Review of land use plans prioritizes protection of agricultural land

Thursday, December 10, 2015

by SUSAN MANN

There’s no question agricultural land is stringently protected in Ontario’s two million acres of Greenbelt, but urban growth is annihilating farmland outside of the sheltered zone in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, according a report released Monday.

From 2006 to 2011 the Greater Golden Horseshoe lost more than 160,619 acres, about 4.4 per cent, of its agricultural land, which is an area larger than the city of Toronto, says the report called Planning for Health, Prosperity and Growth in the Greater Golden Horseshoe: 2015-2041. Most of the loss is outside the Greenbelt and is primarily due to urban growth.

However, the news is not all bad. In the last decade, provincial land use planning policies have started to reduce urban sprawl and increasingly put a spotlight on the region’s agricultural resources and natural heritage, the report says.

The report is the culmination of an advisory panel’s coordinated review of four land use plans in Ontario – the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, the Greenbelt Plan, the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan and the Niagara Escarpment Plan. The panel was headed by former Toronto mayor David Crombie and included two agricultural industry representatives among its members, Ontario Federation of Agriculture vice president Keith Currie and Grape Growers of Ontario CEO Debbie Zimmerman.

Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Ted McMeekin released the report.

The Greater Golden Horseshoe is Canada’s fastest growing urban region with its population projected to grow in 25 years to 13.5 million people from its current population level of nine million. The region wraps around the western end of Lake Ontario with outer boundaries stretching north to Georgian Bay and south to Lake Erie.

The report says the plans, which help guide provincial and municipal land-use planning, provide a framework for accommodating sustainable population and employment growth in the region while protecting vital assets, such as high-quality farmland, water resources and natural areas.

The advisory panel has made 87 recommendations and identified six strategic directions to target greater economic prosperity for the region and improve transportation, agricultural production, communities and natural systems. The strategic directions are:

• Investing in transit and infrastructure.
• Supporting agricultural investments and viability.
• Growing the Greenbelt.
• Protecting the environment and natural heritage.
• Creating jobs.
• Responding to climate change.

Ontario Agriculture Minister Jeff Leal says in a statement, emailed by his press adviser, he’s pleased to see the panel recognized the importance of agriculture in the Greater Golden Horseshoe and “included recommendations related to preventing the loss of agricultural land to non-agricultural uses.” The panel also had recommendations related to the need for the agricultural industry to be viable and on policies to promote local food.

Leal says the government will issue a detailed response to the report in the new year and the public will be able to comment on it before “we propose legislative amendments to the plans. We will continue to engage our agricultural stakeholders to ensure the viability of farmland for the future.”

Many farmers, however, find the idea of expanding the Greenbelt unpalatable. Ontario Federation of Agriculture President Don McCabe says municipalities had an opportunity “even before all this work was done to apply to the government to expand the Greenbelt if they so wished and nobody had taken them up on it. I think that’s a statement in itself.”

Zimmerman says the recommendation to grow the Greenbelt “comes with instructions on what would be considered for expanding it,” and the extension would only be done if there were good reasons to do it. There would be more consultations before the government acts, she says. “It’s not an automatic.”

The report says the strategic directions encompass many inter-related ideas that work together so the four plans’ objectives can be met. For example, the province must curb urban sprawl and build more compact communities to support transit, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect valuable farmland.

Just protecting farmland is “not enough unless it is also productive and supports a strong agricultural economy,” the report says. Zimmerman says the point, something the panel clearly embraced, “recognizes the strength of the farmer on the land.”

Farmland makes up about half of the land area of the Greater Golden Horseshoe “and represents one of the most important economic sections of the region,” the report says. The farms in the Greenbelt are particularly productive and produce 55 per cent of Ontario’s fruit and 13 per cent of its vegetables.

The Greenbelt has almost two million acres of protected land, including the Niagara Escarpment, Oak Ridges Moraine and land called “protected countryside” located at the centre of the Greater Golden Horseshoe. The Greenbelt protects important ecological and hydrological systems along with prime farmland, rural areas and specialty crop areas. BF