Item - 2011.PG9.11

City Council on December 1, 2011 adopted a motion to defer any remaining Items on the agenda to the next regular meeting of City Council on February 6 and 7, 2012 or to a special meeting called by the Mayor for that purpose.

The following Items were subsequently deferred:

Planning and Growth Management Committee Item PG9.11

Public Works and Infrastructure Committee Item PW9.5

Public Works and Infrastructure Committee Item PW9.10

New Business Item CC14.7, and

Member Motion MM14.28

City Council on September 21 and 22, 2011, referred Motion MM11.6 to the Planning and Growth Management Committee.

Municipal councils in Ontario are directly elected by their constituents, and have general responsibility for land use planning in the public interest.
 
Since the establishment of the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) in 1906—initially as the Ontario Railway and Municipal Board—it has evolved from an approval authority into an appeal body in matters of land use planning. As municipal councils developed increasingly sophisticated expertise and resources over decades, they have become qualified and better equipped to make informed and prudent decisions.
 
Toronto City Council is advised and informed by an established and experienced full-time Planning Department staffed with accredited professionals, and is capable of making decisions in the public interest.
 
City Councillors are eager to adopt the responsibilities their constituents expect of them. Councillors have the benefit of ongoing engagement with the communities they represent, and extensive knowledge of local issues, opinions and needs both large and small, on which they base their decisions.
 
City Councillors and the planning staff's ability to plan is undermined if applicants calculate that it is in their interests to treat City processes as a mere formality en route to an OMB hearing. Although many applicants are fair and reasonable in their dealings with the City, the OMB appeal process is not conducive to fostering good-faith negotiations and efforts. 
 
The current OMB hearing process is too cumbersome, too expensive, too time-consuming and too legalistic to facilitate wide-ranging citizen participation and is therefore unfair to the local residents as well as the community at large.
 
The current OMB process is also a drain on City Planning and Legal resources. Great urban planning is about looking forward using planning documents/guidelines/frameworks with the benefit of past professional experience, and this should be what planners should spend their time doing.  Instead, much of their time is spent defending appeals based on personal or private interests to the OMB. This situation also creates a disincentive for the City to appeal its own decisions, even where they are correct and in the public interest. All these matters impinge on the City's ability to meet its obligations to its constituents, including applicants expecting responses to their proposals.
 
The OMB tends to act as an arbitrator between the public and private interests, a function more suited to the Courts, which are a more appropriate venue for legal disputes.
 
The Planning Act treats appeals of municipal planning decisions to the OMB as de novo hearings and allows the OMB to substitute its decisions for those taken by democratically elected councils, generally having little regard for the public interest as expressed through these councils.
 
The Ontario Divisional Court held in the decision Minto Communities Inc.  v. the City of Ottawa that the OMB's powers on appeal of municipal planning decisions have not been altered by the requirement that it consider municipal decisions.
 
The Ontario Divisional Court has stated that a "more clear and specific expression of legislative intent" would be required to change the traditional role and practices of the OMB.
 
Certain planning matters respecting land severance applications and minor variances heard by the Committee of Adjustment, as well as heritage designations established by Council, are also subject to appeal to the OMB.
 
It is manifestly undemocratic for an appointed board such as the OMB to substitute its opinions for the considered judgment of elected councillors and professional city staff on matters affecting municipalities in which the councillors and city staff will continue to live and in which the OMB has no ongoing presence.
 
Furthermore, on June 22, 2011, the Council of the City of Mississauga voted unanimously to abolish the OMB.