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<p><a
href="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</a></p>
<h1>Rush to be ‘open for business’ in Ontario puts environment on
back burner</h1>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="c-author-badgeinitials">SK</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="articleauthor-by">By </span><span
class="articleauthor-name">Susan Koswan</span><span
class="articleauthor-credit">Special to Waterloo Region
Record</span> </p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="articlepublished-date">Wed.,
Nov. 11, 2020</span><span class="articlereadtime"><i>timer</i></span><span
class="articlereadtime">3 min. read</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><i>update</i><span
class="articleupdated-time">Article was updated 7 hrs ago
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<p class="text-block-container">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.</p>
<p class="text-block-container">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.</p>
<p class="text-block-container">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.</p>
<p class="text-block-container">In 2011, <a
href="https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/ontarios-local-biodiversity-has-global-significance">Ontario
Nature</a> 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 <a
href="https://www.ontario.ca/page/species-risk-ontario">list</a>
of species at risk and weep.</p>
<p class="text-block-container">Steve Clark, Minister of
Municipal Affairs and Housing, is on <a
href="https://news.ontario.ca/en/speech/58027/minister-steve-clarks-speech-at-the-2020-association-of-municipalities-of-ontario-conference">record</a>
in a presentation to the Association of Municipalities of
Ontario that the Minister’s Zoning Orders (MZOs) “cannot be
used in the greenbelt.”</p>
<p class="text-block-container">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 <a
href="https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/10/30/2118042/0/en/SmartCentres-Receives-Approval-for-City-of-Cambridge-Minister-s-Zoning-Order.html">project</a>
to develop the 73 acres near Highway 401 and Pinebush Road in
Cambridge.</p>
<p class="text-block-container">Objections are futile; MZOs
cannot be appealed. The guideline language has too much wiggle
room. In the Q & A on the <a
href="http://www.mah.gov.on.ca/AssetFactory.aspx?did=5426">Application
Guide</a> it says that “generally<em>,</em> 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.</p>
<p class="text-block-container">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.</p>
<p class="text-block-container">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.”</p>
<p class="text-block-container">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.</p>
<p class="text-block-container">Both the Farmland Trust and
Environmental Defense are part of the <a
href="https://greenbeltalliance.ca/">Ontario Greenbelt
Alliance</a>. 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.</p>
<p class="text-block-container">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.</p>
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<p class="text-block-container">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 <a
href="https://yourstoprotect.ca/">yourstoprotect.ca</a>.</p>
<p class="text-block-container">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.</p>
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