Revising North Bay's Official Plan

GreenSpace North Bay submissions to the City of North Bay

October 2008

July 2008
 

Official Plans and Planning processes
In Ontario, the Planning Act is the key piece of legislation directing municipal planning, with Part III of the Planning Act dealing with Official Plans and related planning and review processes. As of January 1, 2007, the Planning and Conservation Land Statue Law Amendment Act, 2006 (Bill 51) requires municipalities to revise their official plans at least every five years. 

The Provincial Policy Statement is issued under the authority of Section 3 of the Planning Act. It provides direction on matters of provincial interest related to land use planning and development, and promotes the provincial “policy-led” planning system. 

Examples of Official Plans and Planning processes
The City of Windsor web page includes a good explanation of what an offical plan does, what it contains, and how it is reviewed and revised, as well as links to the Official Plan and supporting documents. The City of Kingston provides similar information, including links to their April 2008 preliminary draft of the proposed new Official Plan for the City of Kingston. The official plan for the City of Sudbury was adopted by City Council in June 2006 and approved with modifications by the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing on March 7th, 2007. As a result of four appeals, the Official Plan was submitted by the Minister to the Ontario Municipal Board which issued Orders on October 15th, 2007, December 17th, 2007, January 22nd, 2008 and April 10, 2008 approving the majority of the Plan. One outstanding site specific appeal currently remains before the Ontario Municipal Board. The official plan for the City of Thunder Bay, current to 2005 is available on that City's web site. The City of Ottawa's web site includes a good description of the Legislative Basis for Land Use Planning in Ontario, inculding explainations of official plans, the Planning Act, the Provincial Policy Statements, and the Ontario Municipal Board, as well as links to Ottawa's Official Plan which was adopted in 2003. The City of Brantford's official plan review process, called "Shaping a Liveable City', included an extensive public engagement process and a "kitchen table discussion guide". The City of North Bay's web site includes background information about the City's uPlan process to review and revise North Bay's Official Plan. 
Some Suggested Readings 

• Ontario Nature has on-line an excellent resource created by Linda Pim and Joel Ornoy about creating greenways and curbing sprawl. . Largely focused on southern Ontario but still with relevance to planning in the north. It is on-line in chapters on the following index page: http://www.ontarionature.org/enviroandcons/smart_growth/index.html 
• The Ontario Smart Growth Network at: http://www.smartgrowth.on.ca/index.htm has some useful information about urban land use, as does the US-based Smart Growth, online at http://www.smartgrowth.org/Default.asp?res=1024 In particular, click on the link to a document called "This is Smart Growth" 
• The Pembina Institute has case studies and an evaluation of 27 cities using a "sustainability index" available online. The report "Local Implementation of Smart Growth Policies: Three Case Studies (2005)" at http://pubs.pembina.org/reports/Local_Impl_Cover+Summaries.pdf looks at three large cities, while the in the second report, North Bay comes out at 24th out of 27th on a sustainability index of communities in Ontario; the report includes some detailed case study work. Titled the "Ontario Communicty Sustainability Report - 2007" it is online at: http://pubs.pembina.org/reports/ocsr-07-report.pdf 
• Materials created by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. They actually have some quite clear and well written materials. The following page has a kind of annotated index to their materials: http://www.mah.gov.on.ca/Page186.aspx. More specifically, see the link to the Citizen's Guides to Land Use Planning, linked directly here: http://www.mah.gov.on.ca/Page338.aspx. You can pick and chose the topics areas of interest.