In May, the provincial government introduced Bill 139, Building Better Communities and Conserving Watersheds Act, 2017, which proposes significant changes to the land-use planning and the appeals process. LPAT’s mandate will be to give greater consideration to the planning decisions of local communities. One of the biggest problems with Bill 139 is that it will have a negative impact on the highly successful mediation model of the OMB. The reforms proposed in Bill 139 will remove incentives for parties to engage in mediation in the first place. What is worse, the reforms proposed in Bill 139 could sacrifice good planning to local politics.

Source: thestar December 02, 2017 16:52 UTC