New legislation aimed at speeding up housing developments across the province next year might actually end up slowing things down instead, a Southwestern Ontario mayor is warning.
New legislation aimed at speeding up housing developments across the province next year might actually end up slowing things down instead, a Southwestern Ontario mayor is warning.
“I can see trouble brewing,” St. Marys Mayor Al Strathdee said Thursday, not long after a local committee meeting about Bill 109, the More Homes For Everyone Act. “I get what the government is trying to do – to do everything possible to force municipalities to (approve) more development. I just think … that this is a mistake and hasn’t been well thought out.”
Premier Doug Ford’s government unveiled the legislation on March 30, pitching it as one solution to Ontario’s housing crisis. It quickly received royal assent in April, a couple months before the recent provincial election, and is scheduled to take effect in January.
Among the bill’s more eye-catching policy actions requires municipalities to refund application fees in phases if decisions on several routine planning requests aren’t finalized by newly legislated deadlines.
Beginning next year, a developer that’s applying for a zoning bylaw amendment, for example, will receive a 50 per cent refund if a decision isn’t made within 90 days. That refund grows to 75 per cent within 150 days and 100 per cent within 210 days, according to the bill.
New deadlines for site plan approvals in the legislation are even tighter: 60 days, 90 days and 120 days.
Bill 109 is meant to bring more homes to market more quickly, the province has said, but officials on the municipal level – including many planners – are saying the stiffer deadlines could create a slew of unintended consequences.
“This in fact could … actually backfire and add more time to the approvals process because it could limit our ability to fully assess an application,” said Gregg Barrett, London’s director of planning and development.
London’s planning department is currently preparing a report about how the city will handle the changes in Bill 109. Among Barrett’s concerns is that legislated refunds will motivate planners to refuse applications rather than discuss them with developers, which could result in more time-consuming and costly appeals to the Ontario Land Tribunal.
Barrett is also concerned the legislation doesn’t allow municipalities to “stop the clock,” even if the developer agrees it’s in their best interest to review concerns raised by experts or the public during the application process. That function is included in the Ontario Heritage Act, but not the More Homes For Everyone Act.
“The way the legislation is written, even if an applicant wished that process to occur, it can’t,” Barrett said. “I think the province probably heard a pretty consistent message coming from municipalities on this concern.”
Barrett’s concerns echo those raised in Stratford, where councilors argued in April that the province is asking too much of municipalities in order to address the provincewide housing crisis.
In Ottawa, planning manager Stephen Willis told a council committee in April the city would have been on the hook for approximately 70 per cent of its zoning applications and more than 80 per cent of its site-plan applications if the new legislation had been in effect in 2021.
Because his department bases its budget and staffing on projected development applications, Willis said at the time the potential refunds demand a plan for dealing with the revenue shortfall.
The legislation has also raised transparency concerns.
In St. Marys, Grant Brouwer, the town’s director of building and planning, updated councilors this week on how his department plans to handle planning-related applications in January. Those plans include asking developers to do more homework ahead of applying for approvals, but they also reduce the amount of time a project spends in front of the town’s planning advisory committee.
The latter did not sit well with local councilors, who argued that the committee provides valuable input and an opportunity for the public to keep track of local development projects.
Now, “the value of (the committee) is a big question mark moving forward, and (so is) how the public is going to feel about the transparency of the decisions we’re making,” said Coun Jim Craigmile, one of the committee’s members. “To me, it could almost look like there might be some sort of rubber-stamping going through without proper due course.”
Strathdee, the mayor, said the town is still expecting more information from the province about the legislation in the coming months, but he is far from convinced the bill will work as intended, especially in towns the size of St. Marys.
“We think that we’re doing a good job and we think development applications move through fairly quickly already,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to speed the process up. In fact, I think there’s a good chance it could slow the process down.”