Land use plans leave ‘legacy for children’: STORM Coalition policy analyst

YorkRegion.com
April 9, 2015
Lisa Queen

The hard-fought victory was a “minor miracle,” Debbe Crandall, policy analyst with Save The Oak Ridges Moraine Coalition, says.

Back in 2001, determined environmentalists helped convince Ontario’s Mike Harris government to adopt legislation protecting the Oak Ridges Moraine.

One of Ontario’s most significant landforms, the moraine is a 160-kilometre ridge formed some 12,000 years ago by glaciers.

Stretching from the Trent River in the east to the Niagara Escarpment in the west, the ecologically diverse moraine is the source of the headwaters of many streams, is home to woodlands, wetlands and watercourses and its ecological functions are critical to the area.

When the moraine came under threat from massive development in the 1980s, including in York Region, people began rallying to save it.

“We didn’t even have a name for it; we just knew there were streams and valleys and we realized it was an ecological structure and people became very attached to it. We saw nothing in municipal official plans that could effectively stop development,” Crandall said.

“The (provincial) act and plan were a product of people standing up and saying this landscape is really important. So it was a real victory. It was land-use planning based on biology. Collectively, we feel very much attached to this legislation.”

The provincial government is now conducting a comprehensive review of the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan along with the Greenbelt Plan, the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe and the Niagara Escarpment Plan.

Town hall meetings are being held in several communities, with York Region’s scheduled for April 13 in Aurora and May 12 in Vaughan.

Crandall calls the review a “big deal; a huge deal” and sees it as an opportunity to strengthen policies protecting the environment.

“Any time you open it up is a damn good time to say we have to do our planning and do things better because we’re still losing ground on ecology health,” she said.

“It’s as big a deal as when we got the plans because we’re setting the course for the next 10 years. So, it’s a huge deal for people to demonstrate again how important this land form is, how important water is, how important ecology is.”

While the plans have helped preserve environmental features, they don’t go far enough and they also don’t address threats that have emerged in the last decade, such as fill from Toronto condominium construction sites being dumped in communities outside the city, Crandall said.

“We have to do more than what the plans are saying. The policies are good and maintaining the status quo, but this (the moraine) is a highly degraded landform in the first place. While they are holding the line, they are holding the line at a very low bar,” she said.

“People should care about it. It is about creating a legacy for our children so they have clean water, access to clean water, access to lands that feed them, they have clean air.”

Protecting the environment and agricultural land is laudable, but the province has also determined the Greater Golden Horseshoe region will grow by four million people to 13.5 million and by 1.8 million jobs to 6.3 million by 2041, Joe Vaccaro, CEO of the Ontario Home Builders’ Association, said.

Developers may often be seen as the bad guys, but they are simply looking for co-ordinated and integrated provincial policies that deal with that reality, he said.

“Walking into these rooms (for the town hall meetings), it’s clear people want to be confrontational; they want to be adversarial.,” Vaccaro said.

“Our role has been to say, ‘Let’s air our grievances’, but when you’re done, how do you want to accommodate four million people coming to the area in the next 30 years?”

He said the questions being discussed include: What do we need to do to protect the environment and to accommodate growth? Where do we put the housing, the subways, the roads and highways, the water treatment plants?

“Growth is coming. Growth continues to happen here. How do we make it work for everybody?” Vaccaro said.

“The crux of the issue is York Region is going to grow by X (population) and X amount of jobs. So, put your planning hats on and figure it out.”

The town hall meetings have proven a worthwhile way to bring different points of view together and achieve a better understanding, Vaccaro said.

“All the voices get to be in the same room for three hours with bad coffee,” he said.

“We’re happy with the co-ordinated review because it forces everybody to talk about everything.”

York Region’s chief planner, Val Shuttleworth, agrees the development industry has generally accepted provincial policies aimed at protecting the environment in light of the significant growth that will occur.

“I don’t see them going in with guns ablazing saying change it all,” she said.

While some minor adjustments to the provincial plans are needed, the region supports the policies, Shuttleworth said.

“The region says these are good plans, they are solid plans that have served their purpose,” she said.

Boosting protection of the moraine and the Greenbelt was one of the top three concerns residents raised when Newmarket-Aurora MPP Chris Ballard was campaigning in last year’s provincial election, he said.

 “We want to hear from residents, businesses and governments how to strengthen the Greenbelt legislation,” he said.

“We need to get the message to government that people are concerned about development on the Oak Ridges Moraine. The Greenbelt and Oak Ridges Moraine (plans) were a great first step. We can strengthen them.”

Protecting the environment doesn’t mean skyscrapers will be needed to accommodate growth, Ballard added.

“We can handle our intensification by smart planning,” he said.

But the three candidates vying to become the next Ontario Progressive Conservative leader oppose plans to grow the Greenbelt.

Patrick Brown, Christine Elliott and Monte McNaughton slammed the idea at a debate in King Township Monday.

“I obviously oppose the latest suggestion that the Greenbelt grow by a million acres. The reality is it is tough to afford a home and they’re (the Liberal government) going to make it more difficult,” Brown said.

“The average house price in Toronto is now over $1 million and they’re going to drive prices up in the GTA and that’s the lens we have to look at in the PC party — what’s in the best interest of Ontarians?”

The Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation welcomes the review as the next vital step in ensuring the plan continues to protect and strengthen the region’s quality of life.

“Stretching nearly two million acres across the Greater Golden Horseshoe, Ontario’s Greenbelt is the world’s largest permanently protected greenbelt,” CEO Burkhard Mausberg said in an email.

“It protects the productive farmlands that feed us, the landscapes that clean our water, the trees that filter our air and supports the health and economies of our communities.

“The Greenbelt is an economic powerhouse. In fact, each year it generates more than $9.1 billion in economic activity and is responsible for 161,000 direct and indirect jobs in agriculture, tourism and forestry.

“The Greenbelt has enjoyed huge public approval. It is consistently the province’s most popular environmental initiative, garnering support from nine out of 10 Ontarians.”

SIDEBAR

The Aurora meeting is April 13 at École secondaire catholique Renaissance, 700 Bloomington Rd. W.
 
The Vaughan meeting is May 12 at Chateau Le Jardin Conference and Event Centre at 8440 Hwy. 27 in Woodbridge.
 
The open house portion of both events runs from 6 to 7 p.m., with the meetings scheduled from 7 to 9 p.m.
 
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