July 2018
The Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) exists to protect against short-sighted and partisan interests that may try to influence how our city and communities develop. Recently Queen’s Park voted to replace it with a Local Planning Appeals Tribunal likely to give greater control over local planning to politicians.
The OMB, established in 1906, is one of the province’s longest-standing adjudicative tribunals. It was created to oversee municipalities’ accounts and to supervise the rapidly growing rail transportation system between and within municipalities.
More recently the OMB has evolved to that of an appeal board that replaces the court system for resolving disputes in an informal, less costly and more timely manner.
There is widespread agreement that the OMB requires reform. What we don’t want is a return to the dark days of Toronto development when any form of development could be halted. This became known as NIMBYism or not-in-my-backyard, which local politicians capitalized upon to obtain votes.
It was the OMB that put a halt to NIMBYism and the influence of local politicians, and allowed Toronto to grow and prosper as a city.
NIMBYism still exists. In 2011 one community opposed a condo building six storeys tall as being oversized. Another group opposed stacked townhouses. Yet another group opposed a four-storey building more than a kilometre away from a subway stop arguing “density creep”.
Today’s planning department lacks the resources to keep up with development because of reduced budgets. Considering the costs of poor development and revenues from new development, perhaps this is not the best approach.
Change is inevitable. Yet we don’t want to return to the days when small interest groups and local politicians prevented beneficial and desirable development.
