I am strongly opposed to…

I am strongly opposed to Bill 66 (Restoring Ontario’s Competitiveness Act, 2018).
I have two fundamental objections.
Firstly, Bill 66 is, in effect, a so called “omnibus bill”. I am philosophically opposed to the passage of any omnibus bill. This bill will affect over a dozen disparate policy areas, including those as diverse and unrelated as pension legislation, environmental protection, and even the regulation of pawnbrokers as just a few examples. Why, I ask myself, are all of these unrelated topics dealt with in a single bill? What is the purpose? The common thread? The title of the bill mentions competitiveness, but I fail to understand how any changes to the regulation of pawnbrokers can possibly have any significant positive effect on Ontario’s competitiveness. Maybe I am wrong and we will see new pawn shops opening up on every street corner once this legislation is passed. But I doubt it. No. This is simply an example of an omnibus bill intended to ram through policy change with as much camouflage and as little comment and understanding as possible. Shame on this Government for proposing it. Shame on any member of the Legislature who supports it.
I am even more concerned with Section 10 of this Bill which will allow local governments to pass bylaws which neuter important health, safety, and environmental protections provided by a host of other Acts currently in force.
Incredibly, this Bill will allow local governments to pass bylaws that allow commercial interests to supersede provisions of the Clean Water Act and the Great Lakes Protection Act – provisions that are in place solely to protect both the environment in general and human health in particular. I am absolutely astonished and more than a little angry that this government is willing to forgo strict protection of clean water sources in order to satisfy commercial interests. Clean water is not simply a nice to have. It is essential. The provisions of Bill 66 which enable an “Open for Business” bylaw to skate around legislation created specifically to protect our water supplies must not be enacted.
Maybe this Government has forgotten Walkerton? I can assure you that the public has not. Colour that one blue. We remember whose watch that happened on.
Granted, Bill 66 does require that the Minister of Planning approve any “Open for Business” bylaw and it allows the Minister to impose conditions that might protect the environment or human health. But I ask myself, why would I trust that the Minister will have protection of my health and the environment in mind when considering a proposed “Open for Business” bylaw? The fact that the Bill even contemplates allowing commercial interests to escape the provisions of the Clean Water Act makes it obvious to me that the current Government has no such interest. This is hugely concerning to me.
This Bill allows passage by a municipal government of legislation which would render the Greenbelt Act impotent, thereby threatening the preservation of a unique environmental resource in southern Ontario. This does not improve Ontario’s competitiveness. What jurisdiction is Ontario competing with for the Green Belt builders’ dollar? We aren’t. This is all about helping developers, those with the resources to lobby politicians, to profit.
More generally, the bylaws contemplated by this bill will also allow development that runs in the face of approved development plans and zoning provisions. What is the point of such plans and provisions if, with the stroke of a pen, they can be abrogated? Why, if a proposed development is a good idea, would the local municipality not simply convene, openly discuss, and vote to change the plan and the zoning as needed?
Bill 66 provides the answer. Deep within the bill are provisions which permit the passage of the “Open for Business Bylaw” without any prior public notice and without any consultation at all. In other words, the bylaw can be crafted and enacted entirely in secret. This is not efficiency. It is not “government by the people.” It is government behind closed doors. The fact that the proposed legislation also gives the Minister of Planning the ability to unilaterally order changes to the “Open for Business” bylaw without public notification or consultation, changes which could easily be ordered to please the Minister’s “friends”, adds yet another layer of decision making secrecy.
Government in secret by is offensive. I can see only one reason why my provincial Government would go out of its way to facilitate decision making behind closed doors. Quite simply, it stinks of catering to special interests. It will enable, and even encourage, lobbying by rich commercial interests who will use their financial might to overwhelm the broader public interest. While the lobbying goes on, the public will be left in the dark until the damage is done. This Bill creates a situation that is extremely vulnerable to graft. It is tailor made to encourage and facilitate influence peddling. And even if the Government is not actually caught selling influence, voters of all political stripes will simply assume that it goes on. Why else would the Provincial Government want to pass such legislation?
To add icing to the cake, the proposed legislation provides that decisions are final and cannot be appealed. What are we to think?
And to top it all off, the fine print of the proposed bill provides that should any other pieces of legislation be deemed “red tape” in the planning process, they can be added, again in secret, by Cabinet, to the list of laws that need not apply to an “Open for Business” bylaw. These additions need not pass through the legislature, need not be discussed in public, and cannot be appealed. This is simply incredible. It is a blatant attempt to give this Government a blank cheque. It smacks of despotism.
So, in summary, we are faced with a Bill which:
• Is crafted as an omnibus Bill which, because of its omnibus nature, discourages rational and open discussion of the proposed course of action by the public.
• Gives those who can afford to lobby and “influence” municipal politicians for personal gain a tailor made ability to do so;
• Allows them to do so behind closed doors;
• Makes it simultaneously easier and more worthwhile (ie. profitable) for commercial interests to “influence” the Minister of Planning, also in secret;
• Enables those “influenced” politicians to pass a bylaw to allow those commercial interests to silently skate around “inconvenient health, safety, environmental, and planning regulations;
• Allows those politicians to do so in secret, without seeking any public input whatsoever from those whose health and way of life will be affected;
• Allows those bylaws to be crafted and enacted in secret, without even informing the public that such a bylaw is contemplated; and
• When the public finally finds out that their health and the welfare of their environment has been sacrificed on the altar of greed, allows those who have been “influenced” to simply say, “Sorry, it’s the law. Can’t change things now.”
• Allows the Government, without consultation or prior notice, to add any other existing law to the list of those which are deemed “inconvenient” for commercial interests and which therefore need not be complied with.
This is not government for the people. It is government for the friends of politicians at the expense of the public. It is despicable.
The only competition Section 10 of Bill 66 is going to facilitate is developers’ competition for the ears of politicians. It would have been more honest to call it “An Act to Keep Our Developer (and Pawnbroker) Friends Sweet and Promote the Financial Welfare of the Party in Power.”