Cynicism is bad for your soul - An update on development charge data
Development Charge Data Project Update
Meredith’s growing cynicism
I am not normally a cynical person, but our project to create a free repository of development charge data may make me one. I’ll explain.
I reached out to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing’s office to see if someone there could help me locate someone in the bureaucracy who could provide guidance. I wanted to get information from the municipalities without wasting hundreds of dollars in fees and time filing Freedom of Information (FOI) requests for the remaining 198 municipalities.
A lovely-sounding person in Minister Flack's office told me to email the general media email account first, which I did. After no one responded, I called her back and left a voice message. Then she called me back but didn’t leave a message, and then called me back again, but my hands were full, so we basically played phone tag for two weeks.
When we finally connected she told me the province is divided into five different planning sections (northwest, northeast, central, southeast and southwest) and then gave me the email addresses of two people (one from central and one from northeast) and told me I should email them with the caveat that they will probably not be the right people but they should be able to help me find the right people…hopefully. It has been 10 days and I have received no response.
And this brings us to the exciting FOI portion of our update. We have filed two FOI requests, one with the City of Toronto and one with Ottawa. The 30-day deadline for the recipient of the FOI must respond passed on May 8th.
Ottawa invites us to visit the archives
After getting zero response to the original February 3rd email, my colleague reached out to the city archives department, and while we waited for a response from them, we filed an FOI as well. The archives then responded on May 10th with the historic bylaw information, but not the treasurer statements, background studies, or development charge pamphlets. So, basically, they provided a small portion of what we asked for.
Then, on May 13th, an Analyst from the Access to Information and Privacy Office sent us an email closing our FOI, telling us that the information we asked for is available on its website. It isn’t. Current information is, and while we have added that information to our database, historic information isn’t. This is a problem, as the point of this project is to give researchers the information they need to analyze trends over time. Unhelpfully, the analyst suggested we reach out to the city archives to help us find the historical information.
They’ve got to be around here somewhere
So, to sum up, the City of Ottawa, like all municipalities in Ontario, is required to collect development change information and make it accessible to the public. It keeps some information in the archive and current information online, but no one seems to know where the historic treasurer statements, background studies, or development charge pamphlets are or who is responsible for them. Good job, guys.
Toronto tells a similar story
The Toronto FOI story isn’t much different from the Ottawa story in that they never responded to our original email of inquiry. We found another email address to try, but not before we had already filed the FOI.
Through this process, we have found that much of Toronto’s historical DC information is available online, but anything before 2009 is buried in meeting minutes, which you can theoretically access through one of three search portals. The email telling us that our FOI had been closed added a final summary line: if that doesn’t work, you should email Shirley or David (last names withheld for privacy).
We emailed Shirley, left two voicemails, and then emailed David, who responded, “Honestly, I have no idea where to even start with that.”
To be fair to David, he then suggested we contact the Toronto archive and gave us the email of a librarian at City Planning.
And this is how cynicism takes root.
Guelph fills us with hope
It’s not all bad news. Since we last connected, six more municipalities responded to our inquiries and have sent us some or all of their historical Development Charge (DC) data:
Ajax sent files back to 2003 (yay Ajax)!
Aurora sent files back to 2015
Guelph: There are 43 files, everything back to 2000 except the Treasurer’s Statements, which go back to 2004 (Guelph rules)!
Waterloo sent 41 files back to 2008
Lanark-Highlands’ clerk emailed us to say that, according to the clerk, they don't have a DC bylaw, so they have nothing to send!
Ottawa sent bylaws back to 2004, but the other three sets of documents are still not accessible, and that’s a whole other story (see below)
This brings us to 23 municipalities out of 220 that have sent us some or all of what we requested (in January). That’s a 10% response rate in three and a half months.
Mike, on the other hand, is a born cynic
Mike Moffatt was on The Agenda with Steve Paikin the other day. For those of you who don’t know The Agenda, it is the flagship show of the provincial broadcaster, TVO, and must-watch TV for policy nerds and wonks alike. (It’s currently wrapping up its 19th and final season - RIP #TheAgenda).
Steve Paikin asked, and I’m paraphrasing here, if Mike thought governments could overcome all of the hurdles and “petty regional differences” to come together and get housing built? Mike answered, and I’m paraphrasing here,
‘It’s going to be really hard.”
I’m not suggesting that the reason we can’t access the historic development charge data we need is because of petty regional differences, but I am suggesting it’s a good proxy for the entire housing crisis.
No one person or level of government is responsible for the housing crisis. We’re all going to have to pull together to get out of it. Municipalities in particular are going to need to get moving, and if they don’t, the provincial government is going to need to step in. The lack of urgency on this matter is obvious. Absolutely everyone is trying to make this someone else's job. The overall vibe is: If nothing gets done, then I can’t possibly have been the one to have messed up. If I throw enough hurdles in front of this person, maybe they’ll get bored or they’ll forget about it and go away.
This is how days turn into weeks, then months, and then years. But the housing crisis is not going away. Politicians and bureaucrats, city councillors and city clerks, are all part of the problem. This is how Canada goes from being a contender amongst the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development rankings to becoming the worst-performing advanced economy over the next decade. We can’t get anything built because we’re all passing the buck and hoping someone else will fix it.
We’re not going to take it
Guess what? This isn’t working for anyone!
Also, I’m not going away.
Warm wishes and kind regards,
Meredith