Food and Water First back from the brink

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Published on Monday, 13 May 2013 17:13

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The Aggregate Resources Act (ARA) review is back from political purgatory.

The province’s Standing Committee on General Government recently decided to pick up where its ARA review left off when former Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty announced his resignation and prorogued parliament back in October.

“They’re truly moving the ball forward,” said Carl Cosack, chair of the North Dufferin Agricultural Community Taskforce (NDACT). “I’m hopeful and optimistic that the ARA review will yield some tangible results and not just be a say-nothing document.”

With The Highland Companies’ proposed mega quarry application caught under the microscope of scrutiny, the standing committee began examining how operations and rehabilitation are handled in the ARA, as well as new industry developments, resource development and fees and royalties.

The committee embarked on a tour of the province, including a stop in Orangeville, to gather input on the aggregate extraction process.

All that research died with the prorogation of Queen’s Park.

As Dufferin-Caledon MPP Sylvia Jones explained, however, the ARA review is back on the standing committee’s desk and has been given life again.

“All we have done, thank you Liberals, is delayed it by four months,” Jones said, noting the standing committee has set aside four days to begin writing its report on the ARA review starting in late May.

Fortunately, the standing committee doesn’t have to start from scratch.

It will be able to use the information gathered from the nine days of ARA hearings held across the province last year.

“All of that gets compiled by the researcher and we start to see what kind of messages were consistently heard,” Jones said. “The report will become public hopefully in June.”

Then again, Jones cautioned the public from thinking recent news means the ARA will automatically be subject to revision or change.

The standing committee will merely submit its ARA review report to Queen’s Park — it will be up to MPPs to take any action.

“It’s a report to the legislative assembly. There is no obligation to debate it,” Jones warned. “I don’t want to mislead people into believing that is going to change the legislation.”

For her own part, Jones does believe the ARA is in need of an overhaul.

It also doesn’t come as any surprise that Cosack and NDACT have a few ideas of their own.

Above all else, Cosack urged the provincial edict be changed to protect source water regions and irreplaceable farmland from aggregate applications or operations.

“That is, without a doubt, the number one cause,” Cosack said, pointing to NDACT’s experience in Melancthon.

“There is no doubt that under the water table extraction should automatically be covered by an environmental assessment,” he said.

Cosack stressed a number of other ARA loose ends, some of which include setting out a different levy structure, addressing the issues of “dormant” aggregate licences, outlawing pumping water in perpetuity, among many other issues, should be tied off as well.

From Cosack’s perspective, the current ARA is working well in some areas, while it is non-existent in safeguarding others.

Several protocols and regulations are simply in need of further strengthening, he said.

“For some types of applications, the current ARA is working fine,” Cosack said. “You don’t have to make it more stringent on everybody, but you certainly have to control application processes like the (mega quarry) one.”

By Chris Halliday

Published in the Orangeville Banner, Apr. 13, 2103

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