Supporting Rural, Northern,…

Supporting Rural, Northern, and Indigenous Communities
Comment: The existing PPS policies as well as the proposed revisions generally identify the preferred order of servicing as follows (most preferred to least preferred): municipal services, private communal services, individual on-site services, partial services.
Partial services are discouraged and yet many rural settlement areas such as the case for the Nobel Settlement Area within the Municipality of McDougall are developed with municipal water and private septic systems without problems. Where servicing is appropriate, partial services should be permitted beyond just infilling and rounding out. This section should be amended to recognize existing partial services in settlements where future development is appropriate, is consistent with other PPS policies and is in conformity with Official Plan policies.
The policy changes appear to remove the flexibility for municipalities to determine the preferred form of servicing within their boundaries. The addition to the policy would require municipalities to assess the long term impacts of individual on-site services on the health and character of Settlement Areas at the time of an OP conformity or update.
The Municipality of McDougall does not support tying these assessments to the OP updates/conformity. Additional information is needed to fully understand the implications for the municipality to undertake such assessments.
The purpose of the proposed changes to the Provincial Policy Statement is to help increase the supply of housing, support jobs and reduce barriers and costs in the land use planning system. However, discouraging partial services has significantly limited or eliminated growth for some settlement areas.

Reducing Barriers and Costs
Comment: The policy requires municipalities to take action to identify and fast track priority applications which support housing and job-related growth and to reduce the time needed to process these applications. Under Bill 108, the legislated timelines for decision making on development applications would already be reduced and the ability to further reduce these timelines for certain applications is not realistic.