The City of Kawartha Lakes'…

The City of Kawartha Lakes' full comments are attached. Our key points:

- The proposed revisions to the Planning Act to eliminate, in certain situations, the need for a minor variance lack specifics and requires further refinement and consideration.

- The revisions are being made to this as-of-right proposal mere months later gives us pause. We request there be a high degree of certainty as to what will be as-of-right and that further revisions won’t be proposed. The increasing lack of certainty is interfering with the development of housing.

- Future developments will likely anticipate the proposed as-of-right and so municipalities with increase their standards by proposed as-of-right.

- Most of our municipality is rural so these as-of-right permissions will not apply.

-Instead of an “as-of-right” reduction, we continue to propose the Minister consider amending the Planning Act to allow or require council to delegate to staff decision making authority for “minor variance” requests within a prescribed percentage.

- Regarding the proposal to make provincial policy statements inapplicable with respect to all Minister’s decisions and the proposal to enable Minster’s zoning orders to be made by non-regulatory orders to expedite the process, we are concerned with the increasing overreach of this provincial government.

- This centralization of authority weakens accountability, reduces local responsiveness, and ironically creates inefficiencies. Most importantly, it undermines public participation and our democratic principles.