Hamilton 350

Dear councillors,

I have reviewed item 11.3 of the December 5 agenda of the Planning Committee. This Municipal Protected Areas Project is a good news item, in my view, and I urge you to support it.

It is disappointing that staff only consider it as a “medium priority” instead of high priority, but the simplicity of what they need to do means it can easily be accomplished quickly without disturbing other staff work. Just providing what Ontario Nature is requesting will mean that their important work will advance with minimum effort by Hamilton staff.

And it is very important that work proceed as quickly as possible. It may make the city eligible for federal land protection dollars. More importantly it will help us advance the high priority work of updating our natural heritage assessment which is necessary to evaluate unprotected wetlands, waterways, forests and other natural features. It is well understood that will lead to enlargement of the city’s identified significant natural heritage features and their protection. The staff report acknowledges the shortcomings of our current assessment.

This is crucial to the implementation of Hamilton’s climate efforts in multiple ways. At the heart of the global climate crisis is the alleged ‘right’ to convert publicly important lands and waters to private dollars while degrading the public benefits. I believe we are now well past the point where this must stop. That conversion inevitably results in the release of more carbon into the atmosphere from the soils, former wetlands and lost vegetation, as well as the elimination of carbon sinks that are crucial to the removal of carbon pollution from the atmosphere to moderate the greenhouse effect.

It will also exacerbate the impacts of climate extremes of heat and precipitation and impose additional costs on the city and its residents. Rural landscapes and vegetation act to cool the extreme temperatures. They also minimize stormwater runoff and resulting flooding. Fortunately our city staff understand this problem and are attempting to minimize it with specific stormwater fees that recognize and reward the positive ways that property owners reduce stormwater runoff.

The Municipal Protected Areas Project originates in Canada’s commitments at the COP 15 Montreal agreement to minimize the loss of biodiversity. It that too, it aligns with council’s efforts to put in place a Biodiversity Action Plan. And it is in keeping with and implementing the Montreal Biodiversity Pledge committed to by the City of Hamilton.

I was disappointed that a majority of council rejected delaying the Transportation Master Plan for the Airport Employment Growth District. But I note that planning staff have acknowledged that natural heritage assessment must occur next. The Municipal Protected Areas Project also seems to align with this promise. That is underlined by the unfortunate flooding that has already occurred in the wake of the Amazon warehouse development that has imposed a massive structural and pavement impervious area, while at the same time eliminating natural features that would have absorbed some of the impacts of extreme rainfall events.

Thank you for considering my views.

Sincerely,
Don McLean

Doug Ford has finally decided that the heat’s too much and has backtracked over the Greenbelt debacle. For the latest information, see the CBC, the Globe and Mail, and the Hamilton Spectator. And for a more insightful analysis, see The Conversation, which points out that the Greenbelt giveaway had nothing to do with creating affordable housing and suggests more sensible and realistic solutions.

What does this mean for Hamilton?

In Hamilton, about 2000 acres of foodlands, forests, and wetlands should be safe from destruction. But it leaves another 5400 acres still exposed because of the Ford government’s forced expansion of Hamilton’s urban area despite overwhelming opposition from City Council and the public. A City-run survey in 2020 completed by more than 18,000 people chose “no boundary expansion” by over 90 percent.

So the effort to protect our irreplaceable foodlands, forests, and wetlands has only been partly achieved. And we are still facing massive sprawl development that will greatly increase climate-wrecking greenhouse gas emissions while eliminating the very areas that can cushion us from climatic consequences.

The boundary expansion benefits the same development sector—and in many cases the exact same developers—as were poised to reap billions in the cutting up of the Greenbelt. The motivation of this government will always be profit over people, but now they’ve been shown to be vulnerable. So let’s build on this and fight the next battle in the knowledge that yes, we can win!

From the Ontario Headwaters Institute:

“Just a few weeks ago, we shared with the public and reminded the government that its “Made-in-Ontario Environment Plan” was still a draft, languishing for what is now 4 years and 9 months on the Environmental Registry of Ontario without a decision notice. 1,155 signatories to our petition agreed that the government should finalize the plan. Now, in its myopic desire to kill the Greenbelt, the government has “discovered” the need for a 10-year review of said Greenbelt.

“Funny. It has never done a thorough review of the Provincial Policy Statement, as required, even though it has amended it 3 times. Funny, it launched the 10-year review of the Lake Simcoe Protection Act more than a year late, and has still not even responded to submissions more than 3 years later. On the Greenbelt, it seems to have completely forgotten its 2020/2021 consultation on Growing the Size of the Greenbelt, ERO 019-3136.

“For our part, more than 120 organizations and individuals supported our 25-page submission on that, urging the government to embrace a once-in-a-generation opportunity to safeguard our regional resilience by substantially extending the Greenbelt into the broader area of the Greater Golden Horseshoe. Specific recommendations, found in OHI Submission ERO 019 – 3136 April 19, included expansion into The Paris-Galt Moraine, the Natural Heritage and Agricultural Systems across the Greater Golden Horseshoe, land and waters in the Bluebelt proposal, and, other key headwater areas. Not a word has been heard since 2021.”

Andrew McCammon
Executive Director

This item was extracted from an email sent to Hamilton 350 by one of our members.

If I could, I would tell [the City] to develop the land with restorative farming, which aims to replenish the soil by rotating crops and allowing the sharp hooved animals free range or better yet, to develop the lands with native plants: paw paw trees, choke cherry bushes, oaks, sugar maples, tulip trees, etc.

Let’s keep urban development in existing already-serviced urban boundaries, where high density housing can be built at lower costs, providing multiple units at a low price. Within the erstwhile urban boundaries, sewers, water mains, electrical lines, roads, schools, libraries, stores, churches, transit, etc. already serve underdeveloped and empty lots. 

We’ve no need to hand developers land on a silver platter so they may make the big bucks.

Let’s keep our Greenbelt GREEN.

Who got paid off? That’s a key unanswered question in the Auditor-General’s damning report on how the provincial Conservative government carved up the Greenbelt. She tells us the land speculators will get over $8 billion in a process that strongly suggests corruption.

Three prominent Conservatives are identified by the AG – Premier Ford, Housing Minister Steve Clark, and the chief of staff they appointed to pick whose lands got removed from the formerly protected Greenbelt. The AG tells us the latter got handed a package at a builders’ dinner last fall that listed 92 percent of the lands subsequently chosen for removal.

What did he or Ford or Clark get in return? They ignored or neutered the established process. They didn’t consult with municipalities, conservation authorities, Indigenous nations, or financial experts. They trashed their party’s promise to not touch the Greenbelt, with all the political fallout that entails. And that decision delivered an enormous windfall to a handful of already extremely rich people.

Who cashed in? Was it one of these, two of them, all three, and/or some others who somehow managed the process out of sight of the AG? Or are we to naively believe that those who got handed over $8 billion didn’t provide a significant payoff?

Will this be revealed or continue to be covered up? Will our alleged democracy deliver justice?

Because there are also big losers – you and me and the rest of the non-billionaires. What are our losses, besides having a government that clearly does not represent our interests and can’t be trusted?

Do you eat? We lose thousands of acres of the best agricultural land in Canada precisely when climate change has made the weather for growing food increasingly unreliable and food prices are jumping. And when heat, drought, wildfires and floods are also smashing up the foodlands we rely on in other parts of the world.

Do you breathe? We lose the air cleaning and oxygen from productive green fields plus the forests and wetlands being carved out of the Greenbelt whose public benefit is to be destroyed for private profit.

Are you feeling the heat? We lose the cooling effects of all these lands and waters on the rural and adjacent urban areas.

Is your community trying to reduce carbon emissions by more efficient use of lands? The sprawl development eagerly eyed by the billionaire developers will make that much worse and much harder to accomplish.

Do you struggle to get around in the time you have? The planned suburban housing will be car dependent, piling thousands more vehicles onto already congested roads.

Do you pay property taxes? You’ll pay more to provide the roads, sewers, water pipes, fire stations, and all the other services to new sprawl development.

Do you worry about climate change? All of the above will make it worse faster, filling pockets of the wealthy while they blame you for not personally doing enough. This scandalous giveaway reconfirms that our Ontario government is an intentional climate destroyer.

And will this build affordable housing? Not a chance. As always anything built on rural foodland and green spaces will be the most expensive. The billionaire speculators didn’t buy these lands to help you or your kids. Housing will continue to be converted from a place to live to an “investment opportunity.”

Who is benefiting? Is it the public or the billionaire corporations?

Hamiltonians get to challenge the Greenbelt removals Thursday, September 14 at the Ancaster Memorial Arts Centre.

The Greenbelt has been carved up; the Conservation Authorities gutted; wetlands opened for paving; municipal governments financially hamstrung; and massive boundary expansions imposed onto Hamilton and Halton foodlands. There have been over 80 rallies across the province.

The tide of anger at Premier Doug Ford is understandable but probably misdirected. It mistakenly assumes that voters rule, not corporations.

The protests have little effect, since the Premier and his Progressive Conservatives clearly reject basic democratic principles. They have even overturned majority rule in city councils with their ‘strong mayor’ legislation. Now what?

First, follow the money. Virtually everything the Conservatives have forced through in the last three months has had one obvious objective – slashing growth fees and environmental rules to benefit billionaire land speculators and greenfield development corporations. These are obviously the real ‘governors’ in Ontario.

With no democratic options left for the public, shaming and blocking these puppet masters is an appropriate path forward. Direct action to defend farmland and wetlands is probably the only way left to prevent the further destruction of our environment and climate.

The huge political influence of big developers has been obvious in Hamilton for decades. They have consistently been the overwhelming source of campaign donations. But residents said enough and stood up to this in 2021. More than 16,000 replied to a city-run survey and over 90 per cent chose the option of no boundary expansion – at least 87 per cent in every ward.

City council then voted 13-3 for that option. Two of the three sprawl supporters didn’t even dare run again in last October’s elections, and the third was soundly defeated despite having been a councillor for nearly three decades. No one was elected on a platform of expanding the urban area onto more farmland.

But that was just the appearance of democracy. The big developers simply turned to their PC puppets in Queen’s Park who imposed a 5400 acre expansion onto local foodlands and wetlands plus 1900 acres of the formerly permanently protected Greenbelt.

Both city voters and councillors were treated as irrelevant. Officially the excuse is cities aren’t mentioned in the constitution so are deemed ‘children of the province’. Hamilton has more residents than each of two Canadian provinces; Toronto more than five.

Conservatives work overtime to make voting irrelevant, especially for city councils. Two decades ago there were 59 elected officials in Hamilton – about one per 8,300 residents. Forced amalgamation by a PC government slashed that to sixteen, and with 100,000 more people we now have one representative per 36,000 residents.

Higher populations per councillor requires more money to get elected so more dependence on rich donors. It also means much more work per councillor, and therefore much less time to respond to resident concerns.

Even then their decisions are overrun by the province whose legislation now comes in omnibus bills to avoid debate – Bill 23 changed nine separate previous acts and ran to hundreds of pages. Nor is democracy inside Queen’s Park, not even a hint that an MPP could vote against the party dictatorship. It is so locked up that media don’t even bother to report on the views of individual members.

None of what the PC government has done was included in their June election platform. Indeed their tactics then were say as little as possible about their plans, keep Ford under wraps, and direct their nominees to avoid all-candidate meetings. The low turnout was quite intentional! And combined with a broken electoral system just 18 per cent of eligible voters imposed a majority PC government.

As climatic chaos spreads across the globe we need to re-examine both the threat it poses to Hamiltonians and the ways in which it is being made worse by once accepted development activity. Hundreds of acres of farmland, wetlands, woodlots and other natural features are threatened by the city’s Airport Employment Growth District (AEGD). This was Hamilton’s last big urban boundary expansion finalized in 2015. When it was first proposed over 20 years ago it was envisioned as a high tech centre, but today low-wage warehouses are the main expected employment in the AEGD. That’s what we’ve seen already with the Amazon warehouse complex on Upper James, and the AIMCo proposal for five warehouses that would destroy the Garner Road Marsh. Other similar proposals have are now being made in other parts of the AEGD.

The AEGD was designed when climate change and loss of biodiversity were not considered important, and when farms and other lands not built on were assumed to just be waiting for their “highest and best use” through future development. Indeed the original name of the AEGD was the Aerotropolis – a grand scheme to put Hamilton’s long struggling airport at the centre of its future economy. City officials wanted the AEGD to be much larger and there are still plans for substantial expansion. But more recently is has been admitted that Hamilton has an excess of such “employment” land that won’t even be used by 2051.

The AEGD is also part of the old thinking that cities should subsidize development in multiple ways. These include expanding the urban area; designating vast areas of farmland for “growth”; building roads, pipes and other public infrastructure to attract developers; cutting development fees so the costs of growth are shifted onto existing residents; pre-zoning the lands to undercut any public opposition; and “eliminating red tape” and “streamlining” planning processes.

This minimizes or ignores the existing role of these lands in providing local food, flood prevention, homes for wildlife and respite from the alienation of urban living. Of course there are nice words in AEGD planning documents about protecting such features, but these don’t align with the real intentions. Indeed, the actual size of the AEGD can’t be found in city documents or the Ontario Municipal Board decision that approved it. We know only that it consists of 555 “net” hectares of developable land. That doesn’t include any streams, wetlands or forested areas that are expected to be undevelopable and therefore are not even counted.

It also excludes the new roads and public infrastructure required to facilitate development. Those were expected to cost half a billion dollars in 2010. That number is far higher and growing rapidly. For example, a trunk sewer forecast to cost $44 million a decade ago has now been tendered at $114 million. That was the lowest of two bids received by the city. The other bid was over $245 million. Development fees can only be collected if actual development takes place. The full amount doesn’t cover the actual costs to the city, and council has discounted the fees by nearly 50 percent. And that’s before any special deals such as were provided to the Amazon “fulfillment centre”.

Last year Hamiltonians overwhelmingly and successfully opposed the urbanization of more farmland, but that decision doesn’t apply to the AEGD. However, it does make clear that the public understands that loss of foodlands and natural features are no longer acceptable. Council got that message on the boundary expansion question; it needs to recognize the same message applies to the AEGD. The climate and biodiversity crises, heat emergencies and flooding require a reversal of the destruction of foodlands, wetlands, forests and other natural features.