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ONTARIO'S GREENBELT LEGISLATION: A recipe for leapfrogging -- and more pain for farmers"This is the worse thing that can happen. To protect the land in the greenbelt and lose land outside the greenbelt that's even better for agriculture is totally insane," says Guelph environmental science professor Stewart Hilts. And many farmers agreeby MIKE MULHERNOntario's greenbelt plan, caught in controversy and being rethought before going to the legislature, may be causing something called the leapfrog effect -- moving urban development from one piece of prime farmland to another.Ron Bonnett, president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA), says that leapfrogging is one of his organization's primary concerns with the plan. "I think there's a concern that if the urban development doesn't take place where it is and it leapfrogs somewhere else, then the problems that we face -- like lack of farm infrastructure inside the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) -- could become a problem outside the GTA." Stewart Hilts, a professor of environmental science at the University of Guelph, says he is also worried about leapfrogging. "There's a huge new city of 100,000 people proposed in Bradford, north of the Holland Marsh, and I've heard local stories of people coming to Guelph and Kitchener-Waterloo and starting to buy up more land. This is the worse thing that can happen. To protect the land in the greenbelt and lose land outside the greenbelt that's even better for agriculture is totally insane." Concerns about the plan caused the government to move the deadline for submissions back to Dec. 20 from Dec. 12 and to schedule four committee meetings for the New Year, up from two. The moratorium on urban development in the greenbelt study area was extended from Dec. 16 to March 9. The Ontario Legislature doesn't sit again until Feb. 15. "We've heard that we need more time to get this right and we've listened," said Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister John Gerretsen in announcing the moratorium extension. The greenbelt is being driven by the ministry of municipal affairs and housing. Victor Doyle, plan manager for the Golden Horseshoe Greenbelt Group, argues that a massive eight-month plan and consultation was conducted before the draft legislation was tabled. However, there is more to come. "We're still receiving lots of mail and trying to work through it," he said in December, during the extended consultation period leading up to Dec. 20. Asked how items important to farmers such as monitoring and compensation got filtered out of the draft plan, he said, "they haven't yet." Doyle noted that Bill 135, the proposed Greenbelt Act, has been referred to the Standing Committee on General Government, which is made up of representatives of all parties. Committee hearings were expected in the New Year. Farmers, however, remain skeptical because the draft legislation didn't include compensation for lost land value, nor did it include a monitoring system to track changes in land value with the view to compensation in the future. Developers, on the other hand, have large parcels of land between Toronto and the greenbelt to develop and they are moving the market outside the zone penciled in by the government.
"They think they can save all kinds of good farmland and protect some recreational opportunities, largely for urban interests," he says. "They don't seem to understand that agricultural opportunity is fully dependent on a viable industry and they have not found a way to come to terms with the idea that they have to address that issue." Lyons, a councillor in the Region of Peel, thinks it is too late to try to create a greenbelt on the steps of Toronto. "If they were serious about doing something about this, they should have started 30 years ago," he says, adding that experience in the United States shows the best approach to agricultural land preservation is to start 20 miles from urban areas. "There is little agricultural infrastructure left (in his area)," he says. "We face a huge amount of traffic on a daily basis and it affects our lives (as does) the urban encroachment, the impact of non-farm neighbours." Lyons is also critical of Liberal MPPs. "I'm grossly disappointed by the Liberal representation. Rural representation has been manipulated, in my opinion, by the urban agenda to drive this thing forward. It floors me that we have good rural representation out there that's not understanding this issue well enough." He says there's already evidence that land values in the greenbelt area are depressed compared to values in adjacent lands not covered by the legislation. "I'm being told by people actually buying real estate in the area that inside the greenbelt they'll pay farmland value, if you can establish what farmland value actually is, but outside the greenbelt, they'll pay the going market rate, which is five to 10 times the difference." Lyons says some of his neighbours are considering legal action if the greenbelt plan goes through and he's not ruling out joining them. Part of the reason farmers weren't heard on greenbelt issues, Lyons believes, can be traced back to the makeup of the Green Belt Task Force which was established in February and reported in August. "If you look at the makeup of the task force, there was only one bone fide agricultural representative, Mary Lou Garr." Garr, among other things, is a director of the OFA and a member of the Ontario Agricultural College, University of Guelph, advisory council. Other members of the task force were chair Rob MacIsaac, mayor of the City of Burlington and Michael Bunce, associate professor of geography and planning at the University of Toronto. Notable among the committee's members were Fraser Nelson, general manager of Metrus Development Inc and David J. Stewart, president of Mattamy Homes. The remainder consisted mainly of academics or environmental and planning professionals. An agricultural advisory team was also appointed by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food in the summer. The team, former federal agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief and Bob Bedggood past-president of the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario, advised the government not to "provide direct compensation (to farmers) for loss of perceived future opportunities."
"There is no other pension (for farmers) but what we get for what we sell. In the days of indexed and guaranteed pensions, this doesn't cut it. I am a person, I do live here and deserve to share in the economy," Misener says. "I'm right on the county line. The land that we own in Wentworth is in the greenbelt (250 acres). The land we own in Haldimand (1,000 acres) is not. The land that would be more valuable is in Wentworth because it is in the so-called City of Hamilton." Misener thinks the government should pay equivalent value where land is open for development, but he's not holding his breath. "I don't think governments are interested in consultation. I've been farming here quite a long time and in the last 10 years we've been called to consultations with the (agriculture) minister provincially or the minister's representative three or four times. Every time, it's a bloody joke because decisions are already made and all they're trying to do is sell what they're doing under the guise of consultation. That's not consultation." Misener is no shrinking violet. He's chair of Seeds Canada, past chair of Innovative Farmers of Ontario and a member of the OFA and the Soil and Crop Improvement Association of Ontario. Misener says the greenbelt will adversely affect his retirement plans. "This is an urban idea only," Misener said. "I don't have a problem with green space for people, but at whose expense? This is at zero cost to every urban dweller and at considerable cost to the landowner. It doesn't seem fair somehow." Hilts, who chairs the environmental land use department in the agriculture college at the University of Guelph, is part of the Ontario Farmland Trust, which includes members from many farm organizations. "Legally," he says, "we agree with the Agricultural Advisory Team that there isn't a place to pay compensation for lost land value and farmers can still get a perfectly decent price for their farms because non-farmers will buy them and build a mansion on them." However, Hilts does quarrel with the way the greenbelt is being proposed. "They are going ahead with the land use plan . . . before they deal with the Agricultural Advisory Team recommendations." Nor does he like where the land-use lines are drawn, arguing that there is too much land south of the greenbelt that is being left out. "There's lots of prime farmland not part of the greenbelt that is open for developers and they've bought most of it, and there's leapfrogging on the outside of the greenbelt that they're not controlling."
Hilts goes on to say that "there's no doubt that the value of farmland in this exercise has gone down while the value of land held by developers has gone up and that there is an inequity in the way it is done. There have got to be creative ways of dealing with that issue apart from compensation for down-zoning." As president of the OFA, Bonnett has been vocal on the question of the greenbelt. In a recent commentary, he wrote, "OFA doesn't feel the government's consultation process has been adequate. It needs to go on for a much longer period of time and should also expand to include full committee hearings involving representatives of all political parties. "We are also demanding," he wrote, "that agriculture's issues with the proposed plan must be addressed by government before implementation takes place, not as an afterthought." In a telephone interview, Bonnett said he hopes to meet with the minister to discuss the OFA's concerns directly. "Equity is a real concern," he said. "Number one, they'd have to put some sort of monitoring system in place to compare values inside and outside the greenbelt. They'd also have to give some sort of commitment that, if there's a great distortion in land values because of this policy, we're going to have a program to deal with it." Right now, no one knows what will happen. "It's all speculation." He affirmed that the issue of farm viability would also be raised. "Farm viability in the GTA is likely going to be different from farm viability outside the GTA. They have to look at what type of farming is going to be in the GTA in the long term and put tools in place to make sure it stays there." He said niche market activity, more likely for the GTA, requires things that are very different from large cash crop operations. Peel apple grower Nigel Eves, an OFA director, is downright cynical about the greenbelt process. "This is just another layer of crap that farmers don't need," he says. "Peel and all the townships around here have already got city plans. They've already done their homework. They've accommodated the Oak Ridges Moraine and the Niagara Escarpment. They've done a very thorough investigation of aggregates....in their official plan and the plans have already been reviewed by the province. I don't get it." Eves is a little heartened to hear that an all-party committee will discuss the greenbelt even if it is "stacked" in favour of the provincial government. At least the chair is a local MPP, Eves says. Peel Federation president Nick deBoer concurs. He farms with his in-laws north of Bolton, milking 80 cows. Their 90-acre home farm is bordered on two sides by a golf course and on the third by estate homes. If a farm is managed properly, a farmer can make a living now, he says. But maybe 200 cows will be necessary to make a living milking cows in 10 years.
"Would I see 200 cows here? Not in your lifetime," he told Better Farming.BF
Premier Dalton McGuinty's timetable for a greenbelt stretching "from Niagara Falls to Rice Lake"by MIKE MULHERNOct. 23, 2003: Dalton McGuinty is sworn in as Premier of Ontario.Nov. 5. Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing John Gerretsen invokes Section 47 of the Planning Act and imposes a temporary freeze on construction of new homes in the Oak Ridges Moraine lands in Richmond Hill. The freeze lasts until Nov. 20. Nov. 21: Gerretsen proposes to reform the Planning Act. Dec. 16: Citing "gridlock and urban sprawl," Gerretsen and Environment Minister Leona Dombrowsky announce a new moratorium on zoning changes in the Golden Horseshoe and create a 600,000-acre Golden Horseshoe Greenbelt with the Greenbelt Protection Act of 2003. The "study area" would include Toronto, Durham, York, Peel, Hamilton, Halton, the Oak Ridges Moraine, the Niagara Tender Fruitlands and the Niagara Escarpment. Further consultations will determine which lands should be included in the greenbelt. Feb 16, 2004: Gerretsen and Dombrowsky name the Greenbelt Taskforce members. The chair is Rob McIsaac, a lawyer and mayor of Burlington. The members include a couple of prominent developers and a lone farm representative, Mary Lou Garr, from Beamsville, the immediate past chair of AgCare and a director of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture. The greenbelt is expected to stretch "from Niagara Falls to Rice Lake." June 21, 2004: At the request of the minister of housing, Minister of Agriculture and Food Steve Peters announces that the Ontario government is appointing an Agricultural Advisory Team "to ensure that Ontario's growth management strategy addresses the concerns of agricultural stakeholders." The members are former federal minister of agriculture Lyle Vanclief and Bob Bedggood, past president of the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario. The task force is to look at five areas:
August 20, 2004: The Greenbelt Task Force releases its recommendations in a document entitled Toward a Golden Horseshoe Greenbelt - Greenbelt Task Force Advice and Recommendations to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, available online at www.greenbelt.ontario.ca. October 22, 2004: Agriculture Minister Steve Peters announces that the government will act upon the recommendations of the Agricultural Advisory Team. Oct. 28, 2004: Premier McGuinty announces that the Greenbelt plan "adds one million new acres to the 800,000 acres in the Oak Ridges Moraine and the Niagara Escarpment that are currently protected." The draft plan is based on advice received from the Greenbelt Task Force, municipalities and stakeholder groups. The government will consult with the public and stakeholders and intends to have a final plan ready by December 16, 2004. "Our plan will strike a balance between protecting our green spaces and meeting the needs of growing communities," said McGuinty. "It will help us build the kind of Ontario we all want to live in -- and that we can be proud to leave to our children." Nov. 1, 2004: "Government is looking for feedback on draft greenbelt plan" says the announcement of public meetings starting Nov. 8 in Markham, Hamilton, Oakville, St. Catharines, Oshawa, Burlington and Caledon East. The final meeting, on Nov. 29, attracts an estimated 1,000 plus. Many of the attendees are reported to be farmers.
Dec. 8, 2004: The government extends the moratorium on urban development in the study area to Mar. 9, 2005, from Dec. 16 and announces that the Ontario Legislature's Standing Committee on General Government, composed of MPPs from three provincial parties, will hold four days of hearings starting Jan. 31 in Toronto, Niagara Falls and Oshawa.BF
Christian Farmers Federation opposes greenbelt compensationOn the one side of the debate is the CFFO, which opposes "subsidies for speculators." On the other is a group of private landowners, who say their land won't be used as a greenbelt for freeby DON STONEMANThe Ontario Federation of Agriculture holds the middle ground in the debate over the greenbelt. On one side is another farm group and on the other is a private landowners group (the Ontario Property and Environmental Rights Association) and they have very different views.The Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario (CFFO) won't support compensation for landowners who feel they've lost value in their property because it is inside the greenbelt. "We don't support subsidies for speculators," says Elbert van Donkersgoed, policy advisor for the CFFO. "You would end up paying (compensation to) the big speculators, those who are in it full time. The state would have to buy every change" in zoning. Van Donkersgoed argues that the greenbelt "isn't anything new." Municipalities used to "down-zone" properties "a piece at a time" using the planning process. The greenbelt is downzoning a large amount of land at once. Instead of being compensated for being unable to develop land, the CFFO says that landowners should get an "environmental payment" based on providing services such as clean water and fresh air. Society can't expect to get this for free, says van Donkersgoed, citing an experiment in environmental payouts with the Norfolk Stewardship Council. But there are precedents for this approach in Europe and in the United States, van Donkersgoed asserts, though he admits "there are serious challenges about how to make it work and how to make it work well." A greenbelt was established around Portland Oregon about 1979 and it has become increasingly controversial. A November referendum centred on the question of whether the state can zone without paying compensation. Those who wanted compensation won. "The future of this process will be interesting to watch, to say the least," van Donkersgoed says. At the consultation meeting in Caledon East in late November, van Donkersgoed says he tried to get the background documents from the ministry of municipal affairs and housing about how successful greenbelt planning is elsewhere. A month later, he still did not have the requested documents. "They've been saying all along that, in any green belt area (in North America,) property values stayed the same or gone up. I'm not sure what they are using as proof of that," says OFA president Ron Bonnett. There is no hard information available on the issue of equity loss, he says. Van Donkersgoed says the CFFO looks at the issue of property ownership in a far different way than the private landowners do. Farmers are stewards of the land, not its absolute owners. The "absolute owners are groups represented by the Ontario Property and Environmental Rights Association (OPERA)." Bob White, OPERA's president, says preserving farmland is important, but the greenbelt issue affects anyone who owns rural properties. "Fewer and fewer people are interested in buying rural properties with what amounts to a government lien on it." Among OPERA's members is the very active Lanark Landowners Association. Its president, Randy Hillier, says a green corridor linking Ottawa to the GTA is referenced "four or five times" in the greenbelt legislation. "That rings a lot of alarm bells." There is also talk of a greenbelt reaching from Algonquin Park to the Adirondacks in upstate New York, as well. After the GTA greenbelt issue is resolved, "we'll be next," Hillier figures. Hillier says his land won't be used as a greenbelt for free. "We have clearly said there will be no green corridor coming through our lands," he notes. If no agreement can be reached, then the government will have to expropriate his land and he expects to be paid for it.
In a letter to the OFA executive which he later made public, Hillier says the OFA and the Lanark Landowners "are not far apart" in their views on the greenbelt, nutrient management and other key issues where property rights are crucial.
Leapfrogging and the CFFOOn the question of leapfrogging, the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario (CFFO) calls for the imposition of the same planning requirements on prime agricultural land outside of the greenbelt area as inside it, along with changes to planning so that development is encouraged outside the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). This would prevent GTA development from simply being shifted from the greenbelt area to the good farmland north of the Bradford Marsh.Growth appears inevitable in Ontario. Where should it be? The CFFO points to Fort Erie, Peterborough "and other locations not surrounded by high capability farmland." And how would that be done? Change planning rules so that development should only occur where there are jobs. The CFFO figures this would change the nature of the bedroom communities on commuter routes into Toronto. Elbert Van Donkersgoed, the organization's policy adviser, says that the CFFO "has come to terms with the fact...a lot of our countryside economy is not great. We have allowed too much of the countryside to be just a bedroom, from which people commute to the big city."
"If we are going to give up farmland, we should be giving up land for real economic reasons, he says. If we give up some medium-quality farmland at Owen Sound, it should be for the community to be strengthened economically. It should be because a real economy is being developed here. Not because more folks are willing to drive a long way for jobs." BF
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