The Ontario growth debate: Slashing red tape or local democracy?

After 67 years in Hamilton, Sam Marranca wants out.

The Dofasco retiree is sick of battling congestion on local expressways initially built to offer drivers speedy commutes across the city.

Rymal Road East, the once rural south Mountain road that leads in and out of the Summit Park subdivision he calls home, is also bad.

The bottlenecks boil down to a lack of arterial roads to adequately service all the residents, he says.

They're trying to build more and more housing without carefully planning. They're not thinking."

That's why Marranca applauds council for freezing Hamilton's urban boundary to prevent more sprawl into the rural outskirts.

Council voted 13-3 to direct staff to draft a plan that maps out that approach to accommodate a projected 236,000 people by the year 2051.

That was November, but anti-sprawl rallies around Hamilton in recent weeks reflect the local decision is far from sewn up as Ontario's June 2 election draws closer.

The governing Progressive Conservatives haven't been shy about expressing their views on the topic.

Last fall, as council lurched toward the vote, Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark called the city's exploration of a frozen boundary unrealistic" and irresponsible" in a Spectator op-ed.

Holding the line, Clark said, would lead to a shortfall of nearly 60,000 homes" due to a lack of available land.

Then in early April, addressing the legislature about Bill 109, the More Homes for Everyone Act, MPP Donna Skelly said council was pushing an anti-housing and anti-growth ideology" that was choking supply and hiking home prices.

Clark said he'd consider sending the city's revised official plan - which must be submitted to the ministry by July, after the election - to the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT) for review as an impartial adjudicator."

That option is available through Bill 109, which contains a suite of measures meant to increase Ontario's housing supply by slashing through municipal red tape.

As minister, Clark has the power to rip up official plans without the tribunal, but Mayor Fred Eisenberger figures the OLT gives the province an outlet to override the city's decision while appearing to keep their hands clean."

They're characterizing this as municipalities are the reason why the price of housing is the way it is," Eisenberger added. And that's just a false premise to start with."

The Spectator requested interviews with Clark and Skelly but neither made themselves available.

City councillors, meanwhile, frame Bill 109 - which followed a provincial housing task force's recommendations - as developer-friendly legislation that does little to address affordability or ensure homes actually get built.

The More Homes for Everyone Act, should really be reading, the More Money for Campaign Donors Act, because it seems like it's written for and by the development industry," Coun. John-Paul Danko said during a recent meeting.

The province is downloading the cost of development to municipal taxpayers," Danko added. They're creating a regulatory process that is by design impossible for us to meet."

For the city, one of Bill 109's poison pills is a policy that forces municipalities to refund processing fees to applicants if provincial timelines to render decisions on files aren't met.

Planning staff predict this could backfire by causing a rush to judge files, potentially giving short shrift to environmental studies, cutting out public consultation and sparking more lengthy and expensive OLT disputes.

Even before Bill 109, councillors aired concerns about mounting city losses before the tribunal.

This week, a staff report tallied 19 appeals, for nondecisions alone, between July 2018 and this past January. Of those, the city had one win, one partial" win, six losses and 11 settlements.

Between external legal counsel and consultants, the bill was $418,831.54. So far, the tab for 14 ongoing appeals is $32,121.20.

While Danko and others argue the OLT favours developers, Matt Johnston, a planning consultant with Urban Solutions, suggests the city has found itself outgunned.

You've got a well-rounded team working for the proponent and you're not getting the same representation from the municipal side."

In 2019, Premier Doug Ford's government shortened timelines for municipalities to process applications: to 120 days from 210 for official plan amendments, and to 90 days from 150 for zoning changes.

To avoid penalties under Bill 109, the city would have to double or triple its complement of 30 staff that work on applications, chief planner Steve Robichaud says.

The focus is on municipalities, but processing applications can also be slowed by tardy responses from developers and outside agencies that must weigh in.

Moreover, back and forth between parties can flag issues that weren't initially caught at the outset, Robichaud says.

This is such a fundamental shift in the way that we would have to arrange and deliver services that it would require a significant investment."

In an email, Clark's office said the province plans to invest $19 million over three years to strengthen the OLT and help it reduce its backlog."

Ambitious density'

Holding the line wasn't always on the table.

City planning staff had initially recommended pushing into 3,330 acres of rural lands, mostly in Elfrida, to help accommodate an expected 110,320 new units by 2051.

Developers, industry groups and the local chamber of commerce supported the ambitious density" scenario as an aggressive" but balanced" approach to growth.

It called for an average rate of intensification - housing created in the built-up area - of 60 per cent over those 30 years, up from about 40 per cent achieved over the previous decade. A frozen boundary would need 80 per cent intensification.

Based on studies and consulting reports, the strategy was predicated, in part, on the province's market-based approach to land needs, which weighs what types of housing, ranging from single-detached homes to apartments, consumers will demand.

In line with Ford's government, the pro-expansion contingent warned a firm urban area would cause buyers searching for single-family or ground-oriented" homes to bypass Hamilton for other communities where the stock is available.

But other planning experts have advised council that allowing gentle density" - and not towers everywhere - on underutilized lots in neighbourhoods zoned for detached or semi-detached homes can achieve growth targets.

A grassroots campaign called Stop Sprawl HamOnt - which has since inspired movements across Ontario in the lead-up to the provincial election - urged local residents to push council for a frozen boundary to save farmland, curb carbon emissions and avoid infrastructure costs.

That effort led to 90.4 per cent of 18,387 completed city mail-out surveys backing a firm boundary, a landslide majority opponents criticized as distorted and unscientific.

Local decisions

Months later, local residents are frustrated" with the Ford government, Allison Cillis says.

Hamiltonians spoke loud and clear in all wards that they voted no for an urban boundary expansion," the NDP candidate for Flamborough-Glanbrook, Skelly's riding, said during a recent anti-sprawl rally in Waterdown.

In their platform, Andrea Horwath's New Democrats say they'll encourage responsible development within existing urban boundaries, while protecting farmland and natural heritage from wasteful sprawl."

Meanwhile, in an interview, Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca blasted the Tories for a four-year track record of consistently meddling in municipal responsibilities."

That includes the absolutely appalling abuse" of minister's zoning orders to fast-track land-use changes, including in natural areas, for development.

Del Duca agreed Ontario is short housing supply, but argued Bill 109 does not include anything in a reasonable way that will produce the amount of all forms of housing, not just one form of housing, but all forms of housing that we desperately need."

Ontario Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner said in a news release Ford's expensive sprawl will pollute the air and make our health worse," adding the Tories are ramming through two air-polluting highways through his pro-sprawl agenda," a reference to the Highway 413 and Bradford Bypass plans.

At the Waterdown rally, Don McLean, a longtime local environmental activist, said the spectre of more applications funnelled through an already backed-up Ontario Land Tribunal through Bill 109 would be bad for democracy.

It's not a local decision. It's a decision by a bureaucrat essentially," McLean said.

It's an absurd situation to have cities the size of Hamilton unable to make a decision that is not overridden by the provincial government."

There are lots of complaints" with city council, McLean said, but a resident can address local decision-makers and have a say in the planning process.

I can go and talk to them. I can call my councillor. That's virtually impossible at the provincial or federal levels."

Not subdivision guys'

Bill 109 addresses a problem at city halls.

And it's disappointing" that city officials wouldn't get behind measures to ease the housing crisis, says Mike Collins-Williams, CEO of the West End Home Builders' Association.

There's no silver bullet ... It's a confluence of a variety of issues," he said, but housing supply is at the top of the list.

Bill 109 makes good strides finding mechanisms" to ease a crunch on the approvals side, offers John Corbett, a planning consultant who represents a consortium of builders hoping to develop a field on Twenty Road West.

One could argue that it could even do more to ensure that there's adequate housing supply available in the marketplace," adds Corbett, whose clients contend their proposal is infill because it's surrounded by the urban area.

Developer Sergio Manchia - a colleague of Matt Johnston at Urban Solutions, which has been involved in OLT appeals - says they support intensification and have no issue with a firm boundary.

We're not subdivision guys anyhow. That was 20 years ago."

Nonetheless, Manchia says he's watched applications languishing at city hall for two to three years.

We're not trying to throw our friends under the bus, but we're telling our friends on the bus that there's a problem."

At its current pace, the city won't hit targets under the ambitious density" scenario, let alone with a frozen boundary, Johnston observes.

Bill 109 is forcing you to improve your process," including modernizing local policies and plans, he says.

And when it comes to municipal red tape, provincial leaders are getting an earful from the development sector, Manchia adds.

I've talked to Doug Ford. I've talked to (Steve) Clark ... They're hearing it in the big cities."

Woefully inadequate'

Sam Marranca may not have spoken to Ford but he did vote for him.

I thought he was going to be the right guy at the time."

But no politicians, he adds, seem up for the job to rightsize infrastructure and deal with growth.

No urban expansion is that simple."

Marranca grew up on the east Mountain and lived with his family in lower Stoney Creek for 20 years before commutes along the QEW became too taxing.

With their kids grown up and gone, he and his wife looked to downsize from their two-storey home to a smaller, single-floor abode.

They landed in a row house at Summit Park, the subdivision off Rymal Road East, behind which developers hope to build more homes on farmers' fields beyond the boundary.

For the first four or five years, it was actually very good," Marranca recalls.

But with more housing came more traffic. But an adequate road network, including bike lanes to safely cycle to nearby shopping, did not, he says.

There is ample space in Hamilton's built-up areas to create density, including along the future lower-city LRT route, Marranca says.

That's where you build. That's where you build some high apartments or condos."

With parents in their 80s, Marranca says he and his wife will stay in Hamilton for now.

But he dreams of getting away from it all - in easygoing Simcoe, down Lake Erie way.

It's a town of one-floor bungalows. It's beautiful."

Teviah Moro is a reporter at The Spectator. tmoro@thespec.com