Overall, this provides good…

Overall, this provides good principles but seriously flawed implementation.

Pillar 1 is one of the more serious issues we have in Ontario. For existing urban areas, the only way forward that makes sense is densification. If single-family home sprawl is permitted then the cost of servicing goes up and the viability of mass transit goes down. Ideally this pillar would reform zoning to permit low- and mid-rise multi-unit buildings in all areas of all built-up municipalities as well as requiring density minimums around both new and existing mass transit stations. The flexibility to build on farmland and in rural areas is not really needed; these communities would ideally start to densify in the population centres.

Pillar 2 contains some good planning principles, but instead of permitting municipalities to expand Settlement Areas without a review there should be some kind of densification principle (as in Pillar 1). Ideally municipalities would have to demonstrate that there is no way to densify before they're permitted to build over green areas.

Pillar 3 is common sense. It does dump a lot of responsibilities on municipalities with - presumably - no new funding or revenue tools though.

Pillar 4 is interesting and contains some good principles. Again, it dumps a lot of planning and management onto municipalities, which makes both oversight and funding more difficult. There is a significant risk of corner-cutting and/or corruption if there is only a single layer of regulation.

Pillar 5 appears fine - though intermunicipal cooperation is often difficult when municipalities have only one revenue tool and inward investment is therefore a zero-sum game.