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The City of Pickering is set to vote next month on a secondary housing development plan that could transform the municipality’s landscape east of Toronto over the next quarter-century.
Mayor Kevin Ashe is presenting the move, which could result in the building of homes for more than 70,000 people, as a job creator and key solution to address the housing shortage.
But critics argue the plan to develop the agricultural area is costly and unnecessary, and a local First Nation is sounding the alarm about a lack of consultation.
The area under consideration covers more than 17 square kilometres. It is bordered by 6th Concession Road to the south, 8th Concession Road to the north, Lake Ridge Road to the east and Westney Road to the west.
The Ontario government added the land to Pickering’s urban boundary in December 2024.
The mayor said in an interview earlier this month that the area is mainly used to farm crops such as wheat, corn and soybeans.
“We certainly recognize the importance of farmland,” he said. “But the province has made the decision to expand Pickering’s urban boundary, and our responsibility now is to plan the growth carefully … and building a complete, well-designed community.”
Over the next decade, Ashe said Pickering’s population is expected to increase to more than 150,000 from around 100,000.
“We have to be proactive and effectively make Pickering a place we can all be proud to call home,” he said in an interview earlier this month.
Durham’s Regional Official Plan predicts the region’s total population will jump to 1.3 million by 2051, from around 700,000 now.
The policy document was approved by the regional council in May 2023 and allows the region’s eight municipalities to make amendments based on their own housing needs and priorities.
If approved, Pickering’s new housing development would fall under the broader regional plan. But it has already been facing headwinds.
The initial vote on the development plan was scheduled in March, but it was pushed back twice to April, and then to May after the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation raised concerns about a lack of meaningful consultation.
Pickering is located within the First Nation’s territory.
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“In our view, there has been a complete lack of meaningful dialogue and our requests to meet to discuss our significant concerns have largely been ignored,” the First Nation said in a social media post last month. “A consultation protocol between the City of Pickering and MSIFN is needed.”
Ashe said the city is committed to respectful engagement with the First Nation.
A spokesperson for the city confirmed that Ashe met with Chief Kelly LaRocca last Monday to discuss “interests and concerns,” as well as the next steps for continued engagement.
“Following the April 20 meeting, and in recognition of the importance of allowing more time for dialogue and review, the mayor issued a directive to postpone council’s consideration of the secondary plan,” it said.
Ashe said he hopes Pickering’s council will give the green light at a special meeting scheduled for May 20.
Abdullah Mir, the co-chair of an advocacy group called Stop Durham Sprawl, is advocating against it.
“The reason it’s a bad idea is because it’s classic urban sprawl, and urban sprawl is very, very costly,” said Mir.
“Pickering is a growing city. I love living here, and I always felt and continue to feel that we need to do some responsible planning.”
Mir said he understands the need to address expected population growth, but projections must be recalculated to reflect more recent immigration restrictions imposed by the federal government.
Existing neighbourhoods have huge capacity to add housing, Mir added. He believes the city should move forward with intensification rather than focusing on “unserviced greenfield lands” without knowing the fiscal or environmental cost.
Such studies have not yet been completed.
Ashe said what’s being voted on is just a “road map” for the next steps in a 10 to 20-year development process that he believes is inevitable.
“It’s really the beginning of a process rather than the end of a project,” he said, adding that environmental, fiscal, wastewater and other studies would still be required and he expects them to be completed in the next five years.
David Amborski, an urban planning professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, said he agrees with Ashe that development of the area is necessary.
Prioritizing plans such as that in northeast Pickering is necessary to help cities get “ahead of the game,” he said, since development takes a long time to come to fruition.
“We’re trying to catch up now on our housing supply nationally, and in areas like Toronto, and it’s a struggle to catch up to where we should be,” he said.
“So I think we have to look before planning and try and make sure that we have adequate supply in the future, and I think it’s important to do the proper planning early on.”
Amborski said while the area east of Toronto has seen some development in recent years, it has historically lagged far behind the York region to the north and Peel in the west due to fewer economic opportunities.
That needs to change, he said.
The federal government acquired vast areas of land to build an airport in north Pickering more than 50 years ago to bridge the gap between the east and the rest of GTA, Amborski said. But that plan was officially cancelled last year after decades of stagnation.
Meanwhile, a lack of “shovel-ready,” serviced and approved land for development factored into a significant increase in housing prices in the province, he said.
He said there is a need for both intensification and new development plans to address the housing shortage. “I have always argued … that you need all types of housing in all locations,” he said
In 2024, the Ontario government announced a policy statement meant to streamline land use planning and accelerate development.
Amborski called the statement a “very important” step to make sure all municipalities, including Pickering, have the land they need available.
He said while environmental studies can be done in the earlier stages of planning, it is close to impossible to know the total cost of a development project in advance, because there are so many variables: density, the type of housing, infrastructure costs and whether provincial or federal funding is available.
“You can’t stop growth. You have to find ways to finance it,” he said.
“So, you have to look at ways to mitigate the impact of finances and have some faith that there’s going to be ways to deal with that and address that.”
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