Insights from Complex, “Hidden” Fields: An Articling Student’s Perspective on the OBA’s 2024 Municipal, Planning, and Environmental Ontario Legal Conference

  • April 17, 2024
  • Peter Voltsinis

Municipal law and planning law are complex and, to some extent, “hidden” fields. The practice areas tend to feature less frequently in popularized conceptions of “the law.” Regardless, the fields undoubtedly engage complex issues that shape and reshape communities in Ontario and elsewhere.

On February 8 and 9, 2024, I participated in and attended the Ontario Bar Association’s (“OBA”) Municipal, Planning, and Environmental Ontario Legal Conference. My experiences at the conference confirmed the complex nature of these all-too-important legal practice areas.

The 2024 Ontario Legal Conference: A Brief Overview

As an undergraduate co-op student studying land use planning, I quickly began to appreciate planning’s complexity. The field engages numerous intersecting areas of expertise, from field ecology and heritage conservation to transportation engineering and land economics.

Now, as an articling student at Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP (“Cassels”) and the OBA Municipal Law Section’s Student Member at Large, I have started to explore the legal dimensions of these complex fields. The 2024 Ontario Legal Conference represented one such important learning opportunity.

The two-day event featured a series of plenary discussions and area-specific panels on important legal updates in the fields. For municipal and planning lawyers, attendees had the opportunity to discuss comprehensive updates on a variety of evolving areas of the practice, including:

  1. Updates on the Ontario Land Tribunal, including its new online service for appeal submissions;
  2. An overview of Ontario’s new strong mayor powers;
  3. Recent compensation decisions under Ontario’s Expropriations Act;
  4. The municipal procurement process for technology and construction projects;
  5. Case law updates for municipal and planning lawyers;
  6. The role of climate change policy in shaping and necessitating changes to land use planning policy;
  7. The role of integrity commissioners and municipal codes of conduct;
  8. Planning law legislative developments;
  9. Drainage Act approvals and appeal processes; and
  10. The ethical complexities of acting for municipalities and multi-stakeholder, public-facing organizations.