April 28, 2024 re:- …

April 28, 2024

re:- additional comments re Bill 185 / ERO # 019-8366

Hello, these are some new comments additional to my comments of April 27/24,
ie comment id 98390:-

(11) The Planning Act needs a clause to explicitly forbid municipalities
from directly changing or diminishing or impairing the zoning status of any property
without the agreement of the owner of such property.

This kind of arbitrary and capricious behavior by municipalities undermines the security of ownership and tenure which owners, developers, and investors need to develop useful and beneficial new projects, such as more housing.

(12) The Planning Act needs a clause which allows the owner of a property of which the zoning status has been directly changed, diminished, or impaired by a municipality without the agreement of the owner to appeal such unilateral action to the Ontario Land Tribunal within one year from the date of such adverse change and regardless of whether the owner had attended a public meeting regarding such action by a municipality.

Again, this would provide owners with more recourse against arbitrary and capricious behaviour detrimental to property owners
and would further facilitate the development of useful new projects,
such as more housing.

(13) The Ontario Building Code needs a new clause to specifically address the issue of when a “shipping container” becomes a “building” or part of a building.

There seems to be an eccentric idea in many rural municipalities,
such as Madawaska Valley Township,
that every shipping container is automatically a building no matter what
and thus requires a building permit to be parked even only temporarily on a property
and this is very obstructive to relocations and new construction projects.

This is apparently based on a wrong interpretation of a decision by the Ontario Building Code Commission circa 2004 involving a particular case where a developer had built a rental self-storage business using shipping containers as components:-
the OBCC found in that particular case that the shipping containers had become part
of a “building” and required building permits
and were assessable and taxable real property.

However the OBCC did not actually rule that all shipping containers were “buildings” no matter what the circumstances and it did not actually establish a legal test to determine when and if a “shipping container” becomes a “building”.

Nevertheless, many rural municipal officials choose to believe this assertion regardless of its legality and will then insist on inflicting this false idea on property owners who need to use one or two rented shipping containers as part of a relocation or construction project.

However bigger city municipalities with their own in-house legal staffs,
such as the City of Toronto, do not do this
and this issue remains a vexatious “gray area” in the Ontario Building Code
which Bill 185 needs to clarify.

(14) Either the Planning Act or the Ontario Building Code needs a clause to prohibit municipalities from preventing the conversion of shipping containers into “buildings” or incorporating them as components into “buildings”.

Shipping containers are useful components in developing new housing
and eccentric rural municipalities, such as Madawaska Valley Township,
should not be allowed to arbitrarily and completely prohibit their use in building projects
so long as such projects conform to the Ontario Building Code.

(15) The Planning Act needs an explicit clause to prohibit municipalities from inventing new terms and phrases which are not already defined or recognized by Provincial statutes.

The Planning Act needs to be understood and applied uniformly across Ontario
in order to maximize the rate of new housing formation by private developers
and eccentric rural municipalities, such as Madawaska Valley Township,
cannot be allowed to inflict their own peculiar and obstructive ideas on the Planning Act
by creating eccentric and counter-productive new terms and phrases to inflict
on businesses and builders.

Thank you. / 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.