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Category Archives: Public Lands Act

ERO-019-3268 – Strengthening our Environmental Compliance Approach

By Linda Heron on Monday, June 28th, 2021
Posted in Aquatic Life, Class EA for Waterpower, Clean Water Act, Climate Change, Conservation Authorities Act, Dams, Endangered Species Act, Energy, Environmental Assessment Act, Environmental Registry, Fisheries, Hydroelectric, Land Use, Mercury, Ontario Water Resources Act, ORA Submissions, Planning Act, Policy & Process, Pollution, Provincial Policy Statement, Public Lands Act, Regulatory, River Concerns, Rivers at Risk, Sewage, Species at Risk, Toxics, Urban Development, Waste Water Treatment Facilities, Water Quality

West Credit River, Photo by Steve Noakes

The ORA offers strong support for polluters being held accountable; however, that isn’t what’s happening here.  Rather than strengthening enforcement tools that hold polluters accountable, this government is systematically and persistently dismantling, weakening or bypassing all environmental policy and legislation that was designed to protect the environment and deter those industries, corporations or individuals who would pollute and/or destroy the environment.

These ERO postings consistently mislead the public, especially in the top several paragraphs and titles, which contain misleading introductions to the proposed policy the government is proposing.  In fact, you can always count on these “modernization” policy changes to be a further attack on environmental policy and legislation. It is even more despicable that these attacks have largely been carried out during the government’s declared COVID Emergency, where no public consultation is required, and what consultation that does take place is meaningless when the main objective is to cut red tape and remove any roadblocks to development and pollution, in spite of the public’s strong recommendations to protect the environment.

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The work to Save the Bala Falls continues

By Linda Heron on Wednesday, October 1st, 2014
Posted in Bala Falls, Crown Land Use Policy, Dams, E-Newsletter, Energy, Hydroelectric, Moon River, Public Lands Act, Regulatory, Renewable Energy on Crown Land, River Concerns, Rivers at Risk

by Mitchell Shnier, Save the Bala Falls

The Township of Muskoka Lakes initiated a Judicial Review in 2013 as the proposed hydro-electric generating station at the Bala Falls would contravene two Sections of the Public Lands Act:

  • Section 65(4), which requires that portages not be obstructed – and the proposed generating station would obstruct the traditional Bala Portage. As requested and required by the MNR, we were able to locate historic documents confirming not only that the portage was south of the Bala north falls, but that it was established before the original Crown land patent was granted. That is, as a result of our claim that the Public Lands Act does not permit the MNR to obstruct the Bala Portage, the MNR requested information, and we provided this information, yet they simply ignored and denied what we provided.
  • Section 3, which states that if less than 25% of the shoreline frontage of a body of water is Crown land, then the publically-accessible Crown land shoreline cannot be further reduced. And in fact, on the Moon River, there is less than 25% of Crown land frontage, and this would be further reduced by the proposed generating station. The Township was able to show that the MNR did not follow their own required Policy PL 3.02.01 in determing Crown land frontage. However, the MNR simply ignored this policy and presented an incorrect calculation to the Court.

Unfortunately, the end result was that despite the MNR contravening these Sections of the Public Lands Act the Court ultimately decided that Section 28 of the Public Lands supercedes the others, and if the MNR unilaterally decides the lands are unsafe or that the Minister wishes to build a hydro-electric generating station anyways, they can.

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