Hazel McCallion tells province to slow down plans to curb sprawl
But not everyone agrees with the former mayor of Mississauga and ‘Queen of Sprawl’.

Toronto Star and thestar.com
By San Grewal
Dec. 23, 2016

Hazel McCallion, long called the “Queen of Sprawl,” is asking the province to slow down plans to curtail...sprawl.

The long-time mayor reported Thursday on a September meeting of mayors and other municipal politicians from across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area who discussed the province’s plan to cut urban sprawl across the region. McCallion is advisor to Premier Kathleen Wynne on GTHA matters and was reporting back on reaction to the population density targets for the region, which the province announced last spring.

“The province needs to slow down and get the details right on how we’re going to implement new policies and accommodate the inevitable growth,” McCallion said in a Thursday press release. “There is an overwhelming consensus among the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area mayors and chairs that the province is going ‘too far too fast’ with proposed land use policies for the Golden Horseshoe.”

But some mayors who McCallion spoke on behalf of don’t agree with much of her announcement.

Several say they think the tough anti-sprawl targets are exactly what are needed, to deal with crippling traffic congestion, pollution, a lack of affordable housing and strained municipal budgets that are ballooning because of the costs of running infrastructure to far-flung places.

Vaughan Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua told the Star Thursday “as one of Canada’s fastest-growing municipalities” Vaughan is “adhering to a sustainable plan.”

“The City of Vaughan’s position is crystal clear: we understand the benefits of both intensification and providing housing options for residents,” he said.

Ajax Mayor Steve Parish wrote to McCallion in November warning he could not sign-off on the report she was preparing.

“We feel strongly that the GTHA must grow smarter and more efficiently, and that more intensive growth supported by higher levels of transit is the only way forward,” he said in the letter. Ajax is “confident that it will meet increased intensification targets as proposed by the government,” it went on to say.

On Thursday Parish said, “Municipalities need to conform to the proposed intensification and density targets to build thriving, vibrant communities across the GTHA...I look forward to working toward the province’s increased targets in Ajax.”

Some mayors did support McCallion, calling the province’s goals unrealistic and likely to drive house prices even higher. The province’s plan calls for increasing population targets to 80 jobs and residents per hectare from 50 in areas slated for development and to 60 from 40 per hectare in already urbanized areas.

Other mayors sit somewhere in the middle, saying if the province provides the necessary infrastructure, such as transit, to support intensification, curbing sprawl is the way to go.

Burlington Mayor Rick Goldring told the Star, “the overall objectives of the proposed changes prepared by the province are worthy.” But, he said, there needs to be “more consideration” to the “process of implementation.”

McCallion declined to respond when the Star asked her about the mayors who seem at odds with her release, simply saying the news release and the report that was sent to Wynne are based on the September meeting.

On Thursday, Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing Spokesperson Mark Cripps said that input from stakeholders regarding the proposed population density changes has been gathered for months, including McCallion’s work.

“We expect the final changes to the plan to be released in early 2017,” he said.

Oakville Mayor Rob Burton and Oshawa Mayor John Henry both said McCallion should be thanked for telling the province to slow down and consider some of the concerns raised during the mayors’ summit, such as the possibility of driving up detached home prices and the need for provincial funding for transit, schools and hospitals to support intensification.

But Cherise Burda, director of Ryerson University’s city building institute, says McCallion’s statements are not grounded in the reality facing Southern Ontario. Burda agrees there will be short-term costs to municipalities that will need to redo plans and make accommodations for infrastructure to meet higher densities. “But the economic impacts of sprawl are far greater.” Its negative impact on productivity, health, the environment and infrastructure costs, make sprawl a crippling option for the region, she said.

Burda’s research suggests housing to meet the province’s suggested intensification is the type of “missing middle” accommodation that many families in the GTA need - less expensive mid-rises, townhouses and stacked housing.

McCallion’s successor, Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie, who has championed planning policies antithetical to many of those pushed by her predecessor, agrees with Burda.

“We’re at a breaking point in the GTHA as housing prices soar, pricing homebuyers out of the market, and people remain stuck in suffocating traffic that only gets worse every year. We need to be smart about future development and plan our communities not for today, but for the future,” Crombie said.

She said she understands the difficulty the proposed new density targets pose for smaller municipalities, adding the province needs to consider that. Crombie emphasized that growth needs to be planned with the entire region in mind.

“In the next 25 years, the GTHA will have to accommodate 4 million people, so it is essential that we determine today how we’re going to house, move and provide services to these new residents. The way we developed in the past may not work in this new reality.”