{"id":23839,"date":"2019-05-23T15:56:32","date_gmt":"2019-05-23T19:56:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23839"},"modified":"2019-05-30T17:12:23","modified_gmt":"2019-05-30T21:12:23","slug":"council-calls-on-province-to-scrap-changes-to-planning-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/council-calls-on-province-to-scrap-changes-to-planning-process\/","title":{"rendered":"Council calls on Province to scrap changes to planning process"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurora is calling on the Province to scrap legislation\nthat could see ultimate power to shape a community out of the municipality\u2019s\nhands and into the hands of an unelected board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Council last week passed a motion brought forward by\nMayor Tom Mrakas opposing Bill 108, stating it will have \u201cnegative consequences\non community building and proper planning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his motion, Mayor Mrakas pointed out that legislation\nabolishing the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) in favour of a Local Planning\nAppeal Tribunal (LPAT) received unanimous, all-party support in the Ontario\nLegislature under the previous government in recognition that \u201clocal\ngovernments should have the authority to uphold their provincially-approved\nOfficial Plans, to uphold their community-driven planning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The recently introduced Bill, announced by the Government\nas a measure to improve housing stock across the Province by cutting red tape,\nwould reverse the decision, argued the Mayor, and put power back in the hands\nof an \u201cunelected\u201d and \u201cunaccountable\u201d body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt the end of the day when Bill 139 was introduced in\nthe House that would look at making significant changes and abolish the OMB, it\nwas quite an incredible amount of work and not just from elected officials, but\nresidents and ratepayers getting together and speaking on behalf of needed\nchanges to bring authority back to our local governments on how we evolve and\ngrow as municipalities with respect to land use planning,\u201d he told Council. \u201cMy\nquestion to those MPPs who are sitting in the House now [is] why the change?\nWhat we call in political terms, why the flip-flop?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis government talks about the fact they are \u2018for the\npeople,\u2019 well, let\u2019s put the people first instead of the Party. That\u2019s what I\nsee here. Everyone is toeing the party line and they are looking to make\nchanges to legislation. Who is asking for it? When Bill 139 was introduced, it\nwas elected officials across this Province and it was a majority of them that\nrepresented close to 70 per cent of the population of this province and that is\nwhy those changes were made. Who is asking for those changes now? I don\u2019t see\nthe people up in arms saying we need to go back to a system that is flawed. At\nthe end of the day, this is being driven by a for-profit industry that is\nlooking to increase their profit margins.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He went on to further challenge the Provincial\nGovernment\u2019s claim that the Bill is being proposed in the name of affordable\nhousing, when the Bill encompasses myriad other pieces of legislation including\nthe Conservation Authorities Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Environmental\nProtection Act, the Labour Relations Act, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey were put in place to safeguard our environment, our\nhistory, our health,\u201d said Mayor Mrakas. \u201cNow, they are being basically\njeopardized in the guise of affordable housing. I put forward this motion to\nsay that we in Aurora oppose this Bill in its current state and that we would\nlike the Government of Ontario to halt this Bill, stop, pause, whatever it is,\nand sit down with the elected officials and let\u2019s have a conversation of how we\ncan achieve what we truly need and what we all agree we need, which is\naffordable housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is a housing crisis in Ontario, but it is not one\nof supply; it is one of affordable housing. At the end of the day, the talk is\nthat the \u2018missing middle\u2019 that this is what will be able to be built if we\nprovide and supply more supply of housing. Well, that missing middle can be\nbuilt today. There is no red tape. You can go out and build bungalows, build low-rise\nto mid-rise apartments and that is not happening. That is not getting built. If\nbungalows were getting built, we wouldn\u2019t have an issue. The red tape is the\ndevelopment industry coming to Councils across this Province and asking for\namendment after amendment and asking us to rip apart our official plans and our\nvisions for our communities so they can increase their profits. It is not what\nthe people want [and] it is time to sit down, work together and let\u2019s have\nplanning that is for the people and not planning for profit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mayor\u2019s Motion received the unanimous approval of\nCouncil, although Councillor Wendy Gaertner said she had some concerns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At issue was a wholesale opposition to the Bill. As the\nproposed legislation covers such a wide area, she questioned whether Council\u2019s\nopposition should be more specific and make their opposition as strong as\npossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mayor Mrakas said he disagreed, saying he personally\nopposed the whole Bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome might not and I can\u2019t speak to those who might like\nsome parts of it,\u201d he said. \u201cAs a developer, you\u2019ll just be able to cut a\ncheque to bypass some protections. That\u2019s in simple terms. It\u2019s a little bit\nmore complicated than that. Each of the acts that are being affected are being\naffected to allow for easier access to the development community to come in and\ndevelop what they would like to instead of what municipalities would like.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora is calling on the Province to scrap legislation that could see ultimate power to shape a community out of the municipality\u2019s hands and into the hands of an unelected board.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6cv","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-16 19:40:23","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}