Kincardine Naturalization…

Kincardine Naturalization Projects (“KNP”) is a not-for-profit corporation in the Municipality of Kincardine, located in Bruce County, on the shores of Lake Huron. We started as a Facebook group and currently have 430 members. KNP and its team of volunteers preserves, restores and enhances the natural environment in our municipality by planting native trees, shrubs, bushes, wildflowers and grasses, and we support animal habitat by installing bird and bat houses. We have worked closely with the Municipality of Kincardine to naturalize unused, public, green spaces. To date, our group of volunteers have planted over 1500 native trees such as red maple, silver maple, birch, black walnut, red oak, white oak, white cedar, spruce, butternut, white pine, balsam fir and linden trees. In addition to our hands-on naturalization work, we have engaged in extensive advocacy efforts to encourage our municipal Council to adopt by-laws to support the preservation of trees on private property and to amend its Official Plan to better protect the environment through the land use planning process. We also monitor and provide comments on active development applications.

We have serious concerns about the proposed regulation, which will allow the Minister (of Natural Resources and Forestry, rather than Environment, Conservation, and Parks, which would be slightly preferable) to override the expert opinion of Conservation Authorities (“CAs”) reviewing and approving permit applications under the Conservation Authorities Act. CAs make decisions in the interest of our watersheds and other environmental resources based on technical expertise and local-level knowledge. The Minister will be empowered to oust science from the review of permit applications, replacing it with political and other considerations. This puts us all at risk - just ask the insurance industry. We will not solve a housing crisis by preventing CAs from ensuring new homes are not constructed in areas prone to flooding, nor by preventing them from regulating climate change mitigating features such as wetlands and natural heritage systems.

These concerns are neither idle nor political. They go to the health and safety of Ontarians in flood prone areas, as well the protection of the environment, both of which we recognize are demonstrably of very little import to this government, which is known to take instructions from the development industry. As climate change intensifies and weather events become more extreme, proper watershed management will become more and more important, not less so.

We ask that the government of Ontario withdraw this regulation and go further to restore public faith by returning Conservation Authorities to their pre-Ford era status, and restore all the necessary power and authority to allow them to effectively protect the environment.

Sincerely,

Doug McCallum, Blair Brajuha, Linda Peebles, Andrea Peebles
Board of Directors, Kincardine Naturalization Projects