pleased with my church for the past 10 years but I'm not running for Pope.
Mr Carr: I get the feeling you're not going to squashed by anybody, so I don't think you need to worry about that.
Ms Kellaway: I hope not.
Mr Carr: One quick question -- I think I have time -- on the particular case you talked about on the front there with the three council members: Were you involved in that decision personally or is it just that you've been watching and following?
Ms Kellaway: No, I was not involved in any of the properties or anything.
Mr Carr: You just followed the reports then.
Ms Kellaway: Yes. At an in camera meeting, a behind-closed-doors meeting, we had almost lost our prime piece of waterfront to developers that wanted to put two 21-storey apartments there, and we formed a committee and saved our waterfront. In doing so, I discovered that there certainly was a conflict-of-interest act that was being abused dreadfully, and when I discovered that, I thought someone had better keep their eye on things.
Mr Carr: Good for you. Good luck and keep up the good work.
The Chair: This committee would like to congratulate you on your activism and we all hope that it will continue for a long time.
COUNTY OF HASTINGS
The Chair: We invite the Hastings county planning advisory committee, Dr Allan Leal and Niall Carney. Welcome.
Dr Allan Leal: Thank you, Mr Chairman, committee members, ladies and gentlemen. Earl Hewison, who is the reeve of the village of Frankford in Hastings county and the chairman of the county planning and land division committee was to have made this presentation, but he is unavoidably absent due to a commitment in western Canada. So what you're going to hear is the voice of Jacob but the hand of Esau.
I've also, however, been astute enough, because of my own limitations in the area, to bring along with me Mr Niall Carney. Mr Carney is the county planning director for the county of Hastings, and I want to say publicly that it is regarded by us all as a privilege to have Mr Carney in that important position. Indeed, it may even be a rare privilege. But he is here to give an air of verisimilitude to what otherwise might be a most unconvincing tale.
Mr Perruzza: The statue is on the way.
Dr Leal: Exactly. Your secretary to the committee has been good enough to solicit copies of the presentation and to distribute them. If you would look at me and not at the script -- I don't want to interrupt your reading, and where I depart from the script, I'll say so, so you'll know what is truth and what is non-truth.
Hastings county has a population of about 62,000 people and has been an advocate of and involved in community-based planning since 1970. It adopted its first county official plan in 1974 and a major revision in 1985. Now, the official plan covers the whole of the county with the exception of one important municipality -- one of the local townships, Sidney township, is not part of it -- and the planning process is being continuously updated. It's principally a policy document which is implemented through the action of local councils -- I have the privilege of being reeve of one gentle village -- by rezonings, severances and plans of subdivision, and it does represent the views of the constituent municipalities as to how change and development should be achieved.
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I depart temporarily from the script to say we tend to lose track of the fact now and again that in the origin of things, the business of land use control was purely a question of the law of nuisance, expressed in Latin, which I translate into English, and you were not to use your land so as to hurt the land of your neighbour. That's where it all began. Then you came into the 19th century, when the whole or most of the city of London was built, planned, adorned with what they called squares, and you've heard of them all: Berkeley Square, Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square, Cadogan Square. All of these were put together through the instrumentality of what we lawyers know as the restrictive covenant, which was not government-related in any form. And what a fine job they did. Then of course it was realized eventually that the law for the rich did not also apply to the poor, so government had to intervene to give the same advantages to the lower strata of development. That's where planning started. It came into force in Ontario with the Planning Act, the first one, in 1948 through the late Dana Porter.
I give you that term of reference simply to remind myself and the committee, with respect, that sometimes we get carried away by what can be accomplished by an overpaternalistic approach at the upper level. I mean no offence, but that is true. I'm concerned about it. Everybody who has taught this, as I have, or thought about it at all will also feel the same way.
Anyway, dealing with policy first, if I may, the policy documents or policy statements, which regrettably are not before the committee, appear very detailed and they will prescribe how we are to plan in the future, leaving very little option for local circumstances to be considered. Instead of making policy to govern ourselves, we will be merely administering policies which perforce have been imposed upon us, and certainly imported.
Two actions are obviously needed. The first one is to make sure that the policies are sound, reasonable, fair, just, equitable, and in order to achieve that desideratum, of course they ought to be reviewed in the very near future.
The other thing that is required, in the submission of the Hastings county council members, is that the wording or the phrase "shall have regard to," which was and is the principle of the current Planning Act, should be retained and should not be replaced by the words "shall be consistent with," which appear in subsection 6(2) of Bill 163 and propose to amend the Planning Act subsection 3(5).
I would like again to depart briefly from the script to say that I have conceptual difficulty with what is proposed in making the policy statements have the force of law, because that is what the proposed change and the phraseology does. These are, and I say this with the greatest respect, the articulations of a single minister being advised by other ministers being advised by informed civil servants being advised by decent human beings, all of those things, but they are not legislative instruments. They're brought into force by the fiat of the Legislature in the act, which says that when the omnibus bill, Bill 163, comes into force after having been given third reading, the policy statements themselves will come into force as well at that date. They are not law. They are not subjected to the legal process. And by the legal process I don't mean what lawyers think; I mean what the law is.
So I do have conceptual difficulties with what is proposed, quite apart from the administrative difficulties that would be caused in trying to work with it, and therefore I support without reservation what my colleagues in Hastings county council recommend, that the wording of the current act should not be changed to accommodate the new wording.
Secondly, dealing with the question of equity, Bill 163 does not treat similar actions in the same way and to that extent they are unfair and may be quite unjust. For example, the regions of the province will be required to plan, that is, to prepare and adopt for approval an official plan. Prescribed counties will be required to do the same thing. Both will, as a result, have the same ability to direct development.
However, the similarity between them and the present scheme ends there. The regions will be delegated many of the minister's powers, such as approval of subdivisions, lower-tier amendments etc. The counties won't. This is not fair; it is not equitable. In addition, prescribed counties will be penalized if they fail to plan and they may be charged fees arising from the cost of having it done for them. Regions won't.
It is our view accordingly that to remedy this the provisions of subsections 17(2) and (3) should be amended to include those counties with official plans in regard to the approval of lower-tier plans and that subsection 51(1) be brought in with regard to approvals of plans of subdivision.
The third question I want to deal with is the question of general governance. Bill 163 proposes the establishment of what the act or the bill refers to as municipal planning authorities. I understand, because I have read some of the background legislative material, that this is being recommended in order that municipalities with a similarity of interest and desiring to make the same changes etc may pool their resources and their ideas and bring it all about more easily than can be accomplished at the moment. What will happen, however, is that many counties or many regions will be formed and they will be just another institution or type of institution added to what already exists.
In addition, where such an authority is established, the county council is prohibited from levying on those municipalities for purposes of county planning. Apart from being -- perhaps "destructive" is too strong a word, but certainly "denigrate" from the powers and the position of counties, it's an undue interference, in our view, with the county's right to strike a reasonable budget. While there may be grounds for joint planning where no upper-tier planning is in place or expected, it does appear to us to be contradictory to require a county to plan and at the same time reduce its fiscal ability to do so.
For those of you who are looking at the script, it is suggested that subsection 14.1(2) be amended to prohibit municipal planning authorities as envisaged in the proposed legislation in prescribed counties or those with approved official plans, and also to delete the provisions of subsection 14.3(5) on the matter of the levy.
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That is all I have to present with regard to the planning side of the omnibus Bill 163. In the nature of things, we're here to criticize the provisions and not to applaud the things with which we agree. In other words, we're here to bury Caesar and not to praise him. But those are the things that our county delegates are concerned about -- really concerned about.
For the next part of the presentation, I would like to turn to the provisions of the omnibus bill dealing with disclosure of conflict of interest, and I'm going to read this pretty carefully, because I do not want it to be understood that I'm walking the gangplank alone on this.
Hastings county has reviewed all sections of Bill 163 through its planning committee and its county review committee. The review committee is a standing committee of council to deal with organization and procedure. Both of these committees have reported their recommendations to county council. The county review committee reviewed parts II and IV of the omnibus bill, Bill 163. The county does not have any concerns regarding the majority of parts II and IV, with the exception, however, of section 15 under the proposed new act to be called the Local Government Disclosure of Interest Act, 1994, which is set out as schedule B to Bill 163.
Section 15 outlines the contents of the register that the clerk of the local municipality maintains, and the contents of that register would be (a) written disclosures of pecuniary interest under section 4, (b) disclosure of financial statements and supplementary disclosure statements with regard to the prescriptions which are contained in section 6 and (c) disclosure statements of gifts and personal benefits under section 5.
Perhaps by way of a slight digression, I find that in my recent experience in this field of local government, which one normally shuns as a plague, the contractors and the engineers and the advisers and the lobbyists and all the camp followers who hang around local government establishments are now wise enough to be, as usual, away ahead of the legislation. They're not making gifts to members any more. They're making gifts to the village, and of course that's not precluded by the act at all. So you get a handsome cornucopia of VCRs and television monitors and, oh, dial clocks and digital clocks to adorn offices throughout the municipal buildings, all this sort of thing.
Interjection.
Dr Leal: And of course turn them all back, yes.
Mr Perruzza: Do they get charitable receipts for that and write them off?
Dr Leal: Who ever said that anybody in local government was a charity? In any event, this is how it's done. They're way ahead of you, a country mile. It's like the photo-radar. The ink wasn't dry on the legislation before everybody was finding ways of masking the licence plate and all those things. They didn't apply to trailers, because that's not a motor vehicle, it doesn't have a motor, and you're trying to read the licence on the back of the car and you can't see it for the trailer etc, etc. Well, you know; this is part of your life.
Anyway, let me say the county is not opposed to a disclosure of information act, but sections 3 and 4 of schedule B are of serious concern to us, because these financial statements would be considered public documents and they may be inspected by anyone at any time by applying during business hours to the office of the clerk where the register is established, and these documents may be used for any purpose whatsoever. They're completely open. So anybody who likes to indulge in fishing expeditions, and I mean just that, to try and incommode somebody on some ground has a harvest store available to them now in the form of the register.
Because the proposed Local Government Disclosure of Interest Act, 1994, also contains a section 7 providing for the appointment of the commissioner -- and we have already heard just previously what sort of a saint he has to be -- we feel that if the commissioner were given the authority to review the disclosures of the members of council, as required under the act, if any complaint is received, then they can check the disclosure to see if in fact the application should be considered and sent on its way and, if not, kill it at that stage.
I want to stress, if I may, please, that we're quite serious about the open-ended and completely untrammelled use that may be made of the information which council members will have to put on file for perusal, and open perusal, for free, by anybody who wants to spend his life being a burp disturber. We don't think that's right. What it may lead to, of course, is the rather unhappy result that the only one who will be allowed, the only one who could take the chance of sitting on municipal council is someone who has no assets at all. I qualify for that and that would be fine with me, but it would affect other people I know, like my good friend the planning director.
My colleagues and I are grateful to you for the opportunity to come here and tell you what we think about some of the things, and we'd be pleased -- Mr Carney would be pleased to try and answer any questions you may have.
The Chair: Thank you. About three minutes and a half per caucus.
Mr Curling: Thank you for your presentation, and though you stated that you didn't come to praise Caesar but to bury him, on the other hand, the evil that men do lives after them.
Dr Leal: That's right. 'Tis a pity.
Mr Curling: Therefore, we've got to make sure that what is done here is that our few things to be buried are the few things the evil that they do would not live after them itself.
I think your presentation was very precise and direct. It is something that we really need to go back and read again. You comment within maybe four pages of your critique of it, and I think you're right on in many respects. What you have said here has been discussed and raised in very different forms by many, many people who come before us.
One of the things that jumped out, very much so to me, is the making of the policy. As we know, these policies somehow intend to bind us more than guide us. As you know, in this hearing it is not the policy that we will discuss. It is very plainly told us here by the government. It's the legislation. It's not subject to any review.
I just want to ask you that, with some of the policies that have been created by the municipalities, what approach do you feel you could use in order to allow the government, or those who will be changing the legislation, so the policies within municipalities can be reflected in the legislation they have here because it doesn't seem to transfer so much?
Dr Leal: Well, thank you very much for the perceptions which are evident in the question.
I would like to point out that in section G of the policy statements, on page 18 it says this, just in order to lend some credence to the intervention I made to suggest that the present proposal with regard to policy statements requiring action to be consistent means that they are law and not simply guidelines. Before now they were guidelines, and they were helpful guidelines and they were important guidelines, but they were not binding law, and if there was a substantial and a reasonable reason at the local level for departing from the policy statement in some degree to achieve more rational, equitable, just behaviour in the particular thing, you were able to do it. You will not now be able to do it. To show you that they said what they meant, in paragraph 3 it says:
"The Ministry of Municipal Affairs, together with other ministries and in consultation with the public" -- well, I hope so -- "may prepare guidelines to assist planning jurisdictions in implementing policy statements."
You have guidelines on the policy statements. You don't have guidelines on guidelines. It's very clear. They draw the distinction. Implementation guidelines are advisory and will provide information on the meaning of the policy and illustrate ways for the policies to be implemented.
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It's too bad, but I must say this: that after having gone through all the trauma that we did go through with the McRuer Commission report on civil rights in Ontario, and passed an omnibus bill amending Ontario's statutes to the number of 279 in order to achieve fairness of treatment and substantial justice in our legislation, we come now with this type, and it's not unique, I regret to say, but a brief 25 years later, we get back to the same old business where you have a wholesale retreat from the laws that govern, or are supposed to govern, democratic government. Why?
Oh, I know where these things come from. I know the minister quite well from having been associated with him for about 15 years. He's changed his name but he's the same man, and let me say this: He's not any more fallible than the rest of us but he is fallible, but these aren't his wild wonderments at four in the morning anyway. I can tell by looking at the American sociological jargon that appears in them that Ed Philip didn't talk that way.
The Chair: We'll move on. Mr Carr.
Mr Carr: Yes, thank you very much for an excellent presentation. Over the course of sitting on committees of the last four years I have seen bills come through where there's no changes; in spite of opposition it just goes through as is. I've seen some bills that have had so many amendments that the bill is completely different over the last little while, so I can't --
Mr Perruzza: Oh, here we go. We stayed away from that stuff but here we go.
Dr Leal: Order. I really would like to hear what he's going to say.
Interjections.
Dr Leal: I may be disappointed, but I'd like to make that decision.
Mr Carr: Actually, you're not going to like me because I was going to say -- and I should have started and said this -- I was going to ask the question specifically to Mr Carney because he hasn't had a chance to speak on it, so I've seen different things happen and we don't know what will happen with the amendments when we go through the clause by clause. Mr Carney, I wanted to ask you: The bill, as is, would you like to see it passed or defeated?
Mr Niall Carney: I'd like to see it defeated.
Mr Carr: Thank you very much.
Mr Perruzza: Can you illustrate one example of where you would not be able to apply local -- to use your words -- local equity, local justice, local righteousness in a land use decision made locally, under this act?
Dr Leal: Oh, sure. It happens all the time.
Mr Perruzza: Well, the act isn't in force yet, but name me a --
Dr Leal: No. The act doesn't create the problem; it just exacerbates the problem. It's going to be worse if this proposal is accepted.
Mr Perruzza: Give me an example.
Dr Leal: For example, they talk about -- what's the term? -- gradual development. We've had a running battle with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs now for as long as I can remember.
Mr Carney: Limited.
Dr Leal: Limited development, and not defined, sprung full-blown from the forehead of somebody somewhere, and because your views don't jell entirely with what has come from the head of Janus, then of course you're not to be believed, you're untrustworthy, you're unreasonable.
Mr Perruzza: Okay. You may have a running battle with someone, but one example of one piece of land somewhere in your county or in your area locally where this bill would prohibit you from using the principles you talked about?
Dr Leal: Oh, sure.
Mr Perruzza: Yes, I'm waiting.
Dr Leal: One of the worst at the moment that we have to deal with is the policy statement which emanated from the Ministry of Environment and Energy -- and don't get me started on them -- which says you can't split the service. You know what that means? If you don't know, I'll explain it to you. It means that if you're proposing a development and there's town water available but not town sewage, you can't put septic tanks in and take the town water. That's splitting the service. You must take both or neither. Why? God in heaven has not told me. She may have a reason.
Mr Perruzza: But how does this impact on that?
Dr Leal: Because it's a policy statement which becomes part of these policy statements because the Ministry of Environment is party to formulating policy statements which apparently in its mind have the force of law.
Mr Perruzza: How would the situation differ when Bill 163 would go into effect from the situation that you have today?
Dr Leal: Because if you had a situation where some policy statement precluded you from doing what you thought in the circumstances -- and not because you felt that way or because you were bull-headed or any reason, but on proper grounds you felt that there was good reason to depart from the policy statement, we can now do it. Under Bill 163 if that proposal is accepted, we cannot. Is that not --
Mr Perruzza: No, I'm not quite convinced that that would be the case, because I believe there is sufficient flexibility, but obviously we're not going to agree.
The Chair: Yes, and we ran out of time. Dr Leal, we enjoyed hearing from you. We find your presentation lively and informative, and Mr Carney, I would urge you to depute separately in order that you might achieve some equity of hearing in the future.
Mr Carney: No. I was heard eloquently.
Dr Leal: We'll catch you on the next round.
The Chair: Very well. I'm sure we will. Thank you. Oh, there's some clarification. I'm sorry. Dr Leal, hold on one second. Some clarification?
Mr Hayes: Yes. I'd like to clear up the issue dealing with these policies. There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding, and whether it's intentional or not, I'm not sure. But governments do set policies, and I think we all understand that --
Mr Perruzza: Yes. You remember the --
The Chair: Hold on, hold on.
Mr Hayes: Excuse me, Mr Perruzza. But the fact of the matter is that, yes, the policies are there, the cabinet has approved the policies, but at the same time you hear people saying that, "We're not getting any input on all these kinds of things and we're not being listened to."
Well, there has been a task force that's set up and chaired by Dale Martin, as all members know. It's the implementation task force on the guidelines for the policies.
Interjection: That's different.
Mr Hayes: It's not different. You have your policies and then you have to have the implementation for the guidelines of your policy.
Interjections.
Mr Hayes: Excuse me. But to hear people say that there's no input, and just about every stakeholder in this province has had input in here --
Dr Leal: Please, please --
Mr Hayes: Excuse me, excuse me --
Dr Leal: -- don't use that term, "stakeholder."
The Chair: Hold on, Dr Leal, hold on.
Mr Hayes: Okay. Many people have been represented by lots of different associations and organizations: the Ontario Home Builders' Association; AMO's got a large list on here. We have county planners. I recognize one from my part of the province in Kent county. There's another one here from Prince Edward county. There's a county planner from the University of Guelph rural planning, Friends of Foodland, and the list goes on and on. We have the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, the Christian Farmers, all of these people are having input into implementing these guidelines. So, I think that the air should be cleared. To say that there isn't proper consultation or we're just ramming these things through --
Dr Leal: Mr Chairman, if I may --
Mr Hayes: -- excuse me, but it ain't right.
The Chair: Very briefly, Dr Leal.
Dr Leal: Sorry. Could I answer that?
The Chair: Yes, please, but briefly.
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Dr Leal: Yes, I'll be brief. You're absolutely correct in saying that governments formulate policy with their advisers.
Interjections.
The Chair: Please continue.
Mr Hayes: Go ahead. I'm sorry. I'm listening.
Dr Leal: Governments formulate policy with the advice of their advisers. That policy finds its way into legislation. If it doesn't, it doesn't affect us except in an advisory capacity. You've made my point.
Mr Hayes: I have? I'm glad we agree.
Interjections.
The Chair: We need to move on because we've scheduled other people. I'm sorry --
Mr Eddy: We really haven't cleared everything up.
The Chair: But Mr Eddy, please, we can't do that.
Interjections.
The Chair: Yes, but Mr Eddy, not in this forum, in this way.
Interjections.
The Chair: Mr Eddy, what I suggest is that when you have your turn, that you then can clarify the points you want to make, okay?
TOWNSHIP OF SIDNEY
The Chair: Town of Sidney. Please begin any time you're ready.
Mr Carl Cannon: I'd like to thank the Chair and the committee for the opportunity to speak to you today. My name is Carl Cannon. I am the director of planning for the township of Sidney. With me today is Jack Arthur, who is the reeve of the township of Sidney, and to the far right is Jim Pine, who is the chief administrative officer of the municipality. Following my submission we'd certainly be pleased to address any questions that arise as a result of this presentation.
We're here today to speak on behalf of council and the approximately 17,000 residents of Sidney township concerning the proposed planning reforms of Bill 163 and their effects regarding the potential planning roles and responsibilities of counties and municipalities like Sidney. We will also touch upon the proposed municipal planning authorities.
Over a long process that's led to this bill, Sidney township has participated very directly in the process. Certainly we submitted submissions to the Sewell commission. We thank the minister for the opportunity for sitting down with Sidney township and a number of other similar municipalities to hear us speak with regard to concerns such as the potential for municipal planning authorities and the issues with respect to upper-tier planning. In essence we've taken any avenues available to us to submit something or make a presentation or make a paper of some kind.
Before we outline our supports or concerns regarding the particular bill, we think it's necessary to give you some background or backdrop of Sidney township. In your blue package that you've got before you, you'll see in the back a map which shows Hastings county. Sidney township is within Hastings county. Sidney township is adjacent to the Bay of Quinte. It has the city of Belleville, 37,000, to the east of us. It has the city of Trenton on the west, approximately 17,000. The city has the same population as Sidney township.
Again, we are a municipality of 17,000 people. In essence we are stuck -- and that's the opinion of the municipality -- in an antiquated county system in which we have little ability to influence the decisions of council. While we have 28% of the population of that county, we pay over 29% of the bills of the county -- that is the county levy; we pay approximately 39% of the county road budget. Our representation at county council, however, is only 10%. As few as four municipalities with 2% of the population carry as many votes as Sidney does in Hastings county.
Second, the county consists of 27 municipalities that stretch from the Bay of Quinte north to Algonquin park, a distance of approximately 140 kilometres. The length and breadth of the county has ensured that our community of interest in day-to-day affairs lies with our sister communities in the greater Quinte area. Our relationships -- business, commercial, residential, service-wise -- are all within the greater Quinte area. We must ensure that this growing interrelationship is not adversely affected. The greater Quinte area represents Sidney's best hopes, and indeed those of other member municipalities in the greater Quinte area, for improving our economic and social environments.
We have, as a group of municipalities sharing common interests, taken some important steps together. For instance, many of us have joined together to establish the first-ever Quinte area economic development commission, whose task is to improve our local economies.
We are also members of the greater Quinte area advisory committee. The reeve of Sidney township is the chair of that committee, which consists of the heads of councils and the senior administrators of the member municipalities. This advisory committee is a sounding-board for many area-wide issues, from taxi regulation and bicycle paths to infrastructure servicing issues. The committee has functioned for well over three years, and we do acknowledge the great assistance of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs in that commission.
In short, our day-to-day affairs are more closely tied with the other municipalities adjacent to our boundaries than with those of the county.
A very significant portion of our daily issues involve planning matters. It is also very important to note that the township has a lengthy tradition and experience in planning matters. We have since 1980 had our own official plan, which was recently updated and revised in 1993. Our long-range and day-to-day planning issues are managed by -- I'm making this comment -- a professionally accredited team of employees.
The county official plan does not affect Sidney township. It does not cover it and never has. Sidney township believes it has a mature planning culture, to use a very common terminology as of late. We believe our long-term directions and planning objectives are generally different than those expressed or contained within the county's official plan. For example, our policies are more restrictive regarding rural development, using severance as an example, and we're more direct in ensuring that growth occurs within identified urban service areas.
Our new official plan and secondary plans reflect a commitment to ensuring that provincial objectives such as the protection of environmentally sensitive areas and significant natural resources is achieved.
Having made this backdrop, I'd like to make some specific references to Bill 163.
Again, our community of interest is with our sister municipalities, neighbouring municipalities, in the greater Quinte area. Because of this situation, we strongly urge you to support section 8 of the bill, which proposes a new planning mechanism called municipal planning authorities. The establishment of these authorities was a direct response from the minister to situations like ours in Sidney township.
Many municipalities like Sidney -- the townships of Ernestown, Kingston, Pittsburg and Elizabethtown -- find themselves locked into a county system of government with the same limitations that we have, especially with respect to representation. Those municipalities I mentioned you will find are all the most urbanized, the most populated municipalities of their counties. Sidney's situation is not uncommon.
Municipal planning authorities we believe are essential. They reflect the realities of planning in communities of interest, specifically in our case the greater Quinte area, but it could be the greater Kingston area. There are a number of areas. We need this forum to work collectively as a group of municipalities which transcends traditional county boundaries to solve common problems of growth and related issues of planning, servicing and economic development.
Certainly the bill as drafted recognizes this necessity for a truly region-wide approach to planning that is equitable and based on logical relationships among municipalities.
Again, we urge you to recommend to the minister and to the government to retain the municipal planning authorities as envisioned in the bill. To do otherwise will only serve to perpetuate and indeed exacerbate the inequities of an unaccountable and artificial planning structure currently in use, being county planning. Unless this committee is prepared to recommend radical restructuring of county government to more closely reflect representation by population, municipal planning authorities will provide us with an opportunity to properly plan within a structure that makes sense. It's the only opportunity for Sidney as envisioned under Bill 163.
Similar to this and related, in turning to other parts of the bill, we'd like to discuss some sections, specifically section 10 of the bill which requires all counties to have official plans. We agree that this is a reasonable suggestion. A municipality like ours, with its own official plan and tradition of planning, should not, however, in the case of Hastings county, conform to a plan that we believe is inferior. It would be the perception and the view of Sidney township's council that this is a step backwards.
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There's no disagreement. The comment made by Prince Edward county, the comments through Hastings county, is that planning is truly a process that people learn from. It improves through time. I don't know if I want to make an equivalency to a wine or something, but it's not something that can be superimposed, pushed down, forced upon people. It does grow. In Sidney township it's the belief of our council, and I think if you even talk to your own ministry staff people there would be some reflection of our opinion, that it has achieved a good status within Sidney township. It's a responsible planning process. It's reflective of the needs and the wishes of the voters of Sidney township.
The other issue, one that's not addressed within the bill, is the existing provisions under the act that require lower-tier plans like Sidney's to conform to a county official plan, as well as to pay a county levy for planning operations. Again, Sidney township is not in the county official plan and the only county service that we use is the land division committee. We use it because the county won't delegate it to Sidney township, so we really don't have an option there. We have to use that system. Sidney is required each year to contribute $54,000 to the county planning process. That's pretty expensive land division, but that's what we get.
The major comment you've heard with respect to municipal planning authorities from counties has been that they're concerned about the loss of revenue as a result of certain municipalities turning towards more logical relationships. Their concern is they are going to lose the money. I think the reality is that a number of municipalities presently in the county are getting their planning subsidized by municipalities such as Sidney township, Ameliasburgh and other larger urbanizing townships within counties. Maybe the reality is that those municipalities should be paying their fair share of county planning, and that through the municipal planning process, Sidney township will have the opportunity to pursue what is best for it and its neighbouring municipalities and create a true regional planning approach. Those other municipalities in the county will have to pay what they should be paying for their planning service, not a subsidized service.
In summary I'd like to briefly restate from our submission that Sidney finds itself as a member of a county where despite its substantial share of the annual budget of the county and of the county population, it carries very little voting power. This lack of influence will greatly affect our ability to plan with our neighbours in the greater Quinte area if no municipal planning authority is available. We cannot be forced to be force-fitted into a county planning structure which will not respond to our needs and the growing interrelationships with greater Quinte area municipalities.
Practically speaking, our community of interest rests with the municipalities in the greater Quinte area more than it rests with the northern townships of Hastings county. The difficulty the county continually faces in the current structure is balancing our needs with the diverse interests of municipalities beyond the greater Quinte area. The bill's provision of municipal planning authorities will allow the county to work with those municipalities that require the county's assistance and will allow Sidney to work with its own community of interest.
Just on top of the comments that you'll find in your sheets, there is some further detail within the document you have. There are some population figures identifying significantly populated townships within counties, as well as some information on municipalities in the greater Quinte area.
I just want to touch upon a comment that the committee has probably heard frequently. I don't think they should be surprised that counties are not supportive of the policies proposed for municipal planning authorities. On the issue with respect to the difference in the potential delegation authorities, the regions versus counties, I think it's very important to realize, and I know you realize, that the province has in the past made many attempts, has provided many initiatives for counties to revise themselves to something that is representative and relevant in 1990, and hopefully relevant in the foreseeable future.
Regional governments are relatively new creatures. They are generally representative and they have been granted authorities reflective of their maturity. I think this is an issue that has come up a number of times, but counties and regions are truly different, and I think we certainly should reflect that. And all counties are not the same, as all municipalities in the county are not the same.
I guess the Sidney perspective is that the flexibility as envisioned in Bill 163 should remain in the document. The minister should have the discretion to recognize that everything is not the same, that there are exceptions to the rules, and that there should be an opportunity to do what is best.
I'll close my comments, and the reeve will likely like to add to that.
Mr Jack Arthur: Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I guess, unlike some of the people I heard someone comment about, we're here to thank you for hearing us before and including concerns that we had into the legislation. The fact is that we're keenly interested and very pleased that the municipal planning authority concept is being considered. It is very important, particularly in the greater Quinte area.
You heard from Mr Bonter, the reeve of Ameliasburgh. He is part of that greater Quinte area. We're working now together on an advisory committee. With the assistance of Municipal Affairs, Mr Paul Ross, I think we've achieved a great deal. But we need the ability to plan together. We're spending literally hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure that we need to be able to share, and we need to start to develop the Quinte area as a region or as an area together.
Certainly our taxpayers come to me as the reeve and say, "Why can't you get together working with Belleville and Trenton?" because to the taxpayer, the boundaries are transparent. It's only the elected people who seem to have to be able to define where the boundaries are. There are obvious reasons for that, but for people who are working in the Quinte area, they need to have a group of politicians who can work together, who can work across boundaries. In this case we're talking working with three county areas: Northumberland, Prince Edward and Hastings. This is very, very important.
Our neighbour to the west of us is in Northumberland, Murray township, but there are certainly services and opportunities that we can deal with together with them if we had the opportunity to have municipal planning authorities. This is critical to our ability to grow and prosper in the Quinte area. It simply means that we can do it logically and be competitive with other areas that have those opportunities. Some of them are regions, some of them have other arrangements, but certainly we need this opportunity.
The county situation, the county planning, is a situation that has served its purpose, but certainly our focuses of interest are not the same. As we identify here, when we have the distances between north and south Hastings county, it is very obvious that it is very difficult for someone in north Hastings to make a decision when it is very dependent on information related to Sidney township. It's just not that reasonable to have that. However, our neighbours of Belleville, Trenton, Ameliasburgh, Murray township, Frankford, those people we have immediate relations with; we have infrastructure interaction. We have every reason to be in the planning business with them. Ladies and gentlemen, we are simply asking you to help us to do this. We're pleased that you've heard us. Just stay with us now and support the concept of the municipal planning authority. Thank you very much.
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The Chair: Thank you. Mr Carr, there are about three minutes -- a bit less than that.
Mr Carr: Thank you very much. On page 4, you sum it up. In the back you talk about some of the things you'd like to see, but on page 4 you basically sum it up, and I think I can read into it that you would like the bill passed. So what you're saying is you'd like the bill passed, but it would be better if they implemented the recommendations that were part of the resolutions on pages 5, 6 and 7 that are fairly detailed.
Mr Arthur: That's right.
Mr Carr: I think that's helpful, because if you look at the recommendations and summaries and comments, they're done very well. I think the government and the staff will be able to take a look at that. So it is laid out very clearly and I want to thank you for that. It's very well done on page 5 on. Good luck.
The Chair: Mr Wiseman.
Mr Wiseman: I defer to Mr Wilson.
Mr Gary Wilson (Kingston and The Islands): Thank you very much for your presentation. I think you can be justifiably proud of your planning department.
Interjection: We are.
Mr Gary Wilson: It has come up with such a good document that it really does underline what is at stake here, and since I'm from Kingston and the Islands, it is of course an area that you do mention as being in a similar position to Sidney and surrounding townships.
I was struck by your comment, Reeve Arthur, when you say something to the effect that, "We have every reason to be in the planning business with these other jurisdictions." I think that again applies to several other areas. I am just wondering what you see in the future for these areas as far as overcoming some of the -- I would assume there are some anyway -- doubts or hesitations about working closer together because of the loss of independence or autonomy that the various constituents, the various townships, have now in your area. How do you foresee overcoming those kinds of barriers?
Mr Arthur: Certainly this is always a concern when there is a change and you're trying to get a balance, but I think the most important thing is that people are aware that the ability of money for hard services and things like this -- that they simply are not as available as they were. We're going to have to share more; we're going to have to resort to working together. We're working smarter, not harder.
Our main concern with something like this is that we don't develop another level of bureaucracy. I think each one of the member municipalities that we're talking about has strong planning abilities, and simply what we need is an organization that brings us together and maybe one limited level of administration that provides us with the opportunity to work together.
I think we've shown in the past that we've been able to work together on the topics we've referred to here. We simply have to move forward, because this is the way of the future.
Interjection.
Mr Wiseman: I can't do it in a minute.
Mr Eddy: Thank you for your brief, because it's quite different from certainly what we've been hearing. I don't understand why you can't work together now and plan. Do you have a municipal liaison committee of the three municipalities, Trenton, Belleville and the township at the present time, and work together and plan together? Do you share services?
Mr Arthur: Oh, yes. We're doing all of those things right now. The greater Quinte planning advisory committee is an opportunity for the heads of council and the administration to come together to discuss topics. What we're trying to do is bring it closer together. This would be sort of phase 2.
Mr Eddy: But rather than discuss topics, do you take recommendations back to the three councils that are implemented?
Mr Arthur: Oh, yes, definitely.
Mr Eddy: And you are working together, so you share services. Do you see, by having a municipal planning authority, that you would have an official plan of the municipalities of your township, Belleville and Trenton and whoever else may go in? Do you know the difficulty of getting that through, changes, and getting that through a multiplicity of independent councils? That's one of the things that I see.
Mr Arthur: Could I just comment? I guess my point is that in the county system there are situations where we simply don't have control; we really don't have the input that we should have.
Mr Eddy: In what, though? In what service?
Mr Arthur: In planning or in any -- basically, on county council level, we do not have the representation. The situation is that it's not by pop, the representation. The fact is that if we can come together as equal and concerned neighbouring municipalities --
Mr Eddy: But you won't be equal. In a municipal planning authority, you can't be equal, because you're 17,000. The city of Belleville is what? Some 37,000, 45,000?
Mr Arthur: About 37,000.
Mr Eddy: And the city of Trenton is smaller. So you're not going to be equal.
Mr Arthur: However, it would be better than having 27 municipalities where significantly the numbers are imbalanced.
Mr Eddy: I have to point out also that the Hastings county plan is a policy plan rather than a land use plan, is it not? Am I wrong on that?
Mr Cannon: It is a land use plan and a policy plan. But the issue the reeve is identifying is that his council will not have the opportunity to say how this municipality, in conjunction with area municipalities, will utilize the millions of dollars that we have in water plants and sewer plants and all that.
Mr Eddy: But you have the opportunity do to that. Whether it's listened to, of course, is a different thing.
Mr Cannon: I think that's the major problem.
Mr Eddy: That's what I wanted to get to.
The Chair: Mr Eddy, sorry, we've run out of time, but I think you wanted to comment.
Mr James Pine: All I wanted to say was that as we understand the bill, if there's no municipal planning authority there, the interrelationships on a formal level are going to be handled at the upper tier, at the county level. What we're saying is that doesn't make sense. We're talking about a community of interests in the greater Quinte area, that we're already working on a whole number of issues, and planning obviously is very important to make all of those things come together. We think the municipal planning authorities have great merit for recognizing areas like our own, Kingston, the Kingston area. It just makes sense. It's logical, the relationships, and we're going to get better bang for our planning buck when we work together that way.
The Chair: We ran out of time. We thank all of you for coming and sharing your suggestions.
COUNTY OF LENNOX AND ADDINGTON
The Chair: We invite the county of Lennox and Addington, Mr Jim Sova. Welcome.
Mr Jim Sova: Good afternoon. I'm presenting a brief on behalf of the county of Lennox and Addington. I'm the county planner for the county of Lennox and Addington. Unfortunately, our reeve couldn't make it. This is the day of the warden's banquet and he's a little tied up otherwise.
The opinions expressed in this brief represent the position of the county of Lennox and Addington council in responding to the Planning Act amendments contained in Bill 163. The county commends the committee for taking time from their busy schedule to bring their hearings to various parts of the province outside Toronto. It's good to see a little bit of Queen's Park down closer to your doorstep. Certainly a very important part of the Sewell committee's work was getting around the province. It's nice to see this committee follow through on that and take the hearings out to the areas outside Toronto.
The county has significant concerns about the impact of Bill 163. We have a concern with the change from "have regard for" to "be consistent with," we have a concern about the impact of municipal planning authorities, and we have a general concern, a sense that local governments are not being given the scope to plan locally and fulfil the local vision of where they want to go.
The test of how provincial policy will be dealt with -- "have regard for" versus "be consistent with" -- has to be related to the detail of the provincial policy. The position taken by the Sewell commission was that "be consistent with" should apply to policy that would, quoting from the Sewell commission's final report, "focus on direction and results rather than on the detail of how implementation will occur or the means to be employed." The recommendation to change "to be consistent with" was something that came from the Sewell commission but it came along with a different set of policies than we're looking at now. The Sewell commission worded their policies relating to a test of "be consistent with" as opposed to relating to a test of "have regard for."
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Their concern was that "have regard for" was too loose, but if it was applied to the existing policies it would be too stringent, and they were walking a tightrope through there. They felt in their recommendation that the test should be consistent with but the policy shouldn't be laid out in such detail that it was impossible to have any local flexibility in applying those policies. The policies proposed in the Sewell commission were much less detailed than the existing provincial policies.
Bill 163 will change the requirement "to be consistent with" without any significant changes to the detail of the existing policy statements. In other words, the same policies will be implemented with a bigger stick. You can read through existing land use policies that are in place now and the new comprehensive set of policies, and in some cases they're virtually word for word. So what the legislation gives is a much tougher level of compliance to the same policies we've had now. There hasn't been an outcry that the existing policies aren't strong enough. That certainly hasn't been my experience in this area, but the test we have to meet now has become more stringent.
Our second area of concern is the impact of municipal planning authorities. The county is concerned about the impact of municipal planning authorities. Creation of a new, special-purpose upper tier will only serve to further confuse an electorate that's already confused about the lines of accountability at the municipal level. There's confusion and we run into it every day as to who controls what and who did I put in control -- who did I elect to a position that's controlling that. If they're dealing with planning, they look first to the local level, then they would look to the county level. They'll now have to look to a different level altogether, people who were appointed through a process that isn't clearly laid out in this legislation, and representation isn't clearly laid out in this legislation.
The creation of municipal planning authorities is restructuring counties by the back door in a very piecemeal fashion. If this opt-out provision goes ahead, what will be next, museums, seniors homes? There are certainly issues surrounding county government that need to be addressed. Some of these solutions will likely involve changing municipal boundaries. However, these changes should only be part of an overall look at county government, not a legislative provision that can be enacted by the local municipality and the minister with no input from the county.
The impetus for the creation of municipal planning authority is the local municipalities involved. They petition to the minister without any criteria laid out in the legislation as to how they'll be created or in what circumstance they'll be created, and the minister issues an answer as to whether that will be created or not. The counties involved may or may not be aware of the creation, have no input unless they're specifically asked about the creation of municipal planning authority.
Our general comment about the local control of planning -- certainly you've heard comments before -- the comments from the last group that was before this committee in Sidney township that the planning process is an evolutionary process, an educational process at the local level. The local municipality worked through it. They see the need for higher and higher levels of control or different levels of control, and they evolve into those. I've certainly experienced the same thing in my work as a municipal planner. There's always a difficulty in starting a new official plan with the municipality in explaining that: "I'm sorry, you don't have a lot of local control. There's a number of provincial policies that have to be met," and that's a generally accepted principle. That's not a difficulty, except when you get into the level of that provincial control.
In some cases we're dealing with municipalities that may have very few decisions left to make once the new comprehensive provincial policy statements are consistent with the policies they want to put in place. Once those are listed and covered, you may not have a lot of options and certainly my experience is that in rural areas -- and that's a majority of what this county covers -- the decisions are very limited.
The tone of the legislation, when combined with the recently approved provincial planning policy statements, leaves one with the general impression that the province does not trust the municipal planning process in general, and the county structure in particular.
The new policies combined with the requirement to be consistent with them give very little scope for local planning in rural areas. Once aggregate, agricultural and environmental policy requirements are met, a significant portion of most municipalities is removed from development. Adding the significant barriers to development on other than full municipal services, many rural municipalities have virtually no control over local planning. The provincial vision for the future of the municipality may not agree with the local vision but the provincial vision wins out.
The legislation does not even provide any carrots of down delegation of approval authorities to promote county planning.
Worthwhile local planning will only take place when the local elected officials can see that they have some scope to direct the development in their areas in accordance with local wishes. It does not appear that Bill 163 and the associated provincial planning policies will provide that scope. Thank you.
The Acting Chair (Ms Christel Haeck): Thank you, Mr Sova. Seven minutes each.
Mr Wiseman: Thank you for your presentation. As I was listening to you I've designated myself the person to discuss the "be consistent with." The reason I have is because I think what we're seeing here in the entire hearing process is a philosophical debate between groups who believe that we need to be moving more strongly towards an ecosystems planning approach, where sustainability of the environment and the communities are the main concern. On the other hand, we're seeing a group of people who believe in absolute property rights: "I own it. I can do what I want with it."
What we're seeing as a substratum to that is that community groups, ratepayers' associations, environmentalists and individuals are coming before the committee and are either saying: "Thank you for `shall be consistent with'" or "it's not strong enough. It should be `shall be consistent with and conform to'" or optimally, "it should be `will conform to.'"
Then what we're seeing on the other hand are planners, councillors and developers coming before this committee and saying: "Oh, no, everything's fine. Leave `will have regard for.'" The argument is breaking down between planners, councillors and developers who say there's something wrong with the planning system, but when they say something is wrong with the planning system they're saying, "It's because we can't go fast enough to do whatever we want."
When we hear from community groups, activists, individuals and environmentalists, we're hearing: "My gosh, they get whatever they want. The official plans don't really mean anything. They're not worth the paper they're written on," and that rezoning takes place and it doesn't even have to make any sense within their own official plans, let alone any policy statements of the government, because zonings are being changed from industrial-commercial to residential all across the province.
People move into a neighbourhood, we hear from community activists, and the land they thought they knew was zoned in a way, overnight, so to speak, is being changed by councils. What we're hearing as a committee is: "You have to get rid of the maybes in the Planning Act and you have to replace them with firm statements saying this is what you can do and this is what you cannot do." Developers in my own riding have said: "Fine, that's great. Tell us what we can do; tell us what we can't do. If we can't do something on this piece of land, we won't buy it, but make sure you get rid of the maybe. Make sure that when I buy that piece of land I can go ahead and do it in the shortest amount of time possible and that my neighbour isn't going to be able to do something else with his land even though it's zoned the same."
What we're seeing here is this constant battle between these two philosophies. My own opinion is that the Planning Act needs to be extremely detailed and very, very clear so that the checks and the balances in the system will work. The view from individuals, ratepayers and community activists is that it does not work for them. It works for the developers and the councils are caught in the middle. In some cases, councils are caught in the middle to the extent that even if they don't want it, the Ontario Municipal Board will impose it on the town anyway. I think what we need to have is a very clear Planning Act that empowers all three groups of people to be able to work within it and get rid of the ambiguities. That is why I support at least moving to "shall be consistent with," and away from "having regard to."
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Mr Sova: My concern and my experience in the rural area is probably fairly significantly different than the urban areas in that we're not typically dealing with the large-scale developer, it's the person who owns a farm and wants to sever a lot for the son, or who owns a 50-acre parcel and they want to divide it in half to sell the other half -- very small-scale developers.
We're also dealing with the situation where we're much more heavily impacted by provincial policy statements than urban areas in that if we're dealing with a standard township in this county, a third to a half to maybe more would be covered by an agricultural designation that's very restrictive and essentially ties the hands of the local municipality as to what they can do there. Really, their only decision is whether or not they grant retirement lots. The list of permitted uses is laid out in the legislation; the types of severances -- and they're very limited -- are laid out in legislation, so we have very few decisions to be made on that. In some cases in some municipalities that may cover 85% or 90% of the municipality.
In this county, a significant portion of a number of townships are covered by aggregate designations. The aggregate designation -- and that's certainly been a very frustrating part for a lot of local politicians in dealing with official plans where the Ministry of Natural Resources comes in with a fairly heavy hand to say, "We want a rather large area designated for future quarrying use." This county tends to have a limestone bedrock very close to the surface and can be a valuable aggregate resource, but there's no relation between the aggregate resource and where it will be used and when it will be used. Certainly there's vastly more than is needed in the local or regional area.
There's some indication that there's not even being projections done province wide to say we're not projecting how much we need over the next 50 years, we just want to protect as much as we can. That is, in fact, the legislation -- the policy says that aggregate lands should be protected as much as reasonably possible, realistically possible. Once the agricultural land and the aggregate land have been covered, then the aggregate policies are essentially to say that nothing that could preclude development of that property for aggregate will be allowed. That essentially sterilizes; residential development of any form couldn't be permitted on that land.
When you take those two groups out and then include the environmental areas, if there are any water areas, waterfront areas, environmentally sensitive areas of a range, those are excluded as well. The proportion of the municipality that the local municipality is left with to make decisions about may be very small. Under the policies, if that municipality doesn't have any publicly serviced water and sewer in urban areas, it may not have the option of allowing extensions to those urban areas. So they may be faced with a situation that, once they've met all the provincial "be consistent withs," they don't even have the option of rezoning industrial land or agricultural land or anything. That's controlled by provincial policy as opposed to an urban area where there's more flexibility. They're certainly not to be covered by the agricultural and aggregate designations to the extent that a lot of rural areas are.
Mr Wiseman: I have another question but, oh, time is up.
The Acting Chair: No, it very clearly is and I'm sorry, but time does tend to fly by.
Mr Eddy: I should give up some of my time, of course, but I don't think I will in this case. Thanks for coming up.
I'm very interested in Mr Wiseman's statements -- take the maybes out of the planning process. Who put more maybes in than his party? How about legalizing basement apartments and forcing municipalities across the province to recognize them? I just saw where the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs has said we've got to help farmers get into business and be into more than the farming business, and we're going to facilitate that. I took it to mean we're going to maybe change the planning rules and -- I'm not saying against it -- facilitate on farm industries, which there is in many places anyway.
I don't think you can ever take the maybes out of planning, because it's a changing process and there are always proposals coming along. Maybe some of us have been part of them.
I appreciate your pointing out the difference between urban and rural Ontario. That's primary in this planning process and should and must be recognized, so thank you.
Coming to the "be consistent with" wording -- a lot of controversy. I really thank you for giving us the explanation, pointing out what Sewell said and why he said it compared with what's been done. It's a change from "with regard to" to "be consistent with," and the government said it might have been "to conform with" and some are saying "to conform to."
However, we've had another proposal, and I'd like your comments on it, saying, "shall maintain the principle and intent of provincial policies." That's the wording. Would you like to elaborate on that?
Mr Sova: That's certainly more within -- our local plans will rarely disagree with the intent and the thrust of the policies. For example, the policy to protect aggregate areas is not something that most local municipalities have a problem with. Their concern is the extent of protection that's provided. They don't have a problem with protecting existing quarrying operations or pit operations and allowing for expansion. Their concern is becoming a quarry for the rest of Ontario.
Certainly a local municipality will maintain the intent of agricultural designations in most cases, in virtually all cases. There isn't a problem there, the problem is with the last hundred acres that are being discussed. The province has a large stick in "be consistent with" and have identified that as an agricultural area; they don't have the option to say, "But in this case, we want to allow for growth to this developed area." Those sorts of local flexibility are not built in with that bigger stick.
Mr Eddy: So especially for rural Ontario, it would be much better, realizing there's going to be a change. "Have regard to" is considered too weak by most people and it's going to change, but you would agree with the proposal I think.
Mr Curling: One needs some comment from you in this respect, and again I know that this omnibus bill is a way of sort of putting everything into it and asking you, in half an hour, to make a presentation, have some interaction, and we call it public hearings and public inputs. But you're not given enough time to exercise and to examine the legislation. Forget about the regulations, they don't count, although most of it -- the meat of all of this is supposed to be in the regulations.
Interjections.
Mr Curling: You see, if you rattle the cages, how quickly they respond. One other thing I'd like you to comment on, if you had an opportunity to look at minor variances and what impact it had and how you see this definition of minor variance. Should there be a definition to it and should that be in the legislation or should that be in the regulations? Furthermore, it's not in the legislation now, anyhow. Could you comment on that?
Mr Sova: It's certainly difficult to define -- very difficult to define. It's a problem I've had dealing with all along. I found that in a lot of cases, the local elected people or the local appointed people have a reasonable handle on what is minor and has a minor effect on the area.
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My one concern with not permitting the appeals to the Ontario Municipal Board any more is that some councils, certainly not all, can be very blunt in making a decision and may not allow for the input.
On the other hand, it's been my experience that when a group is the final decision-making body, they consider the matter much more than when there is an appeal to their decision and the person is simply sitting waiting for your decision so he or she can appeal it anyway.
I faced a situation where a matter before a board to do with a minor variance, where there was quite a discussion on both sides of the matter -- they more or less threw up their hands and said: "It'll be appealed anyway. Let the municipal board make the decision."
If the appeal weren't there, there would be much more consideration of the matter in front of them. That's been my experience: When they're the final arbiter in a situation, they consider it much better, and certainly my experience of the board is that it can be rather variable over time anyway.
Mr Carr: Thank you for your presentation. I take it from the criticisms you've outlined that you'd like to see this bill defeated?
Mr Sova: Certainly the negatives outweigh the positives.
Mr Carr: As you know, we get to present amendments through clause-by-clause, but as it stands now you'd want it defeated. Having said that, and recognizing that the great socialist experiment in the province of Ontario is rapidly coming to a close, what would you suggest the next government do?
Mr Paul Johnson: That's just your opinion, Gary.
Mr Carr: I still can't find anybody who wants to bet any money that they'll win, although the other side is quick to deny that.
What would you suggest the next government do? You're so concerned about this. I'm looking for a broad statement. Where do we go from here, as you don't like this?
Mr Sova: The broad statement of policy as a part of this -- certainly it's not before the committee now -- establishes a provincial policy on a range of items that didn't have written provincial policies up to this point. My concern is changing the test so that we have to be consistent with this new set of policies, but it's certainly refreshing to see the provincial policies laid out in one place rather than having to deal with comments that come back from the various ministries saying, "This is what we think now." Having them down is having the set of rules out in one place. We're concerned about how we have to meet that set of rules, but certainly having the rules in one place is an advantage.
The other concern, and it's a concern I've raised with respect to municipal planning authorities, is that there's a broader issue of county government and county government restructuring that has to be dealt with, and shouldn't be dealt with simply in the narrow range of planning matters but should be dealt with in a broader way. The issues of planning could be dealt with through this, but the issues of infrastructure spending are not dealt with there. It's still at the local municipality. You've got a lot of things that don't tie together and you've got separate bodies dealing with a lot of things that should be brought together. Certainly the issue of county government and county government restructuring is important.
Mr Carr: Some of the concerns you've outlined -- I've sat on other committees this summer, and the same principle applies. They like some of the broad overview and the direction, but it's when you get down to the details that some of the concerns come about.
But I want to ask you this. Knowing that this government will not be around after the next election, can you see the legislation working if, through the regulations, you get what you're asking for? As we go across this province we're hearing time and time again, "Just give us the rules, the definitions." We're hearing that from you here, we've heard it about the timber bill. Can this bill work if you get some of the clarifications and if the government, of whatever political stripe the next one will be, says this is what's going to happen? Can you then live with this bill?
Mr Sova: The biggest concern I still have is the "be consistent with." That's used at the bureaucratic level sometimes as a very large stick, and will be used before the municipal board in the same fashion. They've been given different wording than they had before, and the idea is: "We've got to clamp down more. Clearly the wording is more restrictive than what we had before. We've got to clamp down more and we've got to listen to whatever the province tells us more than we did before." That's my biggest concern.
Mr Carr: Thank you. That's very helpful. Good luck.
The Acting Chair: I want to thank you, but I will not dismiss you yet. Mr Hayes would like to add a few points of clarification for you and, obviously, all of us.
Mr Hayes: Before I ask the staff to make a clarification, I'd just like to point out that obviously Mr Carr hasn't learned from what's happened to previous Tory governments in this province and this country for their arrogance.
Interjection.
Mr Hayes: Ladies and gentlemen, the reason this committee is here is to deal with the Planning Act and deal with open local government and not to come and play politics in your backyard. I don't think you want to hear that.
I would like to ask the staff to make a couple of clarifications.
Ms Dewar: I'm Diana Dewar from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. You asked a couple of questions and asked for some clarification about whether the viability of the remaining municipalities would be a consideration in the creation of a municipal planning authority. The creation of a municipal planning authority would require the minister's approval, and that certainly would be a consideration in any approval of a municipal planning authority.
You've asked if they would be prescribed to prepare an official plan. That would depend on the individual county. They could be or they may not be, but it would depend on the individual circumstances.
The third point I'd like to clarify is your second-last paragraph where you say that the legislation does not provide any carrots of down-delegation of approval powers to promote county planning. I'd like to point out that the existing legislation, and this is carried through in Bill 163, would allow delegation of minister's approval authority to counties.
The Acting Chair: I hope that clarifies some of your points, and I do appreciate your comments. You did add some very good points and I'm quite sure everyone is very interested in what you had to say. Thank you, Mr Sova.
PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY FEDERATION OF AGRICULTURE
The Acting Chair: I now call the Prince Edward County branch of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.
Mr Keith Matthie: Did everybody leave?
Interjections.
The Acting Chair: Excuse me. If you gentlemen would please introduce yourselves for the purposes of Hansard, then please begin.
Mr Curling: Madam Chair, may I make a point? If the government members would be here --
The Acting Chair: Mr Curling, there are definitely government members in the room, and we usually try to avoid making those remarks. Would you allow the deputants to have their full time? I would like to turn to the deputation again, shenanigans aside. Please, gentlemen, continue.
Mr Matthie: It sounds like the Legislature, doesn't it?
The Acting Chair: It is somewhat like that at times. My apologies.
Mr Matthie: Everybody seems to know Jim Taylor, so I don't need to introduce him. Also here is McCrae Danforth, second vice-president of Prince Edward County Federation of Agriculture, and I'm Keith Matthie, the president. We're pleased to be here this afternoon to present our views on these issues.
We haven't been able to cover them all in our presentation, but there are points my two colleagues wish to make. Mr Taylor has comments, and Mr Danforth too. And Paul Johnson, we acknowledge your presence; thank you very much for being here. I'll read the statement we have prepared, which is really a brief outline of some of the problems. There are many more, but we won't have much time to deal with them in the half-hour.
We welcome the opportunity to appear before this committee as part of your tour of Ontario to hear the views of organizations and others on the subject of the implications of Bill 163, to revise the Ontario Planning and Development Act and other acts.
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Our federation is a branch of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, which made a submission to you earlier this week. Our branch has 350 members, mostly farmers, who own or rent land in Prince Edward county. We are in the process of having a revised official plan now before the Ministry of Municipal Affairs for approval, but several objections have been raised by ourselves and others, including the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, and another public meeting must be held before the ministry will approve the plan even though county council has officially passed it.
Our objection to the official plan is the same as we have to the new acts and the various policy statements through which municipalities must have plans "consistent with" the Planning Act. That is, farmers have basically lost their rights to develop their land. This is confiscation without compensation. Farmers recognize that classes 1, 2 and 3 land must be preserved as much as possible for future food production. However, loss of development rights should not be borne by the farmer. If it is in the public interest to retain nearly all good land as farm land and the owner is expected to be a good custodian of the land and maintain it in an environmentally acceptable manner, compensation in the form of the purchase of development rights should take place.
In 1992 the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, as it was known at that time, conducted public hearings across Ontario to discuss the range of options for acting to protect agricultural land and examined various means of compensating farmers. This was recognition that compensation would be necessary to preserve much of the good land under the existing conditions. However, the options available have been ignored, and the present policy statement of land use and the wetland policy statement both take away farmers' rights.
The Ontario Federation of Agriculture, with its 38,000 members, supports this request.
Two different definitions of "agricultural activities" are being used. In the most recent document, Comprehensive Set of Policy Statements, the definition is as follows:
"`Agricultural activities' means plowing, seeding, harvesting, grazing, animal husbandry, buildings and structures associated with these farming activities. This includes such activities on areas lying fallow as part of a conventional rotation cycle."
In the consultation paper of December 1993, A New Approach to Land Use Planning, the definition is: "`Agricultural use' means primary agricultural uses, secondary agricultural uses, and agriculture-related uses. Primary agricultural uses are the growing of crops or raising of livestock and other animals for food or fur, including poultry and fish."
The first definition is also used in the wetland policy statement and is totally inadequate. When the definition says "means" it precludes other activities. For instance, plowing is being replaced by no-till seeding, and there is no mention of growing fruit and vegetables, tile draining or irrigating and related activities in growing fruit and vegetables. When the word "grazing" is mentioned along with animal husbandry, it is obviously the intention to have an all-embracing definition.
It is important that the definition be all-encompassing because only named activities in process can be carried on in the boundary land around wetlands. No new activities will be permitted except by an EIS. Therefore, unless fruit and vegetables are included, would they be classed as new activities?
The second definition is the one used under agricultural land policies, goal D, in Comprehensive Set of Policy Statements. There is a similar disparity in the above booklet on wildlife habitat, which says:
"`Wildlife habitat' means areas of the natural environment where plants, animals, and other organisms, excluding fish, survive in self-sustaining populations and from which they derive services such as cover protection, or food."
The meaning of the above is quite different in meaning from the definition in the land use planning booklet of December 1993 and the one used by our county council to designate deer yards all over our county. That definition is:
"`Wildlife habitat' means areas of the natural environment upon which wildlife depend for survival as self-sustaining populations in the wild, including land and water needed for cover protection or food supply.
`Wildlife' includes all wild mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, and invertebrates. Areas included may be deer yards, nesting areas, aquatic habitat, waterfowl staging areas and habitat of endangered and threatened species."
The deer population in Prince Edward county grew naturally from less than 500 a few years ago to an estimated 5,000 or more now without deer yards and without protection. The deer yards in the official plan cover rural land, which is farm land, and development is restricted because of the deer. Deer have become predators to farm crops and orchards. They are only in the deer yards on the coldest days, and it is used as a base to forage on orchards and other areas in the winter.
It must not be mandatory to establish deer yards in an official plan, but it must be only optional. The definition in the Comprehensive Set of Policy Statements, if it is the definition currently being used, seems to indicate that areas where wildlife survive in self-sustaining populations need not be a designated area. However, if they were designed as "significant" wildlife areas as set forth on page 1, little or no development could take place.
The proposed Bill 163 -- and this is not our forte but we're venturing into it -- will hamstring municipalities to make any independent decisions which are not prescribed somewhere in the Planning Act or elsewhere. Indeed they will be restricted to collecting taxes, repairing roads and paying out welfare. Everything else will be a provincial law. Instead of giving more power to municipalities, it has taken it away.
The proposed bill will not be kind to farmers in Prince Edward county. The amendments are not common goals, the policies are not clear, and it is not good planning, in our view.
We thank you for listening to our comments and look forward to discussion.
I'm not sure whether Mr Taylor would like to lead off or Mr Danforth. Jim, do you want to make your comments?
Mr Jim Taylor: I will, but I hesitate. I hope to have mellowed in my years of absence from Queen's Park; I've never been known for my lack of candour.
The concern I have and that others share with me is that the proposed new Planning Act really completes the reversal of the philosophy of community planning. I go back to 1946 when the Planning Act was first enacted, and it's interesting that the Conservation Authorities Act was first passed in that year as well. It was thought at the time that if planning was not embraced by the local community, it wouldn't work. We were talking about physical planning, community planning.
In the province, there's a great divergence of values and interests, we know that: cities versus the rural areas; communities of interests. As a matter of fact, the riding distribution was based on areas with a community of interest. Our values are different, and in the country we like to think we're not going to be governed by the Great White Father at Queen's Park, or anywhere else.
We fear we're suffering immensely from state paternalism. Now, with this Planning Act, it's not planning from below, from the grass roots; it's imposition from above. And to complete that -- and we followed the Sewell commission very closely, made more than one presentation. I say "we." I have on behalf of our local federation of agriculture; we're all members of the OFA. We've expressed these concerns to Mr Sewell and his colleagues on that commission, without results of course, because I suspect the master plan or the grand design was there and it was a question of filling it in and rationalizing the conclusions.
When the Sewell commission completes its report and the policy statements are published -- and as you know, the policy statements are adopted by order in council, by cabinet, and they are adopted pursuant to the Planning Act. The Planning Act has to be in place to provide for the policy statements, and the policy statements flow from there and then become law. Once that order in council is adopted, it's a part of the legislation.
You look at the comprehensive policy statements and you wonder, what potential for flexibility or local decision-making is there? Worse than that and what really frightens me, after many decades of dealings with government both inside and outside, is that you have a bureaucracy -- and I don't say that in any demeaning way -- that has to administer this law. The policy statements, if you look at what has been circulated, provide and expect that there will be a guideline or a series of guidelines that are issued, because the policy statements are so comprehensive themselves and so broad that now you have to explain what these things mean. That's what it says in here.
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So the ministries -- it's not government -- then issue guidelines, just like the Income Tax Act, and we have all of these guidelines and so on and God help anybody who tries to understand them. The guidelines will probably be more restrictive than the policy statements themselves when they come out; that's our fear. So you have a reversal of a system of community planning from the grass roots up to the top down, and it's all-pervasive. There's really no potential for flexibility in terms of the rural areas. Either you farm or you live in what we call a growth-and-settlement area. You're aware of the policies in place now in terms of growth-and-settlement areas. You're either on pipe sewers and water in a city or a town or a village, or else you farm, because there's no room for rural development.
The OFA is saying: "Hey, farming isn't all that good, and what you're doing is stripping us of our inherent rights of ownership. All of the incidence of ownership is being stripped away, and we'll end up with land that we may or may not be able to grow something on, depending on whether there's a market or not for it."
The other point I'd like to make is that the Planning Act has ceased to be a document of physical planning; it's now social planning. It's really a combination. It's almost a manifesto. I certainly wouldn't want to get partisan, as I've heard some remarks here today -- I've never been noted for that, of course -- but it's almost a socialist manifesto in terms of state paternalism, and that concerns me very much.
Mr Wiseman, I believe it was, mentioned to our predecessor at this table that he was concerned about the integrity of planning. In other words, presumably you get into the municipalities and they play footsie with some of the councillors, with the developers and so on. But I remind you that if you look at some of the examples where you have all the power at the top -- and I would point to the Toronto Islands situation, where you have parklands, and it's zoned for parklands, and you have wetlands that we're concerned about as farmers. You have to spend something like $4 million for diking up those wetlands, and what happens? The province runs roughshod over that and says, "Oh, we're going to put 131 housing units on it." Now, that's integrity.
The granny flats issue: You have all of the community planning that's been done in single-family areas and you're trying to do what you can for your community and then the province, with a sweep of its hand in a piece of legislation, says, "Okay, put the folks in the basement or up in the attic or back in the back."
Mr Gary Wilson: As opposed to sweeping them under the rug; you did that for years and years.
The Chair: Hold on, Mr Wilson.
Mr Taylor: What I'm saying is that I don't think anyone holds a monopoly on integrity. Those are some of the concerns.
There's one point that I would like to make, if I may, because I know that inherent in this document is a political and economic and social philosophy that I don't think we're going to disturb, to be honest with you. I've been around long enough to understand that. But what I would ask you to do, and then I'll shut up, is to ensure that the policy statements, before they become law, are aired in the House, in the Legislative Assembly, where they can be debated and where the House, that public forum, acts on them, not behind closed doors in cabinet, because I'm more concerned about these policy statements than I am about a lot of the wording in the Planning Act.
I disagree with the philosophy of the Planning Act; I've already said that. But it's in place, and I know that's what's going to happen. What I'm saying is, please don't just let the administration, the ministry personnel, draft these policy statements, have cabinet adopt them and then impose them on the people of Ontario.
In the material before us, we see where wetlands can be designated by ministry staff really. The municipalities have to comply with all of these policy statements. We don't have a chance of exercising any independence of mind or any choice or any freedom in terms of what we do with our land or how we plan our communities. We don't have that. So I ask just for that one thing. I think that might be successful if you could have the policy statements aired in the House.
Mr Matthie: I just wanted to make sure that you understood that Mr Taylor is a member of our executive of our Prince Edward County Federation of Agriculture. He is not here in his own right; he's here to help us. We thank him very much. Mr Danforth has a few comments.
The Chair: Please do.
Mr McCrae Danforth: It's interesting to be here and see what's going on. I received a copy of a letter from the Minister of Municipal Affairs, Ed Philip, dated May, setting out the setting up of the advisory task force. I found it interesting that the membership of that task force consisted of 12 members, four from each of different groups; one was the municipalities. I'll read it here: four representatives from each of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, the Ontario Environment Network -- now I'd never heard tell of that before -- and the development industry to ensure that there is a smooth transition to the new planning system across the province.
What I find is quite an oversight is the fact that the people who are most important here, the ones who have the most to lose or gain by this, are the property owners. In rural areas, those principally are farmers. They are not represented at all. Whether this was an oversight, I don't know, but on such an important thing I think that the farmers, as the major component of the property-owning people in our riding, should have been equally represented.
Also I've had news releases put out by government offices to the effect that municipalities will be given greater control of the development process. As we've heard previously by many who can express themselves much better than I, the result of the process seems to be the opposite. Municipalities really aren't going to have any power. All they're going to do is enforce regulations and stipulations that are sent down from on high. Their ability to have much input is very limited.
This is an example of your top-down planning. You've got all your criteria being imposed by Queen's Park, you've got the rigidity of central planning, and this doesn't allow input from the local level or from people who have different ideas. It's very detrimental to progress and growth, in my opinion, in this province. We've seen the results of it in many socialist countries, where they've tried to run everything from a central city or place, and it has not been conducive to good growth.
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There's one little thing that always comes out in the vision statement on these, going back to our county plans: We've got to protect our heritage and so forth. When I look at my heritage, I look back at the people who came into this area. We had UELs who came in here, and they worked. They had their own ideas and they grew and their businesses grew. They sent their sons and daughters all over the country, especially from Prince Edward. We've got a tremendous number of people who have gone out over the country, whether it be bank managers or premiers, such as Roblin in Manitoba. His ancestors came from Prince Edward.
I think we're not giving much recognition to the values that these pioneers brought into this district. I think that our legislation and what we put in should respect them and their heirs and assigns, that they'll use good judgement, and not try to run everything from the top down and give us a little flexibility.
One other thing in regard to this different area in regard to the deer. I understand that 24% of the accidents on the highways in Prince Edward county are deer-related. That gives you some idea of the number of deer and wild animals and so forth. To suppose that we need to give further protection for this type of wildlife, to me, doesn't seem proper. That's all I have to say for now.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I just want to make a clarification of my own with respect to what Mr Taylor has raised, and we can discuss this afterwards if he likes. I represent the Toronto Islands, as the member for Fort York. The housing that will be built will not be built on flood land. It's not on a floodplain.
Mr Eddy: None of it?
The Chair: The money that will be spent that you referred to is going to be spent in part to repair the old seawall.
Mr Taylor: I understand that.
The Chair: After many studies it has been determined it doesn't have to be replaced, just repaired; just as a point.
There are two and a half minutes for each caucus. So, Mr Eddy, I remind you if Mr Curling is to speak, you need to share that time. Mr Eddy?
Mr Eddy: Thank you for coming forward. We had the opportunity to hear the provincial executive of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture the other day, and they dealt with many of the same matters: farm owners being stripped of their development rights on their lands with no compensation, the problem with the policies planning from the top down, many of the same things. Although there is a task force with representation from the rural community to develop guidelines for the implementation of the policies, the big problem, as I see it, is that the policies themselves are not subject to review. When I asked the OFA if it had any input whatsoever or was consulted with, the answer was no. It seems to me that that's awfully important. So, I'm very pleased with what Mr Taylor has suggested, that we ensure that the policy statements are aired in the House, so to speak, or something, reviewed. There's conflict between them, we understand.
Mr Curling: The concern of course, which you have raised very well -- the fact is that it's an omnibus bill, it's a large bill, and given such a short time to present some of those concerns that you expressed so eloquently. Again, too, I think that with every omnibus bill the minister himself should be going around hearing this. We have great respect for the parliamentary assistant, who of course could sit on one of the sides over there, but again, my dear friend the parliamentary assistant will not be privileged to be in cabinet to hear the policy that will be discussed in cabinet. So you made a very good point, that we just hope -- and I know I'm confident enough -- that he will express these very important thoughts to the minister.
Mr Taylor: Could I just respond shortly?
Mr Perruzza: You were a minister, weren't you?
Mr Curling: Definitely, and proud to be.
Mr Taylor: I'm sure this has been brought to your attention, section 20, paragraph 3.2, the authority to pass zoning bylaws. You notice now how broad the prohibition is. At one time it was just swampy land, but now: "For prohibiting the erecting, locating or using of all or any class or classes of buildings or structures...that is a significant wildlife habitat" -- and I'm thinking in terms of the rural community again; it could be a barn or anything -- "wetland, woodland, ravine, valley or area of natural and scientific interest," and then you go on, "that is a significant corridor or shoreline of a lake...." We have 500 miles of waterfront, we're an island basically, and most of our land is either a provincial park or it's an ANSI, an area of natural and scientific interest, or it's a provincially significant wetland, it's a marsh, bog, fen or whatever. Mr Johnson knows that better than anybody, coming from Athol. It's a straight prohibition in terms of using your land.
The farmers own about 14 million acres of land in Ontario. They have a very significant interest in all of this, and what you're saying to them is, "Hey, we're stripping you of the incidence or elements of ownership."
Mr Curling: I'd like to make a clarification.
The Chair: I'm sorry, there is no time.
Mr Curling: Well, he can make a clarification; I'll make a clarification here.
The Chair: Mr Curling, I'm sorry, there is no time.
Mr Curling: But I have to make a clarification. I want to tell the member over there that, yes, when I --
The Chair: Mr Curling, that's not helpful. Mr Carr.
Mr Carr: Thank you very much for your presentation. You did a good job. I'd heard, Jim, about what a great speaker you were. I never had the opportunity, but you certainly were; you cut through it very well. So thank you very much, and I think you hit on the nature of why the frustration is out there. I think, as you well know, it's frustrations with governments of all political persuasions. People are very concerned when the top-down -- it's heightened under this government for many reasons, but I think they are very leery of all governments with this top-down. I think everybody would feel that way, and that's why there's so much frustration out there. But I want to be very clear. Your branch of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture wants this bill defeated?
Mr Taylor: If you're asking me, and we haven't solicited the total membership, I would say definitely yes; unequivocally yes. What do you say?
Mr Matthie: Yes, definitely.
Mr Taylor: All right, the three of us here say yes.
The Chair: Mr Carr, very quickly, you're only allowed two and a half minutes. Sorry.
Mr Carr: With this bill being defeated, one of the things when the government does change, if some of the policies that come forward -- and let's not talk about which political suasion is -- but in an ideal world with a good minister with good policies coming in, can this bill then somehow work?
Mr Taylor: Again, I'll disregard your preface in answering that question.
Mr Carr: Of saying, "with a good minister"?
Mr Taylor: I think you'd have to start over because the innate philosophy of the bill is all wrong, in my view. So you'd have to start from scratch.
Mr Perruzza: I just want to pass for 30 seconds to Mr Johnson and then I want to come back and ask my question.
Mr Paul Johnson: I wouldn't get a chance to say anything if Mr Perruzza didn't allow me that 30 seconds. I want to say that I agree with you. I think the definitions need to be more specific, because they are too vague, and that allows a misrepresentation of what was intended or what might happen indeed. I just wanted to get that on the record, because I do agree with it.
Mr Perruzza: To Mr Taylor, you talked about the philosophy of land use planning and how we've moved away from sort of a physical philosophy to sort of a social philosophy. My question to you is, how would you make the rules clear for the industry, protect the environment and all of those concerns, the agriculture concerns and all the rest of it, and ensure good land use planning? What would you do?
Mr Paul Johnson: You're asking Mr Taylor?
Mr Perruzza: Yes, Mr Taylor.
Mr Paul Johnson: Sorry.
Mr Taylor: Well, first of all, may I point out that we're not just talking about the big bad developer any more, because with the unravelling of the large real estate corporations, and you can mention the Bronfmans and the Reichmanns and the Bramaleas and all the rest, there's a lot of real estate that's gone on the market that the unions have picked up or the pension funds. So they're in the business in a big way.
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Mr Perruzza: So I say make the rules clear for them.
Mr Taylor: Yes. So I just want to make that clear, that we're talking about everybody.
Mr Perruzza: Exactly, yes.
Mr Taylor: We're not talking about any particular segment of society, whether it's Algoma Steel, run by the workers, or whatever it is.
I think that fundamentally the planning should be at the local level. I'm dedicated to local self-determination and I think it's important in a province and in a country this vast that we recognize the regional differences. I think local self-government is so important and I think we're smart enough at the local level, we're informed enough, intelligent enough to make the kinds of decisions that will meet the needs of our own communities.
Mr Perruzza: In that case, would you agree that that's the way it's being done now, and would you also agree that we have --
Mr Taylor: No, I don't agree that that's the way it's being done now.
Mr Perruzza: No?
Mr Taylor: No, it's not.
Mr Perruzza: Who's it being done by?
Mr Taylor: Again, you have the provincial guidelines, you have the provincial policy statements. I've already mentioned the growth and settlement policies --
Mr Wiseman: Local councils and councillors ignore all those.
Mr Taylor: They don't ignore them. They can't.
Mr Perruzza: So you're saying --
The Chair: Mr Perruzza, one more follow-up question.
Mr Taylor: I don't want to get into an argument, Mr Chairman.
The Chair: Mr Perruzza, a final follow-up, please.
Mr Perruzza: I don't mean to be argumentative.
Mr Taylor: No.
Mr Perruzza: So you're saying, "Relax the rules and we will eliminate the environmental disasters that are happening, we'll reduce the bad land use planning that's happening out there, and the rules will be clearer, more straightforward for, for the lack of a better word, the stakeholders, the industry, the developers and everyone else." That's what you're saying?
Mr Taylor: All I'm saying is that the local people, through their elected councils and their appointed planning boards, are competent to make the kinds of decisions that relate to their communities.
I'm not suggesting that there are not matters of provincial significance. We've done that through special legislation, whether you subscribe to it or not; for example, the parkway belt legislation, the Niagara Escarpment legislation. There is special legislation to deal with matters -- right now you're dealing with, for example, the Oak Ridges moraine. That's an area of significance and importance to the province, stretching from Trenton right through to the Niagara Escarpment, so you have all your policy statements there.
Mr Wiseman: And they make --
The Chair: Mr Wiseman, we're running out of time.
Mr Taylor: What I'm saying is that the policy statements are out there now that the municipalities have to comply with. That's why it takes five years.
Mr Perruzza: So I'm going to ask you again --
The Chair: Mr Perruzza, sorry, we ran out of time. Mr Hayes wants to make a point to clarify and then we're moving on to the next delegation.
Mr Hayes: Yes, thank you, Mr Chair. I just wanted to mention that Mr Eddy, in his comments, is correct up to a point when he says he asked Mr Roger George and others from the Ontario Federation of Agriculture if they had input into this. His question was in such a way that they had to -- I don't know if they misunderstood it or not, but when I asked the question more directly and pointed out that there is a three-part committee -- an implementation advisory committee task force, there's the technical committee, and then there's also the rural table which is a committee -- they said, "Yes, we did have input in that," simply because --
Mr Carr: They still want the bill defeated.
Mr Hayes: -- we have the Ontario Institute of Agrologists, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, the Christian Farmers, members from ROMA, county planners, the University of Guelph's rural planning, Friends of Foodland, economic developers, councils -- there's a whole pile -- Strathroy Foods. There was a dairy farmer, a poultry farmer, another person from the OFA --
The Chair: Mr Hayes, I think we get the picture.
Mr Hayes: -- the anglers and hunters. No, I think this should be made very clear, Mr Chair.
Interjection.
Mr Hayes: Just a second. Now, the other clarification: In your presentation you mentioned that there are two definitions. Actually, there are not. That has been taken care of on agricultural activities.
Mr Matthie: Which ones are out?
Mr Hayes: There's one set, a comprehensive set of policy statements. Actually, the December 1993 document was changed as a result of broad public consultation in early 1994, as a matter of fact, 90 days of it, including the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and the Christian Farmers Federation. So I just wanted to point that out. Now, that may have been in there, but it's changed.
Mr Carr: They still want the bill defeated.
Mr Hayes: Mr Carr, you've had your say, and in the democratic process here we will go around the table.
Mr Carr: In spite of everything, they still want it defeated.
Mr Perruzza: Your solution is so simplistic because you're so irrational, that's all.
Interjections.
The Chair: No, we can do this after.
Interjections.
The Chair: Go outside, please.
Interjections.
The Chair: I want to thank you for taking the time to share your concerns with this committee.
Mr Taylor: We thank you very much for the opportunity of expressing our views and those of the association, of course, that we represent.
CITY OF BELLEVILLE
The Chair: We are going to invite the next deputation forward. We have the city of Belleville, Councillor Brian Smith and Mr Stewart Murray.
Interjections.
The Chair: Can I ask people to limit their discussions as much as possible. Welcome.
Mr Brian Smith: Mr Chair and members of the committee, we are very pleased to have the opportunity to address the committee this afternoon. My name is Brian Smith, councillor with the city of Belleville, and to my right is Mr Stewart Murray, director of planning for the city. I realize it's late on a Friday afternoon and we will certainly try and be very brief. The bus is out there. It's not idling yet, but we will try and move things along.
Mr Chair, perhaps we could ask Mr Murray to start off our presentation, and I will follow with a few general comments after that.
Mr Stewart Murray: The council of the city of Belleville has by resolution identified two primary concerns with Bill 163, the first one being that the proposed municipal planning authority provisions of the act do not address the need for broader local government restructuring to address the full range of municipal service delivery.
Secondly, the proposed changes in the legislation will require a major commitment on the part of the province to educate citizens, municipalities, the development industry and others as to the basic changes that are going to take place in the planning system if this legislation does proceed.
With respect to the proposed municipal planning authority there are a number of concerns. We would be creating a new level of local government, effectively, with the proposal as it is set forward now. There would be no direct accountability to an elected council or a single elected council. We would have a new, independent, special-purpose body based on a new and separate geographic unit that would not match the service area for the delivery of other local government services.
This would complicate service delivery therefore with respect to public works, fire, police, public transit, transportation, sewer, water and the full range of other local government services. Separated municipalities which would contain the larger population units may effectively begin to subsidize the planning operations of other smaller municipalities.
There may be a duplication of staffing in that the proposal as it sits now would require that additional staff be retained to address administration of the municipal planning authority, and no doubt municipalities, members to such an authority, would wish to retain their own staff for day-to-day planning administration.
The concept as it is set forth in the legislation also may weaken the only existing regional planning authority that exists in much of Ontario, and that's the county planning structure.
The other provisions of the act related to strengthening the protection of natural environmental features are long overdue and are needed to address the cumulative impact of development across Ontario.
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The reintroduction of lapsing provisions for subdivision approvals will assist municipal efforts related to growth management and the assignment of sewer and water servicing capacity and are supported by the city of Belleville.
The elimination of the Ontario Municipal Board appeals for minor variances raises many questions related to fairness and natural justice which may prove difficult to address in the context of a review of variance decisions by municipal councils.
Finally, the requirement for municipal planning to be consistent with provincial planning policy will provide for a more consistent application of good planning principles, will reduce ambiguity and, in practical terms, will recognize what is now current provincial practice.
That concludes my remarks.
Mr Smith: If I could just build for a moment on a couple of the points Mr Murray mentioned, as a member of the city planning committee for the past six years, some of the difficulties that we face are that we are dependent, and I include the city of Belleville in this, as a set of independent municipal councils, each making decisions which are obviously in their own best interests.
As well, the city of Belleville has a multiplicity of service agreements with our neighbours -- Sidney township, Thurlow township, the township of Ameliasburgh -- concerning sewer and water and the complexities that are involved in administering these agreements with the municipalities and the various ministries.
Perhaps a third point that I'd like to mention is the conflicting administration units that relate to other services such as health, education, social services and transportation. As a couple of suggestions, we would certainly offer that the city of Belleville could take a lead in establishing a joint planning advisory committee with perhaps the southern portion of Hastings county. We believe this would be much simpler initially to set up and establish, perhaps cheaper than going to the full MPA route as a first step.
If that fails, we certainly might see the need for substantial government restructuring. That would hopefully not occur, but we would like to see and be authors of our own destiny as much as possible. I think those comments have been reflected by previous presenters.
Just before we conclude I'd like to make a couple of comments concerning the disclosure of interest act. As a member of the procedural bylaw committee for the city of Belleville, I can certainly support many of the directions that are proposed in the conflict-of-interest section of the act. We did, as a committee, make a review of the earlier drafts of the legislation and made recommendations concerning those to AMO. We were pleased to see that the government listened to some of those recommendations.
I don't believe, as an elected member, that any of us should have any difficulty with declaring the assets and so on of our children and our spouses. I think the definitions of pecuniary interest and the exceptions thereof would be helpful to members of council and the general public, to help to understand more what conflicts of interest are and the good points of the legislation.
Exceptions that are indicated in section 4 that do not apply I think would be of assistance to us as well. I'm pleased to say that the city of Belleville, in its procedural bylaw, currently follows the process set out in section 4, with the exception of leaving the meeting until the matter is no longer under consideration.
We do have a concern in the general cost of administration to local government in maintaining the registry, but we also recognize that this perhaps is a necessary cost that would have to be incurred in order to have the registry work properly.
Again, I don't believe that the inspection of the registry's documents should necessarily propose a problem to elected members. This particular chunk of legislation, I believe, is long overdue and one that certainly we support as city council. I would be pleased to answer any questions.
The Chair: Mr Perruzza and, if there's time, Ms Haeck.
Mr Perruzza: Mine will actually be very short, a very brief comment. First of all, I'd like to get on the record that I enjoyed coming out to Prince Edward, Lennox and South Hastings. While I'm here, and it's beautiful country, I would like to also extend my appreciation for the good work that Mr Johnson does in the Legislature as the member for Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings, for all of his hard work and good work there on behalf of the citizens of this riding. Thank you.
Ms Haeck: I appreciate your presentation. I'm not sure if you've had a chance to hear some of the comments of Sidney township, but I suspect they're not foreign to you. You've probably heard them before.
Mr Smith: Right.
Ms Haeck: Your suggestion is that you might like to move to a South Hastings planning area as opposed to something that is the greater Quinte area. Could you refresh my memory here, if I've missed it, as to why South Hastings -- what I gather from the map and my own knowledge of the area, you are contiguous with Sidney and therefore really would fit very nicely into that greater Quinte area, if you're not dealing with that now.
Mr Smith: We certainly do have relationships with the planning staff -- that's Mr Murray -- on matters that are of mutual interest, and do work closely with him. But I think our planning advisory committee and city council see perhaps the first step, and one in which the city should take a leadership role, as trying to bring together a joint planning advisory committee before we get into the full-blown MPA aspects which may not serve us perhaps any better. There are costs associated with that and I would think that would be an initial first step. We are not totally opposed or foreign to the idea of an MPA, but I think there has to be good faith demonstrated on the part of all the participating municipalities, particularly Belleville, Sidney and Thurlow, in taking those initial steps, with the inclusion of course of the county of Hastings.
Ms Haeck: I would ask, not right now but possibly after all the questions are over, if possibly ministry staff could advise the deputants on the possibilities of undertaking what they propose. I would in the meantime defer to Mr Wilson.
The Chair: Mr Wilson, one last question from you and then we'll get an answer here.
Mr Gary Wilson: I have not a conflict of interest but a point of interest to make here, because I know Brian Smith in another context as a very helpful worker -- actually, Brian, I'm not sure of your title -- with the long-term care division in Kingston.
Mr Smith: Program supervisor.
Mr Gary Wilson: So it's interesting to see this happen. I just wonder what your comments are when you hear about bureaucrats in a different kind of context, suggesting that they're not all that helpful.
Mr Smith: I appreciate that opportunity to respond. I think bureaucrats certainly have a role to play. I think the legislation as proposed here and other pieces of legislation, as Mr Taylor indicated to us on granny flats and second apartments in residences and so on, are perhaps responding to other pressures. At the same time, I think they tend to create additional pressures, particularly for local governments: inspections and things of that nature. Who is going to pay for those additional costs? They will have to be done and carried out. So I think there certainly is a role for the staff to play in developing those things.
I think we have to keep in mind as well the accountability and that the buck stops at the local council level and certainly at the provincial legislative level. I agree somewhat too with Mr Taylor's comments that we hopefully can work things out at a local level and not have a provincial umbrella that necessarily, and I say this with all due respect, is centred on the needs of Metropolitan Toronto and not necessarily serves our needs and poses additional pressures.
Interjection.
Mr Smith: I would hope so.
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Mr Eddy: I wanted to come back to this matter of the municipal planning authority. It was raised by a delegation from Sidney township. It seemed to me they were talking about a larger area than you were talking about, including the city of Trenton and the adjoining municipality in Northumberland.
I think you have the right idea: Proceed one step at a time and see how things go. Many separate municipalities, with either the upper tier or an adjoining local municipality in an upper tier, have municipal liaison committees. They've worked well. They've even had joint studies where they deal with transportation and transmission corridors, the development of fringe areas and, with agreement, incorporate policies in each of their official plans without having an area.
I don't want to get into a local problem, but I think someone certainly is going to face it in the future. But still one step at a time might be the best. What do you really see as the solution? Do you see a new upper tier in the Quinte area? What do you really envision to deal with what seems to be a problem with servicing and development? Coordination, I guess, is what you're after.
Mr Smith: Certainly, one of the outcomes of the closer planning link would, I would hope, ultimately lead us to the aspects of how we could restructure local government. The task would not be an easy one. I think Reeve Arthur of Sidney township touched on it as well in his presentation where we have to have the will to do that as well as the greater Quinte advisory committee as the other -- I think it's too large a geographic area to serve this particular purpose.
But nonetheless if we could look at where the pressures currently exist in South Hastings, city of Belleville, township of Thurlow, Sidney and Ameliasburgh where the growth and the activity -- not to exclude the city of Trenton at all -- but that I think would be an initial big chunk to look after and so on. I don't know whether Mr Murray has any comments.
Mr Murray: One of the difficulties with the Quinte area is that we have a situation where geographically we are touching on three different county administrations. To form one planning unit with three different sections of three different counties is going to raise as many questions as it may answer from a planning point of view.
The commutershed for the city of Belleville, for example, would extend 30 miles to the south and 50 miles to the north, far beyond just the townships that have been referred to previously. Where to draw the boundary for this authority is a real question in my mind. I think that by initiating a discussion through our own county, we might then be able to carry that further as we work some of these problems out and see what directions might work more effectively. There's no doubt that historically there's a long run of different services through the county system that the city participates in --
Mr Eddy: Oh, that you do participate in.
Mr Murray: -- now; a wide range of those services. There are many other services that could also be tied together in that fashion, particularly transportation, sewer and water services and so forth, that could perhaps be managed on a very effective joint basis between the city and the county.
Mr Eddy: Some upper tiers have had official plans for, let's say, north Bruce, south Bruce and central. Something like that is probably more appropriate.
Mr Carr: Thank you very much for your presentation. If you've been here and heard some of the other
presentations, one of the concerns is giving too much authority to the province and the whole issue of more control locally versus the province. I wondered if you would be able to comment on that. Do you see it that way? What are your thoughts?
Mr Murray: At the present time the city is in a reasonably good position in that regard in that we have been delegated subdivision approval authority from the province; we have shared with the province the approval authority. We think that the proposed legislation proposes a series of changes that will not radically alter that. We think that is appropriate.
Mr Carr: In some of the recommendations you've put forward through amendments, you'd like to see those initiated and go through the clause-by-clause section then?
Mr Murray: Yes.
Mr Carr: Anything else that you'd like to see done?
Mr Murray: Not that I can think of offhand.
Mr Carr: You look like you thought it would take an hour to go through it, that's all.
Mr Smith: If I could leave one last thought on that comment it is that, again, keep in mind that perhaps all that fits well in Metropolitan Toronto -- and I say that with all due respect -- does not necessarily work out here. We recognize the reverse is true as well. We would ask that this be kept in mind.
The Chair: We thank you for participating in these hearings and thank you for sharing your ideas with this committee.
Interjection.
The Chair: Oh yes, there's an answer to your question you raised; yes, sorry.
Ms Dewar: My understanding of the question is whether or not a joint planning advisory committee would be something that would be feasible.
Mr Hayes: Yes.
Ms Dewar: Pat has the current provisions in the act. It would appear that this would be something that's feasible. But what we would like to do is get some more information from you and do a bit more work on the feasibility of that.
Mr Smith: Yes. We have some more homework to do as well.
Mr Curling: I wanted to say that this is the last part of our presentation out here and I would like to thank the staff for the excellent work they have done, the ministry staff and the other support staff, because I know we move each day. I just appreciate the work they've done.
The Chair: I was going to do that on behalf of the committee next week. But no, we appreciate the thanks the staff is getting at this time. We concur with that comment.
This committee is adjourned until 9:15 in Toronto, Monday, September 12.
The committee adjourned at 1658.