Future Caledon plan will serve as blueprint beyond 2051

By ROB PAUL

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Council has been provided an update on the Future Caledon Official Plan, one which looks at various aspects of how Caledon can prepare for what's to come with an Official Plan set to be finalized in 2022.

The official plan review commenced on March of 2019 with a statutory open house and the presentation was an update on progress made since September 2021.

The speakers included Sylvia Kirkwood, Marisa Williams, Adrian Smith from the Region of Peel, Jamie Cook of Watson & Associates Economists Ltd., Ray Bacquie of R.J. Burnside & Associates Ltd., and Bobby Gauthier of WSP Canada. 

The project began in 2019 with a five-year timeline. 2019 was spent building the project work plan and 2020 focused on data collection while 2021 has been policy formulation to set 2022 up for policy formulation and council approval for implementation in 2023.

Kirkwood first provided an update on the Town of Caledon land use plan. The original plan was written in 1979 and the plan's current boundary takes the Town to 2031 for development opportunities.

“It's focusing most growth between Mayfield West, Bolton, and Caledon East,” said Kirkwood. “The new official plan we're working on is a comprehensive update to the document and it will also be a provincial conformity review as well as conformity review with our Region's official plan. The new document will prepare us for growth to 2051 and beyond.”

The original plan from 1979 was focused on those three areas for growth specifically. But with discussion from the community they've expanded growth focus and have specifically looked at Caledon East to play a role in the business sector because it lacks the viable land for expansion. While the other areas of the Town will be better utilized for expansion.

“We wanted to create a town centre utilizing Caledon East because of its limited opportunities for expansion due to the location of it within the Oak Ridges Moraine and Greenbelt area,” said Kirkwood. “As part of that, we looked at two business areas to be focused on and we focused on Victoria and Sandhill. And we focused a tourism and recreational highlight to our communities in the northwest area of the municipality.”

Needing to have the Town's official plan aligned with the Region of Peel's, Williams explained to the Council how that should look going forward.

There are five focus areas for the Town official plan: natural resources and agriculture; climate change; tourism, heritage, healthy communities, and culture; transportation, technology, and infrastructure; and growth, settlement, housing, and employment. 

“When we started the official plan review project and we were developing the project charter and work plan, we knew we needed to conduct a policy conformity exercise that would align itself with not only the provincial work, but the Region of Peel's official plan work that they were undertaking,” Williams said. “There's five key focus areas that align with Peel's 2041+ 13 topic areas.”

Each of Caledon's key focuses connects to Peel's to ensure there's continuity between the Town and the Region.

Peel's 13 areas of focus are aggregate resources, Greenbelt plans, greenlands system planning, agriculture, climate change, water resources, age-friendly planning, health and the built environment, transportation, major transit station areas, settlement boundary expansion, housing, and growth management.

The Region of Peel is required to carry out a comprehensive review of its plan every five years and it stays consistent and conforms with the provincial plans and the regional plan sets the context for local municipality plans.

The Peel 2041+ plan review began in 2013 with it set for provincial conformity by July 1, 2022.

The Region of Peel provided a preliminary growth forecast for the municipalities within the region. With Caledon's current population estimate at 81,000 and employment estimate at 26,700, those numbers are estimated to rise to 300,000 and 125,000, respectively, by 2051.

Cook broke down the employment strategy for the Town plan with it looking at five different areas. The first being growth allocation to Caledon with employment growth, location and land expansion, and overall employment area density.

From there, the employment sectoral analysis will anticipate the types of employment sectors which will inflate the local target sectors and site requirements—to inform what key target sectors. Based on anticipated employment growth by sector, the employment demand by area will be formulated and the town will then need to consider policies to attract target sectors and the amount of employment growth allocated to the Town.

With the expected growth of Caledon, Bacquie is focused on developing the multi-modal transportation master plan. The objective is to identify transportation needs and solutions for the year 2041 and 2051 to acclimate the population and employment growth.

The plan needs to integrate the Caledon Transit Strategy and improve active transportation to support the Town's broader objectives such as climate changes and healthy communities.

Currently they are developing alternative strategies and analyzing their impacts from a transportation, environmental, and natural heritage perspective in regard to transportation.

Finally, Gauthier walked Council through what's next with the Future Caledon Official Plan. Regional and provincial inputs as well as Town studies will guide the plan with background review and gap analysis reports for May and June 2021, policy options and directions reports for Fall 2021, and a draft of the Town of Caledon plan by late 2021.

There will be a detailed engagement plan presented to Council later in May to showcase events and consultation tools to receive community input.