The adventure continues… Earlier this year, Ontario’s Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing returned to the City of Guelph the latest version of their Official Plan with 18 modifications. There was some disagreement about that. Since then, the new Minister announced that he was going to rescind those changes made by his predecessor, but what does that mean for Guelph? There’s a meeting for that!

In a follow-up report to the agenda for the December 5 special council meeting on this subject, staff outlined their recommendation for next steps in response to Bill 150, the Planning Statute Law Amendment Act, 2023. The Government of Ontario has asked municipalities to submit official comments on the bill by December 7 because there are two exceptions to changing things back; if there are construction projects already in progress, and if municipalities want to keep the changes that the Province made.

In the Guelph case, we don’t have to worry about the former, but there may be a few instances where planning staff want to hold on to a change. For example, the change in designations to 230 Willow Road and 280 Clair Road West made the Ministry are something worth doing according to staff.

Also, and more controversially, staff would like to hold on to the change that Province made to one controversial property in the downtown area. The original staff recommendation for the zoning at 41-45 George Street was high density, but council changed that to medium density in the final passage of the Official Plan amendment last year. The Province changed that back to high density and staff believe that’s the way it should be.

In terms of the other controversial measures in the OPA decision, reductions to the amount of employment land in the Guelph Innovation District and the added height allowed downtown, that seems to be a split decision. Staff says that now’s not the time to make changes to the GID plan since there’s been no public review of the changes proposed by the ministry. As for downtown, staff say that there are possibilities for allowing more height in some select portions of the area, but they would like to look at those options more deeply with the ministry.

“Generally, staff support general modifications that are conformity related and request that a full public process be followed for site specific and area specific amendments” reads the report authored by general manager of planning and building services Krista Walkey. “Bill 150 was introduced on November16, 2023, staff are supportive of the proposed legislation and ask for further shielding from appeals to the Ontario Land Tribunal of any potential future City initiated modifications to the Official Plan.”