Contrary to the government’s…

Contrary to the government’s messaging, the main thrust of its amendments to the Planning Act – and the main thrust Bill 23 overall – is to legalize and provoke a massive acceleration of suburban sprawl
into wetlands, forests, farmland, and other areas on the rural outskirts of major population centres in Ontario’s most ecologically sensitive regions.
Over the past year, Ontario municipalities like Hamilton, Halton and and Waterloo have made extraordinary strides in protecting wildlife habitat and farmland and delivering the denser, walkable, lower-cost forms of housing in existing neighbourhoods, by adopting groundbreaking plans that would allocate all – or almost all – of their new homes and workplaces to existing neighbourhoods, built up areas, and their existing supply of unused designated greenfield area.
This Bill’s amendments to the section 23 of the Planning Act would allow the provincial government to directly impose sprawl on those municipalities, without any opportunity to accommodate demand for housing and workplaces in their own way.
Even more concerning is Bill 23's proposal to entirely eliminate coordinated regional planning in Ontario’s Golden Horseshoe. In Simcoe, Durham, Halton, Peel, Niagara and Waterloo and York Region, regional planning is meant to prevent “patchwork” sprawl that wastes construction resources and infrastructure, to enable regional governments to ensure that development can be serviced effectively, and to ensure that land isn’t wasted.
The Bill would remove the power of Regional governments to plan where new homes and workplaces go, and the densities at which they are built, to prevent the squandering of farmland and wildlife to habitat, and to ensure that new and existing communities can be serviced with public transit, water and other infrastructure.
The effect of Bill 23 will be a region-wide race to the bottom when it comes to land-use planning, with lower-tier municipalities that lack experienced land use planning staff pressured to expand settlement boundaries onto vital farmland and habitat, or into places where they can never be serviced effectively.
To address the threats caused by the climate crisis and biodiversity loss and to protect Ontario's critical agricultural land, the focus of legislation should be on limiting sprawl, encouraging development within urban boundaries and creating complete healthy communities on already serviced land that can be served by public transit. This has been the intent of regional planning. It should absolutely be permitted to proceed.