Loopholes in the proposed…

Loopholes in the proposed legislation put the Greenbelt at risk.

I am hopeful that the Government’s admission of a mistake regarding the Greenbelt removals, and the current attempt to repair that mistake, will include a sustainable approach to protecting Ontario’s Greenbelt. Simple repair of the recent mistake will not accomplish the protections required.

There are loopholes in the Greenbelt Plan that put the future of the Greenbelt at risk.

No Roads, Mining or Land Swapping

Transportation corridors and extractive aggregate mining are threats to the integrity of the Greenbelt and must be prohibited. Legislation needs to indicate that no new incursions of transportation corridors nor mining will be permitted anywhere in the legislated Greenbelt lands. Further, legislation needs to specifically state that the Greenbelt is established “in perpetuity”, and that lands may only be added to the Greenbelt. The Government has started this by maintaining the additional lands originally proposed as a swap. Swapping one area of land for another must be prohibited. Ten-year reviews will be for the sole purpose of determining if land should be added to the Greenbelt area.

The Greenbelt is one of Ontario’s most important environmental achievements – now is the time to legislate the PERMANENT protection of these lands.

Land and Water must be considered together.

In addition, for the benefit of good health, adequate housing, and employment of the people of Ontario, land use and watershed planning must be considered together.

Therefore, all aspects of Ontario’s land use and watershed planning regimes should be re-focused on watershed security and better integrated to achieve practical goals for inter-generational sustainability.

Ontario must revoke Bill 23 in a manner that restores the traditional mandate of conservation authorities and the previous protocols in the Ontario Wetland Evaluation System;

Ontario must commit to an overall sustainability lens for land use planning, from agriculture to complete communities, by creating and maintaining a guidance document to accompany the Provincial Policy Statement, and that the PPS require conformity from planning authorities to minimum standards in that document.

The government has admitted a mistake in the process of how it removed land from the Greenbelt. Compounding that mistake with another effort that lacks a fulsome context of land use and watershed planning, and without meaningful consultation, will not restore public trust in the government. First Nations must be meaningfully included in consultations and decisions regarding land use and watershed sustainability.

Some of the above comments are a direct result of research in a publication of the Ontario Headwaters Institute, website reference is below.

https://ontarioheadwaters.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/OHI-on-ERO-019-…