HALDIMAND—Haldimand’s Manager of Community and Development Services Mike Evers and Manager of Financial and Data Services Mark Merritt spearheaded a discussion on how the Ford government’s latest housing bill, dubbed Bill 17, or the Protect Ontario by Building Faster and Smart Act, 2025, could impact Haldimand at a Council meeting on Monday, May 26, 2025.
“I think I’ve lost count now. I no longer have enough fingers to calculate how many bills the Province has passed in the last two years. Here’s yet another one,” said Evers.
The bill is currently in its second reading, with municipalities across the province given a 30-day window to comment through the Environmental Registry of Ontario (ERO).
The pair spoke to how the new bill alters the County’s planning process and its ability to access development charges (DCs) on new builds in a timely fashion.
Evers called the changes “not as significant” as other recent housing bills brought forth over the last 18 to 20 months, such as Bill 23, Bill 109, and the new provincial planning statement.
“What’s clear to staff with this bill is that the speeding up of development approvals is at the heart of this push, and that is consistent with a number of the other bills and pieces of legislation and policy statements the Province has put forward over the last couple of years,” said Evers.
He laid out items of significant consequence on the planning side, such as the bill’s proposal to limit study requirements that municipal governments can impose on development applications.
“That’s a significant concern to us as staff. They’ve put forward a short list at this point of study limitations, but there’s always the potential of that growing,” said Evers.
Haldimand’s policy on development related studies is that they must add value while helping paint a full picture of a new development’s infrastructure demands.
“If we lose some of the ability to ask for what we deem as critical studies, that’s a big problem as far as we’re concerned,” Evers said.
While some of the studies included in the list present less of a current concern, such as studies related to high-rises, shadows, and wind, Councillor Dan Lawrence pointed out that if the Province begins pushing through larger buildings in communities like Caledonia, those studies could become much more critical.
“There are several identified in the report that we require on a regular basis. Photo-metric, or lighting studies, to make sure that neighbours are not impacted when a development is being constructed adjacent to, to make sure there’s not light spillage onto our road to create blinding flashes. That will be taken out of our hands,” said Evers.
“That’s not a study we ask for lightly; we believe that’s an important one, it’s an engineering design criteria. History has shown there have been lighting studies that were flawed, and the photo-metrics study requirement allowed us to remedy those and make sure that neighbouring landowners or travellers on the municipal right of way were not impacted.”
He added, “Tied to that is the indication that where those studies are authored by a qualified professional as the Province defines it, we have to accept those studies, regardless of the comprehensiveness of the content in those reports.”
Haldimand has, historically, discovered consultant studies with “significant gaps in them,” according to Evers.
Evers called a variance provision that would add a “10% as-of-right forgiveness of whatever the setback is specific to residential development” as workable in theory, however, “the carte blanche approach of the Province, it doesn’t matter what the setback is, we’ll bring 10%, that’s problematic from a staff perspective.”
Also potentially weighing heavily on the County’s available resources is a possible required update of the Official Plan out of cycle to incorporate updated provincial population forecasts.
“We’re already using those forecasts for a lot of our strategies,” said Evers. “If the Province is going to require us to update our Official Plan immediately, that’s not an insignificant undertaking. It would be out-of-cycle, it will require staff shifting other projects around, the potential for us to have to bring consultants in ahead of our 2027 Official Plan update…. We don’t have the resources to do that at present.”
Merritt also touched on how the new bill will impact how Haldimand collects DCs from developers.
The report notes how a proposed DC bylaw intended to simplify the process of amending Council-approved DC bylaws could in actuality remove the public opportunity to provide feedback to Council, reducing transparency.
Another proposed change, the deferral of DC payment from the start of development to the occupancy stage for all residential development, was called “the most challenging for municipalities” of all proposed DC amendments in the bill.
“Municipalities will need to track occupancy for every unit and then follow-up with appropriate collection of DCs payable,” read the report. “Determining actual ‘occupancy’ will likely be challenging. Collection efforts will be complicated by changes in ownership and rental arrangements.”
Further, it noted that unless securities are required for every deferred payment, “it is likely there will be uncollectable DC payments.”
Staff worry this process will lead to significant cashflow shortfalls for municipalities, requiring use of debt capacity to offset shortfalls.
“The positive thing about the amendments is they’re not as financially impactful as proposals the Province has put forth in the past,” said Merritt. “Having said that, there are a lot of concerning things, particularly with respect to the administration of these proposed amendments, particularly the deferrals, collecting interest, and paying at a later date.”
He continued, “With particular respect to all residential development, that means we’ll be tracking occupancy for every single building permit and trying to collect that money down the road. The unintended results of that are cash flow problems. We’re not getting the money we anticipated, we have to up front that, and it’s likely we’ll have to incur and utilize more of our debt capacity with respect to DCs moving forward.”
As part of this issue, staff have “asked for clarification on what defines occupancy.”
To view staff’s full report on Bill 17, including the comments that will be posted on the ERO, visit Haldimand’s website and search for the May 26 Council agenda.
Council voted unanimously in favour of supporting all staff concerns and forwarding the comments to the Province.
Despite the support, however, Evers warned, “It’s not clear as you get into the process what recourse we might have…. On the surface, very concerning.”
