Simcoe County farmers see pros and cons of freezing growth boundaries

John Morrison -Alliston Herald photo

Warden satisfied with local planning standards

By Brad Pritchard Alliston Herald

The province’s growth policies either need to be more restrictive or more flexible, depending on what side of a municipality’s settlement boundary one farms on, say members of Simcoe County’s agricultural community.

Jim Partridge, an Oro farmer and president of the Simcoe County Federation of Agriculture, says restrictions to limit urban sprawl and confine growth to built-up areas makes sense, but feels the current legislation is lacking.

His biggest problem with the province’s policies on land use is that they “lack teeth” when it comes to protecting the three best classes of farmland.

Partridge said he has seen many examples, including some in his own backyard, where good farmland has been used for other purposes.

“Once you develop property, whether it be for houses, football fields or theme parks, it’s not going to be usable for the production of food.”

“Across the road from my daughter’s place is Burl’s Creek,” he said. “That’s zoned agricultural, it was zoned agricultural before the organization bought the land, and it stays zoned agricultural. Yet they are allowed to run concerts and allow parking on it, which I believe makes it unsuitable for agriculture.”

Partridge applauded a recent statement made on behalf of Ontario’s major farm organizations representing 78,000 farmers, including the Ontario Farmland Trust and Ontario Federation of Agriculture, calling on the province to freeze urban boundaries to protect prime farmland.

But not all farmers see urban growth as a looming threat to their livelihood.

John Morrison, 68 and nearing retirement, farms cash crops and hay in Essa Township, just steps from the urban boundary of Alliston. Because his land is outside his municipality’s settlement area and is off-limits to development, he knows if he were to sell the property, it wouldn’t fetch top dollar.

“For farmers, their pension plan is their property. That’s their security,” he said. “So I’m afraid, if agricultural land is frozen, then what’s the price of that land going to be?”

Morrison said he isn’t against controlled development, adding he believes growth should occur in urban areas as opposed to isolated pockets across the province. He does think it would be more beneficial to give landowners more control over how to use their properties, but he admitted the issue is tricky.

“It’s really a quandary and I almost equate it to playing God,” he said. “Like, it’s OK for you to sell this land, but you can’t. So I don’t know how you would fix it.”

While the province is expected to have 4.5 million more residents by 2041, the farming organizations that support the boundary freeze say this isn’t enough to warrant more urban sprawl.

A 2013 report by the Neptis Foundation, an independent charitable research organization, found there is an excess of 25 years’ worth of farmland already designated by municipalities in the GTA and surrounding areas, including Simcoe County, for growth in both urban and rural settlement areas. The report stated the land equals a little more than 107,000 hectares, an area about 1.5 times the size of Toronto.

Keith Currie, president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, said more restrictions are needed for urban boundaries and fewer for farmers.

“Hard municipal growth boundaries must be part of the solution to supporting agriculture in the (Greater Golden Horseshoe) so we don’t pave over the region’s farmland and displace more farm families and farming communities,” he said.

Simcoe County Warden Gerry Marshall said he thinks the county has “great” growth policies.

“We have some very vigorous standards. I think the province, if they looked at (it), would actually raise the bar to our standards.”

He noted that under current planning policies, 40 per cent of the lands in the county are protected from development.

“We really do drive growth into the settlement areas where there is existing water and sewers,” he said. “We’re doing all the right things and we do them early. And what I like about the county planning department and county council, we are really looking out for four decades.”

Simcoe County’s director of planning, David Parks, said the county official plan is in full compliance with the province’s growth plan. He added provincial policies restrict most local urban boundaries from expanding up to the next 10 years.

“We have very rigorous standards for … urban boundary expansion,” he said. “You can’t expand in the County of Simcoe without going through a tremendous, rigorous process.”

Parks added the province has put a “higher standard” on the county for growth management compared to other regions by allocating growth numbers to each municipality.

While the county’s official plan has growth mapped out to 2031, Parks said planning is already underway for additional population allocation to 2041.