Oakville Variance By-Law
Quantifying Character

NRU
April 11, 2018
Dominik Matusik

With builders continuing to push the boundaries of what constitutes a minor variance in Oakville’s residential neighbourhoods, town staff is suggesting a local variance by-law that would create more detailed criteria for variances, making it the first municipality in Ontario to do so. 

On March 19, Oakville planning and development council adopted a report which outlined options for developing more robust criteria for the consideration of minor variance applications. The report notes that from the 1980s there has been no increase in the volume of minor variance applications filed. However, there has been a change in the types of variances requested, with many more recent applications for significant alterations or replacement of dwellings. 

Under the Planning Act, there are four tests that a minor variance application must pass before being approved. However, amendments to the Planning Act that came into force in 2016 allow municipalities to specify additional criteria, though none have done so to date. 

Oakville planning services director Mark Simeoni told NRU that the goal is to quantify the variances that have been approved, with which staff agreed, and use that to create specific criteria for minor variance applications. 

“We went back, statistically, two years in our database and we identified areas where we’re getting the most applications. We identified applications where staff agrees [with granting variances] and used those as a measure of what’s minor. We’re looking at it in a more quantifiable way,” he says. 

He outlines statistics such as height, lot coverage, setbacks, and floor area ratio as being of particular significance. 

Simeoni adds that, while the Planning Act allows municipalities to create minor variance criteria beyond the classic four tests, no municipality in the province has yet done so. He stresses that the by-law is not designed to stop development, but merely to draw a line between the kinds of changes that can be granted through the committee of adjustment process, versus those that require a zoning bylaw amendment. 

He says that the idea of implementing a local variance by-law in Oakville traces back to a residential character study that Oakville staff undertook last year. 

“We undertook a residential character study of our neighbourhoods to see if the facts from our files were consistent with what was on the ground. And certain truths emerged.”

One of the most salient facts that came out of this study was that Oakville’s residential neighbourhoods can essentially be divided into two categories: those developed prior to the 1980s and those developed later.

Simeoni notes that the neighbourhoods likely to be subject to this by-law are the communities in the south of the municipality. These are older, established neighbourhoods where there has been the most infill pressure.

Oakville staff will hold a public consultation meeting on the by-law on May 14
and anticipate bringing a final report to council for consideration in June.