This comment is submitted on…

This comment is submitted on behalf of Hike Ontario, by Chair, Advocacy, Issues and Policy Committee:

Growing the Greenbelt – Comments from Hike Ontario – April 18, 2021

Hike Ontario represents some two dozen hiking clubs around Ontario, whose volunteers have built and who maintain some 4,000 kilometres of hiking trails. These include the Bruce Trail, Rideau Trail, and Oak Ridges Trail. Most of these trails were completed in 50-60 years ago, in the wake of the opening of the Bruce Trail. Since then, it has become more difficult to secure agreements from private landowners to permit trails across their properties, due to higher land prices, severances and land fragmentation, the retreat of farming from marginal areas, exurbanite ownership, and unwarranted concerns over liability.
Hike Ontario’s central thesis is that the designated growth centres in the GGHA, and particularly their surrounding rural areas, need greater support from the Province to provide an adequate supply of open space recreation, and especially hiking opportunities. The evidence predates the Covid 19 pandemic, but has been exacerbated by it. Popular hiking spots such as the Bruce Trail have become grossly overused, and are deteriorating in quality and sustainability in sensitive locations within natural heritage systems. Long lines of vehicles unsafely clog rural roads, which were not built to accommodate high levels of demand at trailheads and on adjacent public lands. Yet, the PPS does not articulate a strategy for accommodating recreational use of the Greenbelt, merely leaving this to random or incidental grant issuances by the Greenbelt Foundation, and an over-reliance on certain maxed-out Conservation Areas and other public holdings along the Greenbelt extents. And hoping that local municipal governments are somehow picking up the slack. But now, GTA and GGHA growth has reached a point where reliance for open space recreation on the developed public land bases assembled in the sixties and seventies is no longer sufficient. There simply are no longer enough places to take a hike. And at a time when the demand for hiking is at a peak, and is expected to remain at high levels, post-pandemic.
The provincial support that is needed for expansion of the Greenbelt and for the GGHA should take the form of long run and short run initiatives: a long term approach to PPS policy development for what should be truly recognized as the hitherto lost art and science of open space systems planning; and a short term action plan to address the acute shortfall of supply of hiking opportunities, centred on the Growing the Greenbelt initiative. We will address the short term actionables first.
In June 2020, Hike Ontario responded to a call from the Provincial Treasurer for stakeholder responses to enable a provincial recovery from the pandemic. Our response took the form of a six-party coalition of stakeholders including the Ontario Parks Association, Public Health Association of Ontario, and the Canadian Mental Health Association. We and the other five stakeholders posited that a trail-related recovery should take the form of three central thrusts: financial support for trail infrastructure, such as parking, washrooms, signage, and the trails themselves; base funding for Province-wide trail organizations (similar to that provided for several dozen Provincial Sports Organizations); and funding for a trail tourism portal that integrated all public trails with nearby private tourism businesses. This response provides an overview of what is needed now within the Growing the Greenbelt proposal study area.
As a further overview, one must take note of the radical and progressive, 25 year process of throttling of Provincial funding for conservation authorities. CA’s had once been and still could be ideally positioned to be the providers of regional park opportunities in their watersheds, a role not taken up by other parties to date, including most municipal partners. Many of the actionables below could and would have been addressed by the CA’s but for the sustained throttling process. Instead, a CA response of retrenchment to survive financially has pervaded many CA operations, rendering them inert, rather than being able to adjust in a positive way to the growth targets set out by the Province for the GGHA urban areas that lie close by the Growing the Greenbelt study area. A few examples below (including local examples of other public owners) point to a dearth of leadership and funding of open space planning by the Province, and a resulting inventory of potential but underutilized open space assets within and adjacent to the study area.
- Puslinch Lake, Ontario’s largest kettle lake, lies within the Growing the Greenbelt study area. It lacks any developed public access. GRCA property lines a significant share of the shoreline, including a closed off access track to the shore, but this asset, already paid for by both local and Provincial taxpayers, has not been developed, largely due to foreseen operating costs.
- A 1,500 acre land assembly for the abandoned GRCA Everton reservoir project in the Eramosa River valley has lain undeveloped for 40 years adjacent to the study area. Also adjacent are lands acquired earlier for a heritage mill (recently burned down) and a series of extensive and most unusual rock formations along the Eramosa. This asset has not been developed due to foreseen operating costs.
- Extensive Speed River valley land owned by GRCA within Guelph (the former Niska Waterfowl Park) has been shut off from public use for over two decades for minor facility decommissioning and the completion of an unreleased management plan, again, long delayed due to foreseen operating costs of opening the property to public use.
- A 1909 land assembly for the long-closed Ontario Reformatory lies astride the valley of the Eramosa River within the City of Guelph. Yet, it is now in the process of being sold off by Infrastructure Ontario to developers, along with adjacent developable table lands.
- The Arkell Agricultural Research Station, owned by the Province’s agency, the Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario, and tenanted by the University of Guelph, lies within the study area and contains dramatic Galt-Paris moraine features on its southern portion, but is in rough pasture or forested and unused by the University.
Such untapped recreational open space opportunities lying in and near the study area appear to run counter to the professed aim of The Greenbelt to make “efficient use of land and infrastructure.” A short term strategy to support GGHA growth targets should be to provide funding for the development of appropriate recreational trail-related infrastructure on these and on many other underutilized public properties in and near the study area. In some cases, the investment needed can be of the most modest kind….e.g. widening of a rural road shoulder adjacent to a rural Agreement Forest tract such that vehicles can be parked off of the travelled roadway and so that local residents can then hike on existing forest access and logging roads.
Worth noting as well is the basic recreation capability of the moraine for extensive outdoor recreational activities, as identified by the Canada Land Inventory for Recreation. Indeed, hiking trails atop the moraine, such as in the GRCA’s Pinehurst Conservation Area, Waterloo Region’s Sudden Tract, or the GRCA Starkey Hill are overwhelmingly popular, to the point of exceeding carrying capacity. Logically, a trail running the length of the moraine would find many users and be greatly appreciated by local residents, particularly from surrounding urban growth centres.
As for the long run, on the policy side, no land uses are specifically designated for recreational use, nor need they be. However, much of the land with the greatest capability of supporting extensive recreational activity lies within the ambit of the Natural Heritage Systems policies and their designations within Official Plans. However, new opportunities for recreation such as hiking trails appear to be subject to the minimum prerequisite of the preparation of an environmental impact study, a requirement financially beyond the ability of most volunteer hiking trail organizations. Indeed, NHS policy as set out in the PPS has supplanted open space systems planning (OSSP) that existed in most urban official plans in the previous century. However, there is room for both approaches in land use policy planning, and it is suggested that OSSP be woven into or integrated as an overlay of the NHS policy during the next review and update of the PPS, in order to increase the supply of hiking and other related outdoor recreational opportunities. At the very least, a policy review of NHS policies should be conducted to identify means by which these could better support extensive forms of outdoor recreation such as trails, by lessening barriers to basic footpaths within NHS designated areas.
As part of this review, NHS designated areas should be assessed for their ability to provide informative, professional interpretation of their features for the public. This would greatly improve public support and understanding of NHS policies, while providing portals or limited and controlled “sally ports” in support of such interpretation, such as short interpretive trails or viewpoints. As many ANSIs lie within the study area, these should be assessed for their ability to provide interpretive opportunities, which may or may not necessitate trail access to the property.
MNRF policy governing Provincial Park designations should be used to examine closely the study area and the environs for potential candidate areas, particularly those areas that fill the MNRF system gaps or voids. But one salient example, adjacent to the study area, is the 1 km wide valley of the Eramosa River. This sinuous wooded wetland area was carved out by the Guelph Spillway, the largest example of the many proglacial spillways that course across large parts of southwestern and central Ontario. Recognized by the Ministry as a Life Science ANSI, but poorly documented as such due to its large size, inaccessibility, extensive riverine wetlands and relatively undisturbed ecosystems, it warrants close consideration as a candidate Natural Environment Park. Guelph to Erin, or more selectively, the reach of Rockwood to Ospringe, would be the most attractive sections to achieving a Provincial Park designation. Significant portions are owned by GRCA in the form of the Rockwood Conservation Area, as well as the previously mentioned abandoned reservoir land assembly. Notably, trails of various kinds make use of the valley to a limited extent, but with much greater potential for longer trails, particularly interpretive trails. Announcement of such a new park would be entirely appropriate and would be well received by residents in the study area as well as urban areas in nearby regions.
Until very recently, Provincial policy recognized the Ontario Trails Strategy of the MHSTCI and its related Supporting Ontario’s Trails Act. However, a significant component of the Strategy, namely landowner incentives for trails on private land, was never addressed by the Strategy. The high price of land within the GGHA is generally prohibitive for fee simple land acquisition for meaningful trail securement and development. Instead, these elevated prices necessitate a fresh look at the need for such incentives, such as property tax rebates. Hike Ontario has repeatedly advocated to the Treasurer for a modest property tax credit of $20 per year per 100 metres of hiking trail on private land, in consideration of the public good provided and the incidental costs or minor inconvenience to the landowner. Such nominal credits would not just lever, but would revolutionize access to private land for trails to be built and sustained by volunteer forces of the hiking trail clubs. Such an incentive would also effectively create an alternative to emergent calls for a “Right to Roam” initiative for rural land that is central to outdoor tourism and recreation in all Scandinavian countries, Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, and the UK. At the least, the Growing the Greenbelt area , if adopted, could mount a small scale pilot program of landowner incentives to test out its acceptance and feasibility by rural landowners and managing trail clubs respectively.