April 27, 2024 re:- …

April 27, 2024

re:- comment re Bill 185

Hello, I would like to propose some modifications to Bill 185
to make it more effective
based on my own personal experience with increasing the supply of housing
and municipal resistance and obstruction to same.

First, I will list the proposed changes followed by my rationale for them:-

(1) The Planning Act needs a clause to confirm that it applies only to "realty",
comprising real estate, landed property, land, buildings, and associated structures
and that it does not and never has applied to "personalty"
comprising movable property, chattels, vehicles and so on.

(2) The Planning Act needs a clause to confirm that municipalities may not and never have been allowed to regulate "personalty" under the Planning Act,
both directly and indirectly,
and that they may not use regulation of land use to also regulate "personalty"
nor may they regulate "personalty" for the purpose of also regulating land-use.

(3) The Planning Act needs a clause which directs every municipality to delete all clauses in their official plans and zoning by-laws
which purport to also regulate "personalty"
within 120 days of the proclamation of Bill 185 into law.

(4) The Planning Act needs a clause to confirm that shipping-containers, truck-trailers, and other such objects do not ever become "buildings" so long as they are being used to transport goods or store goods in transit or to temporarily store goods on a property by an owner, lessee, or tenant of that property or nearby
as part of a relocation of business or household or organization
or to support a construction project occurring on that property or nearby.

(5) The Planning Act needs a clause to allow an owner, lessee, or tenant of a property which has had its zoning down-graded or otherwise directly impaired
by a municipality through an amendment to a zoning by-law or official plan
to appeal such act to the Ontario Land Tribunal for up to 1 year following such act
and regardless of whether the appellant in such cases has previously participated
in any public consultations or meetings pertaining to such acts.

(6) The Planning Act should restrict municipalities' regulation of land-use
to simply zoning properties according to the schedule of zones
as found in the Assessment Act
and on the website of the Ontario Property Assessment Corporation
and it should prohibit municipalities from engaging in detailed control
of how owners, lessees, and tenants in each zone engage in their activities
as long as they do so in a generally accepted and customary way for each kind of zone.

(7) In Section 34(1)4 in the Planning Act the phrase "the type of construction"
should be deleted in favour of allowing any type of construction
for a building or structure which is otherwise allowed by the Ontario Building Code.

(8) The Planning Act should require each municipality to post online all information, including draft zoning by-laws and amendments thereto,
on the same day on which it notifies the public of any public meeting
required by the Planning Act.

The Planning Act should replace required public notices,
by a notice published in a newspaper
as the basic standard form of required notification,
with standard notification in future being made by unaddressed flyers delivered
by mass-mailing through Canada Post to each postal-delivery address or postal mailbox
located in the area in which public notification is required.

The Planning Act should also require
that where a municipality proposes to reduce or directly impair the zoning of a property
that it must notify the owners, lessees, and tenants of such property
by addressed registered mail with proof-of-delivery
or by a courier or agent of the municipality who also obtains similar proof-of-delivery.

(9) For the purposes of Section 34 of the Planning Act, a municipality may not regulate the general use of land beyond assigning zoning categories beyond what is recognized by the Assessment Act and the Ontario Property Assessment Corporation
and a municipality may not impose limitations on zone categories
beyond what conforms to generally accepted municipal practice in Ontario
and a municipality may not impose additional limitations beyond such general limitations without the specific and explicit consent of each affected property owner,
freely given without any direct or indirect coercion by the municipality.

(10) The Planning Act should have a general clause which prohibits municipalities
from adopting any planning or zoning changes which violate and frustrate
either the letter or the spirit and substance of the "More Homes Built Faster Act"
or any other such similar or related statutes.

Second, here is my rationale for these proposals
which flow out of my own real-life experiences in increasing the housing supply:-

I was born in the original City of Toronto pre-1954
and have lived there all my life until recently.

However I was becoming older and slower
while the city around me was becoming younger and faster
and I could not keep up anymore
so I decided to retire and relocate to a smaller and quieter community,
Barry's Bay on Hwy 60 in west Renfrew County in Madawaska Valley Township,
which I had been visiting intermittently over a lifetime since I was a child
when our parents first took us children there.

This would also have the effect of increasing family-friendly housing in Toronto
by making my match-box bungalow in Mimico available to a young family with children
which needs to stay in the city for employment reasons..

I bought a small old house on a big serviced lot there fronting on Hwy 60
but unfortunately the day on which I finally was able to first visit
was also the beginning of a major Covid lockdown
which lasted for 2+ years afterward and made my move much more difficult.

The house did not have a garage in which to store all my stuff
so I decided to rent a couple of shipping containers from a moving company
to hold the excess stuff behind my new house
until I could build a new garage.

There were no self-storage units available locally at that point in time
but I had a deadline to meet since my old house was sold
and I needed to clear it out before the closing date
plus in Toronto there was suddenly a shortage of small rental trucks
and I needed to travel by GO to Whitby to find an available U-Haul van
to complete my relocation
and the rental shipping containers were the only practical option at that point.

However as I started to build my new garage in 2021
the local by-law inspector told me by mail
that it was illegal to have shipping containers there.

I had actually checked the local zoning by-law previously
which in fact did not make any mention of "shipping containers"
plus I saw several of them at various homes in the village
plus the by-law inspector had actually stated at the Council meeting on April 6/21
that it was permissible to have shipping containers onsite temporarily
during a move-in or move-out or during a construction project
and this had been reported in a local online news journal,
the "Madawaska Valley Current".

However when I objected to this claim of illegality via email
he claimed that a shipping container was identical to a "storage trailer"
which was illegal per the local zoning by-law.

When I again objected to this illogical assertion he then claimed my rented shipping containers were really "buildings" which needed a building permit
but it was actually illegal to have a converted shipping container in an R1 zone
so I still could not have a shipping container there.

However when I again objected that the shipping containers were rented and temporary
and certainly not "buildings" and that the OBC did not even mention them
and when I then reminded him of his statements at the Council meeting of Apr 6/21
which actually stated that such shipping containers were legal in that context
he simply refused to reply anymore
so I then contacted the Township Clerk with my concerns
and she sent me a form by email attachment
which confirmed that these shipping containers were rented containers
temporarily placed to support a home relocation and associated construction
which I signed and returned and that seemed to end that trouble.

Keep in mind that at that point the Township offices were closed to the public
and I could not actually visit there or personally talk to anyone.

I also had got the impression at that point
that this might have been a case of an apparently corrupt municipal official
trying to "shake me down" for a bribe but who then "backed off"
when they realized that I would dispute the matter on points of law
and that I seemed to be educated enough to do that effectively.

It's as if a municipal official told you that you need a building permit
to park a small cargo van or pick-up truck in your driveway
because they've decided that it's really a "building" on wheels
and you certainly do feel very much like telling them "where to get off"
when they make such absurd claims.

Likewise, it would be as if the Township banned the parking of rented U-haul trucks
in R1 zones by deeming them to be so-called "unacceptable land uses":-
this of course is complete nonsense because the Planning Act applies only to realty
and not to personalty (movables such as chattels and vehicles)
and municipalities do not have the legal right to indirectly regulate the use and enjoyment of any movable property by banning or controlling their presence on land
as a so-called "unacceptable land use".

However subsequently I have realized
that in fact this was part of some sort of "wonky" Township policy
to discourage newcomers from settling there
and basically it seems to be their unofficial policy
to make newcomers feel like "criminals"
for engaging in the simple and harmless act of temporarily renting a shipping container
which tens of thousands of Canadian homeowners do each year.

This region was settled before 1900 with very few new arrivals from 1900 to 2000
and the local population became quite intermarried and semi-closed in that time
and quite clannish and culturally inbred and disconnected from the outer world
and many of them apparently do not like newcomers settling locally.

Basically, many of the local people seem to live in a perceptual bubble or cocoon
wherein they are quite insulated from the external modern world:-
in the past, this area has hosted a number of communes of various types
populated by people with extremist ideas who wanted to "hide" here
and to some extent the whole township here retains many characteristics
typical of a culturally isolated community.

They also seem to associate shipping containers with newcomers
and apparently this strange policy of essentially banning shipping containers
is part of their indirect way of discouraging newcomers from settling here:-
they really do seem to have an intense "hate" for
and extreme phobia to shipping containers in this Township
but applicable only in the village with the backwoods homesteads
being exempt from this restriction.

Shipping containers are the ultimate cosmopolitan travellers of the world
and apparently some local people here
have quite a fear and loathing for them for that reason.

This village used to have a motto:-
"Come for a visit, stay for a lifetime!" before its forced amalgamation prior to 2004
with surrounding rural townships
and it was once in fact a quite welcoming small community
with a "big heart" and a "strong spirit" which "played well above its weight"
and it certainly was not afraid of the outside world and its shipping containers
which bring so much prosperity to all who welcome them into their communities.

However the surrounding rural-wilderness townships were always much more resistant
and unwelcoming to "outsiders" and they tended to dominate the Council
of the amalgamated Township
and to impose all sorts of arbitrary restrictions on the village to discourage newcomers
such as this intense irrational prejudice against shipping containers.

Barry's Bay in village form used to have a lot of "Get up and go!" as a community
and was very good at accomplishing various community projects
but all that "get-up-and-go" apparently has long since got up and went elsewhere
and now it's governed by a rural Council
which apparently wants to crush its main street business community out of business
and convert Barry's Bay into a semi-ghost town like Killaloe.

Similarly, in 2018 they apparently forced the closure of a developing art gallery
for local artists
in the old railway station here by cutting off subsidies from the Township
because that program was becoming quite successful in attracting year-round tourism
and some of the "backwoods" people apparently did not like
all those cosmopolitan "wine and cheese" types "invading" the Township.

More recently on April 3/24 the Township posted a notice for a proposed new bylaw
(copied below in Appendix A)
which defines a new category of "storage containers"
which includes not only shipping containers
but apparently also cardboard shipping boxes
and to not only forbid the presence of "storage containers" of any kind in R1 zones
but also to expand this ban to commercial "C" zones
which previously were allowed to have shipping containers and storage trailers.

This is a quite remarkable document
which very broadly and expansively defines a new category of "storage container"
which includes not only "shipping containers"
but just about everything else except perhaps "the kitchen sink"
(although apparently hot-water heating tanks might also be included).

By implication, it also seems to include cardboard shipping boxes
and the implications of this are quite drastic:-
for example, our two supermarkets apparently will no longer be allowed to leave a truck trailer backed up to a receiving door and parked overnight while it is gradually unloaded
and they will no longer be allowed to have any cardboard shipping boxes on site
of the type typically used to ship and store most kinds of merchandise
and which are essential to modern retail commerce.

Ditto for all the other businesses along the main street in Barry's Bay:-
the apparent intent seems to be to kill and eradicate all the businesses
along the main street
which apparently would make some local people quite happy
even if it would also destroy a great deal of commercial tax assessment
and considerably increase the mil-rate on other properties elsewhere:-
however the Township Council seems quite happy
to "cut off its nose to spite it's face"
or " òdkùńczëc gniezã, bë nót jegò òbkłôdkù" in the local Kaszubian language
which is still spoken by some folks here.

Putting it another way:- MVT Council sometimes seems to be
"a few cents short of a dollar".

Another group which would be seriously affected by this proposed zoning bylaw
would be local trade contractors who typically carry tools and supplies in construction trailers which they park in their driveways at home in R1 zones:-
however those are also "storage trailers" prohibited in R1 zones
and if they are forced to park elsewhere it would make it difficult for them to conduct their business of building new houses and commercial buildings.

But then so what?:- if MVT Council has its way and bankrupts the entire main street
no one will be building new houses anyway and they might as well move
to more enlightened communities.

Unfortunately Madawaska Valley Township Council has decided to bankrupt the village of Barry's Bay by planning it out of existence and they are not interested in listening
to objections from their intended victims and there seems to be no stopping them.

Very recently the local Brewers Retail has announced the closure of its local store
despite apparently doing brisk business here
and perhaps this might be an early expression of loss of business confidence
in the MVT Council and its newfound ultra-radical approach to zoning:-
all those beer cartons are about to be banned, outlawed, and criminalized
so perhaps they decided to just do the sensible thing and walk away
from a toxic Township Council and its "screwball" zoning bylaw.

Furthermore, given the apparently whimsical and often extremist way
in which some local municipal staff interpret bylaws,
it would appear that even residents who will still be allowed to possess cardboard shipping boxes might be subject to a demand to obtain a building permit
for each cardboard shipping box, which does seem to be a bit extreme
but certainly not beyond credible possibility in this Township of Madawaska Valley.

For example, in 2023 a local newspaper reported that at one Council meeting
a municipal official was apparently demanding
that even small tents should be deemed to be "buildings"
and with the implication that apparently even small pup tents placed temporarily
in a residential backyard for the recreation of children would require a building permit
so there seems to be no limit to the erratic and extremist tendencies
of the local municipal administration.

However, it might be the case that the Township officials intend to enforce this all-encompassing bylaw quite selectively and only against those residents who fail to offer suitable gratuities in return for non-enforcement:- aka "payola".

The City of Toronto had this system of selective enforcement a quite long time ago
and my immigrant parents were certainly familiar with how it was done
but a humongous scandal circa 1975 finally ended that era in Toronto
but perhaps such old municipal traditions continue to linger here
in the upper Ottawa Valley although I certainly hope not.

Of course all of this nonsense about "storage containers" will also impose a sharp drop
in property values on R1 properties and even more so on C properties
and for no apparent valid reason
other than perhaps a mindless and "bloody-minded" desire
to destroy the village economically.

Essentially this proposed bylaw constitutes an effective and substantial confiscation
of property rights without any compensation from owners of Commercial land
which goes far beyond the legitimate regulation of land use
allowed to municipalities by the Planning Act
and they have not even been informed in advance of this pending expropriation
by confiscation without compensation by any sort of registered mail
or equivalent addressed communication.

Item 10.1 in the minutes of the Township Council meeting of Mar 19/24
casually refers to this proposed confiscation of property rights
as a mere "housekeeping matter"
and the apparent justification is that since most Commercial owners and tenants seldom use this right that it's permissible for the Township to simply confiscate those rights without any compensation
by grossly and illegally misusing the Planning Act for this purpose:-
the Township Council and its administration sometimes seem reminiscent
of a sociopathic habitual petty thief in their antics.

I did attend the public meeting on April 23/24 pertaining to this proposal
and tried to explain these concerns and points of law
but they seemed very cozy with each other and quite oblivious and unconcerned
and gave the impression of being blissfully adrift in "Cloud-Cuckoo Land".

Keep in mind that the City of Toronto,
with expert legal advice from its large in-house legal department,
does not actually regulate shipping containers and cardboard shipping boxes, etc
at all and the term "shipping container" does not appear once
in its own 2000+-page zoning bylaw
and it manages to not only survive but prosper quite well
with absolutely no regulation of shipping containers.

My understanding of municipal law in Ontario
is that municipalities may legislate and regulate
only as the Province explicitly allows them to do so
and, absent any such explicit permission or direction in the Planning Act
allowing regulation of "personalty" (movables such as chattels and vehicles),
the Township of Madawaska Valley is not allowed to regulate "personalty",
such as shipping containers, storage trailers, and cardboard shipping boxes, etc,
in any way whatsoever
and likewise it may not use the regulation of land-use as a pretext
for also regulating such movable objects.

Unfortunately some small rural municipalities seem to think
that if the Province does not explicitly prohibit them from regulating something
then they are free to do so
but this view is completely wrong and illegal
and it's necessary for the Province to rein them in with more specific and explicit prohibitions on regulating movable property as well as trying to override the Ontario Building Code by prohibiting the conversion of shipping containers into buildings in certain zones and hence my rational for the modifications to Bill 185 proposed above.

Big cities like Toronto have staff lawyers to rein in overzealous municipal officials
and their offbeat zoning proposals
but rural townships, like MVT, do not have staff lawyers and even their counties,
like Renfrew County, don't care to employ in-house county solicitors
to assist the townships with timely and economical legal advice
with the result that rural "tinpot dictators" find it easy to illegally regulate rural residents
down to the tiniest detail by decreeing that anything and everything which they don't like is a "prohibited land use" under the Planning Act.

Thus it is necessary for the Province to more effectively rein in such local rural "dictators" by explicitly restricting the regulation of land use to merely applying standardized province-wide zoning categories to individual lots and land parcels.

This is no small matter:-
a major source of "new" housing in the GTA is the relocation of retired seniors
like myself to smaller outlying communities beyond daily commuting range:-
it's very simple in principle:-
we buy something new in a congenial outer community
and sell our old city home to pay for it and bank the difference and invest for additional income while exchanging a hectic uncongenial city milieu
for a much more pleasant and congenial small-town and semi-rural milieu
while also making a "new" city home available for a young family
which needs to be in the city to earn a living.

Unfortunately some of those rural communities, such as Madawaska Valley Township,
are not altogether co-operative with these ideas
and will try to frustrate migrating city seniors with various subtle exclusionary practices
such as a grossly and unwarranted prohibition on shipping containers:-
modern society runs on truck transportation
which uses truck-trailers and shipping containers
so this can be a very effective form of exclusionary practice to exclude newcomers
from settling in small semi-closed, clannish and inbred rural communities.

I think also that the Province should be doing more to support GTA seniors
who would like to relocate to outlying smaller communities.

It was not easy for me and one big problem for seniors such as myself
is that we are house-rich but income-poor
which makes it difficult to get the bridge-financing
needed to finance such a relocation project:-
you need to borrow money against your old home to buy a new home elsewhere
and then you move asap and sell your old home to pay off the bridge mortgage.

However credit unions and banks are income-based lenders
and not equity-based lenders
with the result that you need to go to a private mortgage broker and pay quite high interest rates for your bridge financing despite being a very safe borrower
with a very high equity-cover for your mortgage
plus very stable if small retirement incomes.

It would also help if the Province had a program to offer credit unions a guarantee
so that they could feel safer in providing bridge-financing to relocating seniors.

Now I have built 70+% of my new garage,
which is concrete-block on poured-concrete foundation which needs only a roof,
but the mason advised that this garage could actually carry a wood-frame apartment
on top of the concrete walls
plus the new "More Homes Built Faster Act" allows me to do this
without any zoning variance.

This would be a 3-bedroom 1600 sq-ft apartment
and there would be a ready rental market for it in Barry's Bay
where there is a shortage of family-type rental housing for relocating professionals
such as medical staff at the local hospital and teachers at the local high school, etc.

The projected rental revenue would be more than sufficient to cover a mortgage
but the problem is to get bridge-financing to finance construction
until I can get it to the point that it can be financed by a conventional mortgage
so I must pass on this possibility and just put a roof on it.

The Province should have a guarantee program for bridge-financing
to assist small-town property owners
to build infill housing like this to densify small rural towns
to accommodate urban relocatees.

Barry's Bay, like many small towns,
also needs to extend its water and sewerage system and street system
and Provincial infrastructure loan-and-grant programs to finance such extensions
would help greatly in accommodating urban retirees from the GTA.

We are also in the Shield country here in the boreal "Near North"
with very sandy permeable glacio-fluvial-lacustrine soils
which are ideal for septic fields.

Thus one cost-saving possibility would be to extend only water systems in this area
with wastewater being disposed through septic fields:-
they extended a watermain in Bancroft in 2020 south along Hwy 28
to Monck Rd on this basis.

Another novel solution to loosen and open up this region to urban retirees
might be to sever the western townships of Renfrew County
and combine them with South Algonquin Township in the District of Nipissing
and also the northern townships of Hastings County
to form a new single-tier county municipality to be called "Madawaska County"
with its geographic center at Maynooth
and to establish subsidiary village councils and perhaps also BIAs
in the larger villages such as Barry's Bay and Maynooth and Killaloe
and Madawaska and Whitney and Wilberforce and so on.

This would allow the development of a more professional municipal administration
with paid Councillors who can work full-time on Council matters
with a much more uniform and modern philosophy of municipal governance
much more like what we are used to in bigger cities such as Toronto:-
the locals in their backwoods hideaways might not at all like this idea
with their very ultra-parochial attitudes but it certainly makes a lot of sense
to the more cosmopolitan retired urbanites like myself.

This new County municipality would also be much more effective in promoting
the upper Madawaska region economically
since right now it is badly neglected by both Renfrew County and Hastings County.

Both west Renfrew and north Hastings have much more in common economically
and demographically with each other than with their respective traditional counties
so perhaps it's time to sever them from their traditional counties
and to combine them together into a new single-tier municipal county
which will be able to accommodate large numbers of retirees from Toronto
whose presence in turn will drive a great deal of new economic growth in this region
plus thereby to help relieve the chronic housing shortages in the GTA.

The Province should also develop the considerable potential of the Hwy 17 corridor
between Renfrew town and Sault Ste Marie to accommodate
overflow population from the GTA and especially retired people.

However the situation is complicated in Toronto
by the ethnic heterogeneity of the GTA population
but many of those ethnic groups are economically and demographically mature
with large numbers of fully acculturated "Cosmo-Canadians"
who fully qualify for general retirement benefits such as CPP, GIS, and OAS
which greatly eases the problems of retirement relocation.

For example, Sault Ste Marie already has a significant Italian-Canadian population
and thus it should be relatively easy to persuade Italian-Canadian retirees in the GTA
to relocate to "the Sault"
where they would also revive the somewhat moribund old downtown.

Likewise, downtown Pembroke has a very typical antique 19th century downtown
with 3-storey shops with apartments above lining a very narrow main street
and which is quite obsolete for modern retail commerce
resulting in many vacant store-fronts and a moribund "Deadsville".

However that type of urban milieu is very much preferred by Orthodox Jews
and it might be possible to persuade
not only retired Orthodox Jewish folks to move to downtown Pembroke
but also Toronto's entire Orthodox Jewish community of all ages
since Orthodox Jewish people are very adept at self-employment.

A new Orthodox Jewish community in very staid downtown Pembroke
might seem a bit exotic
but no more so than the equally "exotic" Old Order Mennonites
settling around Douglas to the south
and other local residents certainly seem quite "ok" with them.

So there is my feedback and thank you for your patience. / EMC

Appendix A

THE CORPORATION OF THE TOWNSHIP OF MADAWASKA VALLEY BY-LAW NUMBER 2024-XX _____________________________________________________________________________ BEING A BY-LAW TO AMEND BY-LAW 2006-26, AS AMENDED, OF THE TOWNSHIP OF MADAWASKA VALLEY _____________________________________________________________________________ PURSUANT TO SECTION 34 OF THE PLANNING ACT, R.S.O. 1990, c.P.13, THE TOWNSHIP OF MADAWASKA VALLEY HEREBY ENACTS AS FOLLOWS:

1. THAT By-law Number 2006-26, as amended, of the Township of Madawaska Valley is hereby further amended as follows:

a) By adding the following to Section 2.0 Definitions, immediately after subsection 2.200, and renumbering the remaining subsections of Section 2.0, as follows:

“2.201 STORAGE CONTAINER means any receptacle used for the purpose of storing goods or materials and designed to be loaded onto trucks, trailers, trains or ships for transportation and includes but is not limited to containers commonly referred to as Shipping Containers, Storage Containers, Sea Cans, C Can or Marine Cargo Containers.”

b) By modifying section 3.34 Storage Trailers by adding the bold and removing the strikethrough as follows:
“STORAGE CONTAINERS and STORAGE TRAILERS
Storage Containers and Trailers used for storage, such as tractor trailers straight truck boxes and railway cars, shall only be permitted for accessory storage use in the following zones:

Commercial (C), Highway Commercial (HC), Tourism Commercial (TC), General Industrial (GM), Extractive Industrial (EM), Extractive Industrial Reserve (EMR), Disposal Industrial One (DM1), Disposal Industrial Two (DM2), and Rural (RU) Zones.”

2. THAT save as aforesaid all other provisions of By-law 2006-26, as amended, shall be complied with. 3. THAT this By-law shall come into force and take effect on the day of final passing. READ A FIRST, SECOND AND THIRD TIME AND FINALLY PASSED THIS ___________ DAY OF _____________________MONTH, 2024.