The Ontario government wants residents’ thoughts on how it should consider requests to expand the boundaries of the province’s Greenbelt and further protect countryside.
The province said Thursday it’s developed draft criteria that, once finalized, would be used to consider requests from regional, county and single-tier governments
to expand the Greenbelt’s boundaries.
“We want to help
municipalities strike the right balance between protecting greenspaces and
meeting the needs of their growing communities,” Municipal Affairs Minister Jim Watson said in a release.
Requests to cut the size of the Greenbelt or remove areas from it “would not be considered,” the province said.
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Among the criteria the province has proposed, for example, are that any new Greenbelt expansions should complement the separate Greater Golden Horseshoe Growth Plan — which is meant to help urban communities in the area grow and revitalize — while steering growth away from “environmentally sensitive” or prime agricultural areas.
Also, the province proposed, Greenbelt additions should be “logical extensions to its existing area. New lands to be added should be easily connected and not create isolated patches.”
Set up in 2005, the Greenbelt covers
more than 1.8 million acres of agricultural and “environmentally sensitive” land
around the Greater Golden Horseshoe, stretching from the Niagara Peninsula in the southwest to Rice Lake in the east, including the Niagara Escarpment and the Oak Ridges Moraine, the province said.
The Greenbelt is meant to permanently protect environmentally sensitive and agricultural lands from development — specifically, some of Ontario’s “most valuable” green
spaces, farmland, forests, wetlands and watersheds, the province said.
The deadline for comment on the proposed criteria is April 30, Watson said in the Greenbelt consultation paper.
