Three Decades Too Soon: The Preliminary Proposals of the Niagara Escarpment Commission and the Origins of the Greenbelt Act
- John Bacher (PhD), PALS Researcher, October 5th, 2006
Destroyed by the strong opposition of outraged landowners, the 1978 Preliminary Proposals of the Niagara Escarpment Commission, (NEC) eventually were resurrected 27 years later in the 2005 final plan of the Greenbelt Act. For this plan to be enduring and not repeat the short lived effort of the Planning Act reform of 1994, it is important to understand how the Greenbelt’s shape is not as its detractors claim, cynical “political science”.[1]
Rather than being mocked, the Greenbelt should be understood as an effort to revive the land use planning framework attempted by the Progressive Conservative governments of John Robarts and William Davis, which was destroyed through highly manipulated protests by landowners, supported at the time by the provincial Liberal Party under the leadership of Stewart Smith. This culminated in a 50% reduction in the NEC plan area on May 8, 1978-- a black day for good land use planning in Ontario.
Approximately half of the Greenbelt’s acreage is not related to the NEC’s original plan. This area, which is not influenced by concerns for the Niagara Escarpment’s landscape, consists of the lands designated under the Oak Ridges Moraine Protection Act and other lands to the north of it, stretching to the southern shore of Lake Simcoe. The northern extension was heavily shaped by efforts of developers to “leap frog” the Moraine, after the imposition of a ten year ban on any urban boundary expansions there through the passage of the Oak Ridges Moraine Protection Act.
For its part, the western half of the Greenbelt essentially revives the original concept of the Niagara Escarpment Plan area. Here, the Greenbelt is composed almost entirely of lands that were part of the NEC plan area until the landowners revolt of the spring of 1978. Except for lands in the Bruce Peninsula (formerly entirely protected by the NEC plan) and lands in Niagara Falls north of the Welland River, all the area formerly included in the Escarpment Plan area was placed into the “protected countryside” of the Greenbelt. This comprises the tender fruit and grape lands of the Niagara Escarpment, including important stretches of the shadow fruit belt area in Pelham, Lincoln, and Thorold. Also included in the Greenbelt, are all the lands removed from
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the NEC plan in 1978 that buffered the Escarpment from its scarp to the west. . These lands are in the former County of Wentworth, (now part of the City of Hamilton), Peel and Halton Regions and in the current Wellington and Dufferin counties.
The Greenbelt also gave final shape to another initiative of the Robarts- Davis era, the Parkway Belt West plan, as it finally provided an effective planning mechanisms to this area in Halton Region known as the “Escarpment Link” lands, which had been in a planning limbo.
Both the NEC Preliminary Proposals and Parkway Belt West Plan represented the
best efforts of the federal and provincial governments, acting on reports from civil servants, to curb of worst excesses of urban sprawl. Concern over the loss of the Niagara fruit lands and related scenic vistas of the Niagara Escarpment motivated serious efforts to curb urban sprawl.
Criticisms of the Greenbelt plan from the Neptis Foundation, which point out the very large area adjacent to the heavy growth pressures of Greater Toronto, show the limited ambitions of this resurrected planning measure both today and in 1978. While the more marginal farmland, laced with forests and natural areas, to the west was protected in the original NEC boundaries, no effort was made to safeguard the Class One and Two farmlands of Peel and Halton east of the Escarpment towards Lake Ontario. Despite its modest goals, it still generated massive protests, which delayed its implementation for almost three decades. [2]
The passage of the Niagara Escarpment Act set in motion a ticking time bomb for the protests of landowners hostile to its efforts to protect such important landscapes as the vistas from the Niagara Escarpment to the fruit lands south of its brow towards Lake Ontario. The fact that the Escarpment Commission was quite open about its goal of protecting such landscapes caused it to become a lightening rod for landowner revolt
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when the Preliminary Proposals for the Plan were released in February 1978.
For at least four years the Commission had indicated that it would be tough on curbing sprawl onto the Niagara Fruit Belt, but it wasn’t until six months prior to the document’s release that the beginnings of a landowner revolt began in Grimsby. Grimsby’s municipal council, which desired to urbanize all of its fruit land for the benefit of an expected influx of Hamilton area commuters, was in a collision course with the NEC. The Town opposition became the basis for the Niagara Escarpment Landowners’ Association, which began to denounce the NEC. Its criticisms were boosted by the vociferous editorial support of the only daily newspaper in the former Lincoln county northern half of the Niagara Region, the St. Catharines Standard.
The opening attack on the attempt to protect the fruit belt through the Escarpment Plan was launched a 1,000 word editorial in the St. Catharines Standard on November, 24, 1977. The editorial “Evidence of Blackmail”, would be reinforced over the next five months by negative commentary from landowners, press columnists, Liberal and municipal politicians, and employees of local governments. The initial editorial salvo alleging “blackmail and coercion”, called the NEC appeal process “little more than a farce”, and described the Commission’s planning guidelines as “confiscation without compensation.” [3]
The alleged blackmail revolved around the NEC’s accommodating efforts to permit some severance activity, while maintaining the use of the Bruce Trail corridor along the Escarpment scarp. These attacks were based on a single case in the Town of Lincoln concerning a severance approved on May 11, 1976, on the basis of a “hand shake” agreement, whereby the Bruce Trail would continue to exist on the property. At the
time of this severance, these conditions had not aroused any controversy. The actual landowner was never identified and was silent during the five month period his alleged victimization was cited in protests, editorials and debates in the Ontario legislature. It was not a burning dispute, but one that even Robert Merritt, President of the Niagara Escarpment Property Organization, explained in one of his provocative letters, was
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something his organization had “dug up”, in the NEC’s files. [4]
Merritt’s, and the Standard’s, initial attack on the NEC charging blackmail were repeated by their attacks on the Preservation of Agricultural Lands Society, (PALS) and one of its founder, the NDP MPP, Mel Swart. These were heightened by a December
3, 1977 attack on the Chair of PALS, Dr. Robert Hoover, alleging “Intellectual Dishonesty.” It claimed that Hoover’s dishonesty was part of a pattern which showed “that the economic concerns of farmers are irrelevant, that the only thing that should concern government and planners is the preservation of agricultural land regardless of the economic implications in the Canadian marketplace.” This attack on Hoover was followed up by an announcement of the Town of Lincoln that they would wage “Campaign...Against Fruitland Preservationists”, targeted at PALS and Mel Swart. It was also alleged that the planning for the Town of Niagara- on- the- Lake had been threatened by a planner who had “been hired by Mel Swart to do the secondary planning here. “ [5]
The four month barrage of accusations of “blackmail”, “intellectual dishonesty”, “naked use of force”, “stink”, “extortion” had already resulted in the closure of much of the Bruce Trail when the Preliminary Proposals for the NEC plan were released on February 14, 1978. The poisoned atmosphere, however, would become more inflamed as a resulted of the provocative and manipulative presentation in the mass media of the content of the Preliminary Proposals upon their release. This was the work of a novice St. Catharines Standard columnist, William Marsden. In his provocative February 15, 1978 front page news story, Marsden charged that the Preliminary Proposals would tell “a farmer among other things what he may cultivate, what buildings he may erect on his land and where, to whom he may sell his property and even where he may plant trees and shrubs.” His article, which in may ways was similar to misleading press accounts of the proposed content of the later Greenbelt Plan, was full of scary language about the “absolute control” that Queens Park would now have over land use planning in Niagara and the imposition of “unyielding restrictions.” [6]
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Marsden’s incendiary words were reinforced the next day by a provocative editorial in the St. Catharines Standard. It equated the Preliminary Proposals with Stalinist Communism, claiming it appeared the Davis government was now welcoming “Big Brother even though it is not yet 1984.” This was repeated by similar attacks that claimed the “nefarious activities” of the NEC, had its “officials spout Marxist precepts while confiscating private property.” [7]
In all the sensationalist yellow journalism reporting of the NEC’s Preliminary Proposals,
there was little actual hard news reporting on the actual content of the proposed plan. There was no mention for instance, of the mapping of forest areas and the proposed protective measures- the origins of the eventually adopted Escarpment Natural Area designation. Sensationalist press attacks led to a rapid spread of the Escarpment Property Owners Association from its core support area in Grimsby and Lincoln, to Grey and Bruce Counties. A “Northern Escarpment” Landowners Association was formed and in Wiarton it held a meeting of 1,000 people to denounce the Preliminary Proposals.
These protests were organized by the Liberal MPP, Robert McKessock, who on March 30, 1978, asked Grey County to support his private members bill for an eighty per cent reduction in the Escarpment Plan area. In his presentation to the County Council he announced that his private members bill would be coming up for a debate on Second Reading on May 11, 1978 and that 150 seats were reserved for demonstrators. On April 15, Mc Kessock’s bill for the gutting of the NEC was endorsed by Grey County and the Niagara Escarpment Advisory Committee, composed of municipal planners.
Merritt’s small Niagara group merged with the “Northern” Escarpment organization to plan a mass rally against the NEC, which was held on May 5, 1978, six days before Mc Kessock’s private members bill was to be debated. Three bus loads of Niagara farmers, an estimated 200 people, joined a much larger continent of 1,400 landowners
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from Bruce and Grey counties. While the numbers were far smaller than the organizers were hoping for, the rally, that was called to “Kill the NEC” was lauded as the largest demonstration yet organized against Escarpment planning. One of the keynote speakers was Niagara farmer Howard Staff, who was later appointed to the NEC by the Harris Government in the early months of its mandate. Staff claimed that hikers who walked the Bruce Trail were “hoodlums” and that the pathway served as a “magnet” for such criminals. The must thunderous ovations were heard for Liberal MPP, Eddy Sargent, who denounced the “injustice and dictatorship of the NEC.”
Since he was invited to speak, Mel Swart journeyed to Orangeville rally. He was
proceeded by 13 speakers, all of whom denounced Escarpment planning in the most vitriolic terms. According to Marsden’s account in the St. Catharines Standard, “he (Mel) was the only speaker who was jeered and booed throughout most of his speech.” When he was finally able to speak around midnight, Swart enraged the audience by bravely expressing support for the Bruce Trail and asserting that “In interdependent societies land rights are not absolute.” [7]
Three days after the Orangeville rally, the provincial government reduced the NEC planning area by 50%.. This removed most of the lands in the Niagara Fruit Belt and the areas that would later form the “protected countryside” of the Greenbelt in Wentworth, Halton, Peel, Wellington and Dufferin counties. Mc Kessock was not appeased and his bill supporting the removal of 80% of the plan area still proceeded to a vote May 11th as scheduled. All the Liberal members with the notable exception of James Bradley, who would strengthen the NEC while serving as Environment Minister
in the Liberal Peterson government, voted in favour of Mc Kessock’s bill to gut the NEC. A number of PC members broke rank with Premier William Davis to support Mc Kessock. The most notable was Niagara Cabinet Minister, Robert Welch. He negatively interjected six times when Mel Swart spoke in opposition to Mc Kessock’s bill. [8]
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In the biblical ‘fulness of time’, almost all of the features of the Preliminary Proposals
attacked in the Orangeville rally came back into land use planning with the passage of the Greenbelt Act. The Greenbelt’s provisions for permanent protection of the Niagara fruit belt, a 10 year freeze in the “protected countryside” around the Niagara Escarpment, the ban on retirement severances, the mapping of protected forests to safeguard them from development, are all features similar to the content of the Preliminary Proposals. The significant difference, is that many of the fruit lands that would have been protected, notably in Grimsby and the former Saltfleet Township area, have been totally paved over.
The gutting of the Escarpment Plan area by 50% was a major defeat for the environmental movement in Ontario. It would not be effectively altered for almost three decades, with the final adoption of the Greenbelt Plan in 2005. A serious effort by the NDP government was made in 1994 to reverse the removal of the fruit belt from direct provincial zoning controls by the prohibition of urban expansions here through a strong Provincial Policy Statement (PPS) of the Planning Act. To prevent a landowner revolt similar to that of 1978, this was coupled with a program for the purchase of conservation easements, to protect the fruit lands in “perpetuity. The ensuing Harris government however, first eliminated this Niagara Tender Fruit Lands program to acquire easements and then removed the prohibition on urban zoning expansions of the Niagara Fruit Belt from the PPS. This ominous pattern is worrisome for the future of the Greenbelt, which having not survived a provincial election, is still vulnerable to landowner protests.
The native occupation of the controversial Douglas Creek Estates lands of Caledonia, located a few miles outside the Greenbelt boundary at the old border between Wentworth and Halidmand counties, shows the difficulties in the leaving out of the Greenbelt large areas of countryside protected by the more ambiguous policies of the new Growth Management Plan. The refusal outside of Niagara to extend the Greenbelt borders to the actual urban zoning boundaries is an even greater loophole in the
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legislation. But in evaluating all of these significant flaws, it must be acknowledged that the legislation is finally adopting a framework that was sought almost three decades earlier, by the Progressive Conservative Premiers, John Robarts and William Davis.
References:
1. Bacher, J. Personal reference for this paper. “ Having taken part in the Greenbelt consultations I heard the term “political science” bandied about humourously several times. The best refutation of such arguments is to point out the similarity of most of the Greenbelt boundaries to the original Niagara Escarpment Plan area. “
2. Neptis Foundation .November 11, 2005. Neptis Commentary on the Greenbelt.
3. Editor. November 24, 1977. St. Catharines Standard.
4. Editor. December 3, 1977. “Intellectual Dishonesty”, St. Catharines Standard
5. Marsden, W. February 16, 1978. St. Catharines Standard.
6. Editor. February 17, 1978. St. Catharines Standard,,
7. Marsden, W. St. Catharines Standard. May 7, 1978.
8. McKessock, R. M.P.P. Hansard, May 11, 1978.