Do You Want To Stick It To Ontario’s Greenbelt Plan? Well Here Is Your Chance
A Commentary by Doug Draper
Niagara’s regional governmet is holding a public forum this Tuesday, February 26, giving Niagara residents an opportunity to rant and rave about Ontario’s Greenbelt Plan and all it is doing to destroy opportunities to build more low-density suburbs and shopping malls.
This display of protest against the Greenbelt was displayed near St. Catharines, Ontario’s Pen Centre Mall a few years back. File photo by Doug Draper
This opportunity to slam a 2005 Greenbelt Plan that was intended to protect further farming lands, including tender fruit-growing lands from being paved over, has apparently been a disgusting, government-imposed road block to further development since it was implemented eight years ago.
Therefore, Niagara’s regional government, which has shown its continued interest in sprawling development in areas like west St. Catharines (where the new mega-hospital for all of Niagara will go), Niagara-on-the-Lake where it has approved a mega mall that may very well take customers away from and destroy Pen Centre and Fairview Malls in St. Catharines, and what is left of the Niagara Square Mall in Niagara Falls), now wants to hear from those who will most certainly ask for an end to the Greenbelt.
This regional government also said yes to building a mega-hospital for the Niagara Health System on the west urban boundary of St. Catharines, knowing full well at the time that a new interchange would be needed, at a cost to taxpayers now estimated ath $30-plus millinon, and knowing that there will be pressure in the future to expand that urban boundary into what some of what is left of the fruitbelt, including ‘Henry of Pelham’ (one of Niagara’s premier wineries) lands.
Yet it decided to roll the dice on greenbelt/tender fruitlands anyway, while at the same time asking the taxpayers of Niagara to pay megabucks to accomodate a new hospital for the region in what its own planners try to tell it was a totally wrong location.
If the regional government has its way, given its continued support of sprawling growth, including plans to expand the Smthville/West Lincoln urban boundaries, we might be back to where we were a decade ago around paving over what is left of the only precious tender fruitlands of this whole country, one knife cut at a time.
The regional government will be hosting what it must know will be a forum for the usual suspects in the farm and development community to speak out on the Greenbelt Plan. It will be the typical – God-damn government for telling us what we can do with this land, and the most conservative regional government of Niagara will probably says; ‘Yes, indeed. Why should anyone tell someone who owns these lands what they should do with them.”
After all, if we can buy our tender fruit from South American or other more tropical parts of Asia, who gives a fig if we can grow any buy them here, just so long as the owners of the last few acres of prime, tender-fruitlands in Ontario have the option of selling them off to build a Target big-box store or whatever.
On that score, Niagara, Ontario’s regional council must have known what it was doing when it set up – and I mean SET UP this meeting. It is all about allowing the usual developers and farm owner subjects to dump all over any greenbelt preservation, and demanding wide open access to these lands for sprawling development.
I mean, after all, do the councillors and bureaucrats working for Niagara’s regional government really expect anyone else, who might actually think it is a good idea to preserve tender fruitlands (other than maybe one or two people from the Preservation of Agricultural Lands Society) to show up at this meeting?
I doubt that St. Catharines MPP and Liberal cabinet minister Jim Bradley would even show up to make a case for preserving the greenbelt lands, even though he was one of the original movers, a decade ago, for preserving these lands for agriculture for future generations.
So here we go with when and where this greenbelt-bashing meeting is taking place. The information that follows is from Niagara’s regional government.
| NIAGARA REGION, Feb. 15, 2013 – Media and residents are invited to attend a public consultation session to voice their views related to Greenbelt issues and opportunities within Niagara. What: | The Greenbelt Plan (2005) identifies where urbanization should not occur in order to provide permanent protection to the agricultural land base and the ecological features and functions occurring on this landscape. Niagara Region is undertaking a review of the Greenbelt Plan and the impact of its implementation on Niagara. The project seeks to create an overall picture of the Greenbelt Plan in Niagara. |
| Who: | All members of the public with an interest in Greenbelt Plan implementation are invited and encouraged to attend.Urban Strategies Inc. consulting staff will facilitate the event with support from Niagara Region staff. |
| When: | Tuesday, Feb. 26 6:30- 8:30 p.m.Centre for Conservation, Balls Falls3292 Sixth Ave.Lincoln (Jordan) |
(Niagara At Large encourages all visitors to this site to share their views on this post or any other posts NAL has posted. Divergent views are most welcome in the spirit of NAL’s goal to operate as a virtual town hall for discussing and debating issues of interest and concern to our communities and countries across the greater Niagara region and beyond.)
Niagara At Large 
It’s like drink. Gobble up a little green space appears to make no harm and even makes us feel good. Then you take a chunk here and chunk there, join them up and pretty soon you are drunk with joy and have a lot of underutilized office and retail space, empty strip malls and no room for farming.
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Oh Doug … come on, you have been around long enough to know that the politicians, especially at the municipal/regional level will do everything they can to keep the developers happy! For goodness sakes, where else will they get the money to run their campaigns? Local politicians are the puppets, with the developers pulling the strings! It has been that way for eons!
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Owning approximately 50 acres of greenbelt land and being fairly familiar with this issue please find the following points:
1) Much of the land that is secured within the greenbelt is of questionable value. It is certainly not tender fruit quality land and is suitable for little else than growing hay. Now if the government wanted to protect our food supply, it would have:
A) prevented the decimation of prime farm land below the escarpment that was home to peach, cherry and strawberry fields. This land was airable and of a quality that facilitated these types of crops in addition to vegetable. Since my moving to Grimsby 100’s of acres of farms have been replaced with townhouses courtesy of the spineless Grimsby council and OMB.
B) It would have increased subsidies for food growth at the expense of wine industry subsidies. I guess getting drunk on our own wine is a close second to eating our own food!
2) There have been many instances where the “greenbelt police” have prevented farming operations from operating things like wedding venues, tours, shops and the like to subsidize their income. A little over the top no?
3) If you are going to say to someone that they now have limited options for the utility of their property, they should be compensated for said limitations IMPOSED on them. How would you like if it I got a bunch of people together and we all said you could only do a, b or c with YOUR property. Add to that we are also going to say, while you can’t use your property as you see fit, we are not going to compensate you for your loss. A tactic one would see in Syria perhaps!
The greenbelt is a joke. It was like many socialist liberal initiatives not well thought out, imposed on tax payers in a material way and trampelled over rights that should be enshrined in the Charter.
Now having said all that, I GET the idea of protecting VALUABLE lands. Now if the government wants to do that, they should compensate those parties for the costs attached to limiting the use of those lands. The greenbelt is an example of Expropriation without compensation. It represents the largest land grab in recent Canadian history.
Anyone see a trend in the McSquinty “my way or the highway” approach to politics? He did the same thing with the WindMill issue. Trampelled over the rights of individuals and municipalities with no consideration to their rights and freedoms. If it was 1813 he would have been strung up for this dictator like MO! Sounds like Wynn went to school and we have more of the same to forward to from her. Election PLEASE!!!!
Just sayin……..
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Having watched the “Almost” TOTAL CONTROL that seems to rest in the hands of developers in this Niagara Region it is obvious Regional Government is nothing but an absolute FARCE,
The location of this “NEW” Taj Mahal played right into the hands of these “Entrepreneurs” of PROGRESS (Chuckle) as they forever call themselves and many Elected Regional Councilors are guilty of complicity and outright patronage in these dictatorial aspirations
The God AWFUL location of the Taj Mahal leaves the Southern tier of Niagara abandoned and sick to death of the attitudes and malfeasance of (actually) the Last Regional Council.who in many ways orchestrated this crime.
When the Regional Government attempted, in council, to increase the Development charge and bring it in line with areas like Halton and even London it was bombarded by opposition from Councilors (who seem to derive election funds from these same developers) as well as a the development gang who I have been told circled the Building in their trucks so much like the old saga of circling the wagons Now I would like to ask a question of Doug
Did “THIS” Council eliminate development charges for Niagara developers and if so……. is it not CORPORATE WELFARE in its most malignant form …Take from the poor and give to the Rich Thank you Councilors thanks for cutting our throats………….. We need a Robin Hood in this Region
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All I know is the attitudes I get in this region, particularly among its political does not even make any sense, particularly given I am exposed to true urban and community planning examples elsewhere in Ontario, where the car isn’t king, developers are not freely allowed to gobble up green space, and there is some concern about the health of future generations. I almost give up trying to convince some in Niagara to move out of the 1950;s and try to tell them it is 2013.
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