Guelph-Eramosa Mayor Chris White has defended the township’s comments to the province regarding its Aggregate Resources Act (ARA) review and council has agreed to include comments from the Concerned Residents’ Coalition (CRC) in the townships correspondence.
On Dec. 7 CAO Ian Roger presented a township planning department report outlining the township’s comments on the ARA review.
“Our staff have reviewed this in conjunction with the review already undertaken by the Wellington County staff,” Roger said.
“We received today the official comments from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario … and it is virtually the same as what has been prepared by Wellington and what we have here – that the province is taking a step in the right direction to update the ARA but there’s still definitely, from a municipal perspective, a lot of work that could be done to make it more relevant and deal with local issues.”
Roger said the key message the township wants to reinforce is there isn’t currently enough in the act dealing with local concerns in reviewing and approving new pits and quarries.
The Guelph-Eramosa planning department developed the following comments in response to the government’s proposed changes to the act:
– the township considers strengthening the application requirements the most important aspect of the updated ARA;
– other positive proposals include the ability of the ministry to request new studies from existing operations, and requiring operations to complete a brand new application to extract below the water table;
– recommending an increase to aggregate fees and acknowledging that the proposal to index fees to the consumer price index is a positive step;
– the township is in support of lengthening the public notification period, however, the province should also consider aligning public notification periods with Planning Act requirements;
– the township encourages the development of terms of reference, waiving application requirements and waiving fees under unique circumstances that the township could review;
– the township cautioned against reducing administrative oversight because it believes large industrial organizations should have government oversight;
– the township asked for more information about importation of fill and fees schedules, “permit by rule” requirements, when application requirements and fees can be waived, broadening the integration of Source Water Protection, and broadening of the circumstances that would trigger cumulative impact assessments.
The township also put special emphasis on Wellington County’s comments that the ARA review won’t resolve the concerns municipalities have about aggregate extraction in Ontario, including a lack of control at the municipal level and the lack of a meaningful public process.
Councillor Mark Bouwmeester requested the report include comments about the need for joint review teams.
Councillor Corey Woods said he doesn’t think the province is actually going to read all of the comments.
“I think it’s a waste of time but we have to do it,” he said.
White replied that many municipalities and areas are submitting comments to the province about the ARA.
“I know they’re getting a lot of input from a lot of folks and they’re going to have a lot of stuff to deal with, but I think the comments we’re submitting will be good with [Bouwmeester’s] addition and frankly for me the biggest point, and it’s more generic than specific, is the fact that they come after the little guy,” White said.
“We don’t have the money, we don’t have the resources and we’re easy to pick on.”
He suggested a representative from the province attend aggregate meetings so they can better understand the process.
After a discussion, council agreed to take comments from the gallery.
CRC member Stephanie De Grandis said the township’s response was a little “light.”
“For example, on the ground water protection and … on agricultural land and use of agricultural land in, for example, exit extractions, it’s also very light on rehabilitation,” she said.
“There’s no comments about progressive rehabilitation,” which means the operator should rehabilitate the land as the extraction is completed instead of waiting until the license expires.
White said the township didn’t have the staff to do a complete scientific review.
“We weren’t really in a position to review [it] from one end to the other,” he said.
“We’re just trying to give our input as we’re quite often asked to at the county level but we were in no position to do a full scientific analysis of the reviews that were acquired under this act.”
In order to include a more comprehensive review, White agreed to endorse the CRC’s report and send it in with the township’s comments.
Other CRC members at the meeting voiced concern that the township needed to take a stronger stance on gaining control over aggregate applications in the municipality.
White replied, “So there’s provincial bodies that are elected to deal with these things so you’ve got Ted Arnott … I’m not trying to argue with you, but if the assumption is that this kind of lower tier council is going to change the aggregate act that’s not going to happen.”
He added, “At the end of the day if you need policy changes and you want the legislation crafted so that we have control over local planning issues, which we’ve been screaming about forever, the province has to make the change.”
White also indicated he’s not happy with the current process.
“You think we like the fact that we get pushed around by the OMB (Ontario Municipal Board) or the fact that we can’t control, without rehashing the whole thing, there’s nobody on this council who wants that (Rockwood) quarry,” White said.
“We can’t control it, we don’t have the ability to do that so we’re putting in a document that indicates we find some significant problems with it to the best of our ability.”
White also indicated he’s looking for reform at the OMB.
“I sat with the … [assistant deputy minister] not three months ago and we talked about the quality of the people who sit at the OMB and you may have the world’s greatest brain surgeon there who knows nothing about municipal governance who’s going to make a decision that’s going to completely turn our community upside down and we have no control over it,” he said.
“We’re not happy with that. It’s a very frustrating thing.”
Council passed a resolution to accept the planning department comments with amendments to include a need for joint review teams and to endorse the CRC report.
