Dear Ms. Boland, Thank you…

Dear Ms. Boland,

Thank you for the opportunity to provide comments on ERO posting 019-2972 “Environmental Compliance Policy”. Please accept the following as the City of Waterloo’s comments on the proposed updated policy.

According to the ERO posting, the Ministry is proposing to update their compliance policy to focus more resources on incidents and complaints from the public that pose a higher risk to the environment and/or human health and on holding polluters accountable. The Ministry is also proposing public service standards and a referral tool for responding to incidents. The Ministry plans to use this new, proposed tool when referring low-risk incidents to “more appropriate agencies or levels of government” such as municipalities or others. Staff note that doing so will cause resourcing challenges for municipalities, who do not have specialists on staff to properly evaluate and respond to such incidents / complaints. Further, it is noted that municipalities do not have the same tools and jurisdictional authority as the Ministry does to investigate incidents / complaints and require compliance. For example, municipalities have limited authority to enter onto property without the consent of the owner / occupant.

It is for these reasons that the City of Waterloo requests that the Ministry extend the commenting period in order to engage municipalities in more detail regarding authority limitations under the Municipal Act, the ability of municipalities to effectively respond to environmental compliance nuisance matters, and to allow municipalities more time to determine the cumulative impacts of the proposed updates on local land use planning objectives.

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out.