Towards Implementation? Building Sustainable Urban Communities in Ontario assesses the Ontario government's performance on urban sustainability issues against widely accepted 'smart growth' principles, and its own October 2003 election platform commitments.
The Pembina Institute's report highlights the adoption of the Greenbelt Protection Act, commitment of a portion of provincial gasoline tax revenues to public transit, and release of a growth management plan focused on containing urban sprawl for the Golden Horseshoe region, as the government's key achievements during its first months in office.
The report also highlights that these initiatives have some distance to go before they are implemented. There is, for example, no formula for the distribution of gasoline tax revenues for transit, which is scheduled to begin in October; the greenbelt legislation is only a temporary freeze on the expansion of urban areas in the Golden Horseshoe, pending the development of final greenbelt plan, and the government's proposals regarding a growth management plan for the region, and the reform of the Ontario Municipal Board remain only proposals. The report concludes that the government needs to move forward on all of these fronts if it is to fulfill the promise of its election platform to the province's urban communities.
