Caledon on GTA West route - Agricultural impacts

NRU
Aug. 19, 2015
By Edward LaRusic

The Town of Caledon has asked the province to give greater weight to the impact of the proposed GTA West corridor on agriculture as it decides on a route for the new 400-series highway. While a step in the right direction, farming advocates says that any route will render a huge portion of the land unsuitable for agriculture.

The Ministry of Transportation’s evaluation criteria place far too little emphasis on agriculture says town staff. And Peel Federation of Agriculture president Randy McLeod agrees.

McLeod told NRU that his organization recognizes the public benefit of a new highway through Caledon, but said the needs of agriculture aren’t being met by building the GTA West Corridor.

“In all honestly, what is going to be the future of agriculture once this [highway] goes through to the land stranded to the south of it? ... Once you’ve stranded that land, you’ll make it extremely difficult for agricultural operations to maintain the traffic flow needed back in forth to adequately keep that land in production. ... It’s certainly going to make it easier for that and [south of the highway] to be converted to a use other than agriculture.”

Caledon CAO Doug Barnes told council at its August 11 meeting that it’s important to recognize the role of agriculture in the town. Subsequently, council recommended a preferred route, which it believes minimizes the negative impact on agriculture. It also asked MTO to make agricultural impact one of the five evaluation criteria in selecting a route for the highway through Caledon.

“What we have here, in my mind, is a very significant policy change that we’re asking the province to make in terms of how it moves forward with the environmental assessment,” said Barnes. “We’ve asked for that change based on our discussions with the community.”

Save for a small portion of the highway on the east of Bolton, nearly the entire length would run through town lands designated as prime agricultural in the town’s official plan. As well, the route would move through portions of rivers and creeks that are part of the Greenbelt Plan’s protected countryside.

MTO is in the second stage of an environmental assessment for the construction of a new 400-series highway. The highway would start at Highway 400 in Vaughan, move through Caledon, Brampton and Halton Hills to the Highway 401/407 ETR interchange in Milton. As part of the second stage EA, the MTO has shortlisted a number of routes, from which the town chose its preferred option.

Caledon development approval and planning policy director Mary Hall told council that while the decision on what route the proposed 400-series highway takes through Caledon lies with MTO, the town was asked to comment on the evaluation criteria. These include four broad categories: natural environment, land use and social economic environment, cultural environment and transportation.

“Within those four categories [staff ] discovered that agriculture sat within one of those categories, the land use and socio-economic environment ... we feel that agriculture should be a higher priority than sitting within a subcategory.”

In its report, staff notes that if agriculture remained one of 23 subcategories under the land use and social economic environment category, it could only be given a maximum weight of 2.2 per cent under the MTO’s categories. Instead, staff recommends creating a fifth main category, giving greater weight to agricultural impacts. Considering all five categories to be of equal importance, Council recommended to MTO that each of the five categories be given equal weight of 20 per cent.

Staff conducted an intense analysis of the proposed highway lands and concluded that the town recommend route would result in the smallest negative impact. Of the 7,000 ha of prime agricultural land in the study area, 593 ha. would be lost to highway construction using this route.

McLeod called Caledon’s request that the province increase the weighting of negative agriculture impacts to 20 per cent a “step in the right direction,” but would have preferred a “heavier, larger percentage.”

In an email to NRU, Ward 2 councillor Johanna Downey said that the farming community has been “incredibly engaged” in the GTA West process. Her ward will bear almost the entire brunt of the new highway in Caledon. She said that by giving agriculture equal weight to other factors, council decided that MTO would have a better understanding of the impacts.

“The stakeholders that have been directly impacted by the study area are burdened with the unknown at this time. To that point, succession planning in the agriculture community becomes very difficult and can often mean that families that have farmed for generations are no longer able to sustain themselves.”

Speaking to NRU, Hall said that agricultural fragmentation is one of the subcategories proposed by the town in evaluating agricultural impact, along with the impacts on prime agricultural lands and agricultural buildings and infrastructure investment. She said that staff believes that most of the prime agricultural land south of the highway, save for those lands within Mayfield West, would continue to be used for farming.

MTO spokesperson Astrid Poei said the ministry disagrees with Caledon staff. The impact on agriculture is considered “under different evaluation [criteria] in a number of different ways such as the potential impacts to agricultural lands, businesses and communities.” She added that “great consideration [is] given to agricultural criteria.”

“MTO understands why council has assigned an equal weight to agriculture and, depending on which [criteria are] being considered, agriculture will be given significant consideration in the evaluation process. MTO will continue to work with Caledon staff to ensure that impacts to agricultural lands in Caledon are appropriately considered.”

MTO will present its preferred route and interchange locations at a public information centre in December.