To Whom It May Concern, The…

To Whom It May Concern,

The City of Brampton (hereinafter referred to as ‘the City’) appreciates the opportunity to provide comments on the proposed changes outlined in the Environmental Registry of Ontario posting 019-8368 – Proposed Amendments to Ontario Regulation 73/23: Municipal Planning Data Reporting.

The City is supportive of efforts by the Province to both increase and improve municipal data reporting and remain committed to working with the Province as it relates to their ambitious goal of delivering more housing.

The City recognizes the changes made to the Ontario Regulation 73/23: Municipal Planning Data Reporting to both expand on the municipalities which will, in the future, provide information on their progress towards meeting provincially-assigned housing targets, as well as expand on and increase the frequency of reporting as it relates to a variety of development.

Please see below specific comments on individual aspects of the proposed legislative changes:

1. Expanding list of municipalities reporting

City comment: The City is supportive of this change as allows for increased transparency through the addition of 21 municipalities who also have provincially assigned housing targets. This data will allow for a fulsome picture of the Province’s efforts to realize the housing goal of 1.5 million new homes by 2031.

The City is not anticipating this change in legislation will impact the municipality and has no additional comments.

2. Changes to data points and frequency of reporting

City Comment: The City is supportive of this change and is working towards improving both internal and external data reporting as it relates to the development process through the various planning applications. However, the City notes the additional data points being requested (specifically ERO 019-8368, Appendix 2. Amendment 5.c.i.) can be misinterpreted and misrepresentative of the City’s efforts to complete the development cycle expeditiously. In keeping with the spirit of transparency the data being request would benefit from a fulsome depiction of the planning application milestones that bring the application forward from conception to municipal decision making and potentially steps further unto ground-breaking (where applicable).

The City also generally supports the proposed amendment to have municipalities publish the planning application summaries to their government website. However, similar to the above and the below recommendation, the City requests that the Province consider expanding the scope of the datapoints being requested to prevent any misinterpretation or misrepresentation.

City Recommendation: It is recommended that the Province consider expanding on the scope of information and data being requested to account for major milestones within each planning application type. This would provide increased transparency when determining any potential delays within each process and allow decision makers to make informed legislative changes with the aim of addressing those inefficiencies.

The City would like to thank the Province for the opportunity to provide feedback and comments on the proposed changes.

Sincerely,

Steve Ganesh, MCIP, RPP
Commissioner
Planning, Building & Growth Management
City of Brampton