Upper Cold Creek Farm…

Upper Cold Creek Farm submission on ERO 019-7739 “Proposal to return lands to the Greenbelt – Greenbelt Statute Law Amendment Act, 2023.”

Our family has a 153-acre farm known as Upper Cold Creek Farm (UCCF) and located at 10240 Pine Valley Drive in the City of Vaughan. We submitted a planning analysis in consideration of removing a part of this land from the Greenbelt Plan in November 2022. Please see attached.

We participated in the process last year as we strongly believe our farm viability is at risk.

Given the development and surrounding infrastructure arising from recent subdivisions in our area, our farm has been cut off from farming communities in our area. The incursion of people and traffic makes cattle farming increasingly risky. Six lanes of Major Mackenzie and over 1500 homes now border the farm.

Farming operations alongside residential subdivisions do not mix well and as a result, we believe our land would be better used and helpful for future building of the community than farming. This is a tough decision after nearly 100 years of cattle-calf operations but necessary given the dramatic changes in the land use bordering the farm.

In our 2022 proposal we outlined the suitability of the land for removal from the Greenbelt and met all criteria suggested by the Province. We have not heard any response from the Government since our submission in November 2022.

We encourage the Government to review our submission. We agree with the premise that lands should not be placed into conservation easements nor should landowners be coerced to farm their lands without considerable public consultation and potential compensation.

The Greenbelt changed our land use rights with no compensation. In fact, quite the opposite. We cannot even build a single-family home on our 150-acre property even though the Greenbelt requirements allow us to build residences to house migrant workers. This simply is not fair.
It is our experience that, with the passage of time people, have lost track of the purpose of the Greenbelt and who owns the lands within the Greenbelt (if people ever really understood the Greenbelt).

Many people we canvass believe that the Province owns the lands, and the purpose of the Greenbelt is to retain farming and conservation of nature. Others admit to not knowing much about the Greenbelt at all but feel its important somehow.

We are the third generation working UCCF. It appears that many of the multi-generational farming lands may not have the capacity to continue farming into the future. As noted above farming and subdivisions don’t mix well and being fenced in by residential development makes driving tractors and farm equipment on busy roads a safety issue amongst other things.

Municipal planning and housing developments have isolated many farms, making it impossible to compete economically as small parcels of land. Furthermore, individual and long-time farmers have no capacity to pivot and create value for their land because of the Greenbelt designation and, again, there was no compensation for farming families when the land was designated 20 years ago, and their property rights expropriated. So, who are the real losers in this process?

How do we balance the gains that civil society enjoys from lands designated as Greenbelt with the losses that many individual landowners experience? This is a fundamental truth that advocates of the Greenbelt fail to recognize or acknowledge.

We absolutely support the Government reviewing the Greenbelt on a regular basis as proposed in the original legislation. We support shining a light on the Greenbelt’s purpose and communicating effectively with the people of our Province (its frankly embarrassing how few people understand the Greenbelt).

We also support having municipalities review proposals to remove certain lands from the Greenbelt, but it must be done in a fair and transparent way. We are concerned with the way the lands were initially designated twenty years ago and with the process undertaken in 2022.

Now that 20 years has passed and land use requirements and development have changed the landscape, it is entirely appropriate to review the Greenbelt, its purpose, the lands contained therein, and the issue of compensation to those landowners within the Greenbelt.

If the Greenbelt’s purpose is to preserve lands for agricultural and natural heritage, then we cannot penalize landowners whose lands are affected when societal at large benefits. This is fundamentally unfair and unsustainable.

We have attached the November 2022 Land Use Analysis prepared for us by a third party at some cost to ensure objectivity and professionalism in our approach to both help the community with much needed development for seniors as well as maintain most of our lands for farming, to the extent that is possible.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the current proposed legislation. We would welcome a further discussion with you on our concerns and ideas for helping our community build better with our wonderful land.