The PPCRA currently requires…

The PPCRA currently requires that elected MPPs approve any significant removal of provincial park land. Rather than simply complying with that requirement and obtaining that approval for Wasaga Beach Provincial Park, the government is proposing currently unspecified “legislative amendments” to the PPCRA itself. The government notice says the amendments are “to remove” land. Because of this, I am concerned that the Provincial government intends to weaken the process requirements for removing Park or Conservation Reserve lands seeing as the current law would not itself need to be changed if its process requirements, including a Legislative Assembly vote on the park area changes, are followed.

As Tim Gray, Executive Director of Environmental Defence, has said, provincial parks belong to the people of Ontario and are meant to be protected forever. It is appalling that the current government is trying to give away big parts of one of our most popular parks, and make changes to the legislation that protects all of our Provincial Parks.

Ecological values in the The Wasaga Beach Provincial Park lands to be lost include:
-Known piping plover habitat, which is listed as endangered under both the federal Species at Risk Act and the provincial Endangered Species Act.
-Mature sand dunes, which provide important ecological and stabilizing functions including providing a protective buffer against high water, wind and storm events for private or adjacent lands, which is an important role as the climate changes.
-Significant vegetation communities and provincially significant wetlands.
-“The Point” located in Beach Area 1 which is one of those targeted to be removed is designated as a provincially significant earth science Area of Natural and Scientific Interest (ANSI)

Transferring ownership of Wasaga Beach Provincial Park lands is not required to support beach-related tourism re-development plans in the Town of Wasaga Beach. On the contrary, it is thanks to the active protection of the Recovery Program at Wasaga Beach Provincial Park that piping plovers and their habitat can coexist with a thriving beach destination.