Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Rob Flack tabled the government’s latest housing bill this Monday, the Building Homes and Improving Transportation Infrastructure Act, a wide-ranging piece of legislation that signals a deeper provincial push into local planning decisions.
At its core is an effort to standardize how municipalities plan growth. The province is proposing to streamline official plans, the documents that dictate land use and zoning, into a more uniform format with a limited set of land-use categories. The government says that the current plans have become overly complex and restrictive, slowing down approvals and adding uncertainty for builders.
Currently, municipalities have broad discretion in how those plans are written, so long as they align with provincial policy.