At the BR we are pretty liberal in what we put on our pages, we will print anything that is current, submitted and of interest to the readers. We have received a statement from Mayoralty candidate Max LeMarchant about the post concerning the Interim Control Bylaw. In order to organise content we have set up a Statement Page where we encourage candidates to post their campaign statements, or anything else that is pertinent in these times. Click here for the page

Max’s Statement:

Cobourg Needs to Plan First — and Develop Second

The BurdReport has raised an important concern about the motion coming before Cobourg Council regarding an Interim Control By-law.

I support the fundamental point he is making: Council needs to deal with the planning problem confronting Cobourg now. It should not simply initiate another process that allows major development applications to continue advancing while the Town decides whether it should act.

But I believe there is an even larger issue that residents of Cobourg need to understand.

The Official Plan Should Come First

The Official Plan is the foundation of municipal land-use planning. It is where a community establishes its long-term vision for how and where it intends to grow, including such fundamental questions as density, neighbourhood character, transportation, infrastructure, employment, environmental protection and the overall form of the community.

Cobourg’s Official Plan was already badly outdated when this Council took office.

Updating it should therefore have been one of the first major planning priorities of this term of Council — not something left until the end of the term after major planning decisions had already been made.

The sequence matters.

An Official Plan establishes the community’s planning objectives and policies. The zoning by-law then provides the more detailed regulatory framework needed to implement those objectives.

You establish the plan first. Then you establish the regulations required to implement it.

Cobourg did essentially the reverse.

The Zoning By-law Was Updated Before the Official Plan

On December 17, 2025, Council approved a comprehensive new zoning by-law while Cobourg was still operating under an outdated Official Plan.

The zoning by-law was approved as part of an approximately 1,400-page Council agenda immediately before Christmas.

I opposed its approval and warned the Town that it contained serious problems.

One of those problems directly affected the planned French Catholic elementary school in New Amherst.

The school site had previously gone through the municipal planning process and had been approved for the school use. The project was advancing toward construction. Yet in the new comprehensive zoning by-law, the school was shown in the wrong location while the actual lands intended and previously approved for the school were instead zoned for residential development.

This was not an insignificant typographical error buried somewhere in an inconsequential provision. It affected a real school project on lands that had already been through the planning process and was moving toward construction.

Problems such as this demonstrate why approving such an extensive and consequential zoning document required extraordinary care.

I considered the problems with the new zoning sufficiently serious that an appeal became necessary.

But there is another consequence of the zoning by-law that deserves particular public attention.

It changed important building-height controls.

Those changes potentially opened the door to substantially taller and higher-density development before Cobourg’s residents had gone through the fundamental exercise of deciding, through a new Official Plan, whether that was the form of growth they wanted for their community.

Whether intended or not, the result was that an important part of the debate about Cobourg’s future urban form was effectively advanced through the zoning process before the community had established its updated vision through the Official Plan.

That is backwards.

Questions about whether Cobourg should become a significantly more vertical community should not effectively be determined through technical zoning provisions before residents have established their broader vision for the Town through the Official Plan process.

These are decisions that can change Cobourg for generations.

Cobourg Residents Deserve the Opportunity to Decide

This is not an argument against growth.

It is an argument for good planning.

There are many ways of providing housing. High-rise construction is one option, but it is certainly not the only option. Townhouses, apartments, mixed-use buildings, gentle density, accessory units, courtyard and cottage housing, and other forms of human-scale development can all contribute substantially to housing supply.

The people of Cobourg deserve the opportunity to consider those choices.

What kind of community do we want Cobourg to become?

Where should additional density occur?

What scale of development is appropriate?

What infrastructure will be required to support it?

How do we provide more housing while protecting what people value about Cobourg?

And how do we accommodate growth while creating the healthy, attractive and economically resilient community that we want to leave to the generations that follow us?

Those questions belong first and foremost in a comprehensive Official Plan review with meaningful public participation.

They should not be answered incrementally by whichever major development application happens to arrive at Town Hall next.

Why an Interim Control By-law Makes Sense

That brings us back to the Interim Control By-law.

With significant development proposals now before the Town while the Official Plan itself is being reviewed, I believe there is a compelling case for Council to use the planning tools available to it to provide the time necessary to establish a coherent community vision.

An Interim Control By-law is, by its nature, temporary.

The objective should not be to stop development.

The objective should be to ensure that major development decisions do not outrun the planning process that is supposed to guide them.

The possibility of an appeal to the Ontario Land Tribunal should certainly be considered, and Council should obtain appropriate legal advice.

But fear of an appeal cannot become a substitute for governing.

Municipal councils are elected to make decisions in the public interest. The possibility that someone may challenge a decision does not relieve Council of its responsibility to make that decision.

If Council concludes, on proper planning and legal advice, that interim control is justified to protect the integrity of the Official Plan review, it should have the confidence to act.

Plan First. Develop Second.

We cannot undo major development decisions once buildings are constructed and infrastructure commitments have been made.

That is precisely why planning exists.

Cobourg’s residents are entitled to a meaningful opportunity to establish their vision for how their community should grow through a comprehensive and transparent Official Plan process.

We should then update our zoning to implement that vision.

And development should proceed within that clearly established framework.

The present situation provides Council with an opportunity to restore that proper sequence.

Update the Official Plan.
Let the community establish the vision.
Bring the zoning into conformity with that vision.
Then consider major development within that framework.

Until that work is sufficiently advanced, I believe an appropriately structured Interim Control By-law deserves Council’s immediate and serious consideration.

The BurdReport is right to insist that Council not allow the question itself to become another exercise in delay.

Cobourg does not need another process designed simply to decide whether we should eventually make a decision.

It needs leadership now.

Max LeMarchant
Candidate for Mayor of Cobourg
votemax.ca