Is it really 'Places To Grow' or just places to stagnate?

An issue that ought to dominate the forthcoming Ontario election campaign is the current government's wholly inconsistent stands on the subject of growth in the so-called Greater Golden Horseshoe area.

With considerable flourish, the government of Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty last year released a document dubbed Places To Grow, which purported to lay down planning targets for a 25-year period.

Part and parcel of this planning exercise was the government's Greenbelt Act, which effectively (a) froze development in what has become known as the Oak Ridges Moraine, and (b) by inference, at least, sacrificed some of the province's best remaining farmland rather than see any development in Moraine areas where agriculture has been at best marginal.

A skeptic would say the actions in question simply reflect the sad reality that there are vastly more votes to be had among urban Ontarians (and particularly those in and around Toronto) than among farmers and other rural residents, most of whom traditionally have voted Conservative anyway.

Whatever the case, there is surely a significant inconsistency between a long-term plan that envisions continued vigorous growth in the GTA and various pieces of policy and legislation that are effectively preventing any significant growth of existing urban centres beyond the sacred Greenbelt.

When it was unveiled last year, Places To Grow was trumpeted by David Caplan, the government's Minister of Public Infrastructure Renewal, as a means of ensuring that the Greater Golden Horseshoe can attract new businesses and support a high quality of life for its residents.

"The Growth Plan is a visionary plan to create better-planned communities and more opportunities for economic prosperity," the minister said. "It will create better-planned communities, with more options for living, working, shopping and playing."

He maintained that the focus of Places To Grow plan would be the creation of complete communities, with a greater mix of businesses, services, housing and parks that will make them more livable.

The plan supposedly would stimulate economic prosperity, revitalize downtowns, and encourage more compact communities with services, shops and businesses close to home while preserving greenspace and agricultural lands that are under pressure, curbing urban sprawl, cutting down on car dependency, contributing to better air quality, spurring transit investment and creating conditions favourable to public transit use, and promoting "a culture of conservation."

The reality is that to date precious little has been done toward meeting any of these glorious objectives.

Rather, what we see today is a worsening gridlock, the continued loss of excellent farmland in Peel and York Regions and absolutely nothing being done to stimulate growth that the plan envisions in Dufferin, Simcoe and Wellington counties with lots of marginal farmland and too many urban centres that have become bedroom communities with far too few local employment opportunities.

At this point, there is clearly no coherent government policy we know of that would permit the sort of growth Places To Grow envisions for areas like Dufferin.

Of course, changes in policy could change the picture overnight.

For example, a government that wanted to see healthy growth in towns like Orangeville would merely have to change a few policies and spend some money. In the longer range, the Province ought to allow all cities and towns in the Lake Ontario and Lake Erie watersheds to draw Great Lakes water in the same way Alliston now can get water from Georgian Bay and most of the urban portions of Peel Region can get theirs from Lake Ontario.

But, as we say, the appropriate approach to the expected population growth of the Greater Golden Horseshoe ought to be a major talking point in the election campaign, if only to get all the parties on record so the public will not only have help in making their election-day decision but be able to monitor the extent to which the winner carries out its promises.

The planning decisions made today could profoundly affect the lifestyles and prosperity of future generations.