Do NOT renew cottage leases …

Do NOT renew cottage leases

The Rondeau Park cottagers already don’t respect the rules of the leases they are given:

• Many live in the park as their permanent residence, when they are only allowed to use the cottages seasonally.

• Many garden and dump invasive species, year after year, into the surrounding forests.

• Many use their cottages as Air BnB businesses, even though this is prohibited.

Why would the ministry continually extend these leases when the terms are continually violated?

The claims the cottagers association make as to their own benefits are hilariously untrue. Historic cottages being kept in families, generation to generation? No, many have been sold in the past two years at highly inflated prices to speculators wanting cheap beachfront real estate.

“Stewards of the Land?” If anything, the natural habitat of our deer, rabbits, turtles and frogs would benefit from not being run over in droves by these cottagers continually driving over the speed limits.

If they respected the rules of the park and the leases, it might have been fine to extend. But this has become a case of “give an inch, they’ll take a mile”, and these entitled few people (and many of them Americans for whom the cottages are their second or third homes) are campaigning hard to permanently buy up this sacred natural land.

No. Enough renewals. Enough discussion of letting them stay permanently. Get them out, make them pay market rates elsewhere, and return this beautiful piece of Ontario’s natural land to all Ontarians to enjoy, humans and animals alike.

No responsible government would continue to pander to this tiny, entitled minority of 279 people (a group who is now publicly insulting the ministry, saying they’re “frustrated with the level of incompetence and intransigence”, see link below) instead of serving the 14.6 million Ontarians the government is accountable to, and to whom this public land belongs.