The Honourable Steven Clark …

The Honourable Steven Clark
Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing

Dear Minister Clark,

I live and farm in Wilmot Township near New Dundee in Waterloo Region

I address you today with a heavy heart. The community that I know and love is under threat from pending legislation involving changes to the Provincial Policy Statement and Bill 97. The implications are many and profound but I will focus on two changes specifically, they being the threat to Prime Farmland from the proposal to allow 3 severances per farm parcel and opening up of land zoned “rural” to development.

We live in a special place here in Waterloo. It is arguably the most innovative, dynamic, well planned and prosperous community in Ontario if not all of Canada.
At the same time, surrounding this urban footprint, is one of the most fertile, productive, and prosperous agricultural communities in Ontario, a community that features the second highest farm income per acre and per farm in Ontario.

That doesn’t just happen! It’s not an accident. We, as a region, planned to be the best urban and rural municipality in Canada. Our culture of good planning, countryside lines, farmland protection, a prohibition on farm severances since 1973, and deliberate intensification, is not only an urban success story, it is a rural agricultural success story. Our leadership and our Official Plan are the template for good planning, housing people from around the world, innovation, prosperity and farmland protection in municipalities throughout Ontario.

What is threatened? Only 5% of Ontario’s landmass is suitable for agriculture and less than one half of that is considered to be prime like we have here in Waterloo. The proposed unappealable ability to obtain 3 severances per farm parcel and the opening up of “rural” land for development threatens the ability of farmers in Ontario to conduct the business of farming in a safe and profitable manner.

The detrimental impacts of lot creation are well documented. They include the fragmentation of the agricultural land base, increased conflicts between neighbouring land uses, and the inflation of farmland values which makes the purchase of farmland by new entrants unattainable. As farmers, here in Waterloo and across the province, we have worked diligently to manage, mitigate and minimize conflict between farming and non-farming neighbours by supporting Minimum Distance Separation (MDS) formulas to properly separate farms and residential lots.

Dr. Wayne Caldwell, former professor of rural planning at the University of Guelph has calculated that the addition of 3 severances and accompanying dwellings and the resulting MDS on every farm will make it impossible for farmers to build or expand livestock facilities in Ontario. He predicts that livestock farming will disappear within the 30 planning time frame imposed by the Province. That would be tragic not only for Waterloo but for the province as a whole.

Should proposed changes to the PPS come into effect, all four townships in Waterloo Region have the potential to sever at least 2000 new lots. If every severance averages 1 hectare, that means over 8,000 hectares or 20,000 acres of farmland would disappear. At 2.5 people per dwelling, these 8,000 severances would accommodate 20,000 residents. If these same 8,000 hectares were located within an urban boundary, (at a density of 50 people per acre) they could accommodate more than 400,000 people. One has to ask, is this good stewardship of our precious farmland resource.

The opening up of land zoned “rural” also presents an enormous threat to agriculture. The rural designation is integrated throughout the agricultural landscape of Ontario and for the most part is composed of high quality farmland. The proposal to allow low density sprawl to occur here, presents the same problems as rural severences except at a much larger scale. Farmland surrounded by islands of residential development precludes the growth of livestock agriculture and presents an ever present impediment to normal farm practices including the ability to move farm equipment on highways frequented by those living in and commuting from the countryside.

We live in a special place here in Ontario and particularly in Waterloo Region. Our regional form of collaborative government has enabled us to build a community that is the envy of many. It was Waterloo Region that allowed us to pioneer the Protected Countryside designation, the Environmentally Sensitive landscape designation, the LRT, the Countryside Line, a prosperous urban landscape and a prosperous rural landscape. The evidence is clear that visionary regional government works. We invite you to take the opportunity to visit Waterloo Region. Take a walk through downtown Kitchener or Waterloo and look at the skyline that profiles our innovative and prosperous economy, or step outside this very building and survey a landscape that not only feeds us but sustains every part of our natural environment. We urge you to consider using Waterloo Region as the template for growth, affordable housing, innovation, prosperity, good planning and farmland protection in Ontario.

Finally, please remember that farmland is a non- renewable natural resource and that those who chose to protect it will be remembered by future generations for their foresight.

Thank you.