Nearly 70 groups, including prominent environmental and farming organizations, are asking the government to pull back from its latest housing bill because it makes building on farmland easier, they said in an open letter backed by Green Leader Mike Schreiner.
The Tories have “used the housing affordability crisis to justify changing rules to make it easier to build more expensive, single-family homes on farmland and natural areas,” said David Crombie, who chaired the Greenbelt Council until his resignation in 2020.
More emphasis should be placed on adding density to existing neighbourhoods, Crombie said.
“These policies would divert construction workers and material away from building the affordable homes we need in communities where people already live and services already exist.”
“Greens stand with the many community members calling on this government to step up to the plate with a credible plan to increase Ontario’s housing supply without sprawling onto our farms, forests and wetlands,” Green Leader Mike Schreiner said in response to the letter.
Victor Doyle, a former top bureaucrat at the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, said eliminating third-party appeals for official plans, official plan amendments and zoning by-laws — but letting developers appeal applications for settlement area boundary expansions — would turn the Ontario Land Tribunal into an exclusive enclave for developers.
The policy “facilitates developer-led settlement expansions and developer appeal resulting in the Ontario Land Tribunal being primarily a developer-only adjudicative tribunal,” the groups argue in a press release.
The Tories also tried to weaken third-party appeal rights in Bill 23, the government’s major housing bill in 2022. They walked it back after stakeholders from several different industries clamoured for change.
The groups also took exception to Bill 185 formally removing planning responsibilities from regional governments in Peel, York and Halton on July 1, 2024, which was first proposed in Bill 23. Simcoe, Durham, Niagara and Waterloo will also lose those powers but at a date that hasn’t been set yet.
Lower-tier municipalities will be responsible for planning decisions going forward.
The move would lead to a “highly fragmented and inefficient approach to land use, natural resource and infrastructure," the groups said.
“Eleven upper-tier governments are replaced with 89 lower-tier ones. Most lower tiers do not have the expertise while upper tiers also have jurisdiction over sewer, water, major transportation, transit and affordable housing. This will slow down housing construction,” the letter said.
Another major issue the groups take is allowing municipalities to expand settlement boundaries at any time. Currently, municipalities can only expand settlement areas during a municipal comprehensive review process, which happens during an official plan review.
Bill 185 removes the requirement for settlement expansion to happen during a municipal comprehensive review.
“This makes urban boundaries meaningless and removes/minimizes the need to comprehensively consider whether the conversion of farmland to accommodate future growth is necessary,” the letter said.
Bill 185 is currently before the finance committee and no further hearings are scheduled at the time of writing. MPPs have three weeks left at Queen’s Park before the extended summer break.
