Expand Greenbelt to Mulmur, Mono and Simcoe County?

Greenbelt views aired at meeting
By Adam Martin-Robbins Orangeville Banner November 30 2009
“Be careful what you ask for — once you’re put in, you’re never going to be able to get out.”
That was the message Mulmur planner Ron Mills delivered to about 50 people gathered at the Mono Community Centre recently to hear a discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of expanding the Greenbelt to include most of Mulmur, Mono and Simcoe County.
Mills was part of a five-person panel — which also included a farmer, an environmental activist, a Niagara Escarpment Commission representative and a provincial staffer — providing various viewpoints on the Greenbelt, which currently covers about 1.8-million acres in the Greater Golden Horseshoe.
The crowd was largely made of members from the Mono Mulmur Citizen’s Coalition, many of whom indicated they favoured the Greenbelt.
Mills questioned whether expanding it in Mulmur would actually protect agriculture from being wiped out by development, as it is intended to in the south.
“This line about preserving agricultural land, I think, is a little overblown,” he said. “Already, there’s little else you can do with agricultural land.”
Mills said many of the municipality’s family farms have disappeared and are being replaced by the often contentious, corporate farming operations — something he felt would only continue if the Greenbelt were brought to Mulmur.
“It’s not the family farm we’re going to get by preserving large tracts of agricultural land,” he said, noting one of the stated objectives of the Greenbelt is also to protect aggregates. “What we’re going to get is large-scale agricultural operations.”
Mills said since the current landowners are the ones who made Mulmur a desirable place to live, it makes sense to continue trusting them to manage the land rather than bringing in provincial legislation to do it.
“Do we really need another plan? … I’m not sure we do,” he said.
While Mills was skeptical of the benefits of the Greenbelt, Mono farmer Gerry Reid was downright pessimistic.
He has 200 acres in the Greenbelt and said his kids won’t want to take over the family farm with the number of rules that are currently in place for agricultural operations.
“The reality is the next generation will not tolerate the regulations,” he said. “The regulations that are on agriculture in Canada now will not let us put the next generation on the farms.”
Reid argued that, in fact, some of the most productive farmland in the province wasn’t even included in the Greenbelt the first time.
“The best land in Ontario is still being built on, that’s the Peel Plain,” he said. “We can’t farm the land without infrastructure. We can’t farm without farmers who are neighbours — that’s not happening in Mono-Mulmur.”
Like Mills, Reid suggested that the local municipalities are the bodies best positioned to regulate land use.
“Why would you not take advantage of local town planners, local town policy rather than defer to the province?” Reid asked.
“At least this way you get a long-term plan. Provincial politicians only care about how they’re going to be elected. … They’re not worried about whether there’s a family farm, only how they’re going to get elected in the next four years.”
Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing representative Victor Doyle argued that the Greenbelt was brought in to protect prime agricultural land in southern Ontario from being built over to house the roughly 100,000 people a year that move to the area.
“If we pave over the landscape, we’re never returning it to a natural state,” he said. “We almost have 1.8 million acres of land protected inside to provide a framework for the sprawl that’s been moving north.”
He noted that in 2008 the province introduced criteria for expanding the Greenbelt, but to date no municipalities have asked the province to grow it, or bring it into their communities.
However, the Greenbelt Alliance has gone ahead with recommending a 1.2-million acre expansion that would include most of Mulmur, Mono and Simcoe.
Heather Harding of Environmental Defence, one of the agencies in the alliance, was part of the panel discussion. She countered the arguments put forward by Mills and Reid.
“There has been a huge benefit to agriculture,” she said. “We need to be saving corridors and passageways … that makes more sense than one-off pieces of land.”
She said there is plenty of evidence in areas such as Durham that show local municipalities are not the best equipped to protect agricultural land from development pressures.
Harding also noted, as an example, the Greenbelt Alliance was able to “leverage the support of urbanites” to support Niagara grape growers who were struggling by appealing to the idea of helping local farmers in the Greenbelt.
“Is there growing awareness and support around our local agricultural community? I would say absolutely.”