Prince Edward County council heard from the zone 12 representative of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture at Tuesday night’s county council meeting.
Bruce Buttar, who represents Prince Edward County, Hastings County, Northumberland County and Hastings, Lennox and Addington County for the OFA, attended Tuesday’s meeting virtually to talk about the protection of agricultural land in the county and he asked that council refrain from seeking a Minister’s Zoning Order, or MZO.
An MZO authorizes a minster to circumvent municipal official plans to fast track the rezoning of land for development. In order to be granted an MZO a municipality must apply for it.
Buttar said that the OFA is concerned about the amount of power an MZO has and how it could be harmful to the agricultural sector and said that the power should be curtailed and only used in urban areas.
According to Buttar and the OFA, the agricultural industry provides approximately 860,000 jobs in Ontario and approximately $47 billion to the province’s annual GDP.
He said that agricultural land is finite and of utmost importance as the population grows and that using MZOs to rezone agricultural land for development should be avoided.
“OFA opposed amendments to the planning act to provide the minster, or any other planning authority, the ability to make planning decisions which are not consistent with the provincial policy statement. We are concerned that legislative amendments giving the minister the ability to use MZOs that are not consistent with the provincial policy statement is shortsighted. Further, it weakens the local planning process by providing developers and municipalities with a workaround that could foster bad planning, that will cause either individuals or government to incur the cost of dealing with poor outcomes later.”
In response, Councillor Ernie Margetson referred to the county’s new Official Plan’s policy on agricultural land.
“Approximately half of our land is designated as agricultural and one of the primary objectives of the official plan is to sustain the county’s agricultural lands and maintain a permanently, unfragmented, secure, economically viable agricultural industry. nSo, I think we have a fairly strong policy to support protection of agricultural land. I just wanted to let you know that as a municipality, our official plan is in support of your objective.”
The item was not a decision item so council received it as information.
To see the written deputation from Buttar and the OFA, click here.
