Statement By Phil Pothen, Counsel and Ontario Environment Program Manager

Toronto | Traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat – The Ontario government is using the Budget Measures Bill to ram through its removal of the most celebrated habitats and public recreational areas from Wasaga Beach Provincial Park. The removal of official Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserve status would be the first step in the government’s plan to sell roughly 60% of the Wasaga Beach Park’s celebrated Georgian Bay shoreline land for a development scheme.

That selloff plan is intensely unpopular. Wasaga Beach Provincial Park welcomes 2 million nature lovers and beach-goers each year, and Ontarians who care about the environment know that the area to be removed includes almost all of the Park’s critical habitat for the endangered shorebird: the piping plover. Government caucus MPPs have been swamped by thousands of letters, telephone calls and meeting requests from Ontarians urging them to vote against the selloff and publicly break with the government on its plans. We at Environmental Defence have ourselves been copied on more than 15,000 of those letters.

By making the selloff a confidence vote – Premier Ford has reduced the likelihood of the kind of caucus revolt that forced him to reverse his giveaway of Greenbelt lands. Under normal circumstances, the sale of such a large share of Wasaga Beach Provincial Park would require that individual government MPPs directly defy their constituents – by giving explicit and free-standing “endorsement” of the land sale. The legislation inserted into the government’s budget bill circumvents this critical Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act safeguard against park selloffs by deeming that the specific lands in question are not part of a Provincial Park. That way, MPPs can claim that they never directly approved the selloff itself.

With the government’s repeal of Endangered Species Act, recognition of endangered birds and fish, their habitats (including that of the piping plover) rely more than ever upon the Provincial Park’s protections to safely coexist with beachgoers and other recreational users. Recent communications from the Town of Wasaga Beach have also raised concerns that it plans to destroy piping plover habitat with its beach grooming equipment as soon as the beach lands are given to them. The Ontario government should immediately abandon its plans to remove any of these lands from the Provincial Park.

ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE (environmentaldefence.ca): Environmental Defence is a leading Canadian advocacy organization that works with government, industry and individuals to defend clean water, a safe climate and healthy communities.

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For more information or to request an interview, please contact:

Karishma Porwal, media@environmentaldefence.ca