County of Brant Council voted to adopt the Cainsville Premier Employment Hub Land Use Strategy and Official Plan amendment during last week’s Council meeting on Tuesday, September 8, 2026.
The strategy, last discussed at a June 9 Council meeting, is intended to help protect employment lands and guide future growth and investment in Cainsville over the next 30 years.
It focuses on attracting new business, establishing land-use and zoning provisions, designing a multimodal transportation network, incorporating green infrastructure, utilizing urban design principles and phasing in development.
“The strategy looks to balance economic growth, investment attraction and job creation, with high-quality design and compatibility with surrounding communities,” said Brandon Kortleve, Manager of Policy Planning. “The objective is to establish Cainsville as the County’s premier employment hub over the next few decades. I’ll say that again: the next few decades. This is a long-range plan and it won’t happen overnight. We recognize that.”
There are 376 hectares of land in Cainsville, including 136 hectares of vacant employment lands. The area has direct access to Highway 403 and employment corridors, an existing rail connection and a nearby 230-kilovolt transmission line. It’s also slated to be fully serviced in collaboration with the City of Brantford.
Zach Gable, the County’s Director of Economic Development and Tourism, said those advantages, coupled with the strategy, provides an exciting opportunity for the municipality.
“From the economic development perspective, we have an opportunity to be really proactive and position these lands to take advantage of some of those attributes,” he said. …“From the labour force perspective, I think there’s big advantages here. If you look at the larger commuter shed, we could attract people from all over, but most of the people that are going to be working here are going to be residents of Branford and Brant, and we have a good supply of people with that skill set in manufacturing to really support that type of use in this area.”
Kortleve went on to say that since the June 9 meeting, staff made some key revisions based on conversations with residents of Cainsville, nearby Brantford residents, and some of the neighbouring areas and businesses.
Among the revisions made to the strategy and Official Plan (OP) amendment are changes to land-use designation, as well as more clarity around job density and employment typologies.
With the goal of increasing employment density from 15 to 30 jobs per hectare by 2051, staff proposed achieving that target through a mix of uses depending on the size and location of each site. These include multi-tenant industrial uses, small-scale warehousing and manufacturing, medium-scale manufacturing, large industrial uses, and a supportive village centre to meet the daily needs of workers and businesses.
Additional mixed-use commercial designations were also introduced along portions of Colborne Street east to complement the proposed “village centre.” The designation is intended to provide a transition between large industries and sensitive uses, and permit uses like commercial, office and light industrial uses.
Other revisions to the strategy include buffer concerns, residential uses in the community corridor, minor expansion of legal non-conforming uses, and a servicing framework.
“With respect to servicing, there will be a transition to full municipal water and wastewater servicing. There’s a servicing agreement that’s in discussion with the City of Branford, but that was part of previous annexation conversations [from 2016],” said Kortleve. “That servicing will be coming to the area, and the development will be phased to align with the servicing capacity and with the investments that the municipality is making. The idea behind that is, as we rip up roads to upgrade the servicing, those would be the areas that are targeted for the kind of wholesome look and upgrades being done at that time.”
While Council heard from only one local businesses owner in the area during the meeting, it also heard from City of Brantford Ward 4 Councillors Linda Hunt and Richard Carpenter.
Given that Ward 4 is next to Cainsville, the two represent a nearby residential neighbourhood just north of lands included in the strategy.
While they were fully supportive of the strategy and economic development, they said they had heard concerns from residents living on Hansford Drive about potential noise and odour.
“The Hansford Drive residents, which are the ones whose backyards go directly onto Brant County Road 18, have a legitimate concern about what is going to be built on the other side from the standpoint of a heavy industrial complex potentially being there,” said Hunt. “We have some experience in Ward 4 with residents that are located adjacent to industrial and commercial, and the two complaints we hear constantly are about noise and odour. The buffer, which I think was referred to as a 30 metre naturalized area, is likely not going to be sufficient, depending on if there’s a heavy industrial building that’s being built just on the other side of the buffer.”
Hunt went on to say that she and Carpenter would have also liked to have had the opportunity to participate in the public consultation that’s taken place to date.
“I did speak to our planning department, which had been circulated on the application, but there was nothing actually sent that came through to Council to make us aware of what was going on on the other side of Brant County Road 18. So we have not had that opportunity to speak to our residents that are concerned,” said Hunt. “…We would have appreciated that opportunity to speak to our constituents to be able to address their concerns and to also be engaged from the standpoint of public consultation with the County.”
While they requested that the County defer the decision on the application to early 2027, Council ultimately chose not to support it.
Moving into discussions, County councillors then had the chance to ask both Kortleve and Gable various questions about the strategy.
Many touched on everything from public transit to setbacks and buffers, employment density and typologies, economic benefit, County investment, monitoring high-employment uses, noise and odour pollution, and of course, municipal servicing.
County CAO Alison Newton said most of the work for a servicing agreement between the County and the City has been completed. The agreement would allow Cainsville to connect to Brantford’s water and wastewater system, but there’s still “some minor language that’s being work through” and the intent is to bring the agreement forward early in the next term of council.
Councillor Robert Chambers said that if the strategy only works if Cainsville is fully serviced, but there’s no agreement in place have that done, it would be premature to vote on the strategy at this time.
“Why we are approving a master plan that is based on an assumption that, at this point, is merely an assumption, but in two or three months could actually be an agreement for full servicing if the agreement is passed by both councils?” he asked. “Would it not be prudent to wait until the agreement is in place? Because it’s been my experience that sometimes the City Council and the County Council cannot agree on things that are important, such as this, without a lot of discussion.”
Newton said even if the agreement were to fall through, because Cainsville is now within the County’s settlement boundary, it legally has to be serviced one way or another.
Kortleve added, “It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation because it’s not a matter of if the area will be serviced; it’s a matter of how and when regardless of who is servicing. In order to know what we will do, we have to have a vision for the area, and so that’s what this document sets out: the vision.”
After further discussions, Councillor Brian Coleman, who represents the Ward 5 constituents in Cainsville alongside Ella Haley, said that while he initially did not support the full strategy in June, he would now be supporting the recommendation to approve it.
His one request was that any future changes to transportation and roads take into consideration that agriculture equipment still needs to be able to move through the area.
The recommendation to approve the Cainsville Premier Employment Hub Land Use Strategy and Official Plan amendment was then carried, with Councillors Ella Haley and Robert Chambers voting against it.
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
