Municipal Affairs Minister Ted McMeekin says the province is trying to bring certainty to an often uncertain process of municipal planning with a raft of proposed reforms.

“I think the province … has a responsibility to define what it thinks is sacred: Greenbelt, saving farmland, wetlands, that sort of thing,” McMeekin told QP Briefing. “It has an obligation to encourage municipalities to put real plans in place with real citizens participating in that process. When that’s done, and when the official plan is in place … from my perspective that should be it.”

Proposed amendments to the Planning Act and the Development Charges Act were announced by the province on Thursday. The changes would front-load the planning process, requiring municipalities to set out in their official plans how and when the public will be consulted, and explain how the public's input impacted their decisions. They push for residents to be included on planning advisory committees to local councils, among other changes.

After consultation, the proposed amendments would mandate reviews of municipal plans every 10 years, instead of five. They would also freeze new official plans once they are established by municipalities, holding off Ontario Municipal Board appeals for two years.

"Unless there's been an error in terms of process, or some shenanigans with what's happening, it shouldn't be appealed to anybody," said McMeekin. "Far too many things go to the OMB that go to the OMB because we don’t prescribe that it can’t go to the OMB, or ought not to go to the OMB, or ought to be handled through mediation, or ought to be resolved by a citizen-focused group. We’re trying to eliminate the duplication and the cost and the lack of predictability."

The new legislation would encourage municipalities to create what is called a "community planning permit system." Municipalities would craft their own unique systems with input from residents and stakeholders, setting out acceptable development rules.

Once a community planning permit system is set up, it would not be subject to appeals for five years. McMeekin says that under the system, “there will be opportunities to do the kind of development that is reflected in the official plan without appeal.”

The ability to appeal some items would be removed altogether, the province says.

“It takes away from the municipalities’ democratic right, once you’re elected, to engage citizens, make some decisions, chart a course and not have that open to automatic challenge just because it doesn’t happen to sit well with somebody,” says McMeekin.

The proposed amendments came out of public workshops and stakeholder meetings held from October 2013 to January 2014.

In a release, NDP Municipal Affairs critic Cindy Forster said the changes fall short of the mark, particularly when it comes to stopping the OMB from inserting itself in municipal planning policies.

"The words ‘OMB reform’ are nowhere to be seen in this announcement,” said Forster. “You can’t fix Ontario’s land use planning system without fixing the OMB. There is currently no democratically elected government that has ultimate authority to decide planning policy in Ontario. This is outrageous.”

The legislation would also make several changes to the development charges system, like increasing the amount of capital costs municipalities can collect to fund transit services. Reporting requirements for projects financed through development charges would be clarified as well.

The Ontario Home Builders’ Association said it was concerned “that new transit taxes on development” would increase housing costs.

“This cannot be a piling on of higher taxes to pay for municipalities’ infrastructure programs,” said OHBA CEO Joe Vaccaro in a release. “New neighbours ultimately pay every new tax generated by government.”

Environmental Defence said the changes would help create communities where people want to live, but also fails to recover the full cost of “sprawl development.”

“On the positive side, allowing municipalities to increase development charges to recover full costs for transit will help fund improvements to local and regional transit services – a key component of tackling congestion and addressing climate change,” the group said in the release. “However, we are disappointed that sprawl continues to be subsidized across Ontario. Ontario values smart growth, but today it missed the chance to introduce a development charge framework that would incentivize smart, efficient growth.”

Province proposes more ‘predictability’ for municipal planning, more disclosure for development charges

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