Yesterday the city finally got around to the motion—shepherded by Councillors Josh Matlow (Ward 22, St. Paul's) and Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 27, Toronto Centre-Rosedale)—to urge the province to remove Toronto from the jurisdiction of the Ontario Municipal Board. It's unlikely to have an immediate effect at Queen's Park (even Toronto MPPs like Kathleen Wynne are only tepid supporters), but it's worth asking: why does everyone hate the OMB so much? Sure, it overruled the local community on the Glen Davis Ravine (pictured above), but is it really that bad?

With science to the rescue, Aaron Moore, a University of Toronto researcher, looked at exactly that. From his presentation last December, we learn that:

• Yes, OMB decisions tend to favour developers.
• But that's not the only problem: the entire planning process in Ontario is opaque and hard for citizens to actually work with.
• The OMB is more powerful than similar boards not just in Canada, but more powerful than its few counterparts in the U.S.
• Toronto doesn't really have an official plan or zoning by-laws, since it amends its plans so frequently (often under developer pressure); this might change if councillors could be sure that their plans would be respected (thanks to the OMB, they can't).

And what if council's motion succeeds, and Toronto is free of the OMB? The likely result would be to tie up zoning appeals in court, which are long and costly. The main impact of the OMB is to take zoning away from elected leaders—neither municipal or provincial politicians, so one result is that decisions made on zoning would be more likely to end up being election issues.

(Thanks to David Reevely for the link.)

Blog photo by Nick Kozak.