The current legislation…

The current legislation regarding the rights of our land has been a topic of discussion in my family since time 1970’s when, specifically, the Niagara Escarpment Commission was established. This issue has affected our family for generations, it has been a burden on us since the NEC was conceived and now the burden has passed onto me and my brother. While I do believe that land conservation is necessary and seeks to accomplish a fair objective, the laws and regulations that now govern my ability expand and develop on that property have greatly overstepped their purpose and are unnecessarily far-reaching.

The measures that the Conservation Authorities are imposing have made the real estate market in the GTA substantially more costly. By over regulating large parcels of land the supply of homes has been unable to keep up with the demand. This has put an unnecessary burden on the peoples of the GTA and artificially increased the prices of homes and rent. Overregulation for the purposes of land conservation do not need to be so stringent so as to deny persons and families a place to live on and establish homes and roots.

These measures have also denied me the right of autonomy over my own property. In consultations with other property owners many of us have expressed how our land is now ours only in name as we lack the ability to do anything substantial on that land. We may be the owners in name but the conservation authorities are the modern day equivalents to lords of the land to whom we must petition in order to build a home or cultivate anything on. It is almost a modern day feudal enterprise as we are on their good graces and good nature. This has substantially devalued the land and pushed many families to abandon any sort of development claims, citing the headache and heartache that comes with repeatedly being denied any and every development proposal.

In regards to my family, we hold over 70 acres of land and the current conservation authorities allow me to build only one home on those 70 plus acres. They refuse to allow me and my brother to each establish a home for our newly formed families, only one of us may build and live there. In addition the process for the request to build those homes has become so complicated and inefficient that I am considering abandoning the idea altogether. For example, the land that has been allocated and specified to me, on my family’s generations old land, on which I may build one home, lays on a contaminated farm field which resides next to a busy road. This is neither a safe nor practical spot to build a home on. I have found rules and regulations like these to be completely absurd, unnecessary and absolutely laughable.

The process by which these decisions are based on, how to build and where, which are imposed on the landowners are intricate and perplexing. There is little review on how these decisions are made and judicial oversight is non-existent. Putting these lands in the supposed hands of the public authorities with a broad mandate achieves little. The land consists of scrub bush and farm fields, which offers little in the way of scenery or environmental protection. The protections offered onto this particular land are cumbersome and convoluted. More autonomy should be given to private hands and less to public to manage it. Protection for land is important and can be very efficient, when done right. The situation that I find myself in and my family has been in for generations has hurt us and possibly the GTA as a whole.

Lands as vast and as central as mine are meant to be lived on, cultivated on, developed on and establish a family and roots on. They should not be left to sit idle while a modern day lord, in the form of a conservation authority, dictates what I can and cannot do on generations old land. I cannot continue petitioning these authorities, praying that I am in their good graces, for approval of a home to live on.