The provincial government…

The provincial government should be working to increase the number and the land area of provincial parks, NOT selling park land to private developers. The government should be embracing innovative and creative ways to support Wasaga Beach tourism that does not include selling off provincial park land or other publicly accessed land.

The Ontario government can support the town Wasaga and Wasaga reserve to redevelop a vibrant, public waterfront by building boardwalks and bike trails, providing leased sites for seasonal businesses, supporting seasonal business opportunities, providing public transit within the town so cars/parking aren’t a problem, build regional transit to improve access to tourism and tourists without the negative impact of cars, and support the purchase of already developed properties from private holders. Wasaga beach cottages are build on large properties that would serve the same needs for development without selling off protected park land. Selling Provincial Park land to a private holder is lazy, lacks foresight, and negatively impacts the broader public. Selling to private business risks the property being sold in future and turned into something as useless as a parking garage, which would ruin the waterfront esthetics, ruin waterfront access, ruin business & recreation opportunities, prevent good stewardship of the land.

There are excellent examples of vibrant beach communities, with many businesses AND fully public waterfronts. Look at Rockley/Accra Beach in Barbados, the beaches of Den Hag, Netherlands, and La Ciotat, France (links below). There is no need to sell provincial park land into private hands in order to support tourism, the government simply needs to be smarter and stop relying on private business to do government’s job.

The Ontario government needs to increase the PUBLIC holdings of waterfront, including buying access rights from private land holders in other areas of the province. The provincial government has for too long lacked a strategy to preserve and expand public access to waterways. This is shortsighted and private ownership benefits only a handful of people. The Lake Ontario waterfronts in the town of Burlington and much of Hamilton and Niagara region, much of the Lake Erie waterfront are prime examples of failure to preserve public access. Waterfronts along these privately owned stretches cannot be accessed for recreation (boating, sports, family outings, camping), are not used or maintained by their owners, and are not monitored for waterway health.
Ontario is blessed with waterways, shorelines, and beachfronts but has be plagued by lack of vision to preserve those assets for public access and enjoyment or even preserve them for overall health and clean environment.

Provincial parks come with critical environmental protections and management rules that must be preserved, especially along waterfronts. The current Ontario government has been working to do away with environmental protections and this was unacceptable in the 20th century let alone 2025. Environmental protection is not difficult or overly expensive. It requires the government to do its duty to protect Ontario’s natural assets (not sell them for development), and put just a little bit of effort into supporting both the public and Ontario businesses. The government employs a lot of very smart people with expertise in planning, land use management, environmental protections, public policy, and societal best practices. Use that expertise to be creative in supporting Wasaga beach in a way that does not include selling off provincial parks, which in turn will negatively impacting the people of Ontario.

The Ontario government must honour the Great Lakes Strategy to “ restore, protect and conserve the Great Lakes” by retaining ownership and control of provincial park land. Not just water and land quality is important for public health, public access to waterways is also critical. This is just one paper citing the critical role that PUBLIC waterways play in human & community health:
https://arpf.org/wp-content/uploads/Urban-River-Parkways-An-Essential-T…
There are ample other well-researched papers and government policies from around the world that highlight the need for public access to waterways and green spaces.

http://www.ontario.ca/page/ontarios-great-lakes-strategy

https://denhaag.com/en/do/beaches

https://barbados.org/bcrock.htm

https://en.destinationlaciotat.com/explore/feet-in-the-water/our-beache…

The Ontario government needs to do its job to protect Ontario, most importantly protect, preserve, and expand Ontario’s Provincial Parks, and expand the critical resources that Provincial Parks provide to the people of Ontario