Hello Thank you for the…

Hello

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the changes to the Planning Act. I am not an expert, but the overall implications seem to be that everything is being done to facilitate development at the expense of the people of Ontario and the communities they live in. How do these changes benefit the millions of people who live in Ontario? What is the reason for giving so much power to a special interest group?
It seems that the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal can overturn any decision that the community representatives have made. How does this benefit the people of Ontario? It appears to deny the people of Ontario the right to be critical about poor or inappropriate planning decisions in their own communities. It also appears that the LPAT will be composed of persons who have a bias towards development and developers thereby denying any reasons for appeals by the people of Ontario.
This seems to be a backward approach to development and doesn't utilize local knowledge and expertise but instead allows development to become willy nilly thereby destroying the character, neighbourhoods and cohesiveness of the communities.
How can streamlining processes benefit the community and the people of Ontario in any way. This appears to be driven and even written by the development community. How does a special interest group like this gain so much control over the government and our communities?
No mention is made about where the community planning permit systems will occur. What is the process and how much control will the development community dictate to the government during these decisions?
The proposed changes in fact limit the people of Ontario from appealing inappropriate or poor planning decisions. One can imagine having a local Planner who may disagree with the local governments Official Plan but in fact could push through an inappropriate subdivision plan without any means for the public to object. Creating shorten decision-making timelines also hinders the public from having meaningful input because of the time required to learn about the process and gather factual information. Too many planning decisions are based on inaccurate or incorrect information as a result of a lack of accountability. For instance, one can image a biased and incorrect Environmental Impact Study being presented by a developer and due to a lack of time politicians and the public are unable to gather all the facts so that a true representation of a property can be made. The errors resulting from this may lead to enormous costs to the property owners. For example, allowing development on wetlands which results in water damage to a structure. The home-owner will be forced to bear the monetary burden of inappropriate planning mistakes and unless they have enough money to sue the local government they will suffer. This seems like a backward approach to sustainable and appropriate development.
The public should be allowed to appeal development permit system provisions in Official Plans, non-decisions on an Official Plan and plans of subdivision. Current timelines for decisions should be maintained. Municipal discretion to extend the timeline for Official plan decisions in appropriate decisions should remain in place. Municipalities or planning boards should also be granted discretion to extend any Planning Act decision timeline in appropriate circumstances.
Some other issues which really should be addressed include the accreditation of companies doing the Environmental Impact Statements (or equivalent). Currently, there are no punitive consequences for companies that choose to provide misleading or false information or omissions of critically important information.
How can the government ensure that they will safeguard Ontarians health and safety, support a vibrant agricultural sector and protect environmentally and culturally sensitive areas when you deny the public any ability to have input into poor decisions? These changes appear to allow the development community to be less accountable in all of these areas. These changes are biased and will result in a multitude of poor planning decisions.