There are two main issues…

There are two main issues that I see regarding the proposed changes, specifically:

1. Proposal #1, grandfathering requirements.
Why are grandfathering requirements changing? The excess soil regulation requirements did not suddenly pop-up. The construction industry knows about this issue, and to-be-honest, construction was only stopped or delayed in Phase 1 shut-down (basically early 2019). It is in my belief that this is only an excuse to include projects which does not WANT to be included in the excess soil regulations, but should have been included in the original timelines.

2. Proposal #9, registry delivery.
My main issue is the proposed change 9.1 "for the purpose of filing notices for large and high-risk excess soil-generating projects and large reuse sites to be ... operated by RPRA". I personally have no issue with who the ultimate operator of the registry to be. Whether the operator is MECP or RPRA, as long as it serves the intended purposes, that's fine with me. My concern is the wording of "large and high-risk ... projects and large reuse sites". The qualifier description of what brownfield projects are required to submit a record is way too vague and full of loopholes. In the original description of the Excess Soil Reuse regulations, a rough summary is any brownfield project, excluding individual residential, pool construction, or clean topsoil projects. It is my hope that all soil haul trucks would be required to file under the registry. The exemptions must be clear and unambiguous, otherwise any trucker would have "plausible deniability" by giving a vague project description to the authorities that stop them.

Furthermore, the province's excess soil issues do not extend only to chemically contaminated soils, but also to "debris contaminated soils" as well. Asphalt, concrete, steel, bricks, wood, and debris mixed in with soils at a brownfield site are all non-economically or technically feasible for reuse. By failing to include ALL BROWNFIELD PROJECTS to register their soil movement, debris contaminated soils is still a very large concern for the construction industry. Debris contaminated soils are not suited for all construction projects; farms cannot take it as clean fill or topsoil; it is expensive for projects to pay money in order to dump it into a landfill. Therefore, HUGE quantities of debris contaminated soils are illegally dumped at various private locations to unsuspecting land owners.

Registry and tracking of all brownfield projects is essential, and exemptions must be clear and unambiguous.