November 24, 2022 Hon…

November 24, 2022

Hon. Graydon Smith
Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry
6630, 5th Floor
99 Wellesley St
Toronto, Ontario
M7A 1W3

Dear Minister Smith,

RE: Proposed Updates to the Ontario Wetland Evaluation System

Comments on the Proposed Updates to the Ontario Wetland Evaluation System

Established in 1995, Ontario Streams is an environmental charity dedicated to the conservation and rehabilitation of streams and wetlands through education and community action. Since our inception, we have worked closely with numerous communities, landowners, corporations, and school groups to develop lasting partnerships in education and environmental stewardship. With 27 years of experience, Ontario Streams has continued to demonstrate leadership in aquatic ecosystem rehabilitation. Many Ontario Streams projects have occurred in and around the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), where the need for rehabilitation has been greatest. In addition to the restoration projects that Ontario Streams continues to champion, our organisation has also been involved in the development of several programs, studies, and information-sharing projects. Ontario Streams also coordinates outreach and stewardship programs to foster environmental stewardship in the communities we work in. In 2018, Ontario Streams released its report on the State of the Wetlands (SOW) in the Lake Simcoe Watershed. This work has been continued with SOW in the City of Toronto (2021) and SOW in the Regional Municipality of York (2022) reports and hopes to continue this work guiding our understanding and preservation of this important natural heritage feature.

Background
The Province has estimated that by 2015 we had already lost 72% of our wetlands in southern Ontario compared to baseline data from Ontario’s Biodiversity Report (2015). For example, in the southern GTA wetlands only cover 2% of our landscape compared to historical coverage of 7%. Wetlands are critical to the health of our watersheds. They help to reduce downstream flood events, help to recharge our aquifers, protect groundwater, control erosion, and clean our waters of pollutants. Their organic soils and vegetation store vast amounts of carbon and are critical to retain if we want to meet our climate targets. Many of the province's animals and plants, including multiple species at risk, are dependent on wetlands for all, or part, of their life cycle. Wetlands and their adjacent woodlands and meadows, when protected, become new public natural areas for the enjoyment of our citizens. Our existing natural areas are suffering greatly from overcrowding since the public has rediscovered them during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In recognition of the importance of wetlands, provincial wetland scientists developed the Ontario Wetland Evaluation System manual, or OWES for short. This science-based evaluation system was first devised in 1982 and has been updated and expanded over the years as we have gained more knowledge on the ecological functions and value of wetlands. The OWES manual provides a scoring system, based on rigorous assessment against criteria that are used to assess whether a wetland, or a grouping of wetlands known as a wetland complex, is provincially significant and thus protected from development. There are biological scores (the more diverse and productive the wetlands the higher the score), social scores for how much a wetland is used by the public for hunting, fishing, and nature enjoyment, scores for hydrology (how much the wetlands aid in flood attenuation, erosion control, and protecting aquifers) and special features scores (the presence of rare species or communities, and fish and bird habitats). The scores are added up to see if they meet the provincial significance threshold. Over the past 40 years thousands of wetland complexes have been evaluated, with most of them being designated as provincially significant. It is estimated that the majority of the wetlands in southern Ontario have been evaluated.

Our organization does not support the proposed changes proposed to the OWES manual. The OWES manual and its scoring system is based on sound ecological principles and on the accumulated scientific knowledge we have acquired on the ecological importance and function of wetlands in maintaining healthy watersheds and Ontario's biodiversity. The changes being proposed are not supported by science. The drastic changes will result in downloading responsibility for wetland management to municipalities which lack the expertise. We recommend rejecting these proposed changes. We want our existing wetlands, whether contiguous or complexed, protected and we need to strengthen efforts to restore wetlands to ensure that we have healthy watersheds and more public natural areas for everyone to enjoy.

The proposed changes will in essence gut the manual. It will invalidate most of the thousands of evaluations that have been completed over the past 40 years. This is being done without consulting all the wetland experts that worked on this manual over the years. These changes will result in consultants for developers being able to downgrade the status of most wetlands that are currently provincially significant to non-significant and unprotected so that they may be destroyed forever and available for development. This will also impact all the private landowners that currently get a municipal tax reduction through the Conservation Land Tax Incentive Programme (CLTIP) for having a provincially significant wetland on their property. With the proposed changes, an adjacent owner or developer can get a consultant to downgrade their wetland status so they become ineligible for the tax reduction. The landowner has no recourse when this happens because the Province will no longer review and approve wetland evaluations. The evaluation and conservation of wetlands is a provincial responsibility for the people of Ontario.

This responsibility has been acknowledged by the Wetlands Conservation Partner Program (WCPP), a program in Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks. The Province has committed to $30 million in capital funding over five years for wetland restoration and enhancement to address concerns for stormwater management using natural wetland infrastructure. The Ministry has identified wetland needs as improving their functionality and connectivity and conserving existing wetlands and their features and functions. These objectives contradict the proposed changes to the OWES manual and wetland evaluations any actions taken through this program will be wasted if the proposed changes go forward.

Specific Comments
Wetland Complexing
The current manual treats and scores a grouping of wetlands or a wetland complex as though it is one wetland. This is because wildlife research shows that numerous species visit many wetlands on the landscape, moving between wetlands and also utilizing the surrounding intervening upland woodlands and meadows. For example turtles such as the provincially threatened Blanding’s Turtle will travel and utilize many wetlands over the course of a year for feeding and hibernating. Woodland frogs breed in wetlands, but spend the rest of the year in surrounding woodlands to feed. The current manual says that wetlands within a maximum of 750 metres from each other and in the same watershed can be scored together as part of a wetland complex. This 750 metre distance covers the ability of wildlife to make such movements between wetlands. The update to the manual removes all mention of wetland complexes. Sections of the manual referencing wetland complexes are removed from pages 9, 15, 16, 26, 27, 29, 32, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39 and 40. The only wetland complexing allowed in this proposed update (see page 20) is for small wetlands that are within 30 metres of each other in a woodlot or those within 30 metres of each other along a river or lake. There is no scientific basis to restrict wetland complexing to wetlands that are a maximum of 30 metres apart. This new cut-off of 30 metres will invalidate most of the thousands of existing evaluation wetland complexes that have been done over the past 40 years. This proposed change will lead to catastrophic consequences. The proposed changes to the manual will allow an evaluator to take out a single wetland from a complex, evaluate it on its own, and down-grade it to non-provincial status without any scrutiny through a qualified peer review or government validation. Most wetlands on their own would not score as provincially significant unless they are very large and diverse wetlands. But because they are part of grouping of wetlands in a complex they do score as provincially significant due to the cumulative values of all the intrinsic wetlands. In conclusion, it does not make ecological sense to only score one wetland in isolation. In fact, if wetlands are only going to be scored individually it would result in most wetlands losing their provincially significant designation. The existing wetland complexing rules need to be retained. Ontario Streams does not support this proposed change.

Scoring for endangered and threatened species
The proposed update to the manual no longer scores a wetland if it supports an endangered or threatened species (see changes on page 52). The manual currently makes a wetland or wetland complex that supports occupied habitat for a Species at Risk provincially significant and gives a high score for traditional migratory, feeding, and hibernation habitat used by these species. This scoring is in recognition of the fact that endangered and threatened species are facing provincial extinction if present trends continue. By scoring them in the manual you are protecting their wetland habitat or their traditional wetland feeding, migration, or hibernation areas. The existing scoring for endangered and threatened species needs to be retained. Ontario Streams does not support this proposed change.

No standardization of wetland evaluations and no public repository for wetlands
Currently, wetlands are overseen by wetland experts at the MNRF and in areas that have Conservation Authorities (CA), these authorities regulate wetlands. MNRF is responsible for ensuring that all wetland evaluations and wetland boundary delineations meet the standards set out in the OWES manual. The Ministry also keeps a repository of all the approved wetland evaluations that are available to the public free of charge and also keeps up to date a digital database on the Province's wetlands that is freely available on the Ministry's website. The proposed update to the manual eliminates all mention of the roles of MNRF and CAs in wetland protection. MNRF wetland experts will no longer review or approve them nor will they continue to be the repository for all evaluations. A consultant for a developer with little field experience can now take the five-day accreditation wetland course and then evaluate wetlands on their own with no one ensuring they meet basic standards. The Ministry will no longer get a copy of the evaluation to keep in its public repository of wetland evaluations and will no longer be able to update its provincial wetland database. The public will no longer know what wetlands have been evaluated, what wetlands have been downgraded to non-provincially significant status, or what wetlands have had their boundaries changed or been totally eliminated due to development. The Province will no longer be able to assess the state of its wetlands (i.e. how many have we lost, how many have been restored). It will thus not be able to issue State of Biodiversity reports as required by the United Nations or know if it is meeting climate change targets in regards to wetland carbon sequestration.

Final thoughts
Ontario is home to approximately 25% of all wetlands in Canada and 6% of all wetlands in the world. The Province and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF) acknowledged their role and responsibility in protecting these wetlands for future generations in their 2017 Wetland Conservation Strategy for Ontario 2017-2030. These features provide an economic value estimated at $17 billion annually through recreational benefits, helping aid soil retention and water purification, protection from and reducing the impacts of water contamination, and flood retention. Flood mitigation benefits alone are estimated at reducing economic costs of flooding by 38%. Additionally, Ontario has agreed to the protection and enhancement of wetlands, and the species they sustain, through numerous international agreements, including the Ramsar Convention and the Great Lakes Water Agreement. These have guided current Provincial wetland evaluation and management policies and continue to aid our strategies to protect these vital features.

The OWES manual in its current form, along with the role the MNRF plays in ensuring the integrity of wetland evaluations and managing the files, help to maintain and enhance our resiliency for the future. Removing these safeguards will pose threats to the Province both ecologically and economically. The Province needs to retain the existing rules and scoring for wetland complexing and significant species, and continue to review and approve wetland evaluations and boundary delineations and the CAs need to continue to regulate wetlands. Ontario Streams supports the ongoing comprehensive management of wetlands at the provincial level as the responsibility of the Government of Ontario.

Kindest regards,
Doug Forder
General Manager

cc: Hon. Steve Clark - Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, steve.clark@pc.ola.org; Hon. Doug Ford - Premier of Ontario, doug.fordco@pc.ola.org; Hon. Steven Guilbeault - Minister of Environment and Climate Change, steven.guilbeault.parl.gc.ca; Hon David Piccini - Minister of the Environment, Conservation, and Parks, david.piccini@pc.ola.org; Hon. Graydon Smith - Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry, graydon.smith@pc.ola.org;