Email this pageGreenbelt Council's Progress Report 2009
November 30, 2009
Honourable Jim Watson
Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing
777 Bay Street, 17th Floor
Toronto, ON M5G 2E5
Subject: Greenbelt Council’s Progress Report – Highlights 2009
Dear Minister:
I am pleased to provide you with the Greenbelt Council’s year end report for 2009. The attachment to this letter provides an overview of our activities of the past year.
2009 has been a very productive year for the Greenbelt Council and we tackled a lot of timely and interesting matters as they pertain to the Greenbelt.
Council was pleased to welcome our newest member, Dennis Yellowlees, in July. He brings a much needed farmer’s agricultural perspective to our meetings. I am also pleased that Virginia Maclaren, John Middleton, and Clay Switzer have all been re-appointed for an additional year. I appreciate the continuity that these members bring to our meetings with their knowledge and awareness of many Greenbelt issues. As you know, I have agreed to carry on as Chair and have accepted a one year a re-appointment with my term ending in June, 2010.
Howie Herrema, our former Vice Chair retired from Council in June. His contributions to Council were particularly insightful because he brought a number of different perspectives to our meetings being a farmer living on the Greenbelt, who is a former Uxbridge Township Councillor and who is now a Durham Regional Councillor. We wish him all the best in his future endeavours and we will miss him.
Council has been very vocal about raising a variety of concerns this year and we have provided advice to you and your government on a variety of Greenbelt related issues that was often beyond the mandate of your ministry. Because of this, Council felt it needed to establish a protocol that would set out its expectations with respect to a reasonable timeframe by which your colleagues should respond to our letters of advice as they pertain to their particular mandates.
We wanted to make sure not only was our advice received but that we wanted to know how it was being dealt with by your colleagues. We thank you and your staff for helping to get this protocol in place. It has helped to facilitate some interesting feedback and in some cases direct action by your government.
Council has always felt it important that they have an understanding of the various issues, trends and activities that could have an impact on the Greenbelt. Since our inception in 2005, we have continued to invite a variety of speakers to our regular meetings to help keep us informed and aware of current thinking, of the activities of other organizations, and of new government initiatives with a view to how these could benefit the Greenbelt.
For example, this year we heard from Gord Miller, Ontario’s Environmental Commissioner, Charles Garrad, Past President, Ontario Archaeology Society, Donald Ziraldo and Dr. Jim Brandle of the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre, representatives from Ontario Farmland Trust, as well as a number of local food experts.
Council continued to hear from provincial representatives throughout the year which allowed us to provide input into several of your government’s initiatives such as the Green Energy Act, Lake Simcoe Strategic Vision for Growth, the report on Protecting Niagara Tender Fruit and Grape Lands and the GTA–Niagara and the GTA-West Transportation initiatives, to name a few. Council is presently discussing and considering the latest presentations on GTA-Niagara and GTA-West initiatives.
Council has had many discussions about the wine and grape growing issues in the Niagara Region. We provided you and your government with advice voicing our concerns about the LCBO practices regarding VQA wines and other comparable government policies that we felt worked against the sustainability of this industry.
We were pleased to see the government’s October announcement about its intent to focus on VQA wines, including greater access in LCBO stores and the VQA wine support program, among other matters. We applaud your government for announcing these initiatives that will contribute to and showcase an important part of the Greenbelt particularly in Niagara.
We also appreciated your help in arranging for our recent meeting with the Honourable Leona Dombrowsky, Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. It has always been Council’s view that, having given special designation to the farmland in the Greenbelt, the Province should adopt a specific strategy to support farming in the Greenbelt. This meeting with the Minister was a good start but we consider the Greenbelt agricultural issues as a work in progress.
Council has continued to work closely with ministry staff on putting in place a performance monitoring framework for the Greenbelt Plan. As you know this ongoing and important project is part of our terms of reference and will help set the stage for the ten year review of the Greenbelt Plan.
Viriginia Maclaren has been providing her expertise and guidance to ministry staff throughout the duration of this project on Council’s behalf. We understand that ministry staff held municipal stakeholder workshops during November to receive input on this draft framework and a set of sample performance indicators. John Middleton attended the session held in Vineland. Council also provided their comments and feedback at various times during this year.
I am pleased to report that our Greenbelt Council web pages are regularly updated to include new appointments, minutes from every Greenbelt Council meeting, all of our letters of advice as well as the respective responses from yourself and your colleagues. We have always felt it important that Council’s activities be reported in an open and transparent manner that communicates our work clearly to the public and others. The Council web pages are a good tool to ensure that we continue to operate in an open and transparent manner.
I would like to personally thank you and your staff for your continued support and especially for making yourself accessible to myself and Council members. We appreciate that you always make an effort to drop in on our meetings to hear from us directly. Council looks forward to continue working with you and your staff.
In closing, I would also like to thank ministry staff and our Executive Coordinator Bill Winegard for their hard work and continuing support and dedication over the last year.
Sincerely,
Dr. Robert Elgie
Chair
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