New Provincial Policy Statement (PPS) could help open up Frontenac County for development

Mar 11, 2020

In a report to the Frontenac County Planning Advisory Committee, the county planning department outlined some of the positive changes in the updated PPS, a document that provides the context for what kinds of property development gets the go-ahead from municipal planning departments.

“It is the opinion of staff that the changes to the PPS, 2020 are positive for rural Eastern Ontario and provide better opportunities for rural economic development, “ wrote Jenni Kapusta, community planner with the county, in the report.

The Frontenac County department has been advocating for more positive language in the updated document towards privately owned communal water and sewer services. Sydenham is the only community in Frontenac County with public water, and there are no public sewage systems in the County. Further, there are little or no prospects that any Frontenac Community will be able to put in those systems.

The new wording in the document provides leeway for privately owned alternatives to be explored.

“Where municipal sewage services and municipal water services are not available, planned or feasible, private communal sewage services and private communal water services are the preferred form of servicing for multi-unit/lot development to support protection of the environment and minimize potential risks to human health and safety,” says the new PPs, which will be active in Ontario as of May 1.

Frontenac County Manager of Development Services, Joe Gallivan, has been advocating for this new language in the PPS.

The key piece that remains for private communal servicing to be viable, according to Gallivan, is the financial one, because municipalities face the financial liability if the private developers go out of business.

“There needs to be some mechanism to shield municipalities from liability without making it too expensive for developers to bring these projects to market,” Gallivan said.

Frontenac County is about to submit an application to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities for a grant to support a case study for such a mechanism, using the former Sharbot Lake Public School site as a case study.

Another positive change in the PPS, in the view of the planning department, is a simplified process for changing the boundaries of settlement areas.

Gallivan also said that, from his reading of the new document, environmental protections are just as strong in this version as they were in the 2014 PPS, which will stale-dated on April 30.

“It does not look like they have weakened the language at all,” he said,