By Pepper Parr
June 19th, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
ROPA won’t mean very much to the average Burlington citizen
Regional Official Plan Amendment
ROPA 48 meant a lot to Burlington.
On November 10th, 2021, the Minister of Municipal Affairs announced a change in the Official Plan that moved the Urban Growth Centre further north.
An Urban Centre Growth boundary with the three GO stations MTSA’s in blue. This was the plan that was going to save the downtown core from massive high-rise development.
In a gushy statement Mayor Meed Ward told her citizens that the “Hon. Minister Steve Clark from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing delivered amazing news for our city at a press conference earlier this morning.”
“The Province has approved our request to adjust the boundaries of the Urban Growth Centre (UGC), allowing us to move the designation that was once centered on our downtown core to focus instead on our Burlington GO Station and thereby direct future development with height and density to where it belongs: near mass transit.”
“This is a journey that started back in 2011 and saw many challenges over the years as our community repeatedly voiced their growing concerns that our Official Plan and the development they were seeing was not aligned with their vision for our city. They did not see the cherished character of our downtown and lakefront being protected and preserved. This is a big part of the reason Burlington elected a new mayor and five new members of council in 2018.
“We heard the call for change from across our city, and over the past two and a half years, we did the work to deliver for our community.
“Today’s announcement is a crucial step in the journey towards creating the community we envision.
“Burlington is open for business, and the downtown will continue to grow and evolve. By adjusting the boundaries of the UGC this way, we are in the driver’s seat, not the applicants and not the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT).
“The UGC was often misused to justify overdevelopment, even though we’ve taken our share of growth and met (and will exceed) the UGC targets. This misuse has led to land speculation, pushing affordability out of reach. Adjusting the boundary of the UGC takes the pressure off and allows appropriately scaled growth to proceed.
The Urban Growth boundary that allowed development in the downtown core.
“This great outcome is grounded in extensive study, analysis, planning rationale and feedback, and from day one, there was unanimous support from all members of our city council this term for this change. Our Executive Director of Community Planning, Heather MacDonald, has provided clear and consistent professional planning advice to council to fully complete the necessary and substantive planning policy work to support the recommended UGC boundary adjustment. I am grateful for the diligent work she and her team has done throughout this process.
“We did not do this alone. This has been a truly collaborative process with our community, including residents, developers, partner agencies, your entire City Council, City and Regional staff, our Regional Chair and fellow Halton Mayors.
On the left, MPP at the time Jane McKenna, Minister Clarke and Mayor Meed Ward on the right.
“We know this was not an easy decision for Minister Clark, and we thank him for listening to the data, the planning rationale, the advocacy of our council, our fellow Halton mayors and Chair, our staff, and most importantly — the people of Burlington. With this decision, he has shown himself to be a friend of Burlington. I know he listened to all the feedback carefully, and ultimately was persuaded by the planning evidence and the community voice.
“I’ve had the opportunity to meet Minister Clark through my role on the Ontario Big City Mayors (OBCM) and the Large Urban Caucus of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO). It’s a huge asset that he is a former mayor himself. He understands that local government knows our community’s needs best as we are the closest to the people. Whenever he has come to OBCM or AMO, he has listened, consulted, asked questions and heard our feedback to shape the best policy decisions. It’s been great to collaborate with him around those tables on a whole range of issues and we’ve seen our feedback translate into policy.
“One of the silver linings of the pandemic has been the close relationship that has been forged with our office, and all our elected representatives at provincial and federal levels. We have worked side by side with MPP McKenna to serve the residents of our community, and that close working relationship will last well beyond the pandemic. She has shown herself to be a fighter and strong advocate for residents’ needs.
“There is more to come in the months ahead, as we provide input to the Region’s Official Plan Review that is currently underway. We have done a lot of work to get to this point, and we have a lot of exciting growth and development ahead of us that will help us build complete communities, accommodate the population growth that wants to live here, and ensure that as many of the characteristics that make Burlington so special are preserved and protected for our residents and businesses.”
One might ask in 2026: And how has that worked out for you?
“Today’s announcement is a crucial step in the journey towards creating the community we envision.” Mayor Meed Ward
Discover more from Burlington Gazette - Local News, Politics, Community
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I agree totally with Blair Smith. Those of us who were active knew that there was a time when Metrolinx allowed municipalities to make changes with regard to the MTSA designation. Council failed to act at that time.
For the record it was ECoB who went to speak to Jane McKenna and her staff (Ottawa staff was on the phone)to find out if the UGC could be moved. The response was” that it had never been done but they would look into it “and as a result a newsletter was sent out to residents by Jane McKenna’s office indicating this was possible in the August prior to the 2018 election.
Once again Council waited and eventually when they took action it was too late.
They also failed to protect “the football area” and as a result there will be four high-rise condominiums with inadequate parking spaces for their owners in an area where traffic congestion rules the day.
This is what happens when there is no vision and residents deal with the consequences.
There are certainly people who have been involved on this “file” for longer that I have (names removed to protect the badly used) but I have been a part for more than 10 years. Reading the mayor’s statement brings back so many memories of promises made and not kept, positions established then changed with no sound rationale and an administration that I feel has completely mismanaged the overdevelopment of Burlington’s downtown. I do not intend to go into great detail because there is frankly just too much to mention. However, Meed Ward was advised in very early 2019 that the UGC must be moved. She chose to not heed the counsel and I believe that ego was largely involved. Remember, that she was in a position of extraordinary influence. Not only was she the mayor, the Council was almost entirely new and could hardly find where to place their bums. At the time, apparently on the advice of planning staff, she contended that such a move had never been previously granted. The reality was that it had never before been requested – and I believe that the Province cared not “where” Burlington put the UGC as long as it “was” and the intensification targets were met. It could have been moved north, as was initial advice, in the first quarter of 2019 and the MTSA mis-designations corrected at the same time. When the request was finally made and the UGC move approved (insert meaningless Mayoral self-congratulation), several years had passed, downtown properties had been amassed and 30 plus development proposals were in the pipeline. The die was cast. Well before, there was the ‘hail Mary’ measure of the ICBL (Interim Control Bylaw) to halt the clock around the statutory response timeframes for development proposals then it was cancelled because the City feared that the developers would line up at the OLT which they immediately did and then the ICBL was quickly reinstated because the City could not process the workload. In the meantime, the City also conducted a downtown redesign exercise with a $600,000 plus “directed” contract, excluded the Old Lakeshore District precinct (“the Football”) from the study with no explanation (how has that worked out?) and continued to promote the fallacy that it had some form of overall plan and process control. Does anyone even realize that today the OLT and City planners are using, at best, the 2008 Official Plan as the “authoritative” source because Burlington’s new Official Plan has suffered from approval process problems and has been legally challenged? After all this time and effort and money. I realize that I have wandered back and forth in time sequences like a stream of consciousness in Finnegan’s Wake. I should have made a careful chronological sequence of the points I raised. But, damn it, I’ve spent enough of my life on this – so you get what you get I’m afraid. And as the Editor asks, ” …how has [it all] worked out for you?”
Thank you for going through the details of this farcical saga and sharing them here. Anyone who has watched what has been going on for all these years — some with front row seats — feels a sense of betrayal, as you Blair first phrased it several years ago.
I will always feel that the worst betrayals aren’t and weren’t to individuals who personally believed in and worked towards helping to achieve, through the election of the current mayor and most councillors, a very different plan for the downtown and for the governing of the city, and the promised “better Burlington.” The worst betrayal in my opinion is the betrayal that can’t be undone — the one to the City itself and therefore all current and future residents.
To answer the question, it hasn’t worked out very well at all, except of course for the politicians, a sadly familiar refrain. I do retain some hope though that the tide is beginning to turn against self-serving politicos, and towards a coming together for the common good, and maybe that will eventually hit here in little Burlington too. Too late to “save” the city, but it may well destroy some legacies.
Unfortunately this council has not delivered n their promise to protect the downtown core.Too late now.Get used to a little Manhattan along our cherished Lakeshore.