‘Erosion of democracy’: Vaughan rejects bill stripping powers of conservation authorities

Councillors want to continue to have a say in planning

Yorkregion.com
Dec. 10, 2020
Dina Al-Shibeeb

Vaughan councillors want their planning clout intact and untamed by a planning bill that received a Royal Assent Tuesday, Dec. 8.

Bill 229 is seen as “overriding” municipal powers when approving planning projects or amendments as well as stripping some powers by conservation authorities, who keep any eye to protect the environment.

“I think this bill is burning us,” said Councillor Sandra Racco during council meeting Tuesday. “This bill is taking away our rights, taking our authority as a municipality in doing anything....it’s time to send a message to the province.”

Racco went on to continue saying that "all municipalities should do this.”

Councillor Alan Shefman also described that the reason Ontario started witnessing the burgeoning of conservation authorities in the 1950s is due to “poor planning.”

In addition, Councillor Tony Carella dubbed his colleagues’ decision to “repeal” the bill going to “the message, we want, to the Ford government.”

To accelerate development amid a population boom, especially in areas such as Vaughan, the Ford government had allowed developers to get MZOs by avoiding opposition appeals that include public input.

However, Vaughan Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua weighed in the situation, saying that the Councillors are better off sending a full report with “meat” to the Province on why they are rejecting the bill.

“I do think that we would get a lot of respect if the motion is more than a line long,” he said.

He added, “I would appreciate a panoramic view of what has been approved and the impact.”

“Let's put more meat to the motion, it shows that we thought it through and took the issue seriously as opposed to reaction to what transpired in Queen's Park.”

In response, Councillors agreed to defer the motion and wait for the next meeting in mid-December to send their more detailed disapproval.

Meanwhile, Regional Councillor Linda Jackson, who is also a member of the board of directors at the TRCA, was chairing the meeting, and  read an email she “just received” from the conservation authorities’ chair, highlighting how the biggest thorny issue is with section six, pertaining to the Minister’s Zoning Orders also known casually as MZOs.

The section won’t allow municipalities or the conservation authorities to appeal a decision to the LPAT as the minister is “going to overturn it.”

“I think the mayor's words are wise,” Jackson said in needing a more lengthy response before moving to another agenda.

BILL HAS 'IMMEDIATE IMPACT' ON VAUGHAN

Environmental Defence executive director Tim Gray dubbed the province's move “erosion of democracy,” and sounded the alarm that this would have an "immediate impact" on Vaughan, since there are "provincially significant wetlands that are within recently issued Minister’s Zoning Orders".

“Now that conservation authorities can be ordered to issue permits for wetlands' destruction, we will see more and more of it,” Gray said.

He imagines there will be more "more buildings, more retail" in the remaining wetland and valley lands, in spite of the fact Vaughan has "no shortage" of land zoned for both residential and commercial buildings.

Some of these MZOs include a property owned by Walmart that has wetlands on it, and a "recently approved" one in the northern part of the city, which has "tributaries of the West Humber on a provincially significant wetland".

"Those now will be allowed to be destroyed because that was in the legislation," he said.

Affordable housing is a major problem for people living in the GTA, especially Vaughan, but Gray said this legislation won't help to solve that issue.

"There is no effort to use these MZOs to create affordable housing, and there is no shortage of land available for building housing within the Vaughan region," he said.

"These are about providing special favours to developers outside of the planning process."