CONTENTS
Wednesday 25 November 1992
Ontario Municipal Board
Dale Martin, provincial facilitator, urban economics development secretariat
Draft reports
STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
*Chair / Président: Runciman, Robert W. (Leeds-Grenville PC)
*Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: McLean, Allan K. (Simcoe East/-Est PC)
Bradley, James J. (St Catharines L)
*Carter, Jenny (Peterborough ND)
Cleary, John C. (Cornwall L)
Ferguson, Will, (Kitchener ND)
*Frankford, Robert (Scarborough East/-Est ND)
*Grandmaître, Bernard (Ottawa East/-Est L)
*Marchese, Rosario (Fort York ND)
*Stockwell, Chris (Etobicoke West/-Ouest PC)
*Waters, Daniel (Muskoka-Georgian Bay ND)
Wiseman, Jim (Durham West/-Ouest ND)
Substitutions / Membres remplaçants:
*Cooper, Mike (Kitchener-Wilmot ND) for Mr Ferguson
*Rizzo, Tony (Oakwood ND) for Mr Wiseman
Also taking part / Autres participants et participantes: Perruzza, Anthony (Downsview ND)
*In attendance / présents
Clerk / Greffière: Mellor, Lynn
Staff / Personnel: Pond, David, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1007 in room 228.
ONTARIO MUNICIPAL BOARD
Resuming the review of the Ontario Municipal Board.
The Vice-Chair (Mr Allan K. McLean): I call this meeting of the government agencies committee to order. This morning we're dealing with the first witness, Dale Martin, provincial facilitator, urban economics development secretariat. Mr Martin, would you like to have a seat. If you have any opening remarks, we'd be pleased to hear them. This will be an hour review and we will split what time is left after your introductory remarks between the three parties.
Mr Dale Martin: The only remarks I really have are with respect to the draft recommendations that this committee's come forward with. I'd simply like to say that, in general, I support the thrust of the recommendations. It seems to me you do have a difficult time in that the Sewell commission report will have a considerable impact on the Ontario Municipal Board and its mandate, and depending on what judgements are made about the Sewell recommendations, the administration and jurisdiction of the board will presumably change accordingly.
I'd specifically like to underline my support for recommendation 1, which is the removal of some of the land use issues the board currently deals with, minor variances in particular, as being matters that shouldn't be before the board and that occupy an awful lot of the board's time.
It would be interesting, I think, to look at the history of the Ontario Municipal Board primarily from the point of view that at one time, I suspect, its business was not quite as dominated by land use planning matters as it is today. It was really an omnibus board to deal with appeals from municipal councils on a range of issues. It is time to look at removing an awful lot of those issues from the business of a tribunal that's as significant as this in land use planning matters. In so doing, I think we would address some of the backlog difficulties the board has.
I would like to inform the committee on the matter of alternative dispute resolution. You have, as recommendation 2, a suggestion that the Minister of Municipal Affairs ask me to consider alternative dispute resolution techniques. I should report to the committee that we're right now in the middle of developing a pilot mediation project that is intended for launch in the spring of 1993. The project will be at the local level and will ultimately require, we hope, a mediation step prior to an OMB hearing being undertaken. An appeal of a municipal council should, in our view, remain at the local level for one attempt at mediation prior to a meeting of the board occurring.
In our view, this would result in a lot of hearings being unnecessary, either because individuals who appeal discover in the course of the mediation that an OMB hearing is not a potential remedy to their problem, individuals who appeal have an opportunity prior to an OMB hearing to have their concerns satisfied through a mediation process, or finally, individuals who appeal would have an opportunity to have the issues they want to address at an OMB hearing narrowed, and in so doing reduce the amount of time the OMB has to manage a hearing into an appeal.
We've struck an advisory committee that includes members of the private development industry, members of the environmental community, members from two other ministries and members from the Sewell commission and the Ontario Municipal Board to act as a group to oversee the mediation pilots and to essentially determine whether or not the overall project is worthwhile as a project that could be generalized and applied to the planning approval process or whether changes should be brought to the way the mediation pilots operate to improve their performance.
We are working with three municipalities at this point and expect that these three municipalities will host the pilots. They are the city of Toronto, the city of Nepean and the city of Kitchener. I can only report that all parties to this are very enthusiastic about the idea of proceeding with a pilot and the prospects of the pilot actually reducing significantly the amount of time the OMB has to spend with many of the approvals, and see it as a way of involving the general public more actively in resolving some of the concerns they have with development projects as approved by municipal councils.
So essentially what I'm saying is that we are about to run an experiment in alternative dispute mechanisms or techniques that we think will be productive and that will act as somewhat of a beacon for recommendations coming out of Sewell. That's one of the reasons that I think the commission has decided to involve itself in the advisory role.
The only other introductory comment I'd like to make is with respect to intervenor funding. I agree with the comments in the paper as I see them, which are that if intervenor funding is entertained it should be restricted to major planning matters, probably parent official plans, and that there needs to be a fair amount of scrutiny as to the merit of intervenors being supported.
I agree with the idea that the Intervenor Funding Project Act is probably the way to finance intervenor funding, but prior to any commitment to intervenor funding you probably want to look at the effectiveness of some of these alternative dispute mechanisms. You want to look at whether it's more useful to invest money, whether it be applicants' money or proponents' money or public money, in other ways of solving public concerns with development proposals than major battles at the OMB.
So with those introductory remarks, I'm happy to entertain questions or discussion.
The Chair (Mr Robert Runciman): Thank you, Mr Martin. Who wants to lead off? Mr McLean.
Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): I would like to follow up on your last -- you were talking about intervenor funding. I'm curious to know your feeling with regard to how that should be applied and who would qualify for it.
Mr Martin: I've had, I guess, some experience with it all the way back through being a municipal councillor. There has always been a difficulty with the proponents of large-scale developments appearing at the board with well-funded cases and significant witnesses that they were paying for while the general public felt at a considerable disadvantage in making their case to the board, and the need to redress the balance in some way.
Unlike the current arrangements where the board essentially only hears from individuals or incorporated organizations, it seems to me that qualification for intervenor funding should probably be restricted to community organizations that are bona fide. That test could be applied in the same way that I think it's currently applied with the environmental assessment process to intervenor funding. So you have to establish your bona fide as a representative organization before intervenor funding should be advanced, it seems to me. But I'm not pretending it's an easy issue, because it isn't.
Mr McLean: Right. The other question I have is the OMB hearings, with regard to allowing the OMB to make a decision without going to a full hearing such as on a land severance, that type of thing: a small, forthright issue under the zoning bylaw of a municipality. What is your thought on that?
Mr Martin: I agree with the recommendation here which says those matters should not be before a tribunal hearing of the board, that other ways of resolving appeals --
Mr McLean: If that happened, what time would you take off the process now?
Mr Martin: I think it's fairly significant. If you look at the OMB's current schedule, it's dominated in many respects by matters that are fairly small -- I guess neighbour-to-neighbour disputes.
I should say that there are other changes being made in the approvals process that will presumably improve performance at the board. These include the publication of guidelines so you have clear criteria, clear policy statements of the government, essentially creating a much clearer idea as to what is good public policy and not good public policy, and therefore creating a domain within which individuals will have to make different kinds of judgements about appealing -- right now, things are open-ended enough in most cases that people are quite content to appeal on just about anything -- and making it easier for the board to make decisions about many of these matters. Again, currently the board has to spend a lot of time exploring the issue of public interest and it occupies an awful lot of the board's time.
Mr Robert Frankford (Scarborough East): The OMB and land uses have considerable interest in my area of Scarborough East. It sometimes seems that's the major item of general discussion. Certainly, the question of citizens getting a voice is, I think, a major thing.
I was interested to hear what you say about intervenor funding, and I wonder about some other ways of doing this. I wonder whether, instead of funding, it might be good if the OMB could have some planners available to community groups. In my observations, the community groups are often really poorly prepared. They don't know the whole procedure. They don't really understand that the OMB is a quasi-judicial tribunal. They don't understand that it really goes by rules of evidence. So I think in many cases they're at a real disadvantage just in understanding the process, but then also in understanding how to make their best case.
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I think you often see the arguments going around density and I wonder whether some of this is just the fact that density is something which is quantifiable and so you can always argue that the density is too high or too low. But this, I think, very much restricts the debate. Good urban planning is much more than density. You can certainly see a case in which good urban planning is really quite dense and where the outcome is very good, but I don't see that that sort of debate, which I think requires some input and some time taken by people who have backgrounds and training in planning, is needed.
Would you like to comment on some of those things?
Mr Martin: On the first issue, and sort of repeating what I said about Sewell, the context within which the board operates is really going to be a critical piece. If you have lots of communities that don't have parent official plans or contemporary parent official plans, then you have all sorts of official plan amendments coming forward and you have fairly unhappy neighbourhoods because they're unsure about the future of their own living space, if you like. So it's a very fractious, difficult circumstance within which people try to defend or understand their own future.
If we have a much more coherent regime of parent official plans, provincial policy and relationships between those things and capital funding, then you have an environment within which many of the anxieties that individuals currently have about changes in the planning regime will be taken out of the process and they won't see that as the only way to achieve a remedy to their concern.
The other thing I think that's important is the mediation step. I think you will find that in the mediation step there will be an opportunity to focus an organization's or individual's concern, to let them know what they can and can't get satisfaction from the board around and the way to marshal their case.
I'm not sure that we want to give that responsibility to the board itself. I'm not sure that you want the tribunal to be responsible for informing, bringing up to speed, counselling and all the rest of it, either of the parties to the tribunal. But I think that local government and provincial government, which have interest in good planning, might be the level at which assistance is advanced in a generic way to people making interventions. This is why we have a preference for a first mediation step to occur at the local level and not let the thing drift to the board before a mediation step occurs. We would prefer that the local government has involvement in that first reconsideration of its decision through mediation.
Mr Bernard Grandmaître (Ottawa East): Mr Martin, I'd like to talk about your responsibilities as a facilitator. Where do you enter the picture?
Mr Martin: Generally, after a local government has made a decision and it is with the province at that point. So local or regional governments make land use planning decisions and the province, if it's an official plan amendment or some areas of responsibility, plans of subdivision, gets involved, and then I click in at that point.
Mr Grandmaître: Once the municipal government has made up its mind on a project and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs has, let's say, somewhat approved, or what?
Mr Martin: Or not approved.
Mr Grandmaître: Well, if they don't approve it, where do you fit in?
Mr Martin: I fit in, if we're talking about individual projects --
Mr Grandmaître: Yes.
Mr Martin: My office has four or five parts to its mandate. One of the main pieces is definitely individual projects. It's when government approval agents -- the three or four main ones being Municipal Affairs, Ministry of the Environment, Ministry of Natural Resources and OMAF, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food -- once they have seizure of a project and are trying to make a decision on whether or not it should go ahead, by and large, that's when I get involved, trying to resolve interministerial issues, concerns around public policy, certainly involving the development industry itself directly in resolving those concerns.
It may be an environmental issue that a developer's having difficulty getting a decision out of the Ministry of the Environment on. My office gets involved or I get involved directly in trying to resolve the ministry's concerns in the context of the developer's objectives.
Mr Grandmaître: Recently I met with some of the executive members of AMO and they're quite concerned with what's happening right now in this province as far as planning is concerned. They seem to think they're being left out, not consulted. They're expecting some major changes in the Planning Act at the OMB level and they are very uncertain at the present time where they would fit in. They think they're being left out of some of the major decision-making you people and this government are going through.
You've experienced this as a former municipal councillor and you had your own opportunity of criticizing former governments and ministries of Municipal Affairs in the past --
Mr Martin: Never, never. As I remember, I was always supportive.
Mr Grandmaître: It depends on what side of the fence you were. But tell me, in the last two years, how has this improved? What has this government done that's so different?
Mr Martin: I can speak specifically about my office but I'll speak about both my office and, I guess, Sewell, which I don't have direct involvement in whatsoever.
Mr Grandmaître: That's my next question.
Mr Martin: Okay. The main changes that are being entertained are growing. They're going to grow out of the Sewell commission's work. I'm surprised AMO doesn't think it's being heard or involved, in that I've been at AMO-sponsored conferences and local municipal conferences in which there seems to be a high degree of happiness with the real, tangible, hands-on involvement it's having with both Sewell and with the work of my office.
Over the last two years, Sewell has been announced. But in addition to that, in April of this year, as you know, urban economic recovery initiatives were announced and my appointment was a part of that. Since then we have undertaken, I guess, three pieces to my mandate.
First, individual projects, expediting them through the planning process and it's well along. We have about 70 projects on average on the plate at any one time. The first set we were given was one from the Premier himself, the Palladium project in Ottawa, which we successfully expedited, and a list of Urban Development Institute red tape projects, as they're called, which we also expedited. You can consult with the Urban Development Institute, but I think it's quite happy with our ability to move its projects through the process.
Second, improving the way the system performs, development approval generally: We are working with core teams of ministry officials, which I think have shown to be very effective ways of moving approvals through the system and changing the culture of decision-making, really, in the development approval business.
We've had eight of 11 meetings with the industry called Building on Success seminars that again had been extremely successful opportunities for the industry and approval agents to meet and change the nature of their relationship and begin to identify ways of improving the way the system operates. We're calling them best practices and we've already begun to implement some of those best practices, including a new approach to complete applications and a new approach -- the mediation pilot grew out of those series of meetings that have been going on.
The guideline publications are continuing and we expect in March 1993 to have consolidated guidelines representing the criteria that government expects to have met in approving developments. Again, the industry, as far as I'm aware, is very happy with that as is municipal government.
Backlog strategy: We are again working in a corporate way at eliminating over a six-month period three years' worth of backlog in the approval business.
The third piece of mandate is generic issues that are barriers to development, whether it's water and waste water capacity which, as you know, in eastern Ontario is a big issue, or school capital funding. We are again working with municipalities to find answers to those problems and I expect in many cases before Christmas to find some really key solutions. Kingston township, which has had a serious problem with capacity, is now very happy, I think, to see some forward motion on its concerns.
So we are doing really three things: individual projects, improving the way the system performs and attacking or tackling generic difficulties. In all cases, we are doing it in partnership between the industry and local government.
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In my experience with AMO, both the AMO committee I've appeared at two or three times and the AMO convention indicated a fair amount of happiness with the initiatives that have been taken. I should add that we're very interested in any suggestions for improvements to the way we're working. We've indicated that quite openly and feel the government is very flexible and open to bringing whatever improvements can be brought to achieve the overall objective, which is urban economic recovery.
Mr Grandmaître: The last time I met with -- before I go on to John Sewell. I won't take too long.
The Chair: What I'm going to suggest here is --
Mr Grandmaître: A time limit.
The Chair: -- that we try to have a maximum of 10 minutes and try to go in rotation so everyone has a chance.
Mr Grandmaître: Where am I at?
The Chair: You have another two or three minutes.
Mr Grandmaître: Okay. Let me give you an example, for instance, the basement apartments legislation, whenever it comes through. I met with AMO on that particular problem. They said, "Look, we weren't consulted." They think, and rightly so, that this is interfering in a municipal decision-making process or the planning process. Don't you agree this government is interfering in municipal planning?
Mr Martin: As I said, I'm not here to make political statements since I'm not a politician.
Mr Grandmaître: You're not a politician? When did you quit?
Mr Martin: I'm the provincial facilitator for urban economic development. I took my hat off.
Mr Grandmaître: But you kept the same suit.
Mr Martin: Actually, this is a new suit. Don't you like it? I normally wear doublebreasted blue.
On the matter of housing policy, I think I've indicated in the past that I support the idea of housing intensification, and the idea of using section 3 as a clear policy statement is useful. I think there are probably implementation issues around that section 3 that need to be worked through and, as I understand it, there's a willingness to do that on the Ministry of Housing's part. I'm not in the Ministry of Housing and therefore am at somewhat of a loss to comment in any detail on your question.
Again, I can only say that certainly my office sees cooperation between all of the parties involved in development as being critical. I think we've practised that and I think we've been quite successful at achieving levels of partnership that are useful to the overall task.
The Chair: We can come back to you.
Mr Grandmaître: Good.
Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): Sometimes I have a tough time recognizing some of the members I used to know as members of council. Intervening funding is a curious one, considering you came from a council where if they told you had a nice suit, you'd give them intervening funding.
The one issue I wanted to address right off the top was the Bob Rae "Let's write a letter to the OMB" deal "and move my case up" and so on and so forth. I'm not asking you to make a political statement, but it seems to me that you were put in place to facilitate these kinds of developments: big development, big city, problems going ahead, big numbers, jobs. Isn't that your job?
Mr Martin: Yes, and I did work on it.
Mr Stockwell: I know, but isn't it your job to write those kind of letters to facilitate the movement to get it up there, like the Palladium in Ottawa where it got bumped up and dealt with right off the top?
Mr Martin: Yes. In terms of scheduling OMB hearings, I am directly involved in that in the sense that we have indicated to the board -- and we are not directing the board in any way. We're simply saying to the board, "Here is a project that we think is important to schedule early, if you can schedule it, because it's got economic impact," and all the rest of it. That's precisely what I did in the case of the York city centre. Again, private members who send letters to the board encouraging it to hear hearings ahead of time I don't have any involvement in.
Mr Stockwell: No, but I just want to be clear that that's what I saw as part of your job description.
Mr Martin: Absolutely. Part of my mandate is signalling to the board --
Mr Stockwell: -- which are important and which --
Mr Martin: -- what projects get priorities, a list of priorities that are public, and that the industry understands and saying simply that this project is a project that hits that list.
Mr Stockwell: I thought that. Mr Cooke in the House said I didn't know what your job description was and I was convinced that was part of it, so I'll have to explain to Mr Cooke that he doesn't know what your job description is.
The next thing I have a concern with is with respect to awarding costs. There are tons of frivolous cases brought before the OMB. I know you're one who must have a feeling on the cost issue, of awarding costs at the OMB, since you're one of the few people who actually had costs awarded against you. I think it was on the railway lands in the city of Toronto, was it?
Mr Martin: It was immediately adjacent, the World Trade Centre.
Mr Stockwell: World Trade Centre; the OMB called it a frivolous action and awarded costs against you to the developer. It seems to me that it's a good option for them to have, because it does make somebody think twice if he's going to go to the OMB with what I would consider or others would consider a vexatious, frivolous action. What do you think about awarding costs?
Mr Martin: I think the board has the power to do it now and doesn't. They did it in my case because I was a municipal councillor, and there's a lot of debate about whether or not that was a good basis on which to do it. But they did it, and that's over with. The fact of the matter is, if you use that as the instrument for really managing the board files, I think you probably knock out an awful lot of people who have a legitimate concern that needs to be heard by the board.
I think the better way of doing it really is to have a mediation step that addresses genuine concerns that people have but don't have an opportunity to address between a council decision and a board hearing. I think we'll take a lot of it out through that step.
If we're talking really frivolous and it's obviously frivolous, the the minister, if it's an official plan, has the opportunity to knock it out, and that's done in some cases. But again it's very difficult --
Mr Stockwell: Few and far between.
Mr Martin: -- in terms of rights. But the most important thing to me is to eliminate delay. If delay is taken out of the formula, if it's not a substitute for public policy, which is what it's become because of the long delay in the process, then there is very little incentive to make frivolous objections, because they don't have any consequence in that case. If you can get to a hearing reasonably quickly and the board can make a decision on an objection being frivolous on the basis of evidence, then I think you have a major discouragement. The only reason that frivolous objections have impact now is because of the problem with delay. To me, the main response to that, rather than removing people's rights or threatening them, is to eliminate the delay factor.
Mr Stockwell: Yes. I'm not --
Mr Martin: All I'm saying is that I think it's a tough judgement.
Mr Stockwell: Yes, it is a tough judgement, and I'm not in disagreement. There are some councillors who've built careers on being able to delay projects that came forward, and I can think of one I sit across the floor from in the House. Ruth Grier has literally built a career out of delaying the lakeshore development in Etobicoke through a whole pile of processes.
The problem I have is that it seems to me, rather than hiring somebody like you who is going to get the teams together, whether it's the Ministry of Natural Resources or the Environment or so on, why the hell can't we just put in place a process where decisions can be made in a reasonable and equitable time frame rather than paying you whatever we're paying you and staffing you and putting an entire office in place?
It seems to me that if you just went to the ministries and said, "Look, it just isn't reasonable to take this length of time to assess this project," it makes a lot more sense than another layer of bureaucracy. Whether you like it or not, that's in effect what you become.
Mr Martin: Right. Just to deal with the question, my appointment is a short-term appointment. It's a two-year appointment.
Mr Stockwell: So were taxes, Dale.
Mr Martin: Yes. As a member of the Legislature, you will have an opportunity to decide whether to extend it or not. I don't know that I will be the person; it's the office rather than the individual that you're really talking about anyway.
Mr Stockwell: Yes, that's right.
Mr Martin: Interestingly enough, and you might want to test this with people in the development industry, there's a strong feeling that when the Conservatives were in power they had an equivalent office, the facilitator -- less official, but Milt Farrow performed the function specifically around housing development -- and that removing that office for a short period failed to do the job. Somebody who could coordinate or manage the projects that inevitably are going to be difficult and allow them to smoothly pass through the process is something you need to have. That's again something you can decide.
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The fact of the matter is that today there is a difficulty, and we are trying to improve the way that development decisions are made in general. That's part of what my office is doing. You're going to be able to make the judgement not that far from now, probably in the next six to 12 months, as to whether a smoothly running development approval process on its own is adequate; no need for the facilitator once you have that. You're going to be able to make that judgement partially as a result of the work in my office.
I think it's a judgement you should make. I completely agree with you. I think the jury is out on whether or not you need a provincial facilitator function, but I think it's pretty clear that at the time it was appointed, it was a useful thing to have appointed. There are people in the world who believe that when the Conservatives were in power, they had this and it was a good thing to have.
Mr Stockwell: Lastly, I've been following some of the public thoughts of Mr Sewell with respect to his review. It's tough to follow where he is, when he's coming back and what he's talking about, as usual. He's a bright guy, I don't deny it, but at one point he said -- correct me if I'm wrong -- "Maybe we don't even need the OMB." He was talking about abolishing the Ontario Municipal Board. Any thoughts on that?
Mr Martin: We haven't seen his final recommendations. Again, I think it's a difficult question. The problem with positioning the board, and everyone acknowledges this is the problem, is that you have a series of democratically elected governments making decisions, potentially being second-guessed by a tribunal of provincial appointees. That is going to be an ongoing difficulty.
When I was on municipal council, like every other municipal councillor I was unhappy about that but at the same time acknowledged that there needs to be some kind of an appeal step. So the question is, "What's the alternative to the board," rather than, "Can the board be criticized for being a second-guesser of democratically elected governments?" It obviously is a second-guesser of democratically elected governments in performing an important appeal function. I don't have a ready answer to that.
You're right: Sewell obviously started off in the classic municipal politician's position, saying, "We don't need the board," but in doing a more general review of Planning Act amendments that might be brought, he came to the opposite conclusion that you probably don't need the provincial approval agents playing the role they've played. I think we're going to have to wait and see what his final recommendations are. If you look at his first round of recommendations, they involved waste-water septics and taking them out of the development formula. After consultation, he changed his mind on that, which I think is a good sign rather than a bad sign and responds in some respects to Mr Grandmaître's concerns about municipal politicians.
I don't think the final set of recommendations from Sewell is available yet. I think it will be very interesting to look at them when they're available. The difficulty of dealing with the second-guessing role of the board is demonstrated by the fact that he has gone himself from being opposed to being supportive of the board playing a role in plan approval.
The Chair: We can come back to you in the next round, Mr Stockwell. Mr Marchese.
Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): Basically, what I'm hearing from Bernard and Chris, it seems the questions they're focusing on are rather negative. The focus of Bernard is to say, "There appears to be interference," and from Chris a number of other questions that I think are very negative, "Let's look at a process instead of having Dale do this." I thought what Dale Martin was doing was looking --
Mr Stockwell: He's a negative guy, though.
Mr Marchese: I know. It really is tough.
What I've heard you talk about today is something that I think is great, that is going to facilitate the backlog, and you spoke to that. I don't know about the application process, if you -- I may have missed you in the first few parts.
Mr Martin: Just briefly.
Mr Marchese: We'll deal with the application process, which I think obviously has been confusing in the past. It deals with the whole issue of delay, because there are costs attached to delaying projects. I see your role as facilitating a process but also making sure that, as processes get cleared up in the different ministries or local governments, you move projects along as a facilitator, as a separate process altogether. I see you as performing an important function rather than a bureaucracy that is dead and doesn't do anything.
If you could, I'd like you to speak to the whole issue of your role in terms of how you're facilitating processes that are confusing at the moment and how you believe your role is important in terms of getting projects moving along where otherwise, without you, they might not have happened.
Mr Martin: It seems to me that one of the difficulties we always face is developing a provincial government position on a project. The reason you have that problem is because you have a series of ministries that have their own policy mandates and imperatives making judgements individually about projects.
This is not unique to the development approval game. It's quite a common problem throughout government: bringing individual ministry perspectives together into a single, coherent provincial government perspective on a project where the various interests and mandates come together in a rational way. That, to me, is what my business is all about: working with ministries, all of which have a slice of a project and a legitimate perspective but don't have the opportunity to reconcile their differences on a particular project in one place.
What we've done about that is really two things. We've created my office to deal with the very difficult interministerial problems and we've created core teams, actual teams of ministry decision-makers, to manage the sort of day-to-day routine. To me, those are two very important changes in the culture of government that will be long-term and durable.
The other part of this is the whole idea that what we have out there are clients, customers, people who need good service. In the development approval game, it's pretty clear that the customers, the development industry and the general public, have not been happy with the orientation or position of the provincial approval agent in the formula.
We have now, as a matter of general approach, worked very hard and I think successfully to change that culture to one of customer service-based. So the durability of what I am doing is not probably so much in the office of the facilitator but the difficult business of changing the way government does things.
I don't apologize for the fact that this office was necessary. I think, as I've said before, there's probably an argument, and it's certainly supported by the development industry as being necessary, that whenever you're changing the way government does things you probably need somebody to facilitate it.
Mr Marchese: Dale, I know that Bernard and Allan and Chris aren't going to thank you for the work you're doing, but I'm going to congratulate you now on the work that you've done and will continue to do.
The Chair: I'm going to move to Ms Carter.
Ms Jenny Carter (Peterborough): One question I'd like to ask you is, what kind of person would you like to see on the OMB? As you know, there's increased environmental awareness these days. Some of us are very concerned indeed about the way we're going in general, and certainly government departments have been sending out papers which are emphasizing that side. There are Streamlining Guidelines: The Development Review Process, and Growth and Settlement: Policy Guidelines from Dave Cooke's office, and also, from Elmer Buchanan's office, An Agricultural Land Protection Program for Ontario: A Discussion Paper.
We were talking in this committee as to how we can make sure there are people on the OMB who would have that kind of knowledge and background. Now, presumably, if somebody's being trained as a planner in this day and age, that would come into it, but I just wonder if you have feelings on that.
Mr Martin: Again, I like the committee's sense that we need to incorporate ecosystem approaches into the agenda of the board, if you like, into the mandate of the board, and that requires individuals who have some understanding or appreciation of the marriage of environmental land use planning and an ecosystem approach.
I think if you look at some of the things that are beginning to emerge, they're going to impact even more broadly than land use planning. The idea of subwatershed areas being planned rather than municipal boundaries will certainly impact on the business of the board and the type of person you want. So I agree with the thrust that you imply.
It seems to me the other part of this, and again it's in the material, is the need to have members who reflect the community fairly accurately. So you need a diverse board, because it's very important that the community, in appearing at the board, feels comfortable and not alienated from the board and has some level of confidence that its concerns will be heard by the board and its members.
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Ms Carter: I believe it is a demographic fact that the people who are least concerned about the environment tend to be older white successful males, just the sorts of people who do show up on these things, and yet there's enormous concern in the population at large which is not maybe mirrored in that group quite so well.
Obviously, we've touched on the question of delays and backlogs, which seems to be absolutely fundamental to this whole thing. But I wonder if you could give us a more complete account of why you think these backlogs are there, how they originated and what the bottlenecks are?
Mr Martin: If you're talking about the board, I can just give you kind of a superficial impression. I think we went through some dramatic changes in our approach to land use planning over the last five or six years. If you just look at government policy, if you like, and regulations, we've gone from two or three regulations 10 or 15 years ago to 30-odd, I think, now. So the business is much more complex than it has been in the past, and we've had a difficult time in governments sort of catching up with some of the imperatives and deciding clear policy on some of the imperatives.
It has been difficult for decision-makers in the approval game to identify in clear ways what the public policy position is, and all of that stuff, all of that uncertainty, has been essentially directed to the board to sort out. So the board backlog is in some respects a result of the economic boom combined with increased complexity, new imperatives and a slowness in the governments, both municipal and provincial, to respond with clear policy that could sort things out.
I think, in addition to that, there are basic technological questions that are quite astounding. The information management systems in both the ministries and at the board are antiquarian, to say the least. These things are 19th century. I mean, people at the board, until fairly recently, were still hand-writing decisions. It was a resource issue in some ways. There was just not an awareness of the importance of development approvals or acknowledgement of the importance of development approvals.
We're now in the midst, through some fairly rapid work with committees, of transforming the way we manage our information systems to improve both customer service and the speed with which decisions are made. So part of the problem at the board were these sort of basic technological information systems and file management problems, again which I think are being addressed in the new proposals coming from the board.
Ms Carter: Yes. So we need clear policies.
Mr Martin: Absolutely essential.
Ms Carter: Otherwise people don't know what they're doing in the first place.
Mr Martin: And you sort of send all this stuff off to be adjudicated by tribunals rather than being decided at the political levels they should be decided at.
Ms Carter: Yes. That seems pretty basic stuff. I just know of one instance, which concerns my own area, Peterborough, where a delay was merciful. I'm just wondering what would have happened if the system had speeded up before this particular incident occurred.
It was that a local utilities commission agreed to sell a parcel of land on the riverfront to a developer, and the public just didn't realize what was happening. Suddenly they woke up to what was happening and a little ad hoc body formed to fight this. In the end the public had to pay more than it should have done, but they did get the land back. Now, I was wondering what could happen in that kind of instance if we did have a set system.
Mr Martin: I think what's happening more often than not is delay as a substitute for public policy. So presumably you want public policy that says the waterfront has certain values that make it more than a little piece of land that's stuck behind something and requires a different kind of process. I think that Crombie's work, for example, will begin to outline clear public policy on valuable areas like waterfronts.
Once we get a public policy set that is more in keeping with contemporary values, I think you won't need to have delay operating as the way to protect public interest, which is what it often has turned out to be in the last while, and the cost of that has been quite excessive in terms of the drag on good development. We haven't done a good job of distinguishing between things we want to have happen and things we don't want to have happen because we haven't had that public policy filter to make that basic decision.
Mr McLean: Could I have a supplementary on that, Mr Chair?
The Chair: Sure, go ahead, if Ms Carter has no problem with that.
Ms Carter: I just want to ask one more thing and that is, what is the cost of delays to the committee in general?
Mr Martin: What was the latest estimate? We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars. If you look at the carrying cost alone, I think the estimate that the industry puts out is that there's about a 25% premium on residential homes as a result of the time that it takes to get an approval. So it's a real whack in a bunch of different ways.
Ms Carter: Thank you.
The Chair: Before we move to Mr McLean, I wanted to offer my own view about my riding recently, Mr Martin.
I know you're here primarily to discuss the OMB, but I find that in terms of getting development up and under way, the biggest obstacle -- in recent years in any event -- has been the Ministry of the Environment. I want to give you an example in my own riding of a development that's been proposed for the waterfront in Brockville, a condominium development, a significant development with a lot of construction jobs and a lot of money going into the community.
There are problems with the sewage treatment plan in Brockville; they're violating their certificate in terms of phosphorus. But the developer who wants to proceed with this has already received all of the approvals for two other apartment complexes, so he approached the city about swapping approvals.
The condominium would be significantly less in terms of its load on the sewage treatment plant and, in fact, would not be completed until the upgrade of the sewage treatment plant is completed. But the Ministry of the Environment has simply said: "No way, José. We simply don't want anything to proceed in Brockville."
I've spoken to them myself and there doesn't seem to be any real recognition of the tough economy. There's no compromise. Here's something, in my view, that makes a hell of a lot of sense. They're willing to swap approvals. They're willing to start getting jobs under way, and the ministry is just being rigid and inflexible.
I just wanted to put on the record that, from my perspective anyway, perhaps they're much more of a problem in terms of development approvals and helping the economy at this present moment than the OMB.
Mr Martin: I would simply ask you to refer the developer to my office. That's exactly the kind of situation where we attempt to work with ministries and developers in finding a happy solution, and I think we've been successful more often than not.
The Chair: I personally, as an opposition perspective, appreciate what you're doing and what you're trying to do.
Mr McLean: In April David Cooke released Streamlining Guidelines: The Development Review Process and Growth and Settlement: Policy Guidelines, and these papers are the proposed guidelines which the provincial and municipal planners should follow until the Sewell report is done. Is that being followed and are those guidelines that are there being effectively used?
Mr Martin: I think so, yes. There's two parts to it. Streamlining Guidelines had some recommendations not only for provincial practice but for local and development industry practice. In the case of local practice, we're using the core teams as a way of opening a conversation with local governments to see them begin to use the best practices in those streamlining guidelines, and with respect to the industry, our Building on Success seminars are being used as a way of doing the same thing.
So the guidelines are out. It's really implementation that is the difficult part of this and it's really getting it out to the thousands and thousands of people who are involved in either proposing developments or approving developments. But those manuals, if you like, are absolutely at the core of a lot of the work we're doing.
Mr McLean: There's one issue that really involves rural Ontario. It has to do with the land use policy, with regard to the Ministry of the Environment, on education. There is a policy out that if you want to put an addition on to a rural school, you have to have 150 acres to do it. There's no rural school in Ontario that qualifies for an addition because the Ministry of the Environment's policy is going to stop it, and the minister has indicated that if the school is within five kilometres of a built-up area, the school should be built in the built-up area.
But I'm from rural Ontario. As a matter of fact, there's a school on my farm and if they want to purchase more land, there's no problem to do it. There's not 150 acres. I'm telling you that the indication is -- if they had to put an addition, why couldn't they expand their sewage system? The minister's simply saying they won't allow expansions of sewage systems.
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Mr Martin: Well, I would encourage you to bring that again to the office. There are lots of pieces in those guidelines, if you look at them, that if you take them at face value are not possible to implement.
One of them is the communal septic systems, which say municipal ownership. We've discovered in the course of working with that, that municipal ownership is not what we really mean. We mean municipal responsibility and we're now negotiating with a series of different municipalities on ways of implementing the intent of the guideline without making it impossible for them to develop. The same thing would go, I would say, with this problem you've identified, and it's something we're interested in working with on a generic basis.
Mr McLean: Good. Super.
Mr Grandmaître: Just a short question on John Sewell again, Mr Martin. Mr Sewell's responsibilities and your responsibilities are, let's say, closely related. Maybe I should ask how many times you have met with the John Sewell group to exchange ideas, because you're in the market.
Mr Martin: Right.
Mr Grandmaître: You're faced with those problems.
Mr Martin: Not to imply that we don't consult with each other. We've done that a number of times, probably 10 or 12 times, and meet regularly at events outside of Toronto at which we discuss and exchange ideas. My only point was that I don't have any direct impact. I consult, and we give each other advice, but we don't have any direct relationship. Our relationship is really sequential in a way.
I'm working on a period of time between now and when Sewell's recommendations presumably are available for the Legislature to consider. I generally think that what I'm doing is preparing the system to make judgements about Sewell. If we can get this system working as well as possible, it's a much better vantage from which to decide on what recommendations from the Sewell commission are important to implement and which ones aren't. If we're doing that from the vantage of an inefficient, non-functioning system, I think we're liable to make choices that are really aimed at administrative change rather than fundamental policy change, and it may not do the trick.
So I see my relationship to Sewell as sort of a sequential one, where I'm working now, today, and his policy decisions will have to be made subsequent to today's work that we're doing. But we definitely consult with each other.
Mr Grandmaître: Yes. Both of your responsibilities are related to the development approval.
Mr Martin: Absolutely.
Mr Grandmaître: Absolutely.
Mr Martin: Making development work.
Mr Grandmaître: So you see, I'm on the right track. Now that we've established this, we all know that a good number of ministries are involved, especially in official plans approval, zoning and so on and so forth. Four or five ministries are involved. This is where the red tape exists. What should the government do to streamline this red tape?
Mr Martin: As I've said, the changes we brought recently -- we're going to wipe out a three-year workload in six months. We're developing --
Mr Grandmaître: I realize this. But you have to change the policies.
Mr Martin: I think we adopt policies that are clear. We have to implement guidelines that clearly establish the criteria. One of the complaints the development industry often brings is that dealing with the province is like dealing with a moving target. One minute it's this thing; the next minute it's that thing.
The intention behind the guidelines is to actually nail down in public the criteria that we as approval agents use to decide on projects. So the guidelines are meant to stop the moving target problem, and I think the industry accepts that as a good thing. There are real, tangible changes being brought that started in April, aimed at streamlining the system generally as well as expediting individual projects.
Mr Grandmaître: I'll be very short, Chris. Do you think that once the John Sewell group has completed its work it will eliminate all of the government's red tape?
Mr Martin: As a result of the work that's going on now, by not only my office but the other approval agents, we will have this system working very effectively.
The Sewell recommendations are aimed not only at improving the way the decisions are made but dealing with a whole range of other policy issues, including environmental ones, in a more manageable way. We're working with what is there in place now.
I think we're going to improve the system dramatically, and I think the policy issues Sewell raises are things that don't fall within my domain so much as the domain of the Legislature. I mean, I'll have personal opinions on them, but they're not that useful to you or to the ultimate decision.
The Chair: Mr Stockwell, I'm going to give you one question. We are over the time we had scheduled.
Mr Stockwell: I'll make it one question and kind of two comments, then.
Before Mr Martin breaks his arm patting himself on the back too much, let's be clear about the three years and six months. You know, there's nothing coming on; it's got to be the slowest period in the province's history for development approval, OMB etc, in decades and decades. Having said that, yes, there is a backlog clearing up, and, gee, I can agree with it.
Secondly, I don't think they could have picked two better people to maybe figure out the red tape process than Mr Martin and Mr Sewell, because they probably had the biggest hand in writing it, so they know exactly where the loopholes are that you can clean out, and that's a good thing as well. I'm not going to debate that either.
Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): Always making these shots; always partisan shots.
Mr Stockwell: Yes, I guess they're always partisan shots.
But the point I'd like to ask about is the process when it's finished and Sewell writes his report and the report gets sent to the Legislature and then in the end we adopt it, as the Legislature would adopt, and these are the new rules and regulations. How do you ensure that it just doesn't slowly begin to erode back to the way it was?
It's maybe an unfair question, maybe a tough question, but it seems to me that the OMB was put in place to deal with debentures and financing. The planning process was never involved when we set up the OMB, and through a series of years it has expanded to this situation where it took you a year or two years to get something before the board. How do we put in place a process that ensures we're not going to get back to the same situation where the OMB starts hearing about lean-tos on Third Street in Mimico?
Mr Martin: As I said, I agree with you that in recommendation 1 you should really scope the business of the board to significant planning issues that need to be managed by a tribunal. I concur completely and I think that will probably be a part of the recommendations that Sewell makes and are agreed to by everybody.
I think alternative dispute mechanisms are another way of doing that. We can't rely on the tribunal and the provincial approval agent as the way of managing land use planning issues, again something we're working on.
I think the culture of decision-making and a change in it is fundamental. The people who make the decisions on a day-to-day basis have to view development differently than they have viewed development over the last five or six years. They have to be able to say, "Here's a policy set that says this development is sound development that the community has an interest in, and we need to make sure that gets into the ground as quickly as possible." That is, I think, what's going in terms of the change in the culture of decision-making in the provincial decision-makers now.
This is not a partisan issue. This is an issue the industry supports and sees an interest in having happen. I'm not really patting myself on the back; I think the system is responding to an office, the facilitator's office, and it sees it as a way of getting over some of the problems it wanted to get over. So there is a shift in the culture of decision-making. If that happens, we have a durable package of change.
There are no guarantees, as we all know, but I think the initial indications are reasonably positive. And I think you have every right to be sceptical and to continue to want to keep tabs on it, and I'm not in the least bit reluctant about that. I think, however, the bottom line really is creating a circumstance in which good development, development we all agree is good, gets into the ground as fast as possible.
Mr Stockwell: And that's going to be your difficulty.
The Chair: Okay. That concludes your appearance here, Mr Martin, and we very much appreciate it.
Mr Martin: Thanks very much.
The Chair: I wish you well.
Interjections.
The Chair: Let's come to order. We can carry on this discussion at some other point when the Hansard officer isn't faced with such difficulty. Please, let's have some order.
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DRAFT REPORTS
The Chair: We'll move on to the next matter on the agenda, which is consideration of the draft reports that are in front of you. Hopefully, everyone has copies. I want to move on to the first draft report, the revised draft report on the Ontario Municipal Board. I'm not sure why that one's before us, David. Just for the sake of referral? Okay. We'll move on to the next one then, which is the draft recommendation for the committee report on the Ontario Board of Parole.
Mr David Pond: As members will know, this was last considered on November 4, if memory serves me correctly. The changes the committee suggested at that time are in the darker-shaded ink.
Mr Marchese: Could you refer to them again, please?
Mr Pond: The first one was a formatting question. Mr Waters suggested that the recommendations be reorganized and specifically noted in terms of which ministry they were directed at, hence the shaded blocks on page 1 and on page 6, if you go to the back. The comment on page 6 is, "Comments and recommendations directed at the Attorney General," and on page 1, "Comments and recommendations directed to the Ontario Board of Parole and the Minister of Correctional Services." That's the first change.
The second change is on page 2. The shaded four or five lines in the second paragraph simply correct a factual error in the last draft, which Mr Waters also detected. The first really substantive change is the three words shaded in ink in the first recommendation: "The Ontario Board of Parole and the Minister of Correctional Services should consider introducing a policy whereby victims who so wish" and so on. The idea there was, if you recall, that it might be impractical for all victims to be uniformly informed. The idea was that the victims who wanted to be informed should have access to information.
The next change is at the top of page 5. The last sentence in recommendation 4 is new. That is per Mr Grandmaître's suggestion that if the board does implement this recommendation and comes up with a new or a more sophisticated database, the evaluation of the information should be readily available to the taxpaying public.
And that is it.
The Chair: Any comments or questions on this particular report? I have one, actually. I'm not sure why I didn't consider this before, but in dealing with the the temporary absence passes -- I know we have made a change in respect to the parole board in terms of notification where victims who so wish are informed.
This is related to a personal experience in my riding where, under the TAP program, an individual who had sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl for some reason got a sentence of less than two years. He was in the Brockville Jail and was allowed out about three or four weeks after he'd been incarcerated, right back into the community where this girl resided, and when that became known by the public, there was a great deal of concern and he was pulled back into the jail. But of course the fact was that in this instance the victim and the victim's family were not notified of this release right back into a relatively small community.
I guess I have a similar concern. We've indicated under the board of parole that victims, if they wish, should be notified, and I think the same sort of approach should be applied to the temporary absence program. If a victim wishes to be made aware of the whereabouts and the release, perhaps early release, of a convicted offender, especially in a sexual assault case, I think they should have every right to be made aware of it.
Mr Daniel Waters (Muskoka-Georgian Bay): I've actually just been talking with someone from the ministry, and we'd have a problem with that. From what I can gather, they're charged by this person, by the police, the Attorney General deals with them at the court, and those files stay there; they don't travel with them into jail. So within Correctional Services, from what I can gather, they have no idea who the victim is. What they know is that John Doe or whoever is in jail for this crime with this penalty. They don't necessarily know who he committed the crime against in the system.
Mr Stockwell: So tell them.
Mr Grandmaître: They don't know who committed the crime?
Mr Waters: No, they don't know who the victim was.
Mr Grandmaître: That's strange.
Mr Waters: I see David nodding his head.
Mr Pond: It's true. When the board appeared before the committee in 1990, it made a general comment to the effect that information was not shared expeditiously within the system. It wasn't just they who were out of the loop; lots of people were out of the loop, so to speak.
Mr Marchese: But I think the point you're making is consistent with recommendation 1, which speaks about "introducing a policy whereby victims who so wish are informed." In terms of what Mr Waters raises, that's something that obviously needs to be dealt with by the minister in terms of identifying who they might be, which is quite a separate point. That remains a problem to be dealt with still, but in terms of your suggestion, I see it as consistent with number 1.
Mr Waters: My next question, and maybe Mr Pond or somebody can tell me, is whether under the Constitution we have the right to transfer that information from ministry to ministry and back out to the public.
Mr Pond: There's no obstacle under the Constitution. It depends on how it's used, but there's no obstacle to sharing of information.
Mr Stockwell: Particularly if they ask for it.
Mr Marchese: That's the point: "who so wish." If they're asking for it, it means there's agreement.
Mr Stockwell: So tell them. Big deal. If they ask, the board then can mention it.
The Chair: Is there any problem incorporating that?
Mr Pond: No, we can add that.
The Chair: Is there agreement on that?
Mr Marchese: I certainly agree with that.
Mr Waters: I don't see any problem.
The Chair: It would be consistent with recommendation 1.
Mr Waters: But at the same time that creates a problem with recommendation 2.
Mr Pond: What we could do is add your concern to that.
Mr Waters: Because there's absolutely nothing out there at this point that transfers the trial information or the victim information to the parole board.
Mr Pond: I can incorporate that into that little passage there, if you like.
Mr Marchese: Flagging your concerns.
The Chair: Okay. Adopting those concerns and recommendations then, we'll consider that report adopted. No? You want to bring it back.
Mr Pond: I'll bring this back to you, needless to say, at the next opportunity.
The Chair: The next one is a revised draft report on the Liquor Licence Board of Ontario.
Mr Pond: Again, this was considered at the November 4 meeting. The only change is on page 12. The second sentence in recommendation 3 is new. This is Mr Marchese's suggestion to the effect that when the government implements recommendation 3 and develops its new rules and standards for the elimination of sexism in liquor advertising, it should be required to draw on the expertise and experience of the LLBO in so doing.
Mr Marchese: If I can ask another question, I raised the concern about the applicant on page 3, "the applicant is not a Canadian citizen or a person lawfully admitted to Canada." David, you were going to check.
Mr Pond: Yes, I checked with the lawyers in our office and it's as I suspected. Anybody who's here, who's lawfully admitted and ordinarily resident in Canada, which is just about everybody, can access the Liquor Licence Act and run a licensed establishment.
Mr Marchese: Okay; all right.
The Chair: Anything else in this particular report?
Mr Tony Rizzo (Oakwood): I wasn't here previously, so I haven't had the chance to go through all this, but looking at page 3 now, following "An applicant is entitled to a licence except if," item (h) says, "the licence is not in the public interest having regard to the needs and wishes of the residents of the municipality in which the premises are located." From my own experience, I know that many times, in spite of the negative opinion of the municipalities, the liquor licence board approved the applications for licence. I wonder why this is happening or if this (h) item is considered when the applicants are going to be in front of them, or what can be done.
I was also told that, prior to a few years ago, to be entitled to a licence was a privilege, and a few years ago this was changed to become a right. So if it is a right, then why should there be any opinion asked of municipal councils, and therefore why again, if the municipal council says no, does the board go ahead and approve it anyway?
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Mr Pond: Regarding the second point first, it's the residents' municipality where the opportunity to appear before the board at its quasi-judicial hearings to express their opinions about whether a licence should be granted, not the council per se. Just residents of the municipality.
With regard to your first point, this is why the board is often controversial. It has the discretion under the statute to decide whether a licence should be issued. Needless to say, in many cases the licence is issued over the opposition of some residents. But that's why the board is there, to provide a quasi-judicial process whereby these decisions are made instead of being done by fiat on the one hand or not being done at all. Yes, inevitably, anybody who is disgruntled with a board decision is going to have his say in front of the board, but this is what the board's there for, to make those decisions. Then, of course, you're going to appeal these decisions to the courts. But there's no doubt about it; you know better than I do, sir, that many of these decisions are often controversial.
Mr Rizzo: Not only that, why then are the opinions asked of the municipal council, the municipality, to see if there is anything against the applications or not? I know what they usually say. The different departments answer, "No, this particular location hasn't had any problem with the building department," the board of health sends a note saying, "We have no opinion, or we have no problem with that," and the planning department does the same thing. In the end, nobody has an opinion or some opinions are in favour, and so the response is sent to the board and it automatically approves it. What I'm saying is, shouldn't then the authority be given to the municipality to say, "We are against it," after the municipal council takes a decision? Then it would be up to the applicant to apply for a change of decision to the board.
Mr Grandmaître: I don't know if Chris has experienced this, but in their official plans more and more municipalities are now trying to specify the number of licences issued in their communities, especially in a small community. People don't like a bar or a striptease joint right beside a church, for instance. So if the municipal council thinks it's not in the public interest, then it'll simply oppose it or question the board before the licence is issued. But I think David is right; it's up to the public, Joe Public or Jane Public, to oppose or to object to the licence. But again, a municipality plays a role if a zoning change is needed. That's where the municipal council gets involved. But if the zoning is compatible with a restaurant or a bar or whatever, then it's much more difficult for the public to object.
The Chair: Mr Stockwell, do you want to say something else?
Mr Stockwell: I was just going to say that exactly. If the zoning's in place, you can't stop it.
Mr Rizzo: But this has nothing to do with the public interest.
Mr Grandmaître: Yes, it has.
Mr Rizzo: Zoning has nothing to do with the public interest.
Mr Grandmaître: Absolutely. It's the official plan of the public.
Mr Stockwell: But you can't down-zone somebody. You'd be in court.
Mr Rizzo: It has nothing to do with zoning at all. I understand that if a certain facility is not contemplated in the zoning laws of the municipality, then fine; they cannot get the permit. I understand that.
The Chair: Mr Rizzo, do you have a specific proposal for this report?
Mr Rizzo: My proposal, if this is the right place, would be that before anyone could get a licence, he should get the approval of the municipal council first. If they don't have that, then they can appeal to the liquor licence board. That's the change I would like to see.
The Chair: Well, what's the feeling? Will you have any difficulty in incorporating that as one of our recommendations?
Mr Waters: In large municipalities I can see where that might be okay, but you get into a small town, shall we say, there's always an inner clique, an inner group, that people are always saying runs the town the way it wants to and it can pretty well hold someone out.
The Chair: I wonder how many municipal councils would like to have this power.
Mr Stockwell: Lots of them.
The Chair: You think so?
Mr Stockwell: I don't know directly about the small-town community, but I know full well in Etobicoke we want far more input into where liquor licences are allowed.
Mr Rizzo: That's right.
Mr Stockwell: Because in certain instances, and I can speak specifically on a street like Lakeshore Boulevard, it was just unbelievable. Every Mr Submarine shop got a liquor licence and it was turning into just a big drunk tank and that's what the local council's had a concern about. They had no say and they couldn't stop it and they couldn't do anything. So I understand the point you're making. But Mr Waters may make a very valid point; I don't know. So I think you're in a bit of a conundrum.
The Chair: Let's have a motion then, that Mr Rizzo is moving that part of our report recommendation include a recommendation that approval of the municipal council be a requirement prior to the issuance of any licence.
Mr Rizzo: At the least, it should be considered by the appeal board, that they must have it before they can issue a licence.
The Chair: "Considered." I'm getting two different messages. It is considered. What you're saying is that you want it to be a requirement, municipal approval.
Mr Rizzo: Which can be appealed. Now there is no requirement that there is a need of approval by the municipal council. I want that to be incorporated.
The Chair: Okay. I think we understand what you want.
Mr Frankford: I'm not convinced that this is the right place to be doing this because this is a report on the LLBO. I would ask, is it routine that the LLBO informs councils of applications?
Mr Grandmaître: Yes.
Mr Stockwell: Yes.
Mr Frankford: That gives them the opportunity of responding to applications.
Mr Stockwell: But there's no response mechanism. You just get told; that's it.
Mr Pond: But you can appear.
Mr Stockwell: Well, you can appear.
Mr Pond: The municipality can direct its officials or, for that matter, municipal politicians themselves, as you know, can appear before the board in a hearing and regularly do. That happened in my neighbourhood.
Mr Rizzo: I want the contrary. I want the applicant to appeal a decision of council rather than vice versa.
The Chair: We have a motion from Mr Rizzo that we incorporate in the report the recommendation that municipal council approval be a requirement of the licensing application process. All in favour of Mr Rizzo's motion? Opposed? The motion carries.
Mr Stockwell: Can I make one quick question before you get out of here?
The Chair: We still have another report. Go ahead.
Mr Stockwell: Quickly on the -- what do you call this? -- on the advertising section.
Mr Pond: That would be page 12.
Mr Stockwell: Is there not a name for it? "Eliminate sexism in liquor advertising." Is there anyplace in the world where this has been implemented?
Mr Pond: Where what has?
Mr Stockwell: Where they've eliminated sexism in liquor advertising.
Mr Pond: That's a matter of judgement. Lots of governments are striving to do that.
Mr Stockwell: Has anyone done it?
Mr Pond: But whether it's eliminated or not is a matter of --
Mr Stockwell: Have they passed laws, anyplace that actually passed laws to eliminate it?
Mr Pond: I think so, yes.
Mr Stockwell: Where?
Mr Pond: I'd have to look it up for you. I think there are jurisdictions in the US and there may be elsewhere in Canada; I think probably Quebec, actually, elsewhere in Canada. But I can look that up for you.
Mr Stockwell: I see Quebec just in your report.
Mr Pond: Quebec is quite active in this, yes.
Mr Stockwell: Sorry?
Mr Pond: Quebec is one of the more active jurisdictions in this regard.
Mr Stockwell: Yes. I'd be curious to see if anyone's passed any laws and what they say. I'm just curious, that's it, because I'd like to see it.
The Chair: We want to deal with all of these reports as one report to the Legislature, so we'll have an opportunity to take a look at that before final approval.
The next draft is the health councils.
Mr Pond: If you recall, at the last meeting on November 4 a letter from the Association of District Health Councils of Ontario, which is the province-wide group, was distributed to committee. It commented upon the initial draft recommendations and provided information on where the province is going with regard to DHCs. The committee directed me to incorporate that letter and its information into this draft memo, which I did, starting on page 4.
Essentially, if I may paraphrase, the letter said the concerns the committee had heard from the witnesses about DHCs and their operation in Ontario and their status with the ministry were well known to the association. The association had brought these concerns to the attention of the minister and a process had already been put into place to address these concerns. Specifically, a DHC-Ministry of Health joint task force had been formed with a very firm deadline to address these problems.
Therefore, what I've done here is taken note of that and taken the liberty of suggesting a conclusion the committee might want to reach -- you can feel free, obviously, to disregard it -- which is the last paragraph on page 4, namely:
"The committee believes it is premature to make recommendations about the future of DHCs as long as the task force is sitting. It may revisit this question once the task force has completed its work and its report is in the public domain."
I would point out again that the task force is expected to report within four months, at least according to this letter, which is a pretty quick deadline.
The Chair: Any comments?
Mr Frankford: I can see the difficulties that exist in trying to put a report together on district health councils, because for one thing I think it's something of a moving target. There have been a number of concerns which we believe were there which I think have been confirmed about the changing and somewhat ambiguous relationship between the councils and the ministry.
I think perhaps we do have to go along with the recommendation that we wait for the task force, but I certainly wouldn't like to see the work we've done on this disappear.
The Chair: Do we have agreement that we'll wait to finalize this until the task force report is --
Ms Carter: I was going to suggest that the task force actually report to this committee.
Mr Frankford: It's a ministry task force, isn't it?
The Chair: Yes, it's a ministry task force. We can certainly ask. After the report has been presented to the minister, we can certainly make that request, that a representative at least appear before us.
Ms Carter: I certainly think it would be premature of us to make recommendations about DHCs, because not only is there this task force, there are other things that are changing that I think we should maybe wait for.
The Chair: Okay.
Mr McLean: Maybe we should just turn it around and reverse it and say that what information we have received to date should be forwarded to the task force for them to have a look at and see whether they would like to include any of it in their report. If we have some recommendations we're going to make, it would be nice for them to look at it, because if we make it afterwards, then --
The Chair: Do you have a problem with that, David?
Mr Pond: No. What was it you would like me to send? What information?
Mr Waters: Maybe it's an assumption on my part, but I would have assumed by the letter we received from the head of the association that the task force already has everything. But if they haven't, by all means.
The Chair: Okay. I think we're in agreement that we will delay the finalization until the task force reports and then perhaps have someone from the task force appear. David can confirm as to whether or not they have all the information in terms of the committee's views, and if not, we'll make sure it's made available to them.
I guess that concludes the regular agenda. Is there anything anyone wants to raise before we adjourn? I would remind subcommittee members that we're having a subcommittee meeting.
Mr McLean: What's the agenda for the next two Wednesdays? The Chair: Madam clerk?
Clerk of the Committee (Ms Lynn Mellor): Next week is the Metro police board and on the 9th is Maurice Strong.
The Chair: Hydro chair.
Okay, meeting adjourned.
The committee adjourned at 1135.