Brant County Official Plan Comments

On December 10th, Brant County Council met for a special meeting to present the final draft of its Official Plan and seek feedback from the community. In total, 22 delegations presented at the meeting. Community members raised a number of concerns including the desire to have definitions within the plan clarified and the request to have boundaries on particular tracts of land revised. The issue that received the most public input was the future of development in the Cainsville area. Click below to read the transcribed comments from three speakers.

Tony Henrique:

I’m Tony Henrique; my wife and I have owned Brooks Signs for 20 years and are located in Cainsville for 25 years.

Mayor: Thank you.

Henrique: You know, we’ve had to watch this thing going on with designating Cainsville as a no-growth area. From our perspective, and of course from our neighbours’ perspective, we scratch our heads at this. MTO has made a large investment in that interchange there, that whole strip of Garden Ave that runs down to us, our industrial area, that hasn't been there that long. It’s completely asinine trying to figure out the thought process behind that is beyond us. And even us, who own land adjacent to us, there are no opportunities to develop that land.

Our sign has been out there advertising development, well frankly, if I do get a call, there’s nothing I can say about it. For as long as I can remember, we’ve been stagnant out there. I’ve had building plans for a new building for 10 years. That has not moved forward. It can’t move forward. I can’t entertain building a new build for anyone.
Why the county sees fit to (stoop down) a wall that exists at Garden Ave between the city on one side with residential, commercial industrial, and now a medical centre down the street and nothing to the east baffles us.

Investors have come in, they have money, they have the ability to bring services, as a company on our own and our neighbours, we can’t afford to do that on our own. They’re willing to have mixed uses of this area.

So, you know, I was at the meeting on Monday to listen to this and frankly, the jargon that goes on, and trying to see how you can vote on it, we can hardly understand and I imagine you barely can, is beyond me.

(The sentiment) from business persons such as myself and our neighbours is that this is a development area. We seem to be shut out. We see development going on in Paris, St. George, other areas where there's residential, commercial, yet here we sit on one of the best tracts of land, one of the best developed roadways and have no development. That’s beyond us.

(inaduble) I read in the paper often enough about the breakdown in talks between the county and the city. Again, to us, asinine. (inaudible)

The plan is for the developers, as I said, to push things forward and bring all the services we need to our area. We respectfully request that you consider what’s going on out there.

We are quickly becoming, if not already, the equivalent of the south side of Colborne Street downtown. Our neighbours to the south by TSC are not continuing with their plans to expand, and to the east, we see businesses that are closed, or are closing in our area, which is completely ridiculous. Anyway, that’s my submission. Thank you.

Mabel Dougherty:

I viewed this Official Plan update from a distance because I felt it was important for the majority of tax payers from the county to be heard and not just a few with specific agendas. But as tax payers, we can no longer afford the quality of services expected by the urban residents of our municipality without some development to raise additional revenue. So I personally am not against orderly and serviced development.

I look at the Official Plan as a recipe, not the ingredients to the finished product, but that (which) will allow specific input that should be registered and negotiated.

So I think we should remember as we’re looking at the presentations that have been made over the long term that you’ve been looking at this specific review and update as that. Many residential people have spoken against industrial and residential development in that Cainsville area but first of all, we were agriculture and how did these people in fact get into our community? We all know what happened – we all needed development to allow us to grow as a municipality.

The Onondaga area as you know, was at a distinct disadvantage because we did not have the services to be able to allow the growth that we needed to survive as a smaller community.

We are all aware that the ideal taxation split is 60/40 and this I feel, needs to be addressed significantly in this Official Plan update. When we amalgamated Cainsville and airport, the tax base exceeded that of any municipality in Brant County. And we must rebuild and expand that tax base if the wish is to be able to afford all the taxes in the future.

The Cainsville area is adjacent to the 403. We still have a 4-lane highway that isn’t being used by the county where businesses wish to relocate. This area is a bonus for business. It reduces the cost of transportation.

I have no personal agenda. I have no financial gain, no affiliation with any of the developers or land owners. But it is time to look at the county of Brant as a whole. Everyone says we’re a new municipality, well, then let’s look at those areas that aren’t being serviced to their capacity. Cainsville area is a goldmine for development and a revitalized industrial tax base for the county. Just look a few miles down Brant #2 and 13 to Wilson Avenue and the industrial park in Ancaster. Many opposed its planning and these same taxpayers today are benefitting from the lucrative amount of taxes being produced in that area.

Brant tax payers want an industrial complex that will expand county coffers so that all of us can enjoy the same services, whether we live in the North or South or East or West and we need to improve our road base in order to do that, you know we need more revenue. An area where a business wants to build and carry out business and expand that’s easily accessible to the markets of Hamilton, Toronto, London and the U.S. via highway 403 and 401 and don’t forget that in this area, you’re a few minutes from Hamilton national Airport where in fact, we can have air transport as well.

Usually we ask government to take off the rose-coloured glasses. But I’m asking you, as you continue with your decisions on our Official Plan, that you put on your rose-coloured glasses and view the industrial development between 2 and 403 through those rose-coloured glasses and listen to the golden coins that are going to jingle in the tax-payers pockets of the County of Brant and to Brant County Council.

Ella Haley:

I'm Ella Haley and we've been working for three years, a group of citizens throughout the county, we've formed a group called Sustainable Brant and we've been monitoring land use decisions for the last three years. We have a statement that we presented to council and we're asking, we don't see it necessarily in this new version of the Official Plan and so we just wanted to reiterate some of our points. Some of them we have in common with Mr. Cain who just spoke about dedicating agriculture land.

But basically we want to protect farmland and we want to include Brant County in the Green Belt. When we look at a map that was put out by First Urban over a year ago - I have it here, Mr. Wheat doesn't remember seeing it, but it was in your package, I've blown it up - it shows Cainsville extending all the way to the Hamilton boundary. That makes us nervous. We're trying to preserve farmland, that's prime farmland there.

Mayor Eddy: I want to assure everyone present that Cainsville does not extend to the Wentworth county, or now, the Hamilton boundary.

Ella: It doesn't, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor Eddy: Settlement boundary of Cainsville is a designated boundary and it's a much smaller area and we can reproduce that.

Ella: It doesn't, I agree.

Mayor Eddy: Oh, oh, I'm sorry.

Ella: But the request that have been made by the developers, and if you follow the land buying right now, if you go, we're not allowed to list this on our website, we've removed it, but if you just jot this down. If you go to Walton International, and once you get to that site if you go to communities, and then if you go to Toronto, and then if you go to Brant, you'll see maps of Simcoe county, Brant County, and Niagara Area. You'll read in the third paragraph on that page, that they're the largest land owners in Brant County. If you look at the land holdings east of Brant in this area, ok, we already have First Urban's request, we have private requests, if you look at Walton's land holdings along Highway 2, between 2 and 403, South 403 between 2 and 403, it worries us because gradually this map is coming true. If you go to the city/county boundary talks, and if you sit in their meetings until they ask you to leave because they're going in camera, if you go early, you will see a map there that has our farm on it, so they're looking at maps east of Brantford as well so we're very nervous about what we're seeing east of Brant. This is prime farmland. I wanted to reitterate some of the other statements that we've made before council over the last three years.

We would like to learn from Waterloo. I was out west in Edmonton and there again you have Walton buying land in the northeast part of Edmonton in a lovely, rich, farming community in the northeast. They told us they had 500 people come out to that meeting to basically form a food policy and I don't see this in the Official Plan and that's the request we have tonight is to include more food policy like Waterloo's. Waterloo has the protected countryside. They permanently protect land beyond a certain boundary. And we're asking that the standstill area, Garden Ave, east of Garden Ave, that standstill area, Garden Ave, east of Garden Ave, it's provincial law, between Brantford and Brant County, it came in about 1980, we're asking that that be the boundary for the protected countryside. It permanently protects, in Waterloo, it permanently protects from urban development. And when we see so much landbuying, this is why we make this request because we are very nervous.

A few other points are, we wanted to, in general, Sustainable Brant has been working, the request we made is to protect our environment, to protect our cultural heritage, including saving old community halls and schools that are on the chopping block right now. To not have dirty industry, nobody wants to live near dirty industry so don't bring in dirty industry, let's have a new kind of economy.

Let's foster value, local and value-added economies, including our downed agriculture and small farmers.

The Smart Coalition, just north of us, near Pusclinch, they have a lawyer and they just launched a lawsuit, they're saying that a highway that would connect Brantford, or connect the 403 and the 401 that would go through farmland and wetlands is illegal, it's illegal in the growth plan. And so we support their position and we argue that we should have public transit, instead of another highway.

We made the request to limit growth to preserve the nature of Brant County and earlier we asked if they could reduce the growth numbers. Guelph made that request and Guelph got their wish. Now we're trying to protect the very essence of Brant County.

And we're asking that we be fiscally responsible and also not to privatize our infrastructure. We just found in the Official Plan here, the draft official plan, that it would allow energy from waste incineration. That has some serious environmental health effects. So we make the request that we do not want energy from waste incineration in Brant County.

And just a few more points here. Toronto just passed a bylaw and they were one of the first communities to do that, that they will not allow donations from developers to municipal election candidates. And also the group in Hamilton, it's called CATCH, Citizens at City Hall. They've been monitoring, there's also been some talk in Hamilton, no gifts from developers to municipal staff. Could we do the same? That's the request I make.

Two other points. When we look at the employment land study, this is a point we made earlier, we're worried about the optics.

Brookfield paid for that study. Brookefield is part of the logistic optics. It just does not look independent, it may be independent, there may have been outside peer review, it does not look independent to us.

And I have another question too, Mr. Mayor. If you, yourself have sold to Walton, then how can you vote and make decisions on development in East Brant?

(Applause from public)

Mayor Eddy: I'll answer the request, yes, I have sold some farmland to Walton which I expect will not be developed in either your or my lifetime because there are no services available. You can't stop the purchase of farmland. And because farmland is purchased by a company does not necessarily mean that it will be developed.

And I'm absolutely astounded that you would use Waterloo Region as an example of how to build. When 401 went through the Waterloo Region to the centre, development started, they took one of the richest townships in the province of Ontario, Waterloo Township, far larger than Dumfries. They divided it between Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge. Cambridge was much smaller than Brantford. What is it today? To use Waterloo Region as an example seems awfully strange to me. But thank you for your input and I think what you're saying is you've made requests that have not been answered yet.

Ella: Yes, I have.

Mayor Eddy: So we need to answer those questions.

Ella: If I could have a final question. When we vote on East Brant, should you yourself abstain if you have sold to Walton? I agree anybody can sell to them...

Mayor Eddy: No, I don't think it has anything to do, in my opinion. But of course, I'm not making a decision like that now. I do not personally, I have no personal, it's no personal. When you have, your duty as a member, an elected member of council is to vote on issues and especially as Mayor. When you do not vote is when you have a pecuniary interest in something. I do not have a pecuniary interest in that matter. Next speaker.