Where Four Provincial Plans Meet Caledon Expresses Concern

NRU
Aug. 10, 2016
By Geordie Gordon

Concerned that the impacts of the proposed amendments to the Growth Plan are not yet fully understood, the Town of Caledon is asking the province to extend the deadline for comments on the coordinated review to the end of the year. Among its concerns are the proposed greenfield density and intensification targets.

Ward 3 and 4 regional councillor Jennifer Innis, told NRU that Caledon is one of the few municipalities that has to deal with all four provincial plans being considered as part of the coordinated review. She said that it’s important to ensure that the implications of the amendments are fully understood.

“This is significant. It’s not going to be reviewed for another 10 years, we need to get it right the first time around,” she said. “I just don’t feel that it was enough time to fully understand the implications.”

Innis says that one of the main concerns she has with the amendments is the potential for leapfrog development occurring in the outer ring of municipalities, which have a different set of development standards. The issue being that those areas don’t have the employment to support residential growth, which means an increase in traffic through Caledon to access jobs elsewhere.

“We have significant growth happening north of us, and the province hasn’t given us any funding for infrastructure to support it,” she said. “[The province] allowing the outer ring to have a different set of intensification and greenfield development targets will greatly impact our municipality.”

Policy & sustainability manager Haiqing Xu told NRU that there are other issues with the amendments, including whether or not the increased intensification and greenfield targets can even be achieved together, based on the amount of growth Peel Region is slated to receive to 2041. Xu said that the town has been studying the impacts of a 60 per cent intensification target within the built boundary and 80 people and jobs per hectare. The results show that if 60 per cent intensification is achieved in the region, there might not be enough population left over to meet the greenfield density target.

“Basically we’re saying these two numbers are very critical, but they don’t work in Peel Region,” Xu said.

Xu said that one of the only ways the increased numbers might work, is if they are delayed until after 2031. This would allow for a more compressed growth period, during which the region might be able to meet the numbers—although Xu acknowledged this would be difficult for the province to implement.

Xu said that the issue with the Growth Plan is that it treats all municipalities the same, when in reality there are different conditions within each one. While the parameters for growth set out in the amendments might work for York Region, for example, the same cannot be said for Peel Region. He said the province could acknowledge that each region is different and respond accordingly.

“It requires the province to be more specific, because every region is different. You cannot have a clear cut [situation] where [the province says] everybody must ... achieve this [number],” he said.

Another issue is the proposed new method for calculating density in greenfield areas. Under the proposed amendments, municipalities would be able to exclude what are being called “prime employment areas” from the density calculations. Xu says the issue is that no one knows yet exactly which employment lands will qualify for designation in Peel Region, and so the comments that can be made at this point are very speculative.

“Even if we include all the employment areas within the greenfield [areas] right now, chances are the two numbers [intensification and greenfield density target] do not work,” Xu said.

The rationale for asking for more time is to allow the town to review more growth scenarios and gain a better understanding of the real implications of the amendments, Xu said. He added that it would be difficult to arrive at that level of certainty by the September 30 deadline for comments that is currently in place.

Caledon mayor Allan Thompson said that the town continues to work to implement the previous greenfield density targets of 50 people and jobs per hectare, but the region is coming up against infrastructure pressures, such as the Peel District School Board putting a cap on brand new schools for the first time, as well as pressure on park space.

“We are all learning how to make even the current plan work over 10 years.... at the end of the day our role is to build complete communities, and our biggest challenge is we’re really having difficulty trying to hit where [densities] are now,” he said.

Thompson said there needs to be a recognition that not all communities are the same, and there needs to be more thought given to what the numbers for intensification and greenfield density targets should be. He said that he is confident that the affected municipalities and the province can work together to find a solution.

August 8, town council voted unanimously to request the province extend the deadline to submit comments to December 31.