Nearly all volunteer citizen representatives are being forced off the boards of Conservation Authorities across Ontario as further impacts of last December’s provincial legislation take effect. The Ford government now has proclaimed the governance section of Bill 229 that amended the Conservation Authorities Act and which now requires that a minimum percentage of members of Conservation Authority (CA) boards have to be mayors or councillors.
Developers and their hired agents have been lobbying councillors on growth plans that could affect thousands of acres of farmland south of the current urban area. A crucial staff report and council decision is scheduled for the end of March that is expected to determine the extent of Hamilton’s residential expansion over the next 30 years.
McMaster’s president announced last week that he is directing the university to eliminate fossil fuel corporations from its endowment fund investments. This caps years of petitions and faculty appeals for the university to stop making money off the climate catastrophe facing the planet.
Governments across the GTA are challenging the climate-threatening policies of the provincial government. Mississauga has joined other municipalities seeking federal intervention on the proposed Highway 413 recently revived by the Ford administration, while Halton regional council is pushing back against pro-development rule changes that force municipalities to accept more sprawl on prime agricultural lands. The Halton move is particularly significant to Hamilton whose planners are grappling with the same rules and deadlines.
Action by a neighbouring municipal government may block the provincial government push that is threatening to convert the rest of Hamilton’s unprotected farmland to residential subdivisions. While Hamilton has accepted that new provincial sprawl rules make inevitable a massive expansion of the city’s urban area, politicians in Halton are determined to fight the Ford government.
With the public distracted by a pandemic, it may have seemed a politically smart time for the Doug Ford’s Conservative Party to dramatically overhaul Conservation Authorities with new rules buried in a budget bill, but evidence suggests that calculation was dead wrong. Bill 229 was met with a public outpouring that included 45,000 emails to government officials and formal opposition from all of the province’s Conservation Authorities as well as nearly forty municipal councils
Anger and opposition continues to grow against the provincial changes to Conservation Authorities (CAs). Only a small part of the Ford government’s legislation has come into force so far with the coming year to see more changes via regulations that may threaten ecological protection, recreational trails, education programs, permitting, and other activities.
The single largest change this year is a jump of nearly $5.6 million in the police budget. That along with an extra million in capital allocation will push annual spending on policing over $177 million. Perhaps in response to the city hall encampment and other protests linking homelessness to police funding, the executive summary of the budget highlights “affordable housing”.
Provincial rules forcing the converting of all remaining Hamilton farmland, outside the Greenbelt, to residential subdivisions to accommodate predicted population growth.
The Ontario Energy Board has now officially accepted Enbridge’s withdrawal of plans for a fracked gas pipeline but has refused intervenor requests to impose conditions on the company. Enbridge has downgraded the potential of reviving the pipe through the Beverly Swamp as gas demand continues to face significant headwinds.
All local conservation authorities and dozens of citizen organizations are fighting the Ford government’s legislation that slashes the powers of conservation authorities. makes life easier for developers and converts the Hamilton Conservation Authority into a sub-committee of city council.
The controversial plan to push a new fracked gas pipeline across rural Hamilton has been abandoned by Enbridge, although the company suggests it may re-launch the project next year. The company cites the pandemic as a factor in determining “there is no longer a need for the project in the time frame as originally proposed.”
Statistics Canada is reporting no growth in gasoline consumption in 2019 and that was even before the pandemic began. That is worrying news for city finances which depend heavily on transfers of both federal and provincial gas tax monies.
In an unprecedented wave of public involvement in a civic issue, Hamilton officials have received written correspondence from over 400 people supporting the defund police campaign. The outpouring continues this week with more than three dozen people set to make personal video delegations to council.
The fight against a fracked gas pipeline through Hamilton’s Beverly Swamp has won provincial and national allies. This week twenty-nine organizations linked the pipeline to the Ford government plans to sharply increase gas use in Ontario’s electricity generation.
Hamilton has just entered its fourth heat emergency of 2020 and it may be a long one, a relatively gentle reminder that parts of the planet are already hitting temperatures where humans can’t survive.
Until recently it was illegal, but Hamilton is now facing an attempt by private developers to force expansion of the urban boundary onto rural lands.
Items on the agendas this coming week include cycling lanes, transit cutbacks, sewage releases, backyard chickens, Uber fees, more homeless relief and the ongoing public health response to the pandemic.
Enbridge’s proposed fracked gas pipeline across rural Hamilton is facing unexpected challenges as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and from the huge number of letters submitted to the Ontario Energy Board by individuals and organizations opposed to the project.
