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Written by John Lubczynski
The Provincial Policy Statement, issued under the Planning Act, sets out the Province’s key policies concerning land use planning in Ontario. It provides policy direction on a wide of range of planning matters, such as protecting the environment, managing our natural resources, and building strong, liveable and healthy communities.
The PPS must be reviewed every five years. The current round of review began two years ago. At that time, the Waterloo Region Food System Roundtable submitted a letter expressing its views on how the PPS might be improved to encourage land use planners to consider food systems in their work. The Roundtable’s October 2010 letter had three main points:
- Provide stronger protection to prime agricultural lands from urban development;
- Strike a better balance between mineral aggregate extraction (gravel pits) and other valuable natural resources, such farmlands, woodlands and other resources.
- Introduce the idea of food systems planning into the PPS, which would require municipalities to consider small and medium-size food stores, farmers’ markets, and urban agriculture when planning communities.
The province received comments from many municipalities, developers, and interest groups in 2010. Then, in late September 2012, it released a new version of the PPS with proposed changes in response to the public input it received. The province is now inviting public comments on the proposed changes: comments are due November 23, 2012.
Would you like to be part of a process of identifying comments you think the Roundtable should make to the province? A few Roundtable members will be meeting in mid-November to discuss this, and you are welcome to join us. Please contact Marc Xuereb, staff support to the Roundtable, to express your interest in providing input to this process.
Ontario government website with overview of PPS Consultation process: http://www.mah.gov.on.ca/Page9990.aspx
Full text of proposed PPS highlighting changes to current version: here