Category: PROVINCE OF ONTARIO

Policies & Threats Related to Greenspaces

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Provincial wetland policies

The Federation of Citizens’ Associations, of which the Greenspace Alliance is a member, is in turn a member of the Federation of Urban Neighbourhoods of Ontario (F.U.N.)  Amy Kempster, Treasurer of the Alliance, is on the Executive of F.U.N. F.U.N. is preparing a report card on the McGuinty government. With regard to Wetland and Flood Plain Policies, Amy (with thanks to Ken McRae for input) suggested: While the provincial policies

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Significant Wildlife Habitat Criteria Schedules for Ecoregion 6E

Section 2.1.5 of the Provincial Policy Statement states that “Development and site alteration shall not be permitted in: … d) significant wildlife habitat; … unless it has been demonstrated that there will be no negative impacts on the natural features or their ecological functions.” To help implement this policy, the Ministry of Natural Resources developed a Technical Guide to Significant Wildlife Habitat (October 2000; with Appendices, 396 pp., 2.4 MB;

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Bill 139: Submissions, Committee discussion, passage

August 10, 2017 The Greenspace Alliance today sent in its comments on the planning aspects of Bill 139.  The letter is here.  Some highlights: We strongly support much of this Bill, in particular the end of de novo hearings and the move to a court-of-appeal type regime, the creation of a Support Centre for citizen-appellants and mandatory case management for all appeals. We strongly oppose, however, the proposed inability to

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ECO Report on MNR and MOE – The Citizen

From The Ottawa Citizen, April 25, 2007. p. A5 Abstract Data produced by Mr. [Gord Miller]’s office show that funding for the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Natural Resources dropped off sharply in the mid to late 1990s under the Mike Harris Conservatives. At the same time, they show only a mild recovery under Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals, who came to power in 2003. Full Text  (Copyright

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Ontario’s Ministries not up to the Job: Environmental Commissioner of Ontario

On April 24, 2007, the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, Gord Miller, released a special report, “Doing Less with Less,” saying the Ministries of Environment and Natural Resources are “starved of funding for core functions.” This will not come as news to anyone who has tangled with these Ministries or with MNR’s poor cousins, the Conservation Authorities. The report documents how MOE and MNR’s mandates have expanded but their operating budgets

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From the Ontario Environmental Bill of Rights Registry (EBRR)

Ken McRae reports – December 2006: There is a “Notice” posting on the Ontario Ministry of the Environment’s (MOE) Environmental Bill of Rights Registry (EBRR) regarding the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) consideration of a “Discussion Paper – A Proposed Modelling and Scenario-based Approach for Identifying Natural Heritage Systems in Southern Ontario”. A copy of that posting is copied and pasted below. The final “Modelling and Scenario-based Approach for

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Comment on Ontario Code of Practice for Class EA Assessments

In response to the Notice highlighted elsewhere on our website (here), the Greenspace Alliance sent in the following comment: October 13, 2007 To: Ariane Heisey, Special Projects Advisor, Ministry of the Environment, Project Coordination Section 2 St Clair Avenue West Floor 14, Toronto Ontario M4V 1L5 Re: The Code of Practice: Preparing, Reviewing and Using Class Environmental Assessments in Ontario Dear Ms. Heisey: The Greenspace Alliance of Canada’s Capital wishes

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Comments by the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario

(Click here for a PDF version of this topic. Download the excerpts from the links below.) The Environmental Commissioner of Ontario (ECO), in his 2009-2010 Annual Report issued September 2010, made mention of the efforts to protect Leitrim Wetland. Besides reporting that a leave to appeal to the Environmental Review Tribunal had been granted on a few narrow grounds, the Supplement to the Report describes and comments on two applications

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Ontario Budget Bill also amends 69 statutes

     Bill bypasses notices on the Environmental Bill of Rights web site 14 April 2012 Bill 55, the Ontario Budget Bill, also amends 69 different statutes in its schedules, including the Endangered Species Act, the Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act, the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act and the Public Lands Act. Laws such as these are prescribed under the Environmental Bill of Rights, 1993 (EBR). Normally, when the government

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Province announces its plans for OMB reform

16 May 2017 The Province announced today that it will introduce legislation soon which will, among other things, see: + the Ontario Municipal Board replaced by a Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT); + for the majority of land use planning appeals, the Tribunal no longer hold “de novo” hearings, i.e., no longer able to substitute its own decision of what is “good planning” for that of Council.  Instead the test

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