Category:Greenbelt Act

The Greater Golden Horseshoe area is one of the fastest growing regions in North America, with the province planning for the settlement of another 4 million people in the area by 2031. For decades, urban development has promoted inefficient land use patterns that have devoured significant amounts of southern Ontario’s agricultural lands and natural areas. Urban sprawl continues to threaten the remaining lands and has generated political and economic pressures on the provincial government to assume a leadership role in coordinating regional and provincial planning in the Greater Golden Horseshoe.

During the 2003 provincial election, after an extended reluctance to intervene, the government committed to protecting a greenbelt area in the Greater Golden Horseshoe. In February 2005, the government passed the Greenbelt Act, 2005, which provided the authority to protect a greenbelt of agricultural and environmentally sensitive land in the Golden Horseshoe from urban sprawl. The Act allows for the establishment of a Greenbelt Plan.

The Greenbelt Act requires that decisions relating to the Greenbelt that are made under the Ontario Planning and Development Act, 1994, the Planning Act or the Condominium Act by municipal councils, local boards, municipal planning authorities, provincial Ministers, provincial government and agency officials or the Ontario Municipal Board must conform with the Greenbelt Plan. Affected municipalities must bring their official plans into conformity with the Greenbelt Plan. The Greenbelt Plan prevails where there is a conflict with an official plan, zoning by-law or the Provincial Policy Statement.

Although the Greenbelt Act preserves land around and in the Oak Ridges Moraine and Niagara Escarpment areas, it does not revoke or replace the ORMCA or the NEPDA, the existing laws protecting those areas. This raises the question of which of these land use planning regimes should take precedence in the case of a conflict. The Greenbelt Act provides that the ORMCP and Niagara Escarpment Plan (NEP) prevail over the Greenbelt Plan in their areas of application. However, the Act also gives Cabinet the power to make regulations to override anything in the ORMCP or the NEP if necessary for the operation of the Greenbelt Plan.

The Greenbelt Plan

The Greenbelt Plan covers an area of more than 328,000 hectares of lands already subject to the requirements of the NEP and the ORMCP, as well as a newly added 400,000 hectares of land described as Protected Countryside that are subject to the Greenbelt Act and Greenbelt Plan. The combined total area of the Greenbelt is approximately 728,000 hectares. The Protected Countryside includes three basic land use designations related to agricultural uses: Specialty Crop Areas; Prime Agricultural Lands; and Rural Lands. The Greenbelt Plan also allows for Settlement Areas – land within the Greenbelt designated for urban uses.

Specialty Crop Areas have the greatest protection, with no expansions of Settlement Areas allowed into these areas, and no new non-agricultural uses permitted. Prime Agricultural Lands are not protected from Settlement Area expansions, which are permitted at the 10-year review subject to conditions, but these areas are protected from other new non-agricultural uses. Within areas designated as Rural Lands, a wide range of institutional, commercial, and recreational uses are permitted. While the Greenbelt Plan has some strong policies aimed at preventing the expansion of urban communities into the Protected Countryside, it is a concern that Settlement Areas within the Protected Countryside are permitted to expand into Prime Agricultural Lands. Throughout the Protected Countryside, residential lot severances are strictly controlled and the development of adult lifestyle and retirement communities is prohibited. The Greenbelt Plan prohibits the expansion of settlement areas located outside the Protected Countryside into the Protected Countryside. The remaining 15 per cent of the Protected Countryside is occupied by existing settlement areas, within which land uses are governed by municipal plans and related programs.

Layered over the three basic land use designations is a Natural Heritage System, where enhanced protections are provided for key natural heritage and hydrologic features, including policies setting out restrictions and requirements for any development or site alteration near these features or their protection zones. Outside the Natural Heritage System and within the Protected Countryside, the policies of the PPS guide the protection of key natural heritage features, but the list of key features protected under the PPS is not as comprehensive as those protected under the Natural Heritage System. Infrastructure – including water and wastewater treatment systems, waste management systems, and transportation facilities and corridors – is permitted throughout the Protected Countryside, including within key natural heritage features if the need can be demonstrated and there are no feasible alternative locations.

New mineral aggregate operations under the Aggregate Resources Act can be established, without justifying need, throughout the Protected Countryside except within certain key natural heritage features within the Natural Heritage System. New or expanded mineral aggregate operations within the Natural Heritage System are subject to enhanced site rehabilitation requirements as set out in the Greenbelt Plan. Any such operations within the Protected Countryside but outside of the Natural Heritage System are subject to a more limited list of enhanced rehabilitation requirements.

The Greenbelt Plan permits renewable resource activities, including forestry, water taking, fisheries, conservation, and wildlife management activities, throughout the Protected Countryside, including within key natural heritage features. Recreational uses, including major uses such as ski hills, golf courses, and campgrounds, are also permitted within rural areas of the Protected Countryside, subject to conditions. Within the Natural Heritage System, proposals for major recreational facilities require additional planning to minimize water, nutrient and biocide use. Municipalities are free to enact stricter requirements than those set out in the plan, if they do not conflict with it. However, they cannot enact stricter policies to regulate agricultural uses or mineral aggregate operations.

The policies designed to protect the Greenbelt’s natural features and functions, while stronger than the protections offered by the PPS, are not suitably protective in the long term for the Greenbelt area. The ECO has expressed concerns about the uses that the plan permits across the Protected Countryside and, in some instances, near or within key natural features. Natural heritage policies should be at least as strong as those in the NEP and ORMCP. Introducing consistency across these plans would eliminate the complexities and confusion that arise when multiple plans with differing policies apply to lands in such close proximity.

The Greenbelt Plan also fails to challenge status quo approaches to transportation, as demonstrated through plan policies permitting highways and aggregate extraction operations in most of the Protected Countryside, thereby compromising the Plan’s expressed goal of offering protection to natural heritage, water resource systems and agricultural lands. The ECO believes this fundamental weakness of the plan could lead to transportation corridors that generate additional growth pressures that would threaten the Protected Countryside and beyond.

Review, Public Participation and Implementation

The Greenbelt Act requires that a review of the Greenbelt Plan be carried out every 10 years, in conjunction with reviews of the ORMCP and the NEP. The Minister of Municipal Affairs must consult with affected public bodies as well. The Act also requires the Minister to ensure that the public is given an opportunity to participate in the 10-year review. In addition, the minister may propose amendments to the areas designated as Protected Countryside in the Greenbelt Plan at any time and undertake consultation on these amendments.

The public has the right under the EBR to notice and the opportunity to comment on changes to the Greenbelt Act, and on regulations and policies under it. Members of the public also may file applications for review under the EBR in relation to the Greenbelt Act and related policies and regulations. The Greenbelt Act establishes a Greenbelt Council whose duties include: tracking the success of plan implementation; identifying issues emerging from implementation; and advising on the development of Greenbelt Plan performance measures. In 2010, MMAH developed a draft Performance Monitoring Framework that includes sample indicators to measure the performance of the Greenbelt Plan. It is intended that this monitoring framework will be useful to support the 10-year review of the Greenbelt Plan. This review of the Greenbelt Plan, along with the ORMCP and NEP, will begin in 2015.

The role of the province in plan implementation appears to be very limited, apart from the Greenbelt Council. Municipalities are charged with designating prime agricultural and rural lands, and identifying and delineating the boundaries of key natural heritage features, with minimal and sometimes no guidance from the province. This has generated concern among stakeholders – including municipalities – regarding the potential for inconsistent plan implementation across the Protected Countryside and the lack of resources and expertise at the municipal level to take on these implementation responsibilities. Further, while the plan sets out a process for monitoring the success of implementation through performance measures, it is unclear who will ultimately assume responsibility for steering this process.

It is important that the government assume a larger role in the Greenbelt Plan’s implementation by providing clear guidelines and direction to municipalities and other agencies that will play a part in Plan implementation. Providing provincial resources in the form of staff expertise and funding would also facilitate implementation of the Greenbelt Plan. The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing has introduced criteria that will be used to evaluate municipal requests to expand the boundaries of the Greenbelt. This process is intended to allow municipalities to identify areas that they wish to have included in the Greenbelt. In preparing a submission to expand the Greenbelt, municipalities must demonstrate how they have addressed each of the criteria.