A former Collingwood mayor and councillor has called one of the latest bills proposed by Premier Doug Ford’s PC government “offensive” and “grossly unfair.”
While similar language was used to describe the same government’s attempt to force education workers to accept a contract and overrule Charter rights, former coun. Chris Carrier’s comments were actually about a different bill, pitched as Ontario’s solution to the housing crisis.
The Town of Collingwood is joining many, if not all, of Ontario municipalities in registering its opposition to changes proposed in the More Homes Faster Act (Bill 23).
Coun. Deb Doherty introduced a motion during a council meeting on Nov. 10, the last one for the past council, stating the bill would have “serious economic, social, and environmental implications.” Council supported it unanimously, and the town's objections will be sent to the province.
While Bill 23 makes many of proposed changes to legislation governing municipal planning such as the Planning Act, the Conservation Authorities Act, and the rules for Ontario land tribunal appeals in the interest of building "more homes faster," most objections to it fall within the three main categories listed in Doherty’s motion.
Firstly, the bill seeks to freeze, discount, and reduce “government charges” for some new home construction. Municipalities collect development charges from new home construction, which is used to fund infrastructure like water, roads and libraries. There are also fees for parkland dedication charged to new homes, which towns can use to acquire park space.
The bill suggests “affordable” and “non-profit” housing be exempt from development charges and parkland dedication fees. The province also says the bill will reduce property taxes on multi-residential apartment buildings in Ontario. The bill defines an affordable rent and purchase price as “no greater than 80 per cent of the average market rent or purchase price.”
According to the September report on local real estate activity by the Lakelands Association of Realtors, the median price of homes sold in September in the Collingwood region was about $700,000 for a non-waterfront home and $1.3 million for a waterfront home. That’s the median price when comparing home sales from The Blue Mountains, Clearview, Collingwood, Grey Highlands, Meaford, and Wasaga Beach combined.
Doherty’s motion suggests the changes to the development charges act and planning act “challenge the long-standing and fundamental tenant that growth should pay for growth and threatens to shift the burden of costs associated with growth onto existing municipal taxpayers.”
In addition to reducing fees for “affordable” housing, Bill 23 would remove mandatory public meetings for development site plan approvals to “get shovels in the ground faster” and push public commenting to general reviews of municipal official plans and zoning bylaws instead of specific development proposals.
Former Collingwood mayor and now-past Coun. Carrier, who seconded the motion, suggested the province’s pitch for the bill is “downright dishonest.”
“This is downloading, by any definition of downloading,” said Carrier. “It is local taxpayers that will pay for the cost of local infrastructure, pardon the pun, down the road.”
He said it was “grossly unfair” for the province to shift the costs as proposed.
“It may lead, in some instances, to quicker approvals [of development applications], but it’s not going to alleviate the supply chain issues,” said Carrier. “It’s downright dishonest, from the province’s perspective, to stand before a microphone and say this is going to alleviate this concern.”
The province has said the purpose of Bill 23 is to increase the housing supply throughout Ontario and to achieve the province’s goal of building 1.5 million homes within the next 10 years.
Collingwood’s former council also expressed concern about the environmental implications of the proposed Bill 23, namely for wetlands.
The province is seeking to overhaul the system used to evaluate wetlands to determine whether they are “provincially significant.” The details of the overhaul are complex as they involve specific changes to the existing provincial wetland evaluation system, which currently states that wetland evaluation is done by the Ministry of Natural Resources.
According to the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority (NVCA) the changes will result in fewer wetlands being deemed significant and therefore protected from development.
The CAO for the NVCA, Doug Hevenor said the proposed new system for evaluating wetlands doesn’t capture “complexes,” which are a “mosaic of small wetland features that collectively work together,” and create a wetland complex that’s at least two hectares.
“Under this new legislation, they wouldn’t be considered provincially significant wetlands anymore, so there would be an ability for developers to come in and look at working with municipalities to develop those areas,” said Hevenor in an interview with CollingwoodToday.
Hevenor said it’s possible one of the “unintended consequences” of Bill 23 could be that there won’t be any more provincially significant wetlands designated in the province of Ontario because they won’t meet the criteria.
“They’re going to redefine what a provincially significant wetland is,” said Hevenor.
Compounding the issue, according to the NVCA and the other 35 conservation authorities in Ontario, are the changes in Bill 23 to remove conservation authorities from the development approval process. Where once municipalities relied on the expert staff at conservation authorities to provide comments on local natural heritage, the More Homes Faster Act requires municipalities to find someone else for that work.
Hevenor also pointed out that the province, through Bill 23, is telling conservation authorities to take stock of the land they own and identify what land can support housing.
The NVCA owns nearly 13,000 acres of land, including about 7,000 acres in the Minesing Wetlands. All of the land owned by the NVCA was donated or transferred by developers, counties, and municipalities because it was protected land where homes could not be built.
“Many of these lands were gifted by families that wanted to see that green space live on in perpetuity,” said Hevenor. “Those families made a conscious decision to protect Ontario and preserve woodland areas or stream or fishing areas, and I think they should still be allowed to do that. [Bill 23] takes that ability away.”
Hevenor said the NVCA does understand there’s a housing crisis, but the issue is not finding the land to build homes on because there is “lots of land” in Ontario outside of the acres under environmental protection or conservation stewardship.
He said conservation authorities want to protect landscape features as well as people and the homes they live in, particularly from flooding, which is why wetlands need to remain undeveloped.
“I really think the proposed changes signal, in large part, how the role of protecting people, property, and natural hazards is changing in Ontario,” said Hevenor.
Part of the frustration expressed by the former Collingwood council at the final meeting on Nov. 10 was the speed at which the province seems to be pushing through the More Homes Faster act. In fact, Doherty’s motion noted the province was providing “scant” opportunity for municipalities or the public to “fully understand the details and the risks.”
“This is such a grossly heavy-handed piece of legislation to bypass the relationship that this local level of government [municipal] has with its communities,” said Carrier. “Once again, we’re finding ourselves … as creatures of the province, we can be dictated to. This is offensive, at least, to me.”
He did support Collingwood’s efforts to register objection against the proposed bill and list the impacts on the municipality in comments to the province, but confessed he wasn’t optimistic.
“I hope that the province will listen, but they don’t seem to be in the best listening mood of late,” he said.
Collingwood’s director of planning, Summer Valentine, has been working with the planning directors from the rest of the municipalities in Simcoe County to review the proposals in Bill 23 and prepare comments to submit to the province on the impact it will have for municipal planning. They also contributed to a report that went to the County of Simcoe council on Nov. 8
But the province has left a short window of time for commenting. Bill 23 was introduced on Oct. 25, and the deadline for comments to reach the province’s committee in charge of reviewing the bill is Nov. 17. There are various other commenting periods for pieces of the legislation with deadlines ranging from Nov. 24 to Dec. 30.
The NVCA and several other Conservation Authorities are calling on the province to re-establish the Conservation Authorities Working Group, which was formed to help provide guidance and advice to the province during the last round of changes to the Conservation Authorities Act.
“There are good things in the legislation that we want to evolve,” said Hevenor. “We know that there will be hundreds of thousands of people who are going to be landing in Ontario in the next 10 years and not have a place to stay …. I think the best solution is … collaborative.”
Bill 23 is extensive and complex, with changes proposed to more than a dozen different provincial policies, acts, systems, codes and plans.
Comments on the proposal can be submitted by any member of the public through the Environmental Registry of Ontario at ero.ontario.ca. The Canadian Environmental Law Association has created a list of the provincial legislations to be changed with links to the registry where you can submit comments, as well as comment deadlines. You can find the list online here
