How exactly new provincial policies will impact Bradford’s growth plan remains to be seen.
That was the message from Alan Wiebe, the town's manager of community planning, in response to questions from Mayor James Leduc about how a new Provincial Policy Statement (PPS) 2024 will impact the town.
According to a report from Mana Masoudi, senior planner for the town, the new PPS was released by Ontario Housing Minister Paul Calandra on Aug. 20, and set to take effect as of Oct. 20 with a series of changes to Ontario’s Planning Act.
That could have big impacts on the town’s growth management plan, which is intended to accommodate roughly an additional 40,000 people and 19,000 jobs expected by 2051, as part of the town’s ongoing efforts to update its official plan — which helps determine, among other things, the future locations for homes, schools, parks and businesses.
That could be helped along by the “increased policy flexibility” and “great local autonomy,” according to the report.
“It’s a little more lenient so we can build the community the way it needs to be built,” Ward 6 Coun Nickolas Harper said.
One of the new changes includes the elimination of municipal comprehensive reviews, through which upper-tier municipalities like The County of Simcoe co-ordinated growth projects and assigned targets to lower-tier municipalities like Bradford.
The county completed its most-recent review and issued growth targets on Aug. 9, 2022 through their official plan amendment No. 7 (SCOPA 7), but the province has yet to provide approval.
Complicating matters further, Wiebe explained the province still hasn’t announced the date on which the county will no longer have planning responsibilities for its member municipalities.
However, the PPS still requires municipalities to plan for 20-30 years into the future, and as such Wiebe explained staff will continue that work under the growth management plan with the targets provided under SCOPA 7, while keeping an eye on provincial decisions.
That work could prime the town to deal with another change, which frees municipalities from specific population and employment targets from the previous provincial Growth Plan, and instead requires municipalities to establish their own minimum intensification and redevelopment targets, while still mandating density targets in Major Transit Station Areas (MTSAs).
It’s also becoming easier for municipalities to adjust settlement boundaries at any time, so long as lands are outside the Greenbelt, as the criteria for expansions have been relaxed, according to the report.
There’s also a little more freedom in allocating municipal water and sewer services, which can now be only partially provided in certain cases, and the PPS encourages unused services to be reallocated to meet housing demands.
That’s not to say expansion can happen just anywhere though, as the new PPS emphasizes the preservation of prime agricultural lands and makes agricultural impact assessments mandatory for non-agricultural developments that may affect agricultural systems.
These were previously “rather uncommon,” according to Wiebe, since developments in agricultural areas were “infrequent.”
The new PPS also permits adding two residential units to agricultural properties under certain conditions, much to the mayor’s approval.
“There are a lot of families out there that would like to build homes for their children and I think that’s an absolute bonus for them,” he said.
Also under the new PPS, the definition of employment lands has been refined to include only manufacturing and related uses, excluding certain commercial and institutional uses. Municipalities are required to assess their employment areas regularly and demonstrate the need for land conversions, according to the report.
This comes as the most recent in a series of provincial changes over the last several years, to which town staff have been adapting.
