Quote:
Originally Posted by borkborkbork
"if your project is rejected, you can appeal to a body of retired small-town mayors and city councillors from other municipalities, business owners, and tory donors"
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You nailed it. I've had some involvement in this initiative at various levels of it's development.
It was basically created to override municipalities who are constantly rejecting hog barn proposals. For real. Yes, that's overly simplified but its the just of it.
The province has sunk a ton of money into marketing and attempting to establish itself as a major player in the world hog industry. (That may be one of the stranger sentences I have written on this forum). They want hog barn development, and they want it now and everywhere.
Municipalities aren't overly keen though on selling out residents, resources, and infrastructure for the limited tax dollars they see from such investments. In the end they are left holding the bag, literally, as in this instance manure generation/smell/disposal/contamination are all major sticking points.
Previously all a municipality had to do was pass a resolution rejecting a hog barn proposal in their municipality, if they didn't want one to establish there. No reason needed other than it's not desired. Groups of residents in close proximity are opposed? That was good enough for the municipality.
That is no longer possible. Municipalities now have a list of criteria to meet before they can reject a proposal outright, even if they do not want it. If they reject without meeting the criteria the matter is kicked to the municipal board, and more often than not a decision is rendered against what the municipality desired for a final outcome.
The province gets its hog barn and the municipality gets stepped over. How does this play over with local voters? More often than not it is fine as the majority of our rural communities are Conservatives leaning.
How does that tie into this issue? It all goes back to the purpose of the municipal board in its various locations.
In rural areas, positive decisions are seen as government action stifling small pockets of local dissent, creating jobs and helping the local economy. In urban areas, negative decisions are seen as victories for those in opposition to the project as they feel they have been heard and respected by the board. The thing is that that the chances of being heard and respected in urban areas will largely depend on what pocket of the city you live in. The province passed off its application and functionality in Winnipeg as the Province "working with developers to remove barriers to development" to ensure the City would not be responsible for delaying projects (all of this was related to and born out of the building inspection unit fiasco at City Hall a few years back.) Clearly that is not the spirit in which it will be used in Winnipeg as we are now seeing.
In the simplest and most basic sense the Conservative government of Manitoba has created this new mechanism as a means of buying good political capital with local residents who are affected by these decisions.
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