City’s annexation move is a real gamble

Peterborough city council has rolled the dice on an annexation deal with Cavan Monaghan Township, although it’s not clear councillors see it that way.

Council on Monday asked the provincial government to legislate an annexation agreement between the two sides.

That leads to two questions: Will the province agree, and if so what terms will it impose?

For guidance we can look to the last annexation in Ontario that came down to provincial intervention when the City of Barrie and Innisfil Township couldn’t agree to terms.

The parallels are striking. Innisfil got a casino after Barrie said no and with casino revenue in its pocket developed expansion plans of its own. In 2005 it asked Barrie to provide services for a new township industrial park on the edge of the city and was rejected.

Barrie then proposed an annexation, which the provincial Liberal government supported. It believed Barrie needed more industrial land to meet targets reflecting its status as a Places to Grow growth centre.

Annexation talks followed with the help of a provincial facilitator. A proposed agreement was reached which Barrie supported and Innisfil rejected. The facilitator said that was the end of provincial involvement, Queen’s Park would not get involved and the two sides needed to reach a local consensus.

That history is a nearly exact parallel of what has happened here so far, except here it was Peterborough that rejected the original negotiated terms.

In Barrie, a year passed and then the area MPP, a Liberal cabinet minister, asked the province to legislate annexation.

The province agreed and the Barrie-Innisfil Boundary Adjustment Act was introduced within four months.

With that in mind it seems likely the province would eventually step in here, particularly if Peterborough MPP and Liberal cabinet minister Jeff Leal supports the request.

What would a provincially mandated annexation look like? That’s where the roll of the dice comes in.

In Barrie the Liberal government adopted the original facilitator’s recommendation. If that happens here councillors who called for the province to intervene will be disappointed. They rejected the $74.4-million deal because they feel it is too costly and requires the city to pay too much of the price up front.

Or, Queen’s Park might lower the price and/or change the payment schedule. Neither were factors in Barrie-Innisfil, where the dispute was over the amount of land changing hands.

If politics plays a role in the final outcome Peterborough has the stronger position. Leal is a Liberal cabinet minister while Cavan Monaghan is represented by Laurie Scott, an opposition Conservative MPP.

That’s the way the table is now set, which looks like an invitation for both sides to sit down and start talking again rather the risk accepting whatever the province serves up.