The Ford government kicked off the 2024 sitting of the Ontario legislature by tabling its "Get It Done Act" to re-implement some of the changes it undid to municipal official plans in the wake of last year's Greenbelt scandal.
Confused? Essentially, Premier Doug Ford's Progressive Conservatives are taking a third kick at the can at adjusting 12 regions and municipalities' official plans.
The dozen that the PCs' latest legislation would impact include Barrie, Belleville, Guelph, Halton, Hamilton, Niagara, Ottawa, Peel, Peterborough, Waterloo, Wellington and York. The Ford government originally modified the municipalities' official plans in two batches of approvals on Nov. 4, 2022 and April 11, 2023. Many of these changes were to the municipalities' urban boundaries to open more land up for development.
The official plan adjustments were closely linked to the also-reversed removal of land from the Greenbelt, having been done close in time and by some of the same political staff.
The Ford government reversed the bulk of those policy moves late last year after a pair of parliamentary watchdogs published scathing reports showing how the Greenbelt changes were largely driven by developers' direct requests to the political staffer who led the process.
The PCs completed those reversals by passing Bills 136 and 150, each from Housing Minister Paul Calandra, just before the legislature rose for its winter break.
Before introducing Bill 150, which undid most provincially imposed changes to the 12 municipalities' official plans, Calandra left the door open to mayors to request that modifications be kept. In a Nov. 2 letter, Calandra promised affected mayors that, even after Bill 150's passage, their feedback would be "carefully considered to determine the best approach for moving forward, including if further legislative steps ... are required."
The Get It Done Act would reinstate dozens of the provincial government's modifications that Bill 150 undid.
"What you'll see today is, after consultations with municipalities, they have made the decisions of what parts of it that they want to retain, and what parts they are not happy with," Calandra told reporters on Tuesday a few hours before Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria tabled the Get It Done Act.
Sarkaria's omnibus bill includes other law changes as well, including some that were announced last week.
The Get It Done Act includes the Protecting Against Carbon Taxes Act that would mandate a referendum before any future carbon pricing scheme is introduced in the province — a "veto," as Premier Doug Ford called it — though it doesn't affect the mandatory federal carbon backstop or the provincial industrial carbon pricing regime, and could be repealed or modified by a future government.
It would also speed up the environmental review process for projects like highways, railways and electricity transmission lines — by up to four years, according to the environment minister, who announced the changes on Friday. Provincial and municipal governments will also be able to expropriate land before an environmental assessment for a project involving the land is finished.
Another recent related proposal by the government — which isn't part of the Get It Done Act — would put six-month time limits on environmental assessments of certain municipal water, sewage and shoreline projects.
The Get It Done Act would also prohibit new tolls on provincial highways, eliminate manual vehicle permit renewals, and cut fees for other provincial licences and cards.
