Belleville City Council approved receiving a city report on Bill 17 at its meeting on Monday, but did so with some councillors expressing skepticism on the effectiveness of the provincial bill.
Ontario introduced the Protect Ontario by Building Faster and Smarter Act at its meeting of the legislature on May 12 with the bill aimed at proposing changes to the Development Charges Act, Planning Act, Building Code Act, and Transit related projects.
The bill received royal assent on June 5.
City staff put together a report on the bill noting the financial impact could be over $7.7 million in revenue lost to the city within the next three to five years.
One of the biggest concerns of the bill, among others laid out by city staff, is that the act would exempt long-term-care homes from development charges.
That change would cost Belleville almost $2.4 million in development charge revenue coming from just two retirement residences now under development.
Staff also expressed concern of the bill’s ability to eliminate the city’s ability to charge interest on “various development charge scenarios.”
Councillor Paul Carr spoke on the bill at council, saying the municipality had not had a lot of time to review the bill. He expressed skepticism on the bill’s goal to provide more housing infrastructure.
“We continue to lose ground when it comes to revenue and here, yet again, with Bill 17, we’re losing ground when it comes to revenue. Revenue that’s designed specifically to fund infrastructure in order to have growth occur,” Councillor Carr told council.
“It’s just disappointing that there wasn’t even a period of time for us to provide comment while the bill was still being deliberated in the legislature.”
Councillor Kathryn Brown criticized Bay of Quinte MPP Tyler Allsopp when discussing the bill.
“We’re not being well represented by our provincial representative here in terms of … has he even reached out to try and understand what the implications of this is? No, the hand just went up and said, I support i,.” Councillor Brown said.
As part of council’s approval of receiving the report, city staff will also present submissions to the province on their concerns about the bill.
