The Ford government has put a number of Minister’s Zoning Orders under the microscope, as it tries to determine which developers have been dragging their heels on projects that received special permission from the province, Global News has learned.
Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Paul Calandra has been sorting through more than 100 minister’s zoning orders handed out by his predecessor, Steve Clark.
The orders are a powerful tool within the Planning Act, which allows developers to skip some processes and consultations to get shovels in the ground faster.
If an MZO is issued, provincial rules essentially overwrite or replace existing local planning requirements. For example, an MZO could be used to let a developer build housing that is taller than a local city allows or convert farmland into an industrial space for a warehouse.
The Ford government has handed out more than 100 such orders since taking office in 2018, compared with just 18 given out by the previous Ontario Liberals over 15 years.
Sources told Global News only a small number of those zoning orders were being considered for reversal, with key criteria being the amount of progress builders have made.
A number of other MZOs are also being closely monitored.
Recently, the province stepped up its review of the zoning orders, looking to work out which projects were taking advantage of the tool to build faster, and which had not made progress.
The province sent a letter to municipalities where MZOs had been issued, asking for a progress update to be returned to them by the end of November.
A copy of the letter, obtained by Global News, asked for an “implementation status update” on MZOs. It asked local planning staff to confirm if developers had taken steps toward construction, like submitting a site plan, and if the area has access to municipal servicing, like wastewater.
It said the province was working to “verify and standardize” the information across the projects it had issued MZOs.
Since taking office, Calandra has suggested he is unhappy with how previous decisions on the housing file were made.
In September, the Ford government reversed its controversial decision to swap land out of the Greenbelt. The next month, Calandra announced he would not push forward plans to make changes to urban boundaries in some Ontario towns and cities.
He has also promised to hold developers to account by introducing a “use it or lose it” policy that would force developers to build after they receive permits or have them revoked.
While Calandra has said he is reviewing MZOs, the Ford government has not distanced itself from the policy.
Legislation passed in December to speed up development at Ontario Place expanded the tool and allowed Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma to issue MZOs of her own, specifically on the Ontario Place lands.
“With co-operation of the municipalities, we’ll issue as many (minister’s) zoning orders as we possibly can,” Premier Doug Ford also said at an event in June.
The province’s auditor general is currently conducting an investigation into the orders.
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