Presentation to The Standing…

Presentation to The Standing Committee on Heritage, Infrastructure and Cultural Policy
March 27, 2024
Get It Done Act Impacts On the Region of Waterloo and
Grand River Watershed

Members of the Standing Committee and Guests,

For decades, our members and groups of the Grand River Environmental Network have been stewards and a pro-active voice in Waterloo Region that is facing more growth pressures, more loss of biodiversity, and more challenges than ever.

Our message today on the Get It Done Act is consistent with what you have heard from us in the past – please just stop making changes and increasing the planning chaos in Ontario. Developers, planners, municipalities, investors, and citizens need consistency and certainty to actually get things done.

Schedule 1 – The Environmental Assessment amendments that enable expropriation and assume development can proceed, before environmental assessments are even complete is absurd and confounding. If there is such little regard for our environment and water, why even bother with the charade of an assessment before simply expropriating and proceeding with any project? Schedule 1 is not in the best public interest and needs to be removed from Bill 162.

Schedule 3 – the Official Plan Adjustments have seen so many changes, flip-flops, and reversals of reversals, that not even highly qualified professionals can figure things out anymore. It is not getting shovels in the ground sooner, not rebuilding Ontario’s economy, nor ensuring new housing as this Bill claims.

It is inhibiting development, slowing down planning, and driving away needed investment, as desperately needed housing starts continue to fall each month. This Bill is once again encouraging municipalities to open up already scarce natural areas and farmland to development, diverting limited construction labour and materials to building expensive homes few can afford, far away from where people work and want to live. It’s forcing precious tax dollars towards building slow, inefficient, and expensive public infrastructure where it’s not needed. While little is being done to provision far-more affordable housing where infrastructure, public transit, and services already exist that could far more rapidly and effectively solve our housing crisis for millions of citizens.

The confounding Schedule 3 of Bill 162 is so poorly written that everyone is struggling to understand it. For example, the Overview Table for Modifications by this Act clearly states “None” for the Regional Municipality of Waterloo. Yet, it turns out that later in the document where there is a vague reference to Map 3 on file at 777 Bay Street, that when one goes to get the map, there are actually thousands of acres of forced urban boundary expansions being imposed on Waterloo Region - significantly compromising all of our success to date with our visionary Regional Official Plans and their focus on sustainable, efficient, compact, walkable communities, housing choice, housing affordability and environmental protection, that would have delivered the fast, affordable, housing solutions we so desperately need, by furthering our already successful intensification, and investments in rapid transit, and existing urban infrastructure.

Instead, this Act is forcing our farmers off their essential farmlands, threatening our precarious groundwater situation by paving over some of our best remaining groundwater recharge areas, and diverting scarce tax dollars and resources to unsustainable, inefficient urban sprawl that will reduce the number homes that can be built and not provide the affordable, diverse housing we so desperately need.

Waterloo Region is renown for our global success and proven visionary planning. Yet, there is no data, no rationale, no justification, nor any supporting materials explaining why our Regional Official Plan is being overridden, why the Minister disagreed with years of work done by professional staff and accredited consultants in accordance with provincial methodology and approved with such a strong endorsement by all our municipalities in August, 2022. While this Bill claims municipalities were consulted by this government, our Regional government that has the legal planning authority and responsibility for Official Plans and this long-term growth planning was not even consulted.

I want to draw particular attention to a recent Region of Waterloo Hydrology Staff Report expressing concerns about the future of our water supply, if these forced urban boundary expansions are allowed to proceed onto important groundwater recharge areas that the Region has fought for decades to protect.

Astoundingly, this Regional Report written for this Standing Committee expressing water concerns, and so clearly in the best public interest, since our Region has no pipelines to Great Lakes, nor other water sources, and is totally dependent on our own water supply and living within the carrying capacity of our ecosystems, was fought over for hours by developers and certain municipal Mayors at Regional Council this past week, who did everything possible to prevent you from seeing it.

Bill 162 is set to once again flip-flop and destroy our visionary, sustainable Countryside Line policy and ROP that had almost no farmland loss, strong protection for our vulnerable water supply, and a proven plan to ensure provincial housing targets would be rapidly and affordably met.

The Region of Waterloo is a facilitator - not an inhibitor. It is absurd to be so severely compromising our Official Plan and removing Regional Planning Authority from the Region given our complex water and servicing issues across our communities that are totally dependent on groundwater wells, collaboration, shared services, and living within the carrying capacity of our already fast-growing region.

We saw in Walkerton how quickly water issues can devastate an economy and with Waterloo Region and its agriculture, universities, high-tech, and manufacturing being such a driver of the provincial economy, it’s absurd to be threatening our water supply, farms, and entire community success with these unnecessary boundary expansions that actually mandate a population growth to over 1.2 million people with no data, no justification, no research, nor studies. No one even knows if our region can even support this astounding 50% population increase because it is hundreds of thousands of people more than any previous studies have ever contemplated or researched.

The Greenbelt was repealed because no one could explain how lands were chosen, and no one can explain or justify, any of these changes, or land selections in Waterloo Region. It is all just greed and some of our municipalities wanting all the growth that they can get regardless of the cost, as the attempt to block you from seeing this Regional water supply concern report demonstrates firsthand.

In Schedule 3, the amendments and Map 3 ordering urban boundary expansions needs to be removed, and Bill 23 should ensure that Planning Authority is retained by the Region of Waterloo.

All of our local municipalities as well as the Region of Waterloo have all unanimously declared climate emergencies and committed to meeting Paris Accord targets to reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 50% by 2030 and 80% by 2050.

Schedule 5 of Bill 162 restricting carbon pricing programs in contrast to the need to be actually be addressing adverse impacts of climate change on the environment, health, infrastructure and our economy is absurd. This proposal is at fundamentally at odds with the recommendations of provincial advisors, experts, and numerous reports commissioned by this government.

Schedule 5 needs to be removed from Bill 162.

In Conclusion

Stop. Please just stop! Too much time has been lost by too many changes and planning chaos already be it amalgamation, dissolution, the PPS, the Growth Plan, Bill 23, Bill 39, Bill 140, development charge changes, and so many confounding proposals that still have yet to be completed, or already been repealled.

We need stability, public consultations, Regional Planning Authority restored, and a focus on the simple proven solutions that are already in our visionary, sustainable Regional Official Plan that will actually address our housing crisis quickly and affordably with far more housing units than the province is seeking.

Thank you.