1. Proposed Changes:…

1. Proposed Changes: Ministerial Amendment of Official Plan
Potential City Impacts:
- Minister will be the approval authority for Mississauga’s OP but it is unclear how it will use this power e.g. (ad hoc in between MCR processes).
- Staff are concerned with the uncertainty around timelines and approval of each individual third party initiated Official Plan Amendment (OPA)
- This also erodes the public process and reduces opportunities for public input into the Official Plan when these amendments occur.
Comments to the Province:
- Seeking clarification on how new powers will be used and whether the Province will be approval authority for all amendments (e.g. even in instances where there are no conformity issues with provincial legislation)

2. Proposed Changes: Third-Party Appeals
Potential City Impacts:
- Limits the rights of general public and participation in the appeals process.
- This means that city-initiated OPAs, would be approved by the province and cannot be appealed by the public, including landowners. See S. 17(24).
- Based on the transition policies, the OLT appeals received for existing projects could be dismissed unless there are new regulations specifying classes of appeals that may be exempt.
Comments to the Province:
- Staff consider that removing the ability for developers to appeal will significantly speed up and create greater certainty in the planning process. Developers still have an opportunity to apply for an Official Plan Amendment/ rezoning through site-specific development application.
- This limit on appeals extends to the community, who may wish to have the opportunity to participate in the appeals process.

3. Proposed Changes: Cap on Community Benefit Charges Contribution
Potential City Impacts:
- Impacts to revenue and in turn, reduced benefits.
- Impacts to community infrastructure and long term planning and implementation of new community services/facilities
Comments to the Province:
- The original 4% proposal by the Province did not provide for a meaningful revenue source to municipalities in the first place. This proposal continues to erode this funding source.

4. Proposed Changes: Site Plan Control Exemption for Developments of up to 10 Units
Potential City Impacts:
Cumulative impacts of site plan exemption to the City include removing the ability to:
- Acquire land dedications (e.g. road widenings, sight triangles, greenbelt/hazard lands) and easements (e.g. stormwater/servicing easements
- Control access (e.g. access to main corridors), site circulation/design for vehicles and people,
- Local improvements (e.g. sidewalks, multi-use trails) and lack of ability to collect cash-in-lieu of sidewalks or have developer build missing portion of sidewalk
- Evaluate site servicing/capacity
- Stormwater management controls, and potential loss of the proposed measures all together
- Utility coordination and streetlighting improvement/relocation
- SP Agreement to deal with design of required municipal works and/or to include other required conditions or clauses
- Identify existing and proposed encroachments on City owned lands/ROWs, and identify need for encroachment, license, consent to enter agreements, etc.
- Not being able to identify existing easements or other site restrictions/constraints (these can impact setback distances to proposed buildings, proposed building footprint location can be impacted)
- Fencing and acoustic requirements
- Limiting the application of green development standards is likely to result in inefficient homes being built – leading to increases in greenhouse gas emissions and high utility costs for residents.
- This exemption will impact the City’s ability to manage smaller, sensitive infill redevelopment projects. It will result in the elimination of the Replacement Housing (Infill) Site Plan process in Wards 1, 2, 5 and 7.
- This exemption would leave the City’s Natural Heritage System vulnerable to removal and non-mitigated impacts. Loss of ability to provide technical advice on appropriate mitigation, restoration and compensation related to the Natural Heritage System (NHS).
Comments to the Province:
- Staff are seeking clarification on whether applicants still have to use/comply with City Standards. This is very important for a number of issues, but particularly for municipal servicing, stormwater management requirements/control measures, private road design/naming, etc.
- This exemption could reduce the size and quality of the City’s natural heritage features which provide essential ecosystem services.

5. Proposed Changes: New Exclusions from Site Plan Control
Potential City Impacts:
Exterior Design
- Removes ability to ensure durable materials and sustainable features are used, which leads to lower quality built form and long term maintenance issues.
Landscape Architecture / Sustainable Design
- Removes ability to ensure compatibility with surrounding properties
- Removes ability to ensure linkages to surrounding infrastructure such as pedestrian access to transit
- Removes ability to incorporate sustainable design features such as low impact design, stormwater management, planting and appropriate green features and Green Development Standards
- Removes ability to incorporate resolving stormwater impact adapting to climate change
Streetscape
- Removes municipal ability to obtain sidewalks, street trees and appropriate urban infrastructure required to create and sustain walkable, transit-oriented communities
- Removes an opportunity to coordinate utilities with city engineering requirements which will have financial impacts on cities: capital projects may be required to address to complete the public realm resulting from increased development activity
Comments to the Province:
- Staff recommend that that these matters should be retained in site plan control in order to achieve walkable, liveable and desirable communities.
- Seeking clarification on whether these matters are removed from site plan control for commercial, industrial and institutional uses.
- Limiting the application of Green Development Standards could result in inefficient homes being built – leading to increases in greenhouse gas emissions and higher utility costs for residents.

6. Proposed Changes: Removal of Upper Tier Responsibilities and Approval
Potential City Impacts:
- The Region's Official Plan will no longer exist. This will be a loss of regional planning expertise on cross-jurisdictional matters, such as, health of natural systems that Mississauga is part of.
- Relevant parts of The Region's Official Plan will be deemed to be part of Mississauga's Official Plan. Staff and Council will have to make decisions regarding what parts of the Region's recently approved OP must be integrated directly into Mississauga's OP, what needs to be revised, how to eliminate redundancies and any conflicts and what parts to rescind. This will require significant time and resources. It is out of scope of the current Official Plan Review (OPR) process.
- As approval authority for the City's new Official Plan, the Province will be able to directly modify Council-approved Official Plan policies. Additionally, the Minister will now be able to modify any Official Plan policy at any time when the Minister considers it to be likely to adversely affect a matter of provincial interest. This appears to be similar to MZOs, but for Official Plan policy instead of zoning by-laws.
- Employment Conversion authority will be brought back to the City.
- The Region's OP has extensive environmental policy and mapping which will become the City's responsibility to administer and update as it pertains to Mississauga. Consequently, additional staff expertise and resources may be required.
- Some of Region's map schedules will have to be integrated into the City's new OP.
- City will now be responsible to make decisions on Smart Centre requested Employment Land conversions and the Heartland land use study.
- City will need to determine how much of the Official Plan Review (OPR) should progress in light of Bill 23 (including elimination of Regional planning authority), which could still change and has an undetermined in-force date. It is likely prudent to delay the OPR Policy Bundle 3 release to address the Bill 23 changes and pending changes to the Provincial Policy Statement and Growth Plan that the Province has indicated is coming. It appears that the 1 year time requirement for the City to update its Official Plan to conform to the Region's Official Plan no longer applies, as the Region's Official Plan will no longer exist but will be deemed to form part of Mississauga's Official Plan, where applicable.
Comments to the Province:
- Seeking clarification on the extent of the Province's decision making (e.g. whether the Province will approve every individual amendment).
- Seeking clarification on the transition, process and timeline to integrate and repeal Regional OP policies into Mississauga's OP.
- Clarification on conformity requirements, as there will not be an upper tier official plan (e.g. lower tier has one year to conform with upper tier plan).
- Seeking clarification on matters pertaining to conflicts between the Region's OP and Mississauga's OP amidst the local OP and OPAs getting approved e.g. which policies will prevail.
- If lower tier municipalities will be responsible for employment and population forecasting, while the Region will be the infrastructure provider, what will be the roles and relationship between the upper and lower tier municipalities?

7. Proposed Changes: Increased Gentle Intensification (3 units on a lot)
Potential City Impacts:
- The City’s Official Plan (as well as Official Plan Review draft policies) and Zoning by-laws will have to be revised to address this.
- This proposed change is in alignment with preliminary direction in Mississauga’s Increasing Housing Choices in Neighbouroods Study (IHCN) and the Official Plan Review (OPR).
- Currently, the City’s Zoning By-law requires 1.25 spaces per unit in a duplex or triplex. This will need to be revised. As per design work from the consultants on the IHCN project, staff are considering a maximum of 0.66 spaces/unit in a triplex (this would permit a two-car driveway and triplex building that fits within the existing footprint of a single-detached house and driveway).
- As part of Mississauga’s recently approved Parking Regulations Study, an extra parking space is not required for a second unit.
- Consistent with this proposed change, the recently approved Parkland Conveyance By-law includes an exemption for up to two additional residential units (ARUs). The City’s By-law provides a clear definition for ARUs.
- There is no language on timing requirements. This would mean the current 3 year zoning conformity requirement would apply once the OP is revised to conform to these new requirements, but it is unclear.
Comments to the Province:
- Staff are seeking clarification on implementation, including the application of zoning standards (e.g. can zoning provisions have the effect of limiting the zones/sites where 3 units on a lot are feasible?) and parking requirements.
- Seeking clarification on time requirements for implementation.

8. Proposed Changes: Appeals of Zoning By-laws for Protected MTSAs and Reduced Timeframe for Conformity
Potential City Impacts:
- Significant timing impact to Zoning Services work program, given requirement to amend zoning for PMTSAs within 1 year of OP policies being in place, instead of 3 years prior to Bill 23.
- The proposed wording makes it unclear as to when the 1 year requirement begins (i.e. the in-effect date of the Region’s new OP or the in-effect date of Bill 23).
- Scope of required zoning changes is unclear, including how to incorporate minimum densities (i.e. whether use of minimum building floor space index will satisfy legislative requirements).
- It appears that a member of the public cannot appeal the initial bylaw itself (only public bodies and utilities have this right), but an applicant (e.g. a developer) would have the ability to submit a zoning bylaw amendment application to amend the MTSA zoning bylaw once it is in place if the 1 year timeline is not achieved. The benefits of having Protected MTSAs, including having maximum building height certainty in most of our Strategic Growth Areas will be lost if the City is not able to achieve the 1 year timeline for zoning conformity.
- The new Regional OP was approved by the Province on Nov 4, 2022 and includes MTSA policies. It is unclear how any conflicts between the two official plan documents will be dealt with.
Comments to the Province:
- Seeking clarification on when the 1 year requirement begins.
- It is likely that the City will have to update its ZBL and then re-update it after the new OP is approved. This diverts planning resources and creates inefficiencies in the process.
- Pending significant changes to the Provincial Policy Statement and the Growth Plan that have been announced by the Province will add to process inefficiencies, as some of this zoning conformity work may have to be redone after release of these revised documents.
- Consequently, it is recommended that a minimum of 18 months is given for zoning implementation.

9. Proposed Changes: Changes to Parkland Dedication Requirements
Potential City Impacts:
- The proposed reductions in the amount of parkland/ CIL that can be required of new development significantly impacts the City’s ability to achieve parkland goals set out in the Parks Plan. Parkland requirements included in the recently approved Parkland Conveyance By-law accounted for the amount of parkland needed to 2041 to support new growth and ensure the provision of complete communities.
- The proposed new legislation would have the effect of reducing CIL revenues by approximately 70% - 80% thereby significantly impacting the City’s ability to provide the amount of parkland needed in Mississauga neighbourhoods. The result would be less new parkland where it is needed and increased pressure on the existing parkland supply.
Comments to the Province:
- The proposed changes could result in lower standards for parkland provision and less access to parkland. The proposed caps in Bill 23 would undermine the principle that growth pays for growth. Funding shortfalls will be transferred onto the tax base reducing overall affordability in the city.
- The City is requesting that the Province restore the former rates, or that it remove the funding cap.

10. Proposed Changes: Parkland Dedication Exceptions for Additional Units and Non-profit Housing
Potential City Impacts:
- The recently approved Parkland Conveyance By-law includes an exemption for up to two additional residential units (ARUs).
- The recently approved Parkland Conveyance By-law includes an exemption for any development or redevelopment undertaken by the Region of Peel, which could include some non-profit housing. The proposed new legislation proposes exemptions for affordable housing, IZ units, non-profit housing and attainable housing, which is beyond the by-law exemptions. The impact to the City is a decreased ability to provide parkland, as part of a complete community, to support these types of developments.
Comments to the Province:
- Staff support fee exemptions (DCs, CBC, Parkland Dedication) for additional residential units as it encourages additional density in existing residential neighbourhoods to make better use of existing infrastructure and services.

11. Proposed Changes: Requirement for a Parks Plan
Potential City Impacts:
- The 2022 Parks Plan was approved by Council earlier this year. It is unclear if the proposed new legislation will require a new Parks Plan every time a Parkland Conveyance By-law is passed or an update to the existing Parks Plan.
Comments to the Province:
- Seek clarification on the need for a new Parks Plan.

12. Proposed Changes: Landowners can Select Portion of Lands for Parkland
Potential City Impacts:
- This proposed change that allows developers to identify the lands they intend to convey could result in dedication of small sections of undevelopable lands or parcels that are unsuitable for functional parkland.
- The proposed change that requires full parkland credit for encumbered parkland (strata and POPS for example), will result in less unencumbered parkland in growth areas. Encumbered parkland does not provide the same level of park service as a publicly owned and operated park. POPS have limited park programming ability, are subject to maintenance and operational restrictions and will not support mature trees. The financial burden for maintenance and capital investments for POPS would be that of the private landowner. Credits for POPS are financially beneficial to the developer but could cause financial hardship for the future private landowner/s, particularly in the case of residential buildings that would be responsible for maintaining these spaces.
Comments to the Province:
- Request that Province roll back ability for landowners to determine park locations, or at least ensure dedications are contiguous, link into the existing parkland network and have public street frontage and visibility.
- Request that Province remove 100% credit for encumbered lands or POPS, or at least roll it back to some lesser amount to disincentivize developers providing encumbered parkland or POPS over a public park.

13. Proposed Changes: Requirement for Minimum Spending of Parkland Monies
Potential City Impacts:
- The City already allocates CIL funds through the CIL Continuity 10 Year Plan forecast.
Comments to the Province:
- Seeking more information from the Province regarding the meaning of “allocation” to determine if there are any impacts.

14. Proposed Changes: Public Meeting for Subdivision Applications
Potential City Impacts:
- This reduces the public’s ability to participate in the subdivision process
- Additionally, minor variances and consents are no longer appealable by residents, which is a significant change.