I am deeply concerned with…

I am deeply concerned with Schedule 10 of Bill 66. While the superficial wording suggests that it is aimed at facilitating exceptional employment opportunities, in fact the bill as written has the potential to open the door to numerous poorly planned and opportunistic developments that may provide big profits to developers, a few short term jobs, but create significant problems that will cost municipalities dearly in the future, and degrade the lives of existing residents.

Provisions for overriding major components of the Planning Act and of the Provincial Policy Statement on planning would make a mockery of years of previous work in municipal planning. This advance work seeks to guide urban development in ways that not only provide for reasonable growth, but also make towns and cities healthier, more livable and more serviceable over the long term. The prevention of urban sprawl will, in the long term, provide major benefits to Ontario and Ontarians, by creating more efficient, less congested, and more environmentally sustainable cities, by preserving the farmland we need in a world of growing food instability and by providing ecological services such as cleaner air, groundwater recharge and healthy recreation opportunities. We absolutely need foresight and strong planning to manage the amount, location, timing, and long term impact of urban growth. Allowing either short-sighted municipal councils or profit-maximizing private speculators to drive the overall planning agenda is a recipe for future unsustainability, especially given the strong likelihood that climate change will exacerbate existing problems of stormwater management, transportation infrastructure, air quality, etc. over the coming decades.

Bill 66 opens too many loopholes through which a small minority of elites may irreversibly degrade the overall lives of a majority of Ontarians for short term greed in the name of job creation. At the very least, it needs the kind of very strong restrictive provisions that would be expected in any government legislation that permits for a small number of elected or non-elected individuals to override existing legislation. It needs far more specific and restricted definition of the character and number of long term, full time jobs that a project would have to create even to qualify for consideration, and it also needs far more requirement for public input into any such proposed overrides. Jobs are important, but the idea that any job at any cost and any sacrifice is always the best option is not consistent with the will of Ontarians. As the legislation is currently presented, it could, for example, allow a municipal council to approve anything from a massive marijuana farm to a gigantic bit coin mining operation to an unplanned resource extraction operation in the middle of an urban area or a vital natural area that has previously been designated and even developed for completely incompatible uses. All of this would require only notification after the fact, and would allow for no public consultation or debate. This is a completely undemocratic way of governing.

Development of livable human environments requires a degree of advanced planning and of stability that seems to be completely ignored by this bill. Livable human environments do require employment opportunities, but they also, especially in cities, require opportunities for personal growth and fulfillment, for healthy living, for rearing children in a safe and stimulating place, and for a vibrant cultural, recreational and natural environment. It is worth remembering that people are what municipalities are all about. Planning should be about creating places where people want to live and work, and it is those people who generate most of the distributed economic activity that actually sustains the urban area. People want a stable, predictable living environment in which to establish their lives. This legislation creates anything but. If people are forced to live in a state of constant uncertainty about their own immediate surroundings because an economic elite controls or overrides the planning processes, Ontario will become a much less desirable place to live.