[All] Susan K's column on MZOs, greenbelt

[Susan Koswan]

https://www.therecord.com/opinion/2020/11/11/rush-to-be-open-for-business-in-ontario-puts-environment-on-back-burner.html?rf 
<https://www.therecord.com/opinion/2020/11/11/rush-to-be-open-for-business-in-ontario-puts-environment-on-back-burner.html?rf>


  Rush to be ‘open for business’ in Ontario puts environment on back burner

SK

By Susan KoswanSpecial to Waterloo Region Record

Wed., Nov. 11, 2020/timer/3 min. read

/update/Article was updated 7 hrs ago

Minister’s Zoning Orders seem to be the strategy of choice for our 
provincial government to sidestep public process and the “red tape” of 
Official Plans and environmental assessments. The government rationale 
is to rush economic recovery and build new homes.

We rely on our local governments through zoning, planning and bylaws to 
determine what is allowed and what goes where to provide homes, jobs, 
food, water, resources, green space, and public and private amenities. 
Municipal Official Plans have to be approved by the provincial government.

Why would we short-circuit that process when southern Ontario is already 
under a great deal of stress from the impact of 12.1 million people 
living here? That’s 94 per cent of Ontario’s population crammed into 15 
per cent of the province’s space.

In 2011, Ontario Nature 
<https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/ontarios-local-biodiversity-has-global-significance> 
reported that southern Ontario had lost “more than 70 per cent of its 
wetland habitats, 98 per cent of its grasslands, and 80 per cent of its 
forests.” Well over 200 plants and animal species were at risk of 
becoming extinct. Read the province’s list 
<https://www.ontario.ca/page/species-risk-ontario> of species at risk 
and weep.

Steve Clark, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, is on record 
<https://news.ontario.ca/en/speech/58027/minister-steve-clarks-speech-at-the-2020-association-of-municipalities-of-ontario-conference> 
in a presentation to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario that 
the Minister’s Zoning Orders (MZOs) “cannot be used in the greenbelt.”

But what about communities, such as Waterloo Region, that are outside of 
the protection of the greenbelt? Is our protected countryside line in 
the region’s Official Plans enough to withstand the threat of an MZO? 
Seems not. An MZO was issued to SmartCentres for a 10- to 20-year 
project 
<https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/10/30/2118042/0/en/SmartCentres-Receives-Approval-for-City-of-Cambridge-Minister-s-Zoning-Order.html> 
to develop the 73 acres near Highway 401 and Pinebush Road in Cambridge.

Objections are futile; MZOs cannot be appealed. The guideline language 
has too much wiggle room. In the Q & A on the Application Guide 
<http://www.mah.gov.on.ca/AssetFactory.aspx?did=5426> it says that 
“generally/,/ new development is not permitted on provincially 
significant wetlands, prime agricultural lands…” An MZO has already been 
issued for development on the 57-hectare Lower Duffins Creek Coastal 
Wetland between Pickering and Ajax.

Toronto city councillors were also surprised to learn that three MZOs 
were issued for development on the West Don Lands in Toronto, without 
their knowledge, public input or discussion.

MZOs are not new. They have been used in the past on land that was not 
under an Official Plan, and rarely where there was a municipal plan. The 
Ontario Farmland Trust, a non-profit organization tasked with 
“protecting farmland forever,” shares their concern that new precedents 
are being set with the number of MZOs being issued. Many of them are in 
residential areas with “complete and comprehensive municipal land use 
planning in place.”

The public interest group, Environmental Defence, found 33 new MZOs have 
been issued in the past year. This is more than the previous government 
issued in all of its 15 years in power.

Both the Farmland Trust and Environmental Defense are part of the 
Ontario Greenbelt Alliance <https://greenbeltalliance.ca/>. The 100-plus 
members of the greenbelt alliance are working together for a green 
recovery, a halt on urban sprawl, and to protect and expand the Ontario 
Greenbelt. They know that we must provide shelter, food, amenities, jobs 
and natural space, but they also know we have to do it right, and undo 
the damage already done.

Despite a dizzying array of government legislation and regulations, 
conservation authorities, non-government organizations, land trusts, and 
“friends-of” citizens’ groups, we still haven’t figured out how to 
balance human interests with environmental protection. How quickly we 
forget the costly mistakes of our poorly regulated industrial past that 
contaminated land and water. We should not rush headlong into an 
economic recovery that could threaten the environment that sustains us.

This government has backed down on a number of important issues once the 
public became aware of what it was doing, largely through the actions of 
public interest groups. It’s time again to speak up and call for an end 
to the flagrant abuse of power of Minister’s Zoning Orders. Take action 
through yourstoprotect.ca <https://yourstoprotect.ca/>.

We cannot allow our current government’s actions to put us at risk with 
the already degraded environmental protection, the “open for business” 
mantra, the red herring of red tape, and bypassing democratic and 
transparent processes.

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