Province proposes targets for growth, employment areas, new boundaries

Monday January 31 is the deadline for comment on Simcoe County proposal
NOTE: The Campaign Lake Simcoe submission (Document 7, see below), endorsed by AWARE Simcoe, is posted above as a separate item
By Kate Harries AWARE Simcoe January 29 2011
The provincial government, through its Places to Grow plan for the Great Golden Horseshoe, has been trying to ensure population growth is “managed.”
In some places, it’s worked better than others. A recent article by Toronto Star reporter Phinjo Gombu detailed how Markham has embraced intensification and chosen to safeguard thousands of acres of agricultural land. Brampton, however, has become the “hot spot for horizontal growth – a.k.a. sprawl” and plans to pave over its rural heritage, including foodlands, the Star found.
In Simcoe County, everything stalled with the county’s 2008 official plan.
The province’s plan in 2006, with Places to Grow, was for the county’s population of 437,100 to grow to 667,000 by 2031 – an extra 229,900 people.
Around 160,000 of these new residents would be directed to Barrie (mostly) as well as Orillia, Bradford West Gwillimbury, Collingwood and New Tecumseth.
But Simcoe County has 16 municipalities. Their politicians all wanted a slice of the development pie.
So county planners used the province’s total population allocation, but redirected 40,000 of the new arrivals. The allocation taken from Barrie, Orillia and New Tecumseth was added, for the most part, to boost growth in Clearview, Innisfil and Wasaga Beach  (page 15 of Document 2, see below).
Meanwhile, on the ground, all of the local councils had been going ahead with their own plans, designating huge areas for development, known as settlement areas.
The province refused to approve Simcoe County’s official plan.
It calculates that if all the designated land was developed, it would result in 1.1 million residents in Simcoe County by 2031.
“That’s hundreds of thousands more than are projected to realistically come here,” Tija Dirks of the Ontario Growth Secretariat said at a recent briefing in Barrie. “So the challenge for municipalities is to figure out what to do with those applications.”
Amendment 1 (see Document 3, below) is supposed to give Simcoe County municipalities the tools to fix their mistakes.
The amendment has been decried by Simcoe County officials as micro-management. No other area in the Greater Golden Horseshoe has been subjected to the same kind of provincial oversight, they say.
This is true, the province replies, but strong action was necessary because of the oversupply of designated development land, and the fact that the environmental problems (stress of watersheds, loss of agricultural lands) that exist elsewhere are heightened in Simcoe County.
Amendment 1, issued in October 2010, is a proposal. The consultation process ends January 31, and then the province will weigh the feedback and decide where to go.
Key elements of Amendment 1:
-Midland/Penetanguishene have been added as an urban node (the others being Collingwood, Alliston, Barrie, Bradford and Orillia).
-A new planning concept – the interim settlement boundary – will allow for a realistic delineation of lands needed for growth. Plans for development outside the interim boundary will be placed on hold until after 2031
-To guard against sprawl and make services like transit more economical in new urban areas, the province is assigning intensification targets and density targets (page 25 of Document 3, see below).
-The province is proposing two new industrial employment areas along Highway 400 – one in BWG (already the subject of an OMB decision and a minister’s zoning order), the other in Innisfil.
-The province is proposing two economic employment districts, one airport-related in Oro-Medonte, the other tourism related along Rama Road.
Generally, Amendment 1 provides a framework, leaving municipalities to fill in the details (some politicians don’t want to and are asking the province to do the dirty work like establishing interim settlement boundaries).
Two days remains to let the province know what you want to see in Simcoe County.
Here are some issues to ponder:
-Before we embark on the new growth envisaged by the province – admittedly less than county politicians have pushed for, but still about 60 per cent more people by 2031-  we need to address the garbage issue. This is Year One of our new waste strategy and it needs more ambitious diversion targets and immediate citizen involvement.
-We need to safeguard the water in our aquifers and our watersheds – both the Lake Simcoe and Nottawasaga watersheds are stressed. Georgian Bay is healthier – but for how long if growth leads to more water removed and more wastewater returned? 
-We need to decide how we deal with sewage and septage from existing development..
-There is vacant industrial land in Barrie, Midland and Orillia. Do we need to take agricultural land just because a highway runs through it? The Ontario Federation of Agriculture (Document 6, see below) argues vehemently against the redesignation of foodland for employment lands when suitable serviced land is available.
-Growth has been like a drug that masks the symptoms of our unsustainable lifestyle, allowing us to pretend that we’re making ends meet. But instead, we’ve been making withdrawals from our environmental savings accounts – our watersheds, our aquifers, our lakes, our air, our foodlands – and no provision for repayment.
That has to change. Let your voice be heard!
Document 1 Places to Grow, 2006
Document 2 Simcoe Area: A Strategic Vision for Growth, 2009
Document 3 Proposed Amendment 1 to the Growth Plan, 2010
Document 4 Simcoe County response Warden Cal Patterson January 28 2011
Document 5 Simcoe Growth Primer – COC / STORM / Earthroots
Document 6 Disappearing farmland – Ontario Federation of Agriculture
Document 7 Continuing to Promote Sprawl – Campaign Lake Simcoe
Information on how to comment can be obtained at http://www.ebr.gov.on.ca/ERS-WEB-External/displaynoticecontent.do?noticeId=MTExMjQx&statusId=MTY2OTI0&language=en
Or comment by mail to
Tija Dirks
Director, Ministry of Energy, Ontario Growth Secretariat
Growth Policy, Planning and Analysis
777 Bay Street, Floor 4, Toronto Ontario M5G 2E5
Phone: (416) 325-1210