OMB called a ‘mock court’ with adversarial hearings Wong-Tam: OMB erodes the quality of Downtown neighbourhoods

Dennis Hanagan –

A former Toronto city councilor told a Queen’s Park committee that Toronto should remain under the purview of the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB)—a body current councillors say meddles in the city’s planning business, and they want rid of it.

Kyle Rae told MPPs from all three parties the OMB is needed to overturn bad planning decisions made by city council. He said councillors sometimes bow to angry constituents who oppose good building projects that even planning staff support.

“Can you imagine how few affordable housing, supportive housing and co-operative housing units would not (sic) have been built in the 1980s and the 1990s in the city of Toronto if it had not been for the OMB overriding city council’s refusal based on opposition of residents groups,” Rae told the committee.

“We should be thankful that the OMB could intervene to provide affordable housing,” Rae said.

He spoke April 10 to Ontario’s standing committee on Finance and Economic Affairs that heard public feedback regarding Trinity-Spadina NDP MPP Rosario Marchese’s Bill 20 that seeks to eliminate Toronto from the OMB’s purview.

In a written submission the Ontario Bar Association argued exempting Toronto from the OMB would leave city council decisions “without meaningful oversight.” It added decisions would be argued in courts “whose dockets are already overburdened.”

Marchese said at a press conference residents groups need expensive experts to help them at OMB hearings and that makes it difficult for them.

“Communities are out-gunned at the OMB. It’s not an even playing field,” he said. “Developers have the money to get the best lawyers and planning experts. If a resident (group) appears at the OMB and does not speak the language of lawyers or planning experts they’re ignored.”

Ken Greenberg, Wellington Place Neighbourhood Association president, said OMB decisions on Toronto planning issues are made by people who generally aren’t from Toronto. They could come from North Bay, Hamilton or even Sault Ste. Marie, he said.

The hearings are adversarial, he said. “This is exactly the wrong way to be talking about issues related to building a great city,” said Greenberg.

What’s needed is free and open dialogue, he said. He’s worked around the world and said there is nothing anywhere comparable to the OMB. “No one else thinks that a mock court is the way to try issues related to planning and development.”

Other jurisdictions have a version of a planning commission or a board “where you have an open-ended conversation where there are no lawyers present, generally. Out of those conversations, projects get better.”

Citizens, developers and designers all have their say. In the end elected politicians make a decision based on advice from the commissions or boards.

Greenberg said planning staff spend thousands of hours preparing for and attending OMB hearings and that’s time not spent doing actual planning.

Downtown councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam said the quality of neighbourhoods is eroded when the OMB overrides city council decisions and people across the city are getting tired and disillusioned with developers winning 64% of Toronto’s cases that go to the OMB.

She said Toronto is being “crushed” under the weight of development, and the OMB gives no consideration as to how the city’s infrastructure is going to cope with the intensification.

Marchese said that although the province is currently conducting a land-use planning review it has said it will not discuss the OMB and its operations and “elimination.”

He said some Liberal MPPs have told him privately they support his Bill 20 to get the OMB out of Toronto’s affairs. “But what that means in the end (with a legislature vote)) is hard to say.” He said there’s been no indication where Premier Kathleen Wynne stands.

Wong-Tam’s fellow Downtown councilor Adam Vaughan has described Toronto as being under “colonial rule” with the OMB second-guessing its planning decisions. At the committee’s April 10 meeting he questioned the OMB’s rationale in cases that come before it two or three times and are refused but then approved when they come back a fourth time.

He told of a building project that planning and city council refused but the OMB approved it “because they liked the architecture. Architecture is not a planning issue,” he said.

He said developers can eventually get what they want, against the city’s wishes, by repeatedly going back to the board and each time arguing for an “incremental” change to their project, and the OMB says okay.

“You’ve set up a system that allows repeated approvals incrementally (so developers) get what they want that they can’t get with an honest approach to the planning process. That’s unacceptable,” he said.

Vaughan said the city’s agent at the OMB costs $80,000 a day to argue its cases against developers. If developers get approval for density and height that exceed the city’s by-laws then that sets a precedent for other developers to come in with even bigger projects.

This “leaves us in a position where we can’t even negotiate with the developers. It puts us in a position where we’re not managing growth responsibly,” Vaughan said.

He said there are cases where the city settles with a bad development project because it’s “afraid” of spending legal fees to go to the OMB only to lose.

“We don’t want the OMB. We don’t need the OMB. What we want is relief from the OMB,” Vaughan told the committee.