Examining Considerations of Social Sustainability And Equity Within Integrated Community Sustainability Plans in Ontario

The concepts of sustainability, and sustainability planning, have become prominent in the last thirty years. In 2005, the Canadian government created a budget plan that was intended to fund infrastructure projects in municipalities across the country, as well as catalyze and strengthen sustainability planning within municipalities across the nation. In order for municipalities to receive the funding they needed to create Integrated Community Sustainability Plans (ICSPs) or provincial variants (ex. strategic sustainability plans). This thesis comparatively analyzes select integrated community sustainability plans in the Province of Ontario, Canada with specific focus placed on how and whether ICSPs address, define and advance social equity goals and principles in sustainability planning. Two questions drive the research: 1) How have ICSPs considered equity principles in their design and implementation; and, 2) How does variation in the degree of community involvement in sustainability planning influence how equity is addressed? This study draws upon qualitative methods including a comparative document analysis of ICSPs in Ontario and semi-structured key informant interviews. The overall findings suggested that equity was not strongly considered in the ICSPs analysed. There were few key results that emphasised this. Firstly there was a disconnect between policy goals and details within implementation strategies. There was found to be a lack of prioritization of equity, particularly with meaningful consideration of distributional equity. Lastly a lack of prescriptive guidance by the federal government and FCM with respect to goals and implementation.