Shades of green at Greenbelt consultation

About 250 people showed up to debate how best to keep the Golden Horseshoe green at the third of 15 meetings hosted by the province.

Thestar.com
March 31, 2015
By Tara Deschamps

There is plenty of room for improvement when it comes to the Greenbelt, hundreds of Torontonians concluded at a public consultation Monday night.

The future of protected lands in Ontario, a topic that has divided developers, farmers and environmentalists, was at stake as 250 locals debated decades-old plans targeted at perserving parts of the Golden Horseshoe, the official Greenbelt, the Oak Ridges Moraine and the Niagara Escarpment.

The Toronto consultation was the third of 15 meetings set up to help the provincial government coordinate its plans for protecting agricultural land and resources, creating jobs and addressing climate change.

Attendees voiced concerns about seeing trees cut down along transit routes, watching highrises being built on former farms, and worrying about natural resources being preyed on by businesses with commercial dreams.

With populations continuing to grow and builders encroaching on precious green space in the hunt for room to expand, the review comes at a pivotal time, they said.

“The downtown core has experienced a lot of growth, and the concentrated population has made for more congestion,” MPP Han Dong (Trinity-Spadina) noted. “The population has to go somewhere, but at the same time, we need to preserve some land.”

Beth Gilhespy, executive director of the Bruce Trail Conservancy, agreed.

Government funding cuts and a lack of access to land preserved for recreational uses, she noted, have made problems even worse.

“Conservation shouldn’t be onerous,” she said. “We should be addressing these problems so we can protect land as efficiently as possible and without the hassle.”

She hopes the pending review will prompt the province to fund more land acquisition, make better provisions for conservation, and assure Ontarians access to recreational trails.

Grant Lauzon, a sustainable harvesting advocate from North Bay, put at the top of his wish-list the idea of building self-reliant communities that aren’t swallowed up by urban sprawl.

He had high hopes for the process, but also doubts. The review, he said, might not clarify plans already in place but only complicate them further, with farmers, builders and average folk all championing things that would benefit their own interests.

“I think everyone will lose a little bit. It will boil down to frustration, and the bickering will continue,” Lauzon said. “I guess we will have to wait and see, but I doubt this will really hash out the differences and solve all the problems.”