| March 19, 2003
Leslie Woo
Dear Ms. Woo, The Coalition on the Niagara Escarpment (CONE) is pleased to provide these comments on the Panel's Shape The Future discussion paper and Strategic Directions for a Central Ontario Smart Growth Strategy. CONE is a coalition of 30 environmental and community organizations from all along the Niagara Escarpment and across Ontario. CONE has been working for 25 years to protect the Niagara Escarpment and raise awareness about the many values it provides to Ontario society. Roughly half of the Niagara Escarpment Plan Area is included within the boundaries of the work of the government-appointed Central Ontario Smart Growth Panel. CONE is pleased to see that the Panel has recognized the importance of the Niagara Escarpment in its discussion paper by identifying it in the natural-heritage system mapping and stating in strategic direction #40 that the Escarpment will receive the "highest level of protection". CONE assumes that by "Niagara Escarpment" the Panel is referring to the entire area covered by the Niagara Escarpment Plan. This needs to be made explicit. RECOMMENDATION #1 - CONE strongly supports strategic direction #40 which states that the Escarpment will receive the "highest level of protection" and CONE recommends that the Panel include a definition of the "Niagara Escarpment" in its final report which describes the Niagara Escarpment as the entire area covered by the Niagara Escarpment Plan. It should be recognized in the Panel's work that the Niagara Escarpment Plan prevails over the policies and other provisions of municipal official plans in the Plan Area. CONE believes quite strongly that the Niagara Escarpment is Ontario's first smart growth success story, and it should be celebrated as such in the Panel's advice to the Minister. In 1973, the Ontario Legislature enacted special legislation, the Niagara Escarpment Planning and Development Act, to protect the 725-kilometre-long Niagara Escarpment. Twelve years later, Cabinet adopted the Niagara Escarpment Plan (NEP), Canada's first large-scale environmentally based land use plan. The NEP prevails over the land use policies in the official plans of the 26 municipalities that it crosses, providing provincial-level planning on 183,694 hectares (453,724 acres) of Escarpment lands. The NEP does not prohibit development, but it does recognize protection of the environment as its primary objective. New urban development is directed to existing built-up areas. Rural areas are off-limits to commercial development and residential subdivisions. Large natural areas enjoy strong protection. In several areas, urban sprawl has now run up to the edge of the Niagara Escarpment Plan Area, but not through the provincially-protected Plan Area. The NEP is not only an environmental success story. It is in large part because of the NEP's agricultural policies that much of the Niagara Peninsula's now-famous tender fruit and grape-growing lands were saved from developers' bulldozers. Several small communities have thrived as the NEP prevented big box stores and strip malls from surrounding their historic town centres. Tourism is also booming. Last year the Bruce Trail was named the top tourist attraction in Canada by Attractions Canada. In 1990, thanks to the policies of the NEP, the Niagara Escarpment was declared a World Biosphere Reserve by the United Nations - a place where environmental protection coexists with environmentally compatible development. RECOMMENDATION #2 - CONE recommends that the Panel advise the provincial government that the Niagara Escarpment Plan should be celebrated as a smart growth success story, by featuring it more prominently in the various smart growth documents and public presentations, and holding it up as an on-the-ground case study of what true smart growth can achieve in Ontario. In addition to showcasing what smart growth can achieve, the Niagara Escarpment Plan experience provides another lesson to be heeded as the provincial government embarks on an effort to bring smart growth to the rest of Ontario - putting policies in place is only half the job. Achieving the benefits of smart growth requires an unwavering commitment to implementing and enforcing those policies in the face of ongoing development pressure. Budget cuts and some questionable Cabinet appointments to the Niagara Escarpment Commission (the provincial agency that implements the NEP), followed in December 2002 by a decision by the Minister of Natural Resources to set aside the policies of the NEP in granting a particular development permit, have significantly weakened the integrity of the NEP. The result is a level of uncertainty about development on the Escarpment not seen since the pre-1973 "wild west" days of poorly controlled, piecemeal development. Today the NEC operates with a budget 31% lower than it had in 1994-1995, $1,734,263 as compared to $2,518,300. This cut has affected the Niagara Escarpment in a variety of ways. One of three local NEC offices was closed, staff have been cut, the number of Commission meetings have been cut, public education and environmental monitoring have been all but eliminated and enforcement has become nearly non-existent. RECOMMENDATION #3 - CONE recommends that the Panel advise
the provincial government to re-commit itself to upholding and implementing
smart growth policies of the NEP through financial, policy and legislative
commitments. This re-commitment must include the following:
CONE is generally pleased to see the Panel's focus on compact urban development and the promotion of public transit instead of just more highways. These features of the reports will help to curb urban sprawl and therefore protect the woodlands, wetlands and farmlands surrounding the Niagara Escarpment Plan Area. Strategic Direction #1 RECOMMENDATION #4 - CONE strongly supports strategic direction #1 and recommends that no urban boundary expansions be permitted over the next 25 years and no development be allowed outside the designated urban areas. Examples of water resource protection policies contained in the Oak
Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan, but not in the Niagara Escarpment
Plan, include:
RECOMMENDATION #5 - That the provincial government act to address the lack of water resource protection policies in the Niagara Escarpment Plan by directing the Niagara Escarpment Commission to initiate a Plan Amendment which would bring the NEP up to the standard of the 2002 Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan in terms of water protection policies and which would address all issues raised by Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor in his report on the Walkerton Inquiry. RECOMMENDATION #6 - CONE strongly supports strategic direction #41 and recommends that the panel revise the draft growth concept map on page 6 of Shape The Future to show the continuation of the green Escarpment corridor through Hamilton, Burlington and Niagara. The Niagara Escarpment remains a vibrant agricultural area. The Beaver Valley in Grey County provides one quarter of all of the apples grown in Ontario, for a value of $25 million per year. The Niagara wine industry has thrived on the unique agricultural lands of the northern Niagara Peninsula. Not only do these agricultural areas benefit the Ontario economy, they also serve an ecological purpose by acting as a buffer between urban areas and the Escarpment's core natural areas. The Niagara Escarpment Plan includes several provisions for the protection of agricultural lands and the maintenance of the open landscape character of the Escarpment countryside. Yet several threats to these areas have emerged in recent years which need to be addressed. One of these is rural tourism. The NEC has dealt with numerous applications for rural tourism/recreational activities since the original approval of the NEP in 1985. These include large-scale bed and breakfast establishments, country inns, lodges, spas, hotels and restaurants. These land uses are fundamentally incompatible with the maintenance of agricultural land and open countryside. They generate a high degree of traffic, require intensive servicing (water and septic), and absorb many acres of productive agricultural land. Nowhere is the issue more pressing than on Niagara's tender fruit and grape-growing lands. In 1998, CONE successfully fought an application for a winery resort development near Vineland. Other smaller scale wine tourism applications have also come forward in recent years, including applications for restaurants, overnight accommodation facilities and banquet facilites. The issue of rural tourism was one of the major issues investigated during the Niagara Escarpment Plan Five Year Review, which was launched by the provincial government in December 2000. After several rounds of public consultation, including four weeks of public hearings before two Niagara Escarpment hearing officers, the Minister of Natural Resources was provided with two sets of recommendations in the fall of 2001, one set from the hearing officers and one set from the NEC. The Niagara Escarpment Commission (NEC) and the hearing officers who presided over the public hearings agreed in recommending that the Minister amend the NEP to include a continued prohibition on commercial tourism development in Escarpment rural areas. However the NEC and the hearing officers disagreed in what they recommended to the Minister regarding the scale and types of development at wineries. The hearing officers recommended strong protections for the Niagara Peninsula's precious tender fruit and grape-growing lands by prohibiting wineries from building inns, hotels and restaurants on agricultural lands, and by limiting the size of winery buildings to 15,000 square feet. After reviewing the hearing officers' report, the NEC took a more permissive stance in recommending that small-scale restaurants be allowed and that wineries be allowed buildings up to 25,000 square feet. The recommendations of the hearing officers and the NEC have been before the Minister of Natural Resources since November 2001 without any decision having been made by Cabinet. RECOMMENDATION #7 - CONE recommends that the Panel advise the provincial Cabinet to immediately move to protect agricultural lands on the Niagara Escarpment by adopting the recommendations of the hearing officers from their 2001 report on the Niagara Escarpment Plan Five Year Review, which call for a continued prohibition on commercial tourism development in Escarpment rural areas and a continued prohibition on restaurants, inns and banquest facilities at winery establishments on the Niagara Peninsula's tender fruit and grape-growing lands. Adopting the recommendations of the hearing officers from their 2001 report on the Niagara Escarpment Plan Five Year Review will go a long way toward protecting the Niagara Peninsula's tender fruit and grape growing lands from winery-related development, but that is not the only threat that these lands face. Urban and industrial encroachment must also be addressed for tender fruit and grape-growing lands inside and outside of the Niagara Escarpment Plan Area. For example, a recent OMB decision allowed development on over 550 acres in Pelham on tender fruit land, and pressure is mounting to expand urban boundaries in Lincoln, Grimsby, and St. Catharines. Over 30 years ago, University of Waterloo Professor Len Gertler documented the importance of the tender fruit and grape land in Niagara and University of Waterloo Professor Ralph Krueger sounded the alarm that sprawl had taken over one-third of the land by the 1960s and shadowed a further third. Today, there are only 15,000 acres of tender fruit land and 15,000 acreas of grape land left on the Niagara Peninsula. Permanently protecting these lands requires a dual approach. First, strong land use policies are needed at the municipal and provincial level to prohibit development on lands determined to be tender fruit and grape lands. Second, financial support is required for farmers who agree to place restrictive covenants on their land to protect it from development in perpetuity. RECOMMENDATION #8 - CONE recommends that the Panel advise the provincial government to protect all of the Niagara Peninsula's remaining tender fruit and grape-growing lands by prohibiting development on these lands and by developing a new program, modelled after the 1994 Provincial Tender Fruit Land Program, which will provide financial support for farmers who place restrictive covenants on their land to protect it from development in perpetuity. Niagara's tender fruit and grape-growing lands are not the only threatened farmlands in the vicinity of the Niagara Escarpment. If the proposed Mid Peninsula Highway is allowed to proceed, it will threaten hundreds of acres of Canada Land Inventory Classes 1-3 agricultural lands in the southern Niagara Peninsula. In fact, it is the stated objective of the Region of Niagara in its smart growth plan to grow south on these lands. Because of the Ministry of Transportation's plans for the Mid Peninsula Highway, and the Region of Niagara's growth plans, agricultural lands along the southern Niagara Peninsula need to be identified on the natural heritage and agriculture map on page 5 of Shape The Future as being under "acute growth pressure". RECOMMENDATION #9 - CONE recommends that the natural heritage and agriculture map on page 5 of Shape The Future be amended to show agricultural lands along the southern Niagara Peninsula as being under "acute growth pressure" as a result of the Ministry of Transportation's plans for the Mid Peninsula Highway and the Region of Niagara's intention to direct urban growth to this area. Strategic Direction #9 It is CONE's position that the only way to implement this strategic direction is to enact an immediate moratorium on approvals and funding for all new provincial and municipal expressways, or expressway extensions, including the Mid Peninsula Highway, GTA East-West Corridor, and Red Hill Creek Expressway, until a comprehensive Ontario smart-growth strategy, including a smart transportation network, is completed. CONE strongly disagrees with the statement on page 13 of Shape The Future that suggests that highways can be built that do not encourage urban sprawl. The Mid Peninsula Highway is a case in point. While this is proposed as a corridor to facilitate international trade, the Region of Niagara has already undermined this purpose by stating in several fora that it intends to use the highway to direct urban growth to the southern Niagara Peninsula, in other words, to encourage sprawl. New expressways and smart growth are completely incompatible concepts and this needs to be made explicit in the Panel's report. RECOMMENDATION #10 - CONE strongly supports strategic direction #9 and recommends that the Panel advise the provincial government to enact an immediate moratorium on approvals and funding for all new expressways, or expressway extensions, including the Mid Peninsula Highway, GTA East-West Corridor, and Red Hill Creek Expressway, until a comprehensive Ontario smart-growth strategy, including a smart transportation network, is completed.
Sincerely, Cc: Gord Miller, Environmental Commissioner of Ontario
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