Ford government tables new legislation, including tolls and urban boundaries

The Ford government has tabled its first piece of new legislation since the winter break, slipping urban boundary and environmental changes into an omnibus bill under the banner of affordability.

The Get It Done Act, which the government trailed at several events in the past week, includes campaign-style tweaks to the rules governing carbon pricing, tolls and vehicle licences in Ontario.

The omnibus legislation proposes changes to a slew of existing laws, including the Environmental Assessment Act, the Highway Traffic Act and the Photo Card Act.

The province is framing its new legislation as an affordability boost, while opposition parties say it is about scoring political points.

“Our government made a promise to get it done,” Minister of Transportation Prabmeet Sarkaria said in a statement.

“While previous governments neglected critical infrastructure, we’re getting shovels in the ground to build roads, highways and houses while we keep costs down for people and businesses. We’re getting it done.”

Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said the bill was a “distraction” by the Ford government.

“At the end of the day, this legislation, which I think is called ‘getting it done’, is a sign that the government is not actually getting anything done,” Stiles said.

“They’ve spent more time in the last year reversing course than they have actually coming up with practical solutions that will make life easier for people.”

The Ford government used the week before the legislature returned to announce the parts of its new law that would freeze and cut costs.

The law bans the introduction of tolls on new highways, though it does not remove them from existing roads, including the public and private portions of Highway 407.

That change is introduced through changes to the Public Transportation and Highway Improvement Act that ban new tolls on roads where the province has authority unless the toll is already allowed within the law.

The law will also freeze the price of driver’s licence renewals. The freeze is not a new policy but the government said it will make it harder to reverse it in future by putting it into law instead of simply using regulations.

The law also proposes the introduction of a system of referendums if any future government plans to levy a new price on carbon.

Future governments could avoid a referendum, add tolls or unfreeze the cost of licences by simply amending or revoking the laws.

The omnibus law also includes changes to how environmental regulations in Ontario work and codifies a government reversal on urban boundaries.

The bill would “streamline” certain environmental assessments to allow the government to build infrastructure such as roads more quickly.

Part of the new bill includes specific language to “clarify” the rules around expropriating land, something the government can do to force the sale of land or property needed for infrastructure projects.

The law also includes specifications over urban boundaries for various cities across Ontario.

The Ford government had, under its former housing minister, overruled several local municipalities to force them to expand their urban boundaries and allow building on more undeveloped land.

Several of those cities, particularly Hamilton, pushed back against the change and called for the government to change its mind.

In the wake of the Greenbelt scandal, newly-appointed Housing Minister Paul Calandra said he would reverse the changes. Calandra said he felt political staff were too involved in the previous decision-making.

In November, the government reverted the official plans it had overridden to their original, locally-approved form, including taking away the urban boundary expansions it had enforced.

The new law marks a negotiated outcome.

If passed, it will enact official plan and urban boundary changes previously imposed by Queen’s Park and accepted by municipalities through consultation over the past few months.

Some regions and municipalities had spoken out over the changes, saying the extra land wasn’t needed to build more housing, so Calandra reversed those forced expansions and told municipalities to submit any changes they wanted to see.

Those municipally-requested changes are reflected in Tuesday’s bill, he said, and there are no changes for Hamilton and Ottawa, at the cities’ request.

On Tuesday, the government also announced it will be making other changes under the umbrella of the Get It Done Act.

The government said it would designate the Hazel McCallion LRT in Mississauga and Brampton as a priority project under the Building Transit Faster Act.

That designation will give the project, which the government is set to expand even before it is finished, special status to bypass some assessments and processes the government argues slow down construction.

The government has also said it will make more changes to how environmental assessments work. Environmental assessments are tests and studies applied to new projects to mitigate the effects of construction and landscaping changes on the natural world and things that already exist.

The key change the government announced it is planning will be to move to use a list system for environmental assessments, where some projects will be scrutinized through the studies more than others.

Changes set to come in on Thursday will streamline the process for many environmental assessments.

The government claims those tweaks will maintain environmental protections but opposition politicians are less sure.

“(The) act is going to do something I didn’t think the Ford government could actually do: make the Environmental Assessment Act even worse,” Ontario Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner said.

“This government’s already eviscerated environmental protections, they’re going to make it worse.”
— with files from The Canadian Press