Province reversing urban boundary expansions for Ottawa, several other communities
Housing minister Paul Calandra says the previous housing minister's office was too involved in changes for those plans.
Allison Jones, Liam Casey
The Canadian Press
Published Oct 23, 2023 • Last updated 5 hours ago • 4 minute read
Ontario is reversing its expansion of urban boundaries for several communities including Ottawa after finding that processes used by the previous housing minister’s office did not meet the government’s standards, the new housing minister said Monday.
Paul Calandra said he is also reversing course on changes to official boundaries for Barrie, Belleville, Guelph, Hamilton and Peterborough, and is winding back changes through legislation to official plans for the regional municipalities of Halton, Niagara, Peel, Waterloo, York and Wellington County.
“Since becoming minister of municipal affairs and housing, I’ve made it a priority to review past decisions to ensure that they support our goal of building at least 1.5 million homes and to ensure that the decisions that we made were done in a manner that maintains and reinforces public trust,” Calandra said.
“This includes decisions on minister zoning orders and official plans. Now, when reviewing how decisions were made regarding official plans, it is clear that they failed to meet this test.”
Calandra said the previous housing minister’s office was too involved in changes for those plans, and that the province will cover costs incurred by municipalities on work done.
Many municipalities have said the boundary expansions were not needed to build housing. Last month, Ottawa city councillors voted unanimously to ask the province to reverse the decision to expand the city’s urban boundary. The motion was brought to council by Capital Ward Coun. Shawn Menard.
“I think there was a lot of pressure from a lot of municipalities, but we added our voice to that,” Menard said Monday. “At the end of the day, it’s good to see they saw the light on this.
“Given that the RCMP is now investigating the government over the (Toronto) Greenbelt decision, they likely saw that there were some concerning decisions that bore similarities to that process with urban boundary expansions in several cities,” he said.
The provincial decision opened up land for development to the east, south and west of Ottawa — land that the city itself had deemed too costly to service. The transfer was done without any public consultation.
“It’s obviously very, very expensive when you expand urban boundaries. It’s expensive (housing) supply and it doesn’t do anything to help with affordability for residents.”
Menard said the ministerial order to expand Ottawa’s urban boundary wasn’t subject to appeal under Ontario’s Land Use Tribunal, meaning the only way for the ruling to be changed was if the government backed down.
“Obviously, there’s still concerns that this might happen again and we need to make sure there’s a process in place that doesn’t allow that,” Menard said.
In an emailed statement, Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe said he was “supportive” of Calandra’s decision to withdraw the land. The Greater Ottawa Homebuilders’ Assocation, however, called the reversal “devastating” and “extremely disappointing.
“We need to ensure that residents of Ottawa, now and in the future, have a reasonable opportunity for a home of their own,” Jason Burggraaf, the association’s executive director, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this decision disregards the good progress made to confront the critical housing affordability and supply crisis gripping our city.
“This abrupt reversal significantly undermines our capacity to ensure an ample supply of diverse housing options.”
Calandra replaced Steve Clark as housing minister last month after the former minister resigned in the wake of two legislative watchdogs’ probes on the decision to remove land for development from the protected Greenbelt.
Ontario created the Greenbelt in 2005 to protect agricultural and environmentally sensitive lands in the Greater Golden Horseshoe area outside of Toronto from development. The National Capital Greenbelt in the Ottawa area, meanwhile, is a separate swath of land, made up of a 14,950-hectare horseshoe-shaped collection of farmland, forests and wetlands that border the west, south and east ends of the city. It was created in the 1950s and is managed by the National Capital Commission.
Ontario recently reversed course on its move and 15 parcels of land are being returned to its Greenbelt. The province had planned to build 50,000 homes on that land.
Official Opposition and NDP Leader Marit Stiles said the government has wasted a year on their housing policies only to reverse them in the face of public outcry.
“Minister Calandra’s latest flip-flop makes it abundantly clear; we have only scratched the surface of the damage this government has done,” Stiles wrote in a statement.
“There is a deeply concerning culture of corruption and preferential treatment embedded in how this government makes public policy, and Ontarians deserve more answers.”
Interim Liberal Leader John Fraser was incredulous about Calandra’s comments that Clark’s office was too involved in the changes to municipalities’ urban boundary changes.
“There is no way on God’s green Earth that the premier’s office didn’t know about these urban boundary changes, didn’t know about MZOs, didn’t know about the Greenbelt,” he said.
Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner said the government should have been focusing on implementing recommendations from its own housing affordability task force to build homes instead of removing land from the Greenbelt and expanding urban boundaries.
The government says it has implemented 23 of the task force’s 74 recommendations, with another 14 in progress.
With files from Blair Crawford
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/ontar...al-communities
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