What is the Ontario Municipal Board?

The Ontario Railway and Municipal Board was created in 1906 to oversee municipal finances and the expanding railway systems between and within cities. The “railway” title was dropped in 1932.

The OMB was the province’s first tribunal, according to the board’s website, and has retained most of the powers it was given in 1906.

Today, the OMB is “the most powerful board of its kind in North America,” according to comprehensive research by University of Winnipeg assistant professor Aaron Moore, who wrote “Planning Politics in Toronto: The Ontario Municipal Board and Urban Development.”

As a quasi-judicial body, the OMB is responsible to the attorney general’s office, which also oversees the province’s court system. The OMB is largely governed by the provincial Planning Act, though it receives authority from a vast range of legislation. As Moore writes, it essentially has “the same power, rights and privileges as the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.”

In 1971, a royal commission examining civil rights reviewed the powers of the OMB and found even members had little understanding of the board’s scope, noting its authority came from some 30 different statutes.

“The situation cannot be permitted to continue where even the board does not know the extent of its own jurisdiction,” the commission found.

The OMB has the ability to conduct hearings across the province, but it is based in an office tower on Bay St. in downtown Toronto, just north of City Hall, where small hearing rooms contain wooden benches for members to sit behind and a stand for evidence to be given by experts, giving the appearance of criminal courtrooms though it is planning decisions that are on trial.

There are more than 30 members appointed to the OMB by the province, who typically sit in single or two-member panels to make decisions.

For a $300 fee, an individual, association or company can submit an appeal on issues ranging from amendments to official plans, to applications for rezoning, to the additions to that monster home down the street.

Decisions of the OMB can be challenged in court, though it is rare. Typically, the OMB has the final say.