A Ford government plan to take a large swath of Wasaga Beach, the world’s longest freshwater beach, out of Wasaga Beach Provincial Park and transfer ownership to the town has critics fearing the move could jeopardize sensitive land and lead to the sell-off of provincial parkland elsewhere.
The province is planning to transfer the parcel to assist with the town’s revitalization, but critics question why the province is proposing to amend the provincial parks act, meant to permanently protect the land, to allow the transfer when there is already a process within the act to do so.
Environmentalists say the proposed amendment could lead to land being removed from other provincial parks, which the government denies.
Currently, “if you remove more than one per cent or 50 hectares (of a provincial park) it requires a vote in the legislature,” said Mike Schreiner, head of the Ontario Green Party, of the Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act, “which I think brings more transparency and accountability to the issue and gives the public an opportunity to speak out.
“And to lower that threshold, I think indicates that the government intends to remove other parkland in the future,” said Schreiner.
The proposal from the Ministry of the Environment involves approximately 60 hectares, which will be removed from the 1,844-hectare Wasaga Beach Provincial Park and transferred to the Town of Wasaga Beach. It’s equal to about three per cent of the park.
The government’s plan also includes transferring a large parcel of offshore land out of the park, although it will remain in provincial hands, and to transfer the nearby Nancy Island Historic Site from the Ministry of the Environment to the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Gaming.
The province hasn’t said exactly how it intends to amend the Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act.
But critics speculate the government will change the act so that a vote in the legislature is no longer necessary to remove parcels of land above the one-per-cent or 50-hectare threshold.
“If they just want to do a land transfer in Wasaga Beach they wouldn’t make this kind of regulatory change,” said Phil Pothen, a land use planning and environmental lawyer with Environmental Defence. “They would just need the legislative approval to sell more than three per cent of the land,” he said.
“That’s not what they’re doing,” said Pothen. “They are proposing to change the PPCRA, which affects all parks.”
In an email, the province said the proposed changes to the Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act are specific to Wasaga Beach Provincial Park and “there will be no changes made beyond those being considered in the Environmental Registry of Ontario posting and any claims otherwise are categorically false.
“Any protected species and their habitats will also remain protected regardless of who owns and operates the land where they are found,” said the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks in the email.
Wasaga Mayor Brian Smith said the government’s move will correct 50 years of a failed experiment, when the provincial government of the day tried to turn Wasaga Beach into a year-round destination by making it a provincial park.
“Fifty years ago this park was created,” said Smith, in an interview with the Star. “The province came to Wasaga Beach. They expropriated people’s homes. They expropriated people’s businesses and livelihoods. They basically gutted the economy of our community.”
The province has earmarked $38 million to support the town’s revitalization goals of increasing tourism and investment by providing infrastructure for the thousands of new homes that are slated to be built in Wasaga Beach as well as restoring Nancy Island Historic Site.
The town has already made deals to build a mixed-use development that includes residential and commercial units on the town’s main drag, with some units facing the water, and has a deal with the Sunray Group to develop a $45-million Marriott Hotel at Wasaga Beach’s Beach Area 1 as well as a public square.
When asked why the town needs ownership of the 60 hectares, Smith said the town put out requests for proposal (RFPs) for a community-led master plan and that staff were reviewing the RFPs to select “experts and organizations that will lead us to create that plan,” which will include ecologists. Smith said there would be plenty of opportunities for residents to weigh in.
Smith didn’t say what areas of the beach were involved, but in other news interviews he has said the land in question is largely paved parking lots.
“You know, we say it all the time,” said Smith, “Joni Mitchell wrote her song for Wasaga Beach. The province came here, tore up paradise and put up a parking lot,” he said, referring to a paved area near a section of the beach. “Our plan is to do the reverse. It’s to tear up the parking lot, put paradise back where it belongs.”
Longtime resident Ted Crysler said the town desperately needs to be revitalized. A fire in 2007 gutted 90 per cent of buildings in the town’s main commercial strip and he said the town has been in a “holding pattern since then.”
Crysler said residents had input into the downtown revitalization plan and he expects the same thing to happen when it comes to the beach area.
“If they are going to do development — nothing has been confirmed one way or the other — the town has committed that it will also be a public process with public consultation for the residents,” said Crysler. “And I believe them.
“They’ve done that before,” he said. “And that will be the time for people to say here’s what I want, here’s what I don’t want to see and the town will need to listen to that and respond to that. ”
About half of the 60 hectares the government is proposing to remove from the park is ecologically sensitive land, according to Smith, that includes beachfront, dunes, insects and nesting grounds for the endangered piping plover, a shorebird that nests and feeds along shorelines.
“That is an absolute no-go zone for the province or the municipality or anyone else to build on,” said Smith. “Any developments that would take place on any of these lands … would not be anything that wasn’t there in the past,” he said. “And it worked just fine.”
Some environmental groups are questioning then why that land is being removed from the park.
The removal of the offshore land from provincial park protection may not seem significant, said Adam Ballah, a policy and communications director with Simcoe County Greenbelt Coalition, but it opens up the possibility for activities that might not be allowed if the area remained part of the park.
“Building a pier with amusement rides and whatnot could happen now that those offshore areas are no longer within the park,” said Ballah. “It’s a bit of a stretch to say that will happen, but the change makes it easier.”
Both the town and the province are promising to keep the beach public.
“The beach is the heart and lungs of our community and no one understands the importance of the beach, the dunes, the plovers, the ecosystem, if you will, better than we do,” said Smith, “and how important it is that we maintain and make sure that all stays in place.”
But the word “public” can have different meanings, said Environmental Defence’s Pothen, including public ownership as a continued public space or a mere right of public access to private land, which is often sometimes referred to as public.
And taking the 60 hectares out of the provincial park act means that ecological priorities will no longer trump any other, he said.
“If there really were no plan for lessened protection for the ecosystems or the habitats and the wildlife and the endangered species on any of these lands,” said Pothen, “there’d be no reason to remove them from the provincial park, let alone to sell it off and end Ontarians’ shared ownership of parts of the longest freshwater beach in the world. ”
Environmental Defence would like a clear commitment from the province that the land will be protected as it would under the act.
“The town is a small group of Ontarians,” said Pothen. “And what we’re saying is that it needs to remain in provincial public ownership, which comes with very different conditions.”
