The argument for the OMB

The Ontario Municipal Board (OMB), the controversial arbitration body that handles land-use appeals, has been long criticized for favouring developers over residents; on more than one recent occasion, city councillors have launched a movement to have Toronto removed from its jurisdiction.

This week, one 19-year-old is taking up the torch. Eli Aaron has founded Free Toronto of the OMB; he organized a town hall meeting last week and has gotten support from 15 local residents’ associations.

“We hope that this will send a strong message to the politicians at Queen’s Park that this system does not work for Torontonians, it doesn’t work for communities,” he said, according to City News. “The system is broken, it favours big money interest and we’re looking for change.”

Community stakeholders, they say, don’t have the resources to go up against big builder guns. The OMB has been criticized for making decisions that go against city planners, including a recent uptown project it greenlit in spite of opposition from Mayor Tory and city councillor Jaye Robinson, who says 80% of the proposed developments in her ward go to the OMB.

With the caveat that we must always be skeptical of an organization with an enormous amount of skin in the game, BILD makes a good case in support of the OMB on its blog this week.

Without it, BILD argues our housing shortage would be even more dire. “Too often people mistakenly blame the OMB for the intensification that we are experiencing across the GTA and most especially in downtown Toronto. The reality is that intensification is the result of the provincial policy and the OMB is just doing its job,” says the post.

OMB, it argues, is often a fall-back position for municipal councils that don’t want to make unpopular decisions, and our only safeguard against NIMBYism. Without an independent appeals board, the industry would struggle even more to meet housing needs.

No one is saying that the city doesn’t need an appeals board, but even its supporters think the current system is broken.

“Although we believe that an independent appeal body like the OMB is absolutely necessary, there is always room for improvement and we believe there are some valid concerns that should be discussed,” says the BILD blog. “For instance, the OMB could hire and train more experienced mediators and it could provide planning resources to ratepayer groups to facilitate mediation and settlement.”

If we’ve learned anything from our southern neighbours’ recent healthcare debacle, it’s that we need a better plan in place before we yank the old plan. I’d like to see that new plan include some plain language that would make it possible for residents to elect peers to such a board, instead of so much jargon that only lawyers and experienced policy-handlers can stand it.

But we also need to recognize that Toronto does have affordability issues. (There are loud cries this week for updating the rent controls laws, as two west-end condo dwellers saw their rents double overnight; current laws protect only older buildings, so our recent condo boom and the resultant rental units aren’t covered.)

I know that even saying this is just shouting into the void, but these issues need addressing now, not later, and we need to simplify, simplify, simplify. Housing is intensely personal, life-affecting and necessary. Why do we make it so hard?