Eglinton Park Residents’…

Eglinton Park Residents’ Association (EPRA), located in midtown Toronto, between Yonge Street and Eglinton Park, desires the Province to respect wherever possible the autonomy of local planning bodies over local lands. We acknowledge that, sometime, a Provincial intervention might make things go faster, but we are troubled by several recent cases, for instance the Pickering wetlands to be filled in for a warehouse, the Dominion Foundry Complex heritage properties being demolished for housing where, with more careful attention, they might be conserved in ways compatible with providing homes.
EPRA has, over the past three years, seen instances where the Province has leaned very hard on local planning, upsetting processes and undoing work in which we citizens and city planners collaborated. Most notable is bill 405, which revised in radical ways a local plan on which EPRA and its members, and other local organizations and residents collaborated with Toronto Planning over six or so years of consultation. The Province's changes in that bill have had a radical effect on the height and mass of buildings projected in our very crowded, under-serviced part of the city.

No MZO was involved in the Province’s intervention, but the pattern, of over-riding local control, troubles us, as it imposes a model of governance that undermines the vitality of democracy. The Province might reply, “Are we too not elected?” Indeed, our legislature is elected, but it is our experience as a citizens’ advocacy group that the Province, its officials, and our elected officials are almost altogether out of reach. Dialogue has proven pretty well impossible.
EPRA has read the submission from the Federation or Urban Neighbourhoods, which worries that on many points the proposed legislation is vague. It seems to us especially important to write in a very explicit requirement that, whenever the province does apply in MZO, it then consult carefully with local government and with all relevant stake-holders in the project in question, planners and citizens especially.