Premier Doug Ford has said plans to turn Wilmot farmland into a sprawling industrial site won’t go ahead if the township is not a willing host. Public rallies this week, the latest in a long line of opposition moves, demonstrate that lack of willingness.
The massive pushback against the ill-considered project, including from the majority of those within the 770 acres slated for development, is a clear indicator of the public mood.
The Fight for Farmland Group leading the charge has gathered some 40,000 signatures on a petition, as the concerns about the move go well beyond the immediate area.
There’s an easy explanation for that: it’s a bad idea. Period.
The loss of farmland should have been enough to kill the idea the moment it was raised. That the Region of Waterloo has already acquired some of the land says the madness was not stayed (an altogether common defect in the factory of bad, wasteful decisions, unfortunately).
Then there’s the prospect of turning a quiet rural area into a dirty industrial site, complete with traffic and associated safety concerns.
The region says it’s doing all of this on speculation of some future industrial user, opting to gamble hundreds of millions of dollars – and likely more – extending water services, sewers, roads and transportation links to the location.
And then there’s the secrecy. All of this is being done behind closed doors, bypassing the usual public consultations that are part of the planning process. The development, in fact, very much contradicts existing policies and repeated statements about protecting against sprawl. The move comes hard on the heels of the adoption of new regional official plan, which makes no mention of developing the land in question.
Reaction to the secrecy last week prompted the province to lay the blame for the troubling process squarely on the region, saying it’s simply providing some of the money to acquire the land. The lack of transparency is the region’s fault, the province maintains.
The secrecy is a big red flag. Firstly, if the project has merits, why not be more forthcoming? Certainly, some details may have to be excluded in the early going, but the region appears to be in a huge rush to get this done, meaning typical oversight is being discarded. This, without even the bad argument that there’s a major job-creation project pushing for development.
Perhaps more troubling is that this is just another example of a trend toward less transparency – and even less accountability – from regional government, though it’s not alone in that disregard for the public good.
That the landowners there are being threated with expropriation unless they sell makes the whole process even more problematic.
At the root of opposition is the intentional loss of a farmland, already a longstanding concern. It’s an issue that’s been in the spotlight with the Ford government’s pro-development focus, much of it under the banner of increasing housing supplies.
Agricultural organization have decried recent provincial plans that would see already dwindling stocks of prime farmland disappear to development.
Farmland is already slipping away at an alarming rate. Statistics Canada reports that Ontario lost 580,000 acres of farmland between 2016 and 2021 alone. The province loses about 319 acres of farmland daily. At that pace, 25 per cent of the province’s existing farmland will be gone in the next 25 years.
The building spree promoted by the province serves to weaken already poor controls over the loss of farmland, including sprawl.
Beyond the farmland, there are concerns about environmental impacts, particularly those caused by the massive infrastructure upheaval that will be required to make the area an industrial site.
Little is being said, and none of it is the least bit useful in convincing the public. Already skeptical about pretty much everything and everyone involved, opponents aren’t buying what either level of government is selling just now.
