Municipalities are created by the province, and are sometimes called creatures of the province. Municipalities are given all of their powers and authority to act by the province.
As a senior level of government, the province establishes the ground rules for land use planning in Ontario through the Planning Act .
The Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing has the responsibility for overseeing and enforcing the provisions of the Planning Act. As such, the Ministry is the primary contact for advice and information on land use planning issues. The Ministry ensures that municipalities, in carrying out their responsibilities under the Act, have regard to matters of provincial interest.
The responsibility for long-term planning in Ontario is shared between the province and municipalities.
The province sets the ground rules and directions for land use planning through the Planning Act and the Provincial Policy Statement (PPS).
In certain parts of the province, provincial plans provide more detailed and geographically-specific policies to meet certain objectives, such as managing growth, or protecting agricultural lands and the natural environment. Examples of geography-specific regional plans include the:
These plans work together with the PPS, and generally take precedence over the PPS in the geographic areas where they apply.
While decisions are required to be “consistent with” the PPS, the standard for complying with these provincial plans is more stringent, and municipal decisions are required to “conform” or “not conflict” with the policies in these plans.
A Place to Grow: Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe (A Place to Grow) was established to provide a framework for growth management in the Greater Golden Horseshoe region centered around the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA). It includes population and employment forecasts and policies for intensification, compact built form, transit and transportation. The policies of the plans provide guidance to municipalities on the appropriate locations and characteristics of growth within their settlement areas.
The Greenbelt Plan is issued under the Greenbelt Act, 2005 and provides policy coverage primarily for the protected countryside area by identifying and providing permanent protection to areas where urbanization should not occur. The plan provides policies for permanent agricultural and environment protection in the protected countryside area, supporting an agricultural and rural economy while also providing for a range of recreation, tourism and cultural opportunities. The Greenbelt Plan also includes an urban river valley designation to allow for Greenbelt protections to be provided within urban areas. The Greenbelt Act, 2005 provides for the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan and Niagara Escarpment Plan to continue to apply within their areas and stipulates that the total land area of the Greenbelt area is not to be reduced in size.
The Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan (ORMCP): The Oak Ridges Moraine extends 160 km from the Trent River in the east to the Niagara Escarpment in the west and has a concentration of environmental, geological and hydrological features. It is the regional north-south watershed divide, and the source and location of the headwaters for most major watercourses in south-central Ontario. The ORMCP, approved as Minister’s regulation Ontario Regulation140/02 under the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Act, 2001, is an ecologically-based plan that provides direction for land use and resource management in the 190,000 hectares of land and water in the Moraine.