From Greenspace to Greenbelt: The Role of Civil Society in Landscape Protection in the Toronto Region

By

Wendy Burton

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Graduate Department of Geography University of Toronto

© Copyright by Wendy Burton 2016

From Greenspace to Greenbelt: The Role of Civil Society in Landscape Protection in the Toronto Region

Wendy Burton

Doctor of Philosophy

Graduate Department of Geography University of Toronto

2016

Abstract

Greenspace has been increasingly identified as an important element of environmental,

social and economic health, yet proponents of greenspace protection from within civil

society often find themselves with limited resources in political battles with powerful pro- growth coalitions. This was the case with the three citizen-led campaigns that managed to protect progressively larger landscapes in the Toronto region, culminating with the creation of a 1.8-million-acre greenbelt. How did they do this?

This study uses qualitative methods and draws on institutionalism, participation theory, and social capital approaches to examine the evolution of environmental civil society groups and how they learned to exploit governance processes to persuade state actors to break with the status quo.

The study looks at how cultural understandings, historical legacies, legal institutions, planning rules and public preferences shaped the landscape of the Toronto region. The research finds that citizen environmentalists were able to use their social capital resources

ii as civil society groups to adapt governance structures – particularly public participation processes – to build a durable constituency for greenspace protection with payoffs for political actors. Particularly influential were: historical legacies of deploying natural solutions to prevent natural disasters, public participation exercises that were open to manipulation, bridging social capital that helped build large coalitions, and bonding social capital that helped coalition members unite and carry out strategies that included keeping the vision alive for decades as election cycles came and went, and, finally, protecting new state partners from criticism. However, state actors under the influence of the still-strong growth coalition remain reluctant stewards of the environment and have chosen implementation strategies that could undermine greenspace protection over time.

The study adopts an inclusive definition of civil society and finds that a new typology based on two measures of social capital – inclusiveness and (private vs. public) interests – shows that certain groups are more useful in coalitions campaigning to expand public goods. The study also finds that difficulties in developing the social capital needed to develop working relationships in short-term stakeholder groups were overcome by resorting to selective membership and secret meetings.

iii Preface

I came to the formal study of geography late in life. But, in many ways, I was always a geographer, intensely interested in how local places worked. This fascination began as a survival mechanism living in a peripatetic family. Every time we moved, I struggled to fit in by trying to figure out what was good about the place I was now stuck in and what was to be avoided. While I discovered that nearly every place has its charms, I also learned that some places were definitely better than others. Some places just seemed to “work” better. As a sociology undergraduate, journalist and then activist, I looked for patterns, trying to figure out what people could do to make their places work better for all their residents. This led me eventually to graduate school, first in policy studies, then in geography, as I realized that my abiding interest was in what happened to people in the places where they lived. What did it take to make their communities livable and their governments responsive?

I had been involved with a number of causes over the years when the environment became most salient for me. In my own neighbourhood, I could see that a favourite creek was drying up, algae was clogging up the lake near my home, and air pollution was hurting my family’s health. Like many people living on the boundary between suburb and countryside, I missed each woodlot that was clear cut and each farm that was sold to make way for more homes. It did not take long to see connections. As I did my own research, at first informally, I learned that the technical solutions for many of these problems were already known. There was science galore. So why were these solutions not adopted? What were the obstacles? How could they be overcome?

As I worked as a foot soldier in various environmental and land use disputes, I re-learned lessons from my earlier career in journalism: what seems sensible to me may not seem sensible to others… short-term solutions are easier to accept and fund than long-term ones… some people have more power to affect their preferred solutions than others. But just when I thought I could predict the outcome by looking at the players, the game would turn out differently, sometimes in a good way, sometimes not. Sometimes the wrong people would get hurt, people whom nobody had considered had a stake in the outcome.

As a result, my initial focus on the health of the natural environment became more realistic – incorporating a concern for financial and economic vigour – and broader – including a concern for the impacts of local decisions on other people and places, in the present and the future. The abstract interest I had had in sustainability since reading The Limits to Growth as an undergraduate – which had grown into worry during the oil crisis and alarm as we learned about peak oil and climate change – had finally merged with my personal life in such a way as to make formal study of the problem seem a sensible use of my time.

iv For years, it seemed like the steamroller of suburban development – of a kind that harmed the environment and hurt taxpayers by leaving them with expensive infrastructure bills to pay and few public realm enhancements to balance their losses – had the upper hand in any land use dispute in Southern Ontario. But then the other side began to have some victories. This study is about how victories have been won and consolidated, in hopes of applying those lessons to problems of achieving sustainable development in a timely manner.

My focus here is on the creation of a greenbelt – an area of protected greenspace – that came into being much more quickly and easily than its antecedents. The speed of the change, which was massive, is part of what interests me, since I think the ability to change more quickly might be important in the times to come. Also of interest to me is the choice of the greenbelt tool. Many voices had been asking and looking for ways to deal with urban sprawl. There had been discussion of many tools but greenbelts had not been explicitly mentioned. So how did it enter the policy discussion? Why a greenbelt, in this time and place, in this form? Were there purposeful actions taken that could be replicated to produce other solutions to the challenges of sustainable development?

In pursuing these questions, I have enjoyed the support and mentorship of many people. Chief among them is my advisor, André Sorensen, whose optimism, collegiality and gentle prodding kept me going. His informal seminars for his advisees allowed me to explore new theories in a risk-free environment. My other committee members, Michael Bunce and Alan Walks, were unfailingly kind and patient. I am indebted to all the nameless librarians who have digitized documents, especially those who have found the pages missing from tattered hard copies in the library stacks. My colleagues in the department were welcoming and encouraging. As the wife of a politician, I also appreciated that “What happens in the ivory tower stays in the ivory tower” (to paraphrase a popular advertisement on television while I was studying and writing); the university has been the one place where I could speak my mind without worry.

Finally, I have to thank my husband, Rob Burton, my personal IT guy, who was always proud of my work and who put up with my dogs Tessa and Willow, who kept me company throughout this long process. I also thank my children, Rachel, Sarah and Robbie Burton, who provided encouragement, diversion and help with household chores. I thank my father, Ernest Jackson, for instilling in me a love of learning and language; my mother, Jacquelyn Bradford Cox, for encouraging me to find music in unexpected places; and both of them for the example they set of receptiveness to different people and ideas. To Françoise Morissette and a host of friends and family members, thank you for rooting for me and sharing well-timed glasses of wine.

In closing, it is my hope that people who seek a healthier, fairer future for all will find this research helpful.

Wendy Burton Oakville, Ontario 2016

v Table of Contents

Abstract ii Preface iv List of Tables ix List of Figures x Lists of Appendixes xi Notes to Readers xii

1 Introduction: 1 Staking Claims to Regional Greenspace 1 Grounds for Protection 1.1 Who or What is Civil Society? 1.2 Barriers to Greenspace Protection 1.3 Greenbelts as Government Projects 2 Prior Research 3 Research Questions 4 Contribution of this Research 5 Plan of the Study

2 Conceptual Framework: 23 Governance & Policy Change 1 Introduction 2 Governance 2.1 Institutions: Structures of Decision-Making 2.2 Interests: Actors, Resources & Social Capital 2.3 Ideas: Tools of Policy Actors 3 Policy Change 3.1 Policy Change as Creative Governance 3.2 Analyzing Governance Performance 4 Framework for Analysis

3 Research Design: 51 Studying the Politics of Landscape Change 1 Overall Strategy 2 Methods & their Limitations 2.1 Document Review 2.2 Semi-Structured Interviews 2.3 Participant-Observation 3 Producing the Narrative & Analysis

vi

4 The Niagara Escarpment Campaign (1958-1985): 61 Birth of an Idea 1 Introduction 2 The Niagara Escarpment Plan Story 2.1 Background 2.2 1958-1973: An Extended Gestation 2.3 1973-1985: Crafting a Protection Plan 2.4 1985-2005: Struggling for Sustainability 3 Discussion 3.1 Governance Performance 3.2 Institutional Trajectories 4 Conclusion

5 The Oak Ridges Moraine Campaign (1989-2002): 103 Building Coalitions 1 Introduction 2 The Oak Ridges Moraine Plan Story 2.1 Background 2.2 1989-1995: The Campaign Begins 2.3 1995-1999: The Campaign Stalls 2.4 1999-2002: The Campaign Advances 2.5 Aftermath: The Campaign Never Ends 3 Discussion 3.1 Governance Performance 3.2 Institutional Trajectories 4 Conclusion

6 The Greenbelt Campaign (2002-2005): 157 Consolidating Change 1 Introduction 2 The Greenbelt Plan Story 2.1 Background 2.2 2000-2003: Sowing the Seeds 2.3 2003-2005: Reaping the Harvest 2.4 Aftermath: Mending Fences 3 Discussion 3.1 Governance Performance 3.2 Institutional Trajectories 4 Conclusion

vii

7 Comparing the Campaigns: 215 Gaining Common Ground 1 Introduction 2 Governance Performance 2.1 Arenas, Practices & Modes 2.2 Actors, Networks & Values 2.3 Narratives, Discourses & Paradigms 3 Institutional Trajectories 4 Conclusion

8 Conclusion: 237 The Nature of Civil Society 1 Introduction 2 Civil Society & Governance Performance 2.1 Cultural Dynamics 2.2 Structural Dynamics 2.3 Agency Dynamics 3 Civil Society & Institutional Trajectories 4 Implications 5 Post Script

References 249

Appendixes 281 A Interview Subjects 281 B Information Letter sent to Interview Subjects 282 C Consent Form 283 D Interview Guide 284 E A Greenbelt Timeline 285 F Varieties of Civil Society 293

viii List of Tables

2.1 Types of Ideas & their Role in Policy-Making 35 2.2 Factors Involved in Successfully Challenging the Status Quo 38 2.3 Levels & Dimensions of Governance Performance 40 2.4 Factors of Public Participation Design 45 2.5 Framework for Analyzing Greenspace Protection Campaigns 50

3.1 Methods & their Limitations 56

4.1 Governance Performance in the Niagara Escarpment Campaign 89 4.2 Did the Escarpment Campaign Successfully Challenge the Status 101 Quo?

5.1 Governance Performance in the Oak Ridges Moraine Campaign 131 5.2 Did the Moraine Campaign Successfully Challenge the Status 155 Quo?

6.1 Governance Performance in the Greenbelt Campaign 187 6.2 Members & Supporters of the Ontario Greenbelt Alliance 203 6.3 Did the Greenbelt Campaign Successfully Challenge the Status 213 Quo?

7.1 Comparisons of Arenas, Practices & Modes 217 7.2 Types of Public Stakeholder Committees 219 7.3 Comparisons of Actors, Networks & Values 221 7.4 Comparisons of Narratives, Discourses & Paradigms 231 7.5 Additional Strategies for Challenging the Status Quo 236

ix List of Figures

1.1 Map of Protected Greenspace Plan Areas in the Toronto Region 2

2.1 Social Capital in the Public Sphere 33

4.1 Cross-Border Map of the Niagara Escarpment 62 4.2 Map of the Niagara Escarpment Plan Area, Ontario, Canada 64

5.1 Map of the Oak Ridges Moraine 104 5.2 Map of the Oak Ridges Moraine River Systems 106 5.3 Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan Land Use Map 126 5.4 The DeGasperis Family: A Partial Family Tree 140 5.5 Average House Prices in the GTA, 1954 – 2014 149

6.1 Map of GGH Protected Greenspace & Urban Growth 159

7.1 A Civil Society Matrix 227

x List of Appendixes

A Interview Subjects 281 B Information Letter sent to Interview Subjects 282 C Consent Form 283 D Interview Guide 284 E A Greenbelt Timeline 285 F Varieties of Civil Society 293

xi Notes to Readers

In most respects, style follows The Chicago Manual of Style Online, 16th edition, and spellings follow The Canadian Oxford Dictionary. There are some exceptions: • Oxford commas are used only when necessary. • Ampersands (&) are occasionally used to indicate a closer relationship than other nearby uses of “and.” • “Greenbelt” is spelled as one word, as it is in Ontario’s greenbelt legislation, unless I use a direct quote, in which case I use the author’s spelling. • When otherwise generic words are capitalized, they refer to and act as a short form for a formal entity. Hence, when “greenbelt” is capitalized, it refers only to the Toronto region Greenbelt. When words like “Town” or “Region” are capitalized, they refer to a political entity rather than a geographic one. • To help locate direct quotes from unpaginated material, page numbers are assigned as if the material were printed on letter-size paper in 12-point Times New Roman type. • “ECSO” is used to denote an environmental civil society organization of any size, while “ENGO” (for environmental NGO) is reserved for large professionalized organizations dedicated to environmental issues.

Some of the more common abbreviations the reader may encounter are: ANSI Area of Natural and Scientific Interest BILD Building Industry and Land Development Association CONE Coalition on the Niagara Escarpment ECSO Environmental civil society organization ENGO Environmental non-governmental organization ESA Environmentally Sensitive Area FON Federation of Ontario Naturalists (now Ontario Nature) GGH Greater Golden Horseshoe GTA Greater Toronto Area LEAR Land Evaluation and Area Review MMAH Ministry of Municipal Affairs & Housing MNR Ministry of Natural Resources NDP New Democratic Party NEC Niagara Escarpment Commission OGA Ontario Greenbelt Alliance OMB Ontario Municipal Board OPA Official Plan Amendment ORM Oak Ridges Moraine PC Progressive Conservative(s) (political party) RHN Richmond Hill Naturalists SRVS Save the Rouge Valley System (a.k.a. Save the Rouge) STORM Save the Oak Ridges Moraine (Coalition) TRCA Toronto and Region Conservation Authority

xii 1

Chapter 1 Introduction: Staking Claims to Regional Greenspace

“When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” ~ Aldo Leopold

1 Grounds for Protection

It all began with the “Dufferin Gap.”

That’s what people called the break in the tree-covered limestone ridge in Milton, Ontario, west of Toronto in Southern Ontario, that resulted when Dufferin Aggregates blasted the Niagara Escarpment in 1962. Suddenly, it was clear to residents that this beloved landscape – the backdrop to their everyday lives – could not be taken for granted. Mobilization to protect the landscape was new to the residents, and they were not the only people staking a claim to the land. There were farmers and businessmen who thought the best use of the Escarpment was for tract housing and materials for roads to get people to those houses. Still, the residents-turned-activists managed to secure a protection plan . . . 23 years later.

A few years after that, in 1989, residents to the north of Toronto on the Oak Ridges Moraine believed they had similar grounds to protect greenspace in their region. Like the Escarpment, the Moraine was the headwaters for several major river systems, a home to many rare or threatened plant and animal species, and a cherished landscape. Inspired by the example of the activists on the Escarpment, they pursued a protection plan of their own. It took 13 years.

After securing Moraine protection, environmentalists believed that politics and science might finally be on their side. Voters wanted meaningful action to manage growth in the region. New developments in conservation biology provided grounds to press for a more connected protected landscape: a greenbelt. Three years later, the Ontario government

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Figure 1.1 Map of Protected Greenspace Plan Areas in the Toronto Region

http://www.mah.gov.on.ca/Page11256.aspx

passed into law a plan creating what was then (and may still be) the largest greenbelt in the world at 1.8 million acres in size. (See Figure 1.1.)

Protection of the Greenbelt landscape was the culmination of decades of work by ordinary people without wealth or power, who were up against a pro-growth coalition that had all the earmarks of an “urban growth machine,” a coalition of land speculators, developers and other business and civic leaders who benefit from growth (Molotch 1976). The citizen groups were not the first to fight for the right to shape the places where they live, but they faced unique problems of co-ordination in seeking policies that would avoid communities being played off against one another in a “race to the bottom” that primarily served the growth coalition. These people – spread out over a large area, fighting local battles of their own – faced enormous odds. Even organized into determined groups of

Chapter 1 - Introduction 3 like-minded volunteers – collectively known as “civil society” – they lacked the material and political resources of their opponents, some of whom also organized themselves into civil society groups. So how did they do it, particularly in an era of attachment to market- driven logics and neo-liberal politics? How did civil society actors create the political will for state actors to deviate from a more conventional path and adopt legislation to protect regional greenspace?

1.1 Who or What is Civil Society?

Civil society is one of the most debated concepts in Western political thought, with Cicero, Marx, Gramsci and DeTocqueville among the early thinkers on the topic describing it variously as a safeguard against state power, an arm of the bourgeoisie, a debate space to challenge state and market dominance, and associational life necessary for the operation of democracy (Peck 2015). In the mid-20th Century, the perceived failure of the welfare state to efficiently provide social goods followed by the retreat of a more market-oriented state from providing them renewed interest in finding a new partner that was neither state- nor market-based (Edwards 2011a; de Gómez and Bullock 2012). Meanwhile, international development discourses painted civil society as a channel for promoting associational activity, democratic practices, and empowerment in order to more effectively deliver goods to the world’s poor (Peck 2015). Finally, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the democracy movement that followed it led many to see civil society as the “magic bullet” that would help new democracies develop good governance and achieve the political and social goals that would stabilize them (Edwards 2011a).

With such a mixed parentage, it is not surprising that the definition of civil society is itself a topic of debate. Agreement stops after identifying it as a non-state, non-market and, for the most part, non-family space for collective action that is voluntary and non-profit. There are three overlapping debates: one concerning the content, especially the democratic content, of civil society; another concerning classification and the basis for a common conceptually useful scheme; and a debate concerning the relationship of civil society to the state.

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The content debate starts with the question of whether civil society is essentially progressive or includes elements that are regressive or undemocratic. Civil society is no less diverse than the family, market and state sectors, yet planners, in particular, often use the term “civil society” to mean progressive groups, even as they face Not-In-My-Back- Yard (NIMBY) groups in their practices (Abu-Lughod 1998; Storper 1998). Those who conceive of civil society as progressive or only interesting in its progressive form tend to see it as contributing to healthy democracy in a variety of ways: acting as an incubator of public-interested reforms, thanks in part to its horizontal and flexible nature (Angeles and Gurstein 2007; Carley et al 2001; de Gómez and Bullock 2012; Peck 2015), as a counter- weight to the state (Aylett 2010), schooling people in democratic practices (Putnam 2000; Boyte 2005; Ghose 2005; Edwards 2011a), bringing diverse people together in constructive ways (Putnam 2000; Gonzalez and Healey 2005), and as a force for local empowerment and source of local knowledge (Friedmann 1998; Boyte 2005).

On the other side of this debate are those who see the terrain of civil society as “neutral” in the sense of including a variety of groups ranging from regressive to progressive. In this view, civil society includes groups with self-serving goals that do little to advance the common good (Foley and Edwards 1996; Evans 2002). They may be undemocratic in a number of ways: focusing on defending their privileges (Lane 2003), displaying intolerance (Heinrich and Fioramonti 2008), being unaccountable to the larger society (Bucek and Smith 2000; Bogason and Musso 2006), acting internally undemocratically (Bucek and Smith 2000), being disproportionately middle and upper class (Fung 2006), or just lacking capacity (Boyte 2005). Neo-Marxists argue civil society fails democracy because it buys into a self-reliance trope and allows itself to be co-opted into doing work the state should be doing, never challenging the capitalist status quo that sustains inequality (Goonewardena and Rankin 2004).

Those on this side of the content debate are often concerned with identifying the groups that can produce promote livability and strengthen democracy (Evans 2002; Foley and Edwards 1996; Uhlin 2009), leading to the classification debate. But at the moment there is no commonly accepted typology or conceptualization, which has made comparative work difficult (Vakil 1997; Van Deth 2008; Bailer, Bodenstein and Heinrich 2008). Previous

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attempts to categorize civil society groups have included arrangements based on essential and contingent descriptors (Vakil 1997), organizational attributes and world views (Mejido Costoya 2007), deliberation style and influence/inclusiveness factor (Font and Galais 2011), beneficiaries and distinctive activities (Gurza Lavalle and Bueno 2011) and recognition of the other (Rucht 2011). Uhlin (2009) focuses on group mandates, dividing civil society into two complementary groups that are both important for democracy: political advocacy groups, which are crucial for interest articulation and checking state power, and recreational groups, which school people in organizational and participation skills.

The civil society-state relationship debate has two sub-debates. The top-down vs. bottom up debate asks whether healthy democratic institutions lead to a vibrant civil society (Foley and Edwards 1996; Maloney, Smith and Stoker 2000; Rydin and Pennington 2000; Bailer, Bodenstein and Heinrich 2008); or whether civil society pushes the state to become more democratic (Tusalem 2007) and society to become more engaged in political affairs (Putnam 2000); or some combination of the two (Maloney, Smith and Stoker 2000)? The partner vs. opponent debate asks whether civil society is more effective or successful in achieving its goals if it works with the state (Blagescu and Court 2008), or in opposition to it (Aylett 2010).

Many of the debates are couched in terms of Robert Putnam’s influential proposition that civil society is linked to social capital, which he defined as “social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them” (Putnam 2000, 19). This has sometimes been called the civic engagement debate. He argued that societies with a dense associational life develop citizens with the skills and norms of trust necessary to collaborate on political and economic projects. In other words, certain types of civil society groups generate social capital in the form of generalized trust in government institutions that leads to healthier democracies with stronger civic cultures. Empirical statistical studies have validated aspects of Putnam’s work, finding a positive relationship between association membership and generalized trust (Stolle and Rochon 1998) and a positive relationship between the strength and density of civil society groups and stronger governance and civil liberties (Tusalem 2007). Font and Galais (2011) also found

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that civil society involvement was “the best guarantee” of a meaningful public participation process (945). However, others have argued that these results are highly context-dependent, with different groups having unequal access to resources (Foley and Edwards 1999), and civil society in general being subject to changing relations among state, society and market (Edwards 2011b).

This dissertation argues that civil society is a neutral sector of society outside the state, market and family, where people form groups to further common goals (Heinrich and Fioramonti 2008; World Bank 2013). This definition reflects governance realities – where certain kinds of policies such as those governing public participation apply equally to all actors, regardless of their aims – and applies to this set of case studies in particular, in which all the contenders for political influence with state actors formed civil society groups in hopes of furthering their interests. But this conception of civil society raises other questions. What do different groups within it have in common and what sets them apart? If civil society is not a “force for good,” then what is it? In governance, how does civil society convert its social capital – resources arising from social relationships – into political capital – the ability to achieve policy reforms (Sullivan 2009)? In this case, how did environmental civil society actors overcome the many barriers to greenspace protection?

1.2 Barriers to Greenspace Protection

The most significant barrier to greenspace protection and greenbelt creation is the desire among owners of the targeted land to keep or upgrade the permitted uses on their land (Elson 1986; Pacione 2009). Protected greenspace of any kind is bitterly opposed by landowners hoping to sell to residential developers. Besides freezing land uses, protected greenspaces often connect green patches to form a system, providing corridors for wildlife that further impede development prospects. The strongest voice against greenspace protection is usually the local urban growth coalition, whose members rely on intensifying the use of land they already own to enhance their profits (Pacione 2009).

The strength of urban growth coalitions is underpinned by pervasive cultural paradigms that assume healthy societies are based on economic growth powered by capitalism and

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resource exploitation, particularly on land that is privately owned. This is accompanied by a perception that people should be able to do what they want with land they own, and that if a government wants to dictate what should be done with the land, it should purchase it. Indeed, this is eventually what happened with the Ottawa region greenbelt, where the federal government purchased the land for its greenbelt, creating a difficult historical precedent for people in Southern Ontario, who lacked the ability to spread the costs of protected greenspace across a broader tax base.

Opposition from urban growth coalitions can lead to conflicts that span a great length of time – another challenge for environmental civil society organizations (ECSOs)1. Actors experience time differently, some seeing its passage as helpful, others as an impediment. Time can either increase or erode a community’s attachment to place characteristics or its commitment to a new idea, impacting the ability of policy actors to achieve and maintain a consensus on a proposal (Patashnik 2003; Matthews 2014). Time becomes “an expression of power” as one actor or another’s preferred schedule is chosen (Matthews 2014, 51). In Ontario, the Planning Act sets limits on how much time municipalities can spend examining developers’ applications and empowers developers to seek redress at the Ontario Municipal Board, an appeal body, after the limits expire. Election rules also limit provincial government mandates to five years and municipal mandates to four years (and as little as two years during the early greenspace campaigns), with the result that political alliances may need to be rebuilt every few years. So the clock is always ticking on actors trying to engage the public and politicians in reaching a consensus.

Integration of connected greenspace with urban development has been shown to promote climate change adaptation and mitigation (Senbel and Lesnikowski 2015). But action on climate change at the local level in Canada faces barriers of lack of political and bureaucratic leadership, funding, and technical capacity, as well as a lack of jurisdiction for certain kinds of activities (Robinson and Gore 2005). Fraser (2003) also identified implementation costs as a barrier to reforming Central Ontario greenspace policies, along

1 “ECSO” is used in this dissertation to denote an environmental civil society organization of any size, while “ENGO” (for environmental non-governmental organization) is reserved for large professionalized environmental organizations.

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with two kinds of public preferences: public desires to save the greenspace they can see, whether or not it is ecologically valuable, thus ignoring greenspace at a distance whose functioning may be more important for environmental and public health, and public beliefs in accessibility, that is, that any natural area that is protected must be made accessible to the public, with recreational needs trumping conservation needs.

Another challenge for anyone involved in land use disputes in Ontario is the conflicting desire for both certainty and flexibility in applying planning law. Municipal officials tend to draw up official plans (master plans for local development) with policies that are flexible enough to be adapted to unforeseen circumstances. However, most homeowners tend to value certainty, that is, clear expectations about how their own or abutting land is to be used. Meanwhile, speculators depend on flexibility in order to upzone land they own for more intensive uses. The Ontario Municipal Board, faced with a flexibly-written policy, can give the benefit of any doubt to the landowner to respect property rights or to the municipality to respect “the expressed will of the people for a universal application of orderly planning” (Bruce v. Toronto, in Makuch, Craik and Leisk 2004, 246).

Civil society actors on both sides of the greenspace protection debate in Southern Ontario also faced challenges of space and scale. The large areas being considered for protection involved many decision-makers and stakeholders at several scales – provincial, regional and municipal – each a unique community of interest, privileging different actors and creating different understandings, networks and opportunities for action (Bulkeley 2005; Filion 2014). This scaling increased chances for misunderstandings and disagreements as well as basic costs of operating over a distance.

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1.3 Greenbelts as Government Projects

Civil society has not always been involved in greenspace or greenbelt protection. The early greenbelts – surrounding medieval castles, colonial new towns and, later, growing cities – were usually created and imposed by governments to provide some combination of security, agricultural land, recreational opportunities, urban separators, source water protection, growth management, wildlife protection and landscape aesthetics (Freestone 2002; Amati 2008).

Greenspace (sometimes spelled as two words) is seldom defined in official documents but usually means undeveloped land that is largely covered with vegetation. Greenspace can occur in urban or rural settings; this study concerns greenspace at the urban-rural fringe that has a rural character, defined as “dominated (either currently or recently) by extensive land uses such as agriculture or forestry, or by large open spaces of undeveloped land” (Cloke 2000, 718).2 The term includes a continuum of greenbelt-type planning tools (Freestone 2002), which include, for instance, greenways, defined as linear parks or open spaces along waterways or other historically meaningful paths, such as former rail lines (Lindsey 2003).

A greenbelt is a substantial band of mostly connected land surrounding a built-up area that is governed by policies restricting development in order to preserve landscapes in a rural or natural state. A greenbelt is meant to be permanent, providing a range of ecological, cultural and economic services to both urban and rural populations (Fung and Conway 2007). However, permanence is more of a goal than a given, as conflicts between landowners and conservationists are a constant within most greenbelts (Elson 1986).

Governments have been attracted to them because they are multi-purpose, acting as urban growth boundaries, environmental service providers (protecting air quality, water

2 The term “countryside,” which is used by the Ontario government to describe the rural area protected in its Greenbelt Plan, is avoided here because of its specific policy meanings in that plan and in the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan, where it denotes a particular category of protected greenspace. It is also avoided because of its connotations of a “rural idyll” (Bunce 2002) used to help market the conservation plans to urban dwellers. This usage tends to devalue the lived experience of rural residents, many of whom are involved in a more industrial version of farming than some urbanites realize (Valentine Cadieux, Taylor and Bunce 2013).

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sources and habitat required for biodiversity), landscape amenities, spaces for passive and active recreation, and land reserves for agriculture and future uses (Elson 1986; Freestone 2002; Amati 2008). They are also relatively easy to understand and administer; they put into place some sort of regional co-ordination; and they are seen as a low-cost strategy by the great majority of voters (Ibid.). In recent decades, protected greenspace areas have been identified as contributors to sustainable development (Berke and Conroy 2000; Senbel and Lesnikowski 2015), providing an additional rationale for their proponents. For all these reasons, greenbelt and greenspace protection plans are also seen as enhancements to livability, attractive to businesses looking for new locations (Florida 2005).

In practice, there are also many negatives. Protected greenspace and greenbelts contribute to higher land and housing prices in both greenfields (where people move for cheaper housing) and built-up areas (where closeness to jobs and amenities becomes more desirable the more the region spreads out) (Elson 1986; Freestone 2002; Amati 2008). These areas contribute to leapfrog development and longer commutes for suburban residents who work downtown or must take circuitous routes to avoid protected areas, thus increasing congestion and pollution, particularly if infrastructure provision lags. They also sometimes fragment ecosystems and protect land of dubious environmental value, fail to provide enough flexibility for farmers to pursue ancillary or expanded uses that will help them survive, exclude the poor by promoting rural gentrification and placing greenspace amenities at a distance from them, and shift the burden of ecological service costs to rural communities (Ibid.).

But these problems have detracted little from their popularity, as many of these problems can be remedied by creating or adjusting complementary policies (Freestone 2002). For instance, traffic congestion from intensification can be ameliorated by policies requiring related infrastructure to be built at the same time as new buildings. In Ottawa’s greenbelt, land swaps have permitted development of land of dubious environmental value in exchange for wetlands and other areas worthy of protection (Gordon and Scott 2008).

Furthermore, even “failed” greenbelts can be celebrated as successes if they are reframed as “green infrastructure.” In Ottawa, traffic and other problems caused by leapfrogging of

Chapter 1 - Introduction 11 development over its greenbelt have been overshadowed by the popularity of the amenities provided by a protected area now lying within the region’s borders (Amati and Taylor 2010). In places like this, the greenbelt of today may become the urban forest or urban bread basket of tomorrow. Green wedges and linear parks add to the greening of the city, which is seen as good for both human physical health and psychological well- being (Lehrer 2009; Chobak 2012; Senbel and Lesnikowski 2015), and more just because the greenspaces are more accessible to more people (Lindsey 2003). When even “failed” greenbelts are successes, the risk of experimenting with greenbelt protection is lowered.

1.3.1 The Ottawa Region Project

The first regional greenbelt in Ontario was a government project: the National Capital Greenbelt in Ottawa. Beginning in 1903, the Canadian government commissioned a number of plans for the region. Federal government planners were inspired by ideas from the Garden Cities and City Beautiful movements, as well as the example of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.’s contributions to the 1902 McMillan Plan for the District of Columbia, in particular, the idea of an inter-connected park system (Amati and Taylor 2010; Gordon and Scott 2008). But only incremental additions to Ottawa parks were made until after World War II, when French urban planner Jacques Gréber was hired to create a comprehensive plan for the region. His 1950 Plan for the National Capital called for a four-kilometre-wide greenbelt to surround the future built-up area, which was to serve a population expected to peak at about 500,000. The greenbelt was to provide an attractive entrance to the capital from any approach.

Even with several unique tools, such as the ability to deny federal mortgage insurance for homes in proposed greenbelt areas, the federal government needed the co-operation of local municipalities because it lacked land use powers. However, the local municipalities did not wish to see their growth curtailed. The federal government was forced to purchase most of the land it needed; in 1958, Parliament began appropriating funds to do so. But the land purchased was not enough – or far out enough – to stop development from leapfrogging the greenbelt as the region grew beyond original projections (Gordon and Scott 2008).

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The greenbelt is made up of farms, woodlots, and land-intensive federal uses such as its Central Experimental Farm. More and more infrastructure crossed the greenbelt as inner city workers commuted to and from suburbs outside the belt. By 1990, the pressures of urban growth on the greenbelt threatened its viability and required a rethinking. New environmental science also made it clear that the greenbelt boundaries often disrupted ecosystems (Ibid.). A new plan adopted in 1996 expanded the belt in places to restore ecosystem integrity, bundled infrastructure into fewer, larger and sensitively-placed corridors to reduce landscape fragmentation, and began the process of linking and expanding walking trails to improve public recreation opportunities, overall taking a “green infrastructure” approach (Amati and Taylor 2010). Later, the 2003 Official Plan of the newly amalgamated City of Ottawa prescribed complementary policies of intensification of already built-up areas.

So while the Ottawa greenbelt failed in its original goal to contain urban development, it did shape development, and became a valuable asset in the middle of the city-region, providing local food, natural and recreational amenities, and a sense of place that, together, have contributed to economic diversification into high technology and tourism (Ibid.; Gordon and Scott 2008). However, it was conceived in a time and place that permitted 75% of it to be purchased (NCC 2016), a unique situation that could not be replicated by others, although some would continue to claim it set a precedent.

1.3.2 The Toronto Region Project

The Toronto regional greenbelt is also known as the Greater Golden Horseshoe Greenbelt after an increasingly used name for the region. The region is so called because of the semi- circular way it hugs the western end of Lake Ontario and, with Toronto at its heart, forms the largest and most important economic region in Canada. Its 2015 population of nine million – a quarter of Canada’s and two-thirds of Ontario’s – is expected to increase to 11 million by 2031 and more than 13.5 million by 2041 (Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation 2015; MMAH 2015b). Developers foresaw this growth decades ago and began buying and banking inexpensive agricultural land in anticipation of future residential and commercial projects; many farmers counted on selling to developers to fund comfortable retirements (Bunce 1985; Harris 2004).

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But by the 1990s, residents voiced many concerns about growth and its consequences: traffic gridlock, air pollution, water pollution, loss of beloved landscapes and loss of agricultural land (Environics 2001; Taylor 2007). Some felt it was affecting their health, as the Ontario Medical Association published reports stating that air pollution was responsible for the premature death or illness of thousands of people (OMA 2005). Other people became concerned about the costs of growth they were paying for in their taxes (Altshuler and Gómez-Ibáñez 1993; Neill, Bonser and Pelley 2003). While some saw dispersed forms of suburbanization as a response to consumer preferences and a triumph of providing attractive and affordable housing to the masses (Gordon and Richardson 1997; Bruegmann 2005), others increasingly blamed it for degrading the natural environment, absorbing disproportionate amounts of public spending for infrastructure and depriving governments of needed funding for social programs (Whyte 1968; Feldman 1988; Benfield, Raimi and Chen 1999; Duany, Plater-Zyberk and Speck 2000; Calthorpe and Fulton 2001; Rome 2001; Gillham 2002; Burchell et al. 2005; Blais 2006).

The Federation of Ontario Naturalists (FON) described this “problem growth” as “urban sprawl” in a widely-circulated pamphlet (FON 2001) that followed years of discussion and letters to the editor (see, for example, Matlow 2001). For this dissertation, sprawl is understood as the general public understood it, which was primarily as FON and other environmental groups told them to understand it: as low-density development that consumes large amounts of environmental and agricultural land, and which, because of its spread-out form and separation of land uses, requires increased use of automobiles, thus contributing to gridlock and air pollution, and requires new infrastructure in places where it isn’t cost-effective, thus adding to property taxes (Ibid.; Pim and Ornoy 2002; Neill, Bonser and Pelley 2003; EDC 2013).

Compared to other American jurisdictions, growth in Southern Ontario has been better planned, denser, and more contiguous (Sorensen and Hess 2015). However, by the early 2000s, even the pro-growth conservative provincial government said growth could be better managed to avoid gridlock, air pollution and excessive consumption of greenspace and farmland (Central Ontario Smart Growth Panel 2003). It joined others in calling for “smart growth,” a reframing of sustainable development that prescribed clear urban

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boundaries, conservation of natural and agricultural land, placing of growth where public infrastructure already exists or could be easily extended, redeveloping brownfields and abandoned buildings, creating mixed-use pedestrian-friendly communities, mixing housing types within communities, providing transit alternatives to the car, and locating development near mass transit nodes (FON 2001; Neill, Bonser and Pelley 2003; Gillham 2002; Wheeler 2000; Tregoning, Agyeman and Shenot 2002; Bengston, Fletcher and Nelson 2004; Portney 2003; Talen and Knaap 2003; Connelly, Markey and Roseland 2009).

After years of technical studies, political conflicts over protection of the Niagara Escarpment and Oak Ridges Moraine, lobbying by environmental groups and, finally, a change in government, the first of a package of smart growth solutions was rolled out: the Greater Golden Horseshoe Greenbelt, which was to serve a number of purposes: preserve agricultural areas, protect and enhance the environment, promote recreation and tourism, support a strong rural economy, sustain the character of the remaining countryside, and provide for infrastructure and natural resources needed for the region’s growth (MMAH 2005b). The Greenbelt Act was to designate where growth could not occur, while the complementary Places to Grow Act would designate where growth could go.

It was not a strategy without risk. The Ottawa region had demonstrated that greenbelts are imperfect at containing growth, and the controversial imposition of greenspace protection plans on the Niagara Escarpment and Oak Ridges Moraine suggested that a greenbelt would probably be hotly contested by pro-development groups (Whitelaw 2005). Nevertheless, the McGuinty government adopted a top-down strategy and enacted its Greenbelt in a mere three years, from campaign promise in 2002 to royal assent in 2005. While perhaps not remarkable for a majority government, previous majority (and minority) governments took much longer to make similar decisions to protect greenspace in the region surrounding Toronto. And the McGuinty government had also shown it was as capable of breaking an election promise as other governments were.3 What prompted it to take such risks?

3 Almost immediately upon gaining office, the McGuinty government back-tracked on a promise to stop a housing development on the Oak Ridges Moraine, citing confidential legal advice. Within the year, the Liberals, who had also campaigned on a promise of no new taxes, implemented a new health tax, citing a greater-than-expected budget deficit left over from the previous government.

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2 Prior Research

Much of the research on the Oak Ridges Moraine and Greater Golden Horseshoe Greenbelt focused on their impacts as government projects. The adoption of greenspace protection plans piqued researchers’ interest because it was such a dramatic enlargement of the commons in the face of a strong regional growth coalition and neo-liberal governments.

Political economists Macdonald and Keil (2012) argue that the Greenbelt is an upscaling of governance they call “extended metropolitanization” that is designed to better position the Toronto region for urban entrepreneurialism (128). This “new regionalism” (129) provides better ecological protection for the Toronto bioregion while reordering economic and political relations; in particular, the Greenbelt legislation and accompanying growth management measures urbanize the suburbs, making all parts of the region share growth burdens equally, they argue. They see the Greenbelt as the latest chapter in a long history of the province acting as a de facto super-regional government and regard as “peculiar” (140) that the province did not set up a jurisdictional political unit at the extended metropolitan scale. This anomaly begs the question whether there were other factors – related to institutions, agency or context – that influenced this decision.

Macdonald and Keil are part of a group of scholars who see governments framing “greening” as an economic opportunity (Gunder 2006; Bina 2013), part of a “sustainability fix” pursued by actors trying to safeguard growth amidst popular concerns for the environment (While, Jonas and Gibbs 2004). In this view, environmental enhancements that help market cities to global capitalists are given a higher priority than other possibly more important environmental issues (Temenos and McCann 2012). This raises questions about whether conservation-minded actors are aware of or concerned about this and other unintended pro-growth results.

Macdonald and Keil build on research by fellow York University scholars, including Wekerle et al (2007), who see the Greenbelt as a “cornerstone” for growth, used by a soft- core neo-liberal government to sell managed growth by providing environmental conservation at the same time that it continues infrastructure expansion and resource

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extraction that could undermine the environment. The authors point out that the Greenbelt Plan’s provision of stores of land for two to three decades of growth – considered a best practice because of the way it creates a sense of the greenbelt’s permanence (Elson 1986) – also serves to provide a predictable environment for investors in land inside the Greenbelt and outside the boundary, where cheap agricultural land can be bought and banked. Add to this the provision for infrastructure corridors within the Greenbelt and one has a greenbelt that serves growth more than conservation. The Liberal government’s Places to Grow Plan, introduced just as the Greenbelt was enacted, calls for intensification of land inside the Greenbelt and thus pairs an unpopular idea – density – with a popular one – conservation – leading the researchers to conclude that “nature” was used to mask or legitimate growth: by linking the two, “the Provincial government has been able to pacify public concern over the environmental consequences of unchecked growth . . .” (32). The authors also claim the linking of the Greenbelt and growth plans justified the need for regional control of planning by the province. In fact, the province has always had constitutional authority to control regional planning, though recently this had been accomplished by failing to assert its powers and letting the market lead. This vacating of political space reached an extreme under the Harris Conservatives, who weakened most planning legislation (the Planning Act, Ontario Municipal Board rules and appointments, the Development Charges Act and the Provincial Policy Statement) in service of a neo-liberal agenda promoting market-driven development. In those cases, discourses of “local control” masked a reality of downloaded responsibilities, unfunded mandates and developer control. This was particularly the case since provincial election spending rules allowed developers to “buy” the councillors they preferred, which they did by consistently and generously donating to the political campaigns of pro-development council candidates (MacDermid 2006).

Practices over time are highlighted in Sandberg and Wekerle’s (2010) study of the gentrification of nature enshrined in the Oak Ridges Moraine protection legislation. The authors see neo-liberalism as a process, rather than a state, and argue that a historical lens needs to be applied to see this process at work: “The legislation rests on a half century long pattern of rural gentrification, a process that suggests that a neo-liberalizing nature is not new but part of deep-seated historical processes” (53). Their research finds that the

Chapter 1 - Introduction 17 landscape has been aestheticized for consumption by the wealthy, which helps to solidify their support of the state. Logan and Wekerle (2008) also focus on the benefits to the rich in the negotiated settlements environmentalists make in pursuit of conservation. In their study of land trusts and private conservation on the Oak Ridges Moraine, they point to the way land trusts benefit the wealthy who can donate land while receiving tax breaks and often still enjoying the landscape amenities of the donated property. For neo-liberal governments, this is a win-win strategy, as they bolster private property owners while protecting the environment. Further, the authors claim, this strategy co-opts the environmentalists who run the land trusts and conservancies. However, for these environmentalists, who have chosen to operate in the constrained charitable sector, it seems as likely that this is just one strategy among many, in a long-term, multi-pronged campaign that takes advantage of any openings in the institution of private property.

While the York University researchers mostly see the Greenbelt and similar projects as solutions to the challenge of making the region competitive in a global economy, Pond (2009a) analyzes the Greenbelt in terms of the Liberal government’s stated goals of protecting farmland and greenspace from development, and constraining urban sprawl. He asks why the Liberals chose the greenbelt tool over what he sees as more effective tools for farmland protection, such as British Columbia’s Agricultural Land Reserves system, which is administered by an arm’s length agency, or the purchase or transfer of development rights approach more popular in the U.S. His conclusion is that the political environment – with an antagonistic growth coalition and farm lobby – made direct engagement with these parties unpalatable, and the institutional environment – in which the province is free to set policy and leave the messy job of implementation to the municipal level – made direct engagement unnecessary. The B.C. approach has become a political football and would result in endless negotiations about what was viable farmland. Pond says that the Liberals’ more arbitrary approach – it ignored many parcels of nearby high-yield farm land – risks loss of legitimacy, except that as a top-down Westminster-style government, the government controls the terms of engagement. It has the tools to create an after-the-fact support coalition: activities and grants from the Greenbelt Foundation and the Ontario Heritage Trust, plus the ability to make strategic additions to the Greenbelt to satisfy supportive stakeholders. Meanwhile, opponents lack

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tools of resistance: constitutionally guaranteed private property rights and citizen- initiated referenda, both available in the U.S. Missing from Pond’s account is a discussion of the role of planning culture and the development of institutions of greenspace protection. His approach is ahistorical, providing little context for understanding how the growth management issue landed on the political agenda.

In a separate article, Pond focuses on the waning influence of the farm lobby and its failure to secure compensation for lost development rights. He concludes that a “new ‘post-productivist’ regulatory regime” (Pond 2009b, 423) is being driven by two trends: an increase in urban residents moving to the countryside to enjoy its amenities rather than to work there, and a distancing of urban society from the realities of modern farming, making it easier for opponents to frame farmers as in need of environmental regulation. He warns that the Greenbelt will be unsustainable if it fails to meet the complaints of farmers who claim they are bearing far more of the risks than the rewards of the new land use policies by requiring them to steward their land to provide landscape amenities and environmental services.

Missing from these accounts is discussion of the role of governance institutions or agency. What mechanisms moved policy actors to make greenspace protection a priority? How important was agency – “the ways in which citizens organize themselves for normative purposes, articulate and argue about their ideas, and fashion some sense of vision and direction for the future of the communities to which they belong” (Edwards 2011b, 480)?

Whitelaw et al (2008) provide some insights, finding that environmental movement organizations influenced land use planning in the Escarpment and Moraine campaigns by increasing their collaboration with government and helping to create a regional planning identity through agenda setting, educational activity, and lobbying. Their account leaves gaps in the details of how this was done and the possible impacts of tensions within the sector, especially as environmental coalitions grew in size and complexity. Without the third data point of the Greenbelt campaign, it is not as clear as it could be how environmental civil society actors adapted to changing institutions, such as changes in public participation practices, and how other civil society actors, such as those promoting agricultural interests, defended their interests.

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3 Research Questions

On the surface, the decision to create the Greenbelt was clearly a calculated political decision by state actors – a plank in a political party platform designed to secure the support of environmental and community groups concerned about urban sprawl and help the Liberal Party win the 2003 election. But in any political process, certain ideas and interests are privileged – constrained or enabled by historical legacies and societal conventions as well as the strategic activities of policy entrepreneurs. How did this process play out here?

This study asks: What was the role of civil society – particularly from the environmental sector – in creating regional protected landscapes around Toronto? To what extent were these actors change agents? How was their role enabled or constrained by: • Cultural paradigms and historical legacies? Where did the idea of a greenbelt come from? How did it rise on the policy agenda? • Governance institutions and policy processes – particularly public participation processes – it was forced to act within? • Other actors? How did environmental civil society actors respond to them? What strategies did they employ?

This study can be seen as the history of an idea – regional greenspace protection – and what happened to it when it met planning and governance institutions on the one hand and development and conservation interests on the other hand. As a study of how the activities and decisions of people affected a major landscape, it sits securely within the realm of human geography. As a study of how the clash of their ideas and interests mapped power over the landscape, it sits securely within political geography.

4 Contribution of this Research

First of all, this dissertation provides a detailed account of the Greenbelt campaign and what led up to it, identifying, among other things, the importance of an early tendency to adopt natural solutions to prevent natural disasters. The study also adds insights from bureaucrats to earlier accounts of the Niagara Escarpment, thanks in part to the fact that a

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few people were actually or nearly retired at the time of interviews and felt freer to speak about events, particularly with the benefit of hindsight. It also provides reflections of participants on some of the events of the Oak Ridges Moraine.

Looking at all three cases as one helps unpack the role of time. A historical perspective allows exploration of whether the Greenbelt was the result of a short or long process. Looked at from up close, the adoption of the Greenbelt looks like the quick top-down command-and-control initiative of a majority government that ignored the complaints of the agricultural community, which claimed it was bearing most of the costs of the policy. As such, it flies in the face of scholarship that suggests major land use policy change of this kind should be undertaken only after thorough consultation and investigation of the needs and expectations of the full range of stakeholders in order to be sustainable (Peters and Hoornbeek 2005; Webb 2005; Healey 1998; Bucek and Smith 2000; Innes and Booher 2004; Armitage 2008). Looked at from farther away, the Greenbelt could be seen as the latest step in a longer incremental process. This has implications for climate change policy: if policy change takes decades to enact, then the impacts of climate change could overtake society before it can put new policies and practices in place.

Taking a long view also reveals the ways the environmental coalition evolved and matured, adopting new strategies designed to keep the vision alive and, eventually, protect government partners. The long view also provides insights into governance institutions, particularly public participation processes that structure actor responses, and the way stakeholder groups, especially those with confidential proceedings, have evolved into an “institutional work-around”4 to overcome shortages of social capital needed for joint problem-solving. The study shows how public participation processes evolved from more open models to more manipulated ones.

Viewing long-term institutional trajectories also shows how implementation rules could result in uneven results on the ground.

4 “Work-around” is a word from computer science meaning a situation-specific repair or bypass of a problem or “bug” in computer hardware or software. It is usually a temporary solution or alternative to a genuine solution. However, a work-around sometimes involves “outside-the-box” thinking that can serve as or lead to enduring solutions.

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Turning to questions of agency, this research contributes to a more nuanced understanding of civil society, which plays an increasingly large role in governance. Many observers have discussed the range of civil society, which includes some very un- civil players. Others have attempted various ways of conceptualizing the entire range of civil society actors or have adjusted their definitions of civil society to fit a specific research purpose. This study introduces a two-dimensional scheme based on group interests and inclusivity to understand the range of civil society groups and the type of social capital each type of group brings to policy problems. The research further shows how the ability of civil society groups to help provide governing resources needed for government action (Hood and Margetts 2007) makes them more or less useful partners in governance. In particular, groups that can help overcome the problems inherent in the two- to five-year election cycle appear to be important partners in governance. The study also examines kinship networks present within Southern Ontario’s regional growth coalition and links them to bonding social capital to help explain some of the strategies that coalition adopts.

5 Plan of the Study

Chapter 2 argues for a conceptual framework incorporating elements from New Institutionalism and theories about public participation, civil society, social capital and governing resources. It examines concepts concerning governance – “collective action arrangements designed to achieve some general benefit” (Healey 2004, 87) – to understand the institutional environment civil society was required to act within and the actors it was required to contend with.

Chapter 3 presents the rationale for a qualitative research design and “within-case comparisons,” that is, a comparison of cases – the Niagara Escarpment, Oak Ridges Moraine and Greenbelt campaigns – within the larger case study of greenspace protection in the Toronto region of Southern Ontario. I discuss measures taken to deal with the fact that I came to this study as an accidental participant-observer, a bit player in some of the public participation exercises described.

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Chapters 4, 5 and 6 tell the stories of the Niagara Escarpment, Oak Ridges Moraine and Ontario Greenbelt campaigns, respectively, with attention to the interaction of new policy ideas with governance cultures, processes, arenas and actors. The first half of each chapter is more descriptive, detailing the case under study, including insights from participants. The second half of each chapter provides discussion and analysis of governance performance and institutional trajectories. The focus in Chapter 4 is on the emergence of the new idea of regional landscape protection, while the focus in Chapter 5 is on the building of coalitions of support among interested actors, and the focus of Chapter 6 is on the consolidating and embedding of new ideas into institutional practices.

Chapter 7 compares the findings from the three cases, which produced insights into stakeholder committees and the varieties of civil society. Civil society comprised a complex “ecology of actors” (Evans 2002) with different kinds and amounts of social capital.

Chapter 8 concludes the work with a discussion about what the study reveals about the nature of civil society.

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Chapter 2 Conceptual Framework: Governance & Policy Change

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” ~ Albert Einstein

1 Introduction

The goal of land use planning is to create “better” communities in a “purposeful” and responsible way (Rydin 2011, 138). In the latter 20th Century, “better” was often defined as meaning more sustainable: more economically viable, socially inclusive and environmentally protective in ways that would ensure the availability of natural resources for future generations’ needs (WCED 1987). In the early 21st Century, “better” was also often defined as more resilient: better able to recover from shocks to the social-ecological system, increasingly from climate change (Walker et al 2004; Folke et al 2005; ECO 2009; Pisano 2012). While what looks “better” can still privilege private property – for example, in landscape preservation, as expressions of class identity (Duncan and Duncan 2001; Walker and Fortmann 2003) – there can still be new benefits to the general public, such as new or enhanced access to landscape amenities, recreation areas and ecological services. In this dissertation, the “public interest” will be understood to mean these sorts of enlargements of the commons or additions to collective consumption goods.

Policy change occurs within a governing framework that has evolved over the term of this story. After looking at that evolution, the chapter will turn to the key elements of governance systems – its institutions – and how they change, who changes them, and the ideational tools change-makers use. This is followed by an examination of policy change, specifically factors that contribute to sustainable land use change. The chapter culminates with discussion of a framework for analyzing land use policy change at a regional level that focuses on the public participation sites for action by actors and the social capital resources those actors bring to the process.

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2 Governance

Governing – the processes of decision-making by which the affairs of a collectivity are managed – evolved after World War II from a centralized, top-down approach directed by formal government actors in traditional settings to a “governance” approach that is more diffuse and collaborative, engaging non-state actors in less formal ways. The reasons for the evolution were both practical and ideological. But it was the increasingly intractable nature of environmental problems that provided the main impetus for change (Peters and Hoornbeck 2005).

The “first generation” of “black-and-white” environmental problems – characterized by obvious, well-defined and usually visible pollution and pollution sources – were relatively easy to understand, find consensus on and regulate; these were solved within the traditional “government” frameworks of governing. The “second generation” of environmental problems – featuring often invisible pollutants with more than one possible source – were much more complex and inter-connected, characterized by uncertainty, non-traditional jurisdictions (such as watersheds), conflicts with other societal goals and values, perceived and real failures of the techno-rationalist tradition, and difficulties enforcing command-and-control regulations, all leading to issues of political acceptance (Day, Gunton and Frame 2003; Howlett 2005; Peters and Hoornbeek 2005). Governments that previously could confidently deploy “substantive” tools of government (like protected greenspace), which alter the distribution of goods and services among members of society, turned to “procedural” tools, which are strategies to manipulate the size and composition of policy networks and their links to the larger community in order to facilitate mutual learning about a problem, consider solutions and gain legitimacy for a chosen course of action (Howlett 2005). This opened the door to greater public participation and decision-making processes that involved a larger range of actors, including non-state actors: what is now called “network governance” or simply “governance” (Healey 1998; Peters and Hoornbeek 2005; Rydin 2008).

This form of governing fit with the New Public Management reforms of neo-liberal governments, which sought to reduce the size of government and do more with less by co-ordinating or “steering” the efforts of others instead of “rowing” and doing the jobs

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themselves (Sossin 2002; Bogason and Musso 2006; Sorensen 2006). This often involved downloading of responsibility to the state or non-state actors who were considered to be the most efficient providers because of proximity to the target recipients of public goods and programs. This approach inevitably led to gaps in policy and program delivery (Friedmann 1998), and demonstrated the need for multi-level governance. Multi-level governance is governance that engages governments across levels and regions in a collaborative manner, rather than a principal-agent manner (with a higher level dictating terms to a lower level) (Zurn, Walti and Enderlein 2010). In environmental politics (and in this dissertation), network governance is usually assumed to include multi-level partners from all sectors because environmental problems do not respect political boundaries or scales, and governments usually need to consult private firms as well as a wide range of community groups in order to solve environmental problems (Rydin 2008; Armitage 2008; Scholte 2010; Walti 2010).

It is argued that the benefits of network governance are that it aligns policies and institutional practices so that they work together effectively (Bulkeley and Betsill 2005); ensures that policies are sensitive to the discourses of different coalitions at different scales (Ibid.); recognizes that local policies always exist within a wider context (Ibid); fills gaps in the performance of regional governments (Innes, Booher and Vittorio 2011), improves policy implementation with consultation and collaboration aimed at improving fit with local interests (Walti 2010); improves policy transfer (Ibid.); makes policy innovation easier because new ideas can be incubated in one part of the system without putting the whole at risk (Ibid.); and provides more access points for civil society actors (Scholte 2010). But network governance also poses dilemmas. It can be time-consuming, challenging the desire for inclusivity and accountability (Innes, Booher and Vittorio 2011, Taylor 2016). As Taylor (2016, 7-8) puts it: “Policies may be inclusively developed and executed in an ethical and competent manner, but they amount to little if outputs arrive too late to respond to urgent problems or if delays impose undue burdens on stakeholders.” A democratic deficit can result from exclusionary and manipulative membership practices; lack of accountability, particularly if the network sidelines elected officials; insular rules of engagement that can lead to group think; and lack of transparency in decision-making (Swyngedouw 2005; Bogason and Musso 2006; Sorensen

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2006; Lane 2003; Innes, Booher and Vittorio 2011). For Swyngedouw (2005, 1998), this “governance-beyond-the-state” is merely a new playing field where market forces still set the rules of the game, “celebrating the virtues of self-managed risk, prudence, and self- responsibility.” On the other hand, it is possible to see this kind of deliberative democracy as a complement to representative democracy, rather than a replacement for it (Scholte 2010). In the Toronto region, what procedural tools were used to advance or frustrate greenspace protection? To help answer this and other questions, it is useful to consider the traditional “building blocks” of policy analysis: institutions, interests and ideas (Heclo 1993, 375).

2.1 Institutions: Structures of Decision-Making

Institutions are understood as “the formal or informal procedures, routines, norms and conventions embedded in the organizational structure of the polity or political economy” (Hall and Taylor 1996, 938). They influence action by structuring expectations about what other self-maximizing actors will do, by providing existing templates of what is do-able, and by supplying cultural maps of what is socially appropriate (Ibid.). Institutions generate logics of what is appropriate and expected; these logics tend to set boundaries on the kinds of solutions to problems that are seen as possible. As many institutions exist within any field and are usually nested within larger institutional structures, there is often contestation over what logic will predominate.

2.1.1 Types of Institutions

To improve understanding of how institutions work separately and together, they are usually divided into three types: cultural-cognitive, normative and regulative (Scott 2008), each characterized by particular types of rules that are not to be broken, practices that reward or punish behaviour, and ideas that reinforce common understandings (Lowndes and Roberts 2013).

Cultural-cognitive institutions are deepest in the background of our lives, being our assumptions about what is thinkable in our world. The rules are very fundamental, like commandments, and they dictate certain approaches to life. Sanctions at this level are on a

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par with ostracism and banishment. Narratives that support these institutions are “paradigms,” basic cultural assumptions (Campbell 1998).

Normative institutions occupy a middle ground, being the practices that flow from our understandings about what is right or wrong in our world, usually written into laws but sometimes left unwritten. These practices structure our daily lives, serving as the “rules of the game.” Negative sanctions range from fines to imprisonment. In this study, relevant legal institutions include: • Laws against damaging or destroying private or public property • Ontario Municipal Board rules that favour those with money to buy the planning expertise the board claims it bases its decisions on (Chipman 2002) • Development charge laws that have been designed in such a way that they incentivize sprawl (Blais 2010) • Charitable rules that restrict environmental charities to spending no more than 10% of their budgets on political advocacy (Waldie 2012) • Election financing rules that allow developers to buy influence on councils (MacDermid 2006).

The ideas that buttress these institutions are what Campbell (1998) calls “public sentiments” about what is desirable, acceptable or legitimate.

Regulative institutions are the most in the foreground, being the visible conventions that tell us what is doable in our world. These rules are the weakest and most changeable, but often the most pragmatic. For example, while the law may prescribe that public participation must take place, local convention may make less accessible forms of engagement acceptable. Punishments for infringements are relatively light and sometimes informal, like gossip or shaming. Regulative institutions are the most flexible, and are sometimes used in an effort to change normative institutions. Ideas proliferate at this level and include specific policy proposals and the arguments used to make those ideas acceptable to the public and decision-makers (Campbell 1998). (See Section 2.3 for a fuller discussion of ideas.)

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2.1.2 Stability & Change

Institutions tend to be stable, sustained by path dependence, a process in which earlier decisions or events that establish a path constrain later efforts to deviate from that path, such that even minor choices can have major impacts in the long term. Two broad types of feedback mechanism are thought to sustain paths: incentive structures, wherein actors both adapt to and reinforce the logic of the system, and distributional effects, wherein political and material resources are apportioned unequally among groups, empowering some and marginalizing others (Thelen 1999). Particular policies become “locked in” and then maintained by feedback mechanisms that “lock out” alternative pathways. Pierson (2000), in trying to provide more rigour to a concept suffering from stretching, further argued that true path dependence requires that there be multiple options and that the benefit of maintaining the original policy should increase over time, generating increasing returns (positive feedbacks), and making reversal ever more costly. In land use policy, feedback mechanisms include sunk costs, land values, zoning and other measures that provide expectations of continuity, rules for infrastructure building and renewal, and political boundaries that serve existing constituencies (Sorensen 2015).

Institutions are a kind of social infrastructure that requires constant maintenance; they are only as strong as their rule-followers. The rules work better for some people than others. These others, the “institutional losers,” drive change (Mahoney and Thelen 2010, 22). The intentional pursuit of change is known as institutional design; this is the realm of policy development and lobbying. But institutions can also be changed unintentionally. The main types of institutional change have been identified as: • Displacement, where existing rules are replaced by new ones, sometimes in the abrupt manner of “punctuated equilibrium” (Kingdon 1995) from an external shock to the system, and other times in a longer-term defection from one rule set to another (Hacker 2004; Streeck and Thelen 2005; Mahoney and Thelen 2010) • Layering, where a new policy or institutional structure is created and layered on top of an existing policy (Ibid.) • Conversion, where policies are changed over time, typically by a series of small changes in operational rules such as eligibility criteria (Ibid.); • Drift, where the failure to adapt policies or institutions to new realities results in different impacts than were originally intended (Ibid.).

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In displacement, the crisis moments that create a context for change become “critical junctures,” resulting in new institutions forming and heading down new paths. Once an institution is formed during a critical juncture, it continues to develop along a particular pathway that is constrained by past choices as well as the changed social and political environment. The farther a policy goes down a particular road, the more actors become invested in it and the harder it becomes to change.

But not all institutions are path dependent. Sometimes unconnected ideas collide with existing ideas in unexpected ways, sending policy off in a new direction and reframing the political meaning of policies (Weir 1992). Innovations can produce feedback that is negative – a political backlash that creates new constituencies with new goals and identities and that changes the sense among government administrators about what is or is not possible to do (Rast 2007). Self-reinforcing mechanisms such as support coalitions may need to be re-invented (Thelen 1999). Once the innovation becomes the new status quo, the costs of maintaining this institution may be high enough that returns will do well to remain constant, let alone increase (Greener 2005). Further, rules are never perfectly enacted: people interpret rules in different ways, fail to understand their nuances, look for ways to avoid new obligations and fail to prevent deviant behaviour in following or enforcing the rules. These discontinuities between the ideal and real provide the openings for gradual change from within (Streeck and Thelen 2005). These kinds of gaps are particularly likely to exist where government institutions are fragmented such as when a higher level of government is making policy and leaving it to a lower level to administer (Hacker 2004). Any of these may lead to endogenous changes of layering, conversion or drift, which may be transformative over time, leading either to retrenchment or to learning and widespread adopting of appropriate behaviour in what Lanzara (1998) calls “increasing returns to adoption.” Moreover, different processes of change – fast vs. slow, exogenous vs. endogenous – may combine to produce new or reformed institutions, particularly when political actors are trying to manipulate these processes.

This intentional pursuit of institutional change is institutional design, sometimes called “path creation” (Martin and Sunley 2006). Institutions are subject to “ongoing skirmishing as actors try to achieve advantage” (Streeck and Thelen 2005, 19). Power is never

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permanent so power relations need to constantly reproduce themselves (Flyvbjerg 1998). This produces interstices where contestation and agency are possible. Institutional entrepreneurs may then seek advantage through strategies like deploying old institutional resources for new goals, adapting policies borrowed from other places, or promoting the neglect of an existing institution (Lowndes and Roberts 2013).

Because of the many obstacles to institutional design – uncertainty about the future, risk aversion, sunk costs, complexity, inadequate or inappropriate resources, and lack of trust (Lanzara 1998) – it often takes a crisis to open a “policy window” of opportunity for new responses to a problem (Kingdon 1995). But often the only strategy available to institutional designers is “bricolage,” where policy actors use resources at hand to patch together a loose set of rules (Lanzara 1998). While the looseness of these frameworks can make them vulnerable to conversion or drift, their flexibility can give actors the comfort to explore new options and adapt to local conditions while protecting sunk costs and reducing set-up costs (Ibid.). In this way, what Christopher Hood called a “variety engine” can be sustained (Lowndes and Roberts 2013, 187). The focus for reformers is usually regulative legal-political institutions, which have the potential to be “fast- moving” and changeable, compared to cultural institutions such as social norms, which change slowly and continuously (Scott 2008; Roland 2004).

Some reforms are easier to design than others. As Streeck and Thelen (2005) observe, it takes less effort to let actors act in their individual self-interest than to mobilize and co- ordinate them to act in the collective interest. These tendencies, in their view, help explain why the shift to neo-liberalism – the reliance on markets for both economic and political action – has been able to occur in an evolutionary manner rather than the more disruptive manner of earlier shifts in political economies. It also sums up the challenge of those working to avoid “tragedies of the commons” to achieve more environmentally sustainable communities. Rule changes are also easier and faster to make when policy actors use familiar or supportive institutions to make new rules simple for the public to understand and for bureaucrats to implement (van Bueren and ten Heuvelhof 2005; Bengston, Fletcher and Nelson, 2004; Connelly, Markey and Roseland 2009; Campbell 1998; Lowndes and Roberts 2013). The need for fit with existing institutions helps explain

Chapter 3 - Research Design 31 why the transplanting of best practices from one place to another may fail: practices embedded in one institutional architecture may not fit with a different architecture (Roland 2004).

Although institutions are conceived of as boundaries on choices, these limits actually enable decision-making. Psychologists have long known that too many choices can paralyze people, as they struggle to determine the differences among too many proposals that could be too similar, while fewer options leave people feeling more in charge and able to make a stronger, more satisfying choice more quickly (Estrada 2011).

2.2 Interests: Actors, Resources & Social Capital

The actors involved in governance can be thought of as participants in the “public sphere.” The public sphere is the theoretical and often physical place where people create and locate solutions to the shared problems of human settlements. The idea of the public sphere dates back to Ancient Greece, where the agora was a civic meeting place, public court, marketplace and spectacle, all in one (Mitchell 1995). The public sphere overlaps but differs from the commons, which usually refers to shared resources that are ultimately finite (Hardin 1968; Ostrom 1990). Opinions about how the state should manage the commons are forged in the free and open dialogue of the political “public sphere” (Habermas 1973), which, as feminists remind us, includes households (Staeheli 1996).

The public in the public sphere is not a single monolith; it is many “mini publics” (Fung 2006). The key sectors within the public sphere are the state, civil society, the market and the family. Actors within each sector deploy characteristic resources to satisfy their primary interest: • State actors use political networks and political capital – their influence and control over public goods – in pursuit of power. • Civil Society actors use community networks and social capital – their connectedness and trustworthiness – in pursuit of group benefits. • Market actors use trade networks and economic capital – investments in resources for production – in pursuit of financial benefits. • Family actors use kinship networks and human capital – investments in health and education – in pursuit of personal and family benefits.

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But they all have and use social capital arising from their own networks of personal contacts, though that social capital may vary by type and degree.

Social capital is essentially a metaphor for resources, benefits or advantages that arise from social relationships or structures. It is intangible, which may account for the many conceptualizations of it: as driver, outcome, networks and norms (Foley and Edwards 1999). Being intangible, it is also difficult to measure. Nevertheless, it has an intuitive power. Colloquially, it is understood as “who you know” -- contacts that might help a person or group get a job, win a contract, sway a vote or work with to “get things done.” Like financial capital, it needs to be circulated or activated for its potential to be realized.

Social capital develops as a result of repeated positive social interactions, becoming more valuable the more it is used (Brondizio, Ostrom and Young 2009). Social capital highlights the benefits of group dynamics: social interaction and shared information increase the payoffs of working together, promoting reciprocity; personal relationships increase the costs of free-riding, and predictable interactions increase trust among members (Rydin and Pennington 2000). These benefits accrue to groups or networks of people in any sector of society. Within the market sector, social capital can smooth the way for lending and borrowing or for joint industry appeals to government regulators. Within the family sector, social capital can help members find employment. Within civil society, social capital helps people with similar interests or identities to create and support common solutions ranging from sports leagues to missionary projects. Within the state sector, social capital can expand support coalitions for candidates or policies.

The relative richness of social capital is underpinned by the type of social capital that predominates within it: “bonding” or “bridging.” Bonding social capital predominates in groups with strong internal ties that promote cohesion, while bridging social capital predominates in groups with weaker internal ties (Putnam 2000). Bonding social capital predominates in the family sector, where kinship networks are preoccupied with their own social reproduction. Bridging social capital predominates in the state sector, where actors need to forge partnerships with other groups to create support coalitions, and successful relationships can be somewhat impersonal. Both kinds of social capital are weak in the market sector, which relies more on pecuniary mechanisms to build

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relationships with customers and suppliers, although norms of trust help these relationships and narratives of connectedness are concocted to market products to consumers. By contrast, both kinds of social capital are believed to be strong in civil society (although unevenly distributed), where both group cohesion and group alliances are based on common interests and reinforced by norms of trust. (See Figure 2.1.)

Figure 2.1 Social Capital in the Public Sphere

Stronger BRIDGING State Civil Society Social Capital Political networks focus on Social networks are based on (inclusive, outward- linking to support coalitions mutual (community) interests looking)

Market Family Weaker BRIDGING Trade networks are based Kinship networks focus on social Social Capital mostly on monetary exchanges reproduction of family members (exclusive, inward- looking)

Weaker BONDING Stronger BONDING Social Capital (less cohesive) Social Capital (more cohesive)

As each of the sectors of the public sphere includes actors that are more or less inclusive and civic-minded, so it is with the social capital they embody. Social capital is neutral, able to lead to both progressive and regressive outcomes (Brondizio, Ostrom and Young 2009). There can be a “dark side” to social capital (Foley and Edwards 1996; Abu-Lughod 1998; Putnam 2000; Tusalem 2007). Studies of criminal gangs and drug cartels in Latin America have drawn attention to “perverse” social capital in which “the networks, the contacts, the power relations, the legal system, the informal norms of behavior, the political activities, and the reward systems established in this society inspire rent-seeking, or criminal behavior, to the detriment of productive activities” (Rubio 1997, 815).

Context affects how social capital is manifest, so that a group that normally embodies bonding social capital in one situation may embody bridging social capital in another (Rydin and Holman 2004). Both bonding and bridging social capital are seen to have a horizontal quality, with relationships occurring at a similar scale. Challenging problems

Chapter 3 - Research Design 34 that require more vertical relationships can benefit from “linking” social capital that connects actors to others with more power and wealth (Woolcock 2001).

Rydin and Holman (2004) identify another helpful variation: “bracing” social capital, a combination of bonding and bridging social capital that develops when actors from multiple sectors reach across scales and sectors to focus on a place-based policy problem. They see this occurring “within a limited set of actors” because of the challenge of finding enough common ground to tackle the problem they face (123). For them, the best examples of bracing social capital are partnerships among business, government and civil society actors formed to solve a local “wicked” problem. Governments often convene these stakeholder groups in hopes that enough social capital will develop to solve the problem at hand.

Civil society, as the sector of already organized voluntary groups and networks, is considered to have a ready supply of social capital, although it is variable and not guaranteed (Putnam 2000; Rydin and Pennington 2000). Some local community groups, where face-to-face interactions occur, have been shown to solve complex problems, making them attractive partners for other civic projects (Ostrom 1990; Putnam 2000). Identifying which groups can contribute to healthy communities is a goal of this and other research.

2.3 Ideas: Tools of Policy Actors

Ideas have had a checkered history in debates over what affects policy-making. Victor Hugo famously wrote that nothing can stop an idea whose time has come. Max Weber likened ideas to “switchmen that determine the tracks along which interests push action” (Campbell 1998). But neo-Marxists and rational choice theorists who were focused on self- interest as the prime motivator of policy change dominated the discussion until the late 1980s, when scholars from a variety of traditions recognized the power of beliefs to define actors’ interests in other ways (Ibid.).

Campbell (1998) distinguishes between cognitive and normative ideas operating in the background and foreground of policy debates (see Table 2.1). Cognitive ideas are “descriptions and theoretical analyses that specify cause-and-effect relationships,” while

Chapter 3 - Research Design 35 normative ideas are “values and attitudes” (384). Background ideas tend to be taken for granted, while foreground ideas are contested as part of normal policy debate.

He identifies four types of ideas relevant to policy-making: • Paradigms – These are the taken-for-granted assumptions that operate in the background of policy debates. They provide broad constraints on possible solutions, being ideas about what is thinkable or useful, that is, a plausible solution. • Public sentiments – These are normative frameworks also operating in the background. They are broad-based beliefs about what is desirable, acceptable or legitimate. • Programs – These are the “ ‘road maps’ out of policy dilemmas” (380). They are foreground policy ideas that prescribe a course of action. • Frames – These are instrumental ideas – concepts and symbols – also operating in the foreground that policy actors use to make programmatic ideas acceptable to the public. While often normative in nature, frames can use more cognitive ideas, such as new research, as well (Campbell 2002). For example, research on the impacts of cigarette smoking reframed efforts to ban smoking in public places.

Table 2.1 Types of Ideas & their Role in Policy-Making Concepts and theories in the Underlying assumptions in the foreground of the policy debate background of the policy debate

Cognitive level Programs Paradigms Ideas as elite policy prescriptions Ideas as elite assumptions that that help policy-makers to chart a constrain the cognitive range of clear and specific course of policy useful solutions available to policy- action makers

Normative level Frames Public sentiments Ideas as symbols and concepts Ideas as public assumptions that that help policy-makers to constrain the normative range of legitimize policy solutions to the legitimate solutions available to public policy-makers

Campbell 1998, 385

Ideas are among the most important tools in the policy entrepreneur’s toolkit. Program ideas include ideas about both problems and solutions, which both need to be accepted by the public and decision-makers before they can be seen as part of the public policy agenda (Kingdon 1995). These program ideas are more likely to gain a spot on the agenda if they fit with existing paradigms and public sentiments. If the fit is poor, policy entrepreneurs

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may use frames to lead the public to see the new idea in a different light, for instance, as legitimate according to a different but accepted set of rules. For example, family values about putting children’s needs first helped reframe the gay rights debate from sexual deviance to children’s needs, which ranged from the needs of HIV-infected adult gay children for the love and support of their parents to more recent concerns about the needs of children of gay parents for social acceptance and financial support of their alternative families. This example also shows where “new” ideas come from, namely, from bits and pieces of old ideas from “home” or “away” – what Kingdon (1995) calls the “policy primeval soup” – recombined or connected to new situations.

According to Kingdon (1995), it takes agreement on the nature of a problem and its solution along with political will to move an issue up the public policy agenda, from discussion item to decision item and acceptance. What happens to ideas as they work their way through to implementation?

Weir (1992) saw ideas as working their way through a narrowing funnel or sieve in a process of “bounded innovation” in which institutions “channeled the flow of ideas, created incentives for political actors, and helped to determine the political meaning of policy choices” (189). The range of paradigms and public sentiments is narrowed down to discrete policy choices and then further narrowed as they encounter technical ideas about what is doable. For those seeking policy change, this suggests that foreground ideas should not be too distant from background ideas if quick approval is sought.

3 Policy Change 3.1 Policy Change as Creative Governance

Of all the factors that influence the evolution of regions – geographic, technological, economic, social and institutional – social and institutional factors, such as those embodied in governance, are usually the most amenable to change (Wheeler 2003; Scott 2008). Research into “creative” governance – practices that have the capacity to challenge the status quo and lead to social innovation, defined as “changes in governance institutions and agency that intend to or have the effect of contributing to improving

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quality-of-life experiences in a socially inclusive and socially just way” (Gonzalez and Healey 2005, 2055) – has converged on six factors: vision, actors, knowledge, public engagement, accountability and institutions. (See Table 2.2.)

First, there needs to be a clear and inclusive vision, goal or “catalyzing issue” (Connelly, Markey and Roseland 2009) to motivate self-organizing (Wheeler 2000; Lebel et al 2006; Booher and Innes 2010; Smith and Wiek 2012). Radical change comes faster when people feel they are responding to a crisis (van Bueren and ten Heuvelhof 2005). But even incremental change requires that people agree that there is a problem, for instance, that a critical threshold is about to be reached (Lebel et al 2006).

Second, there needs to be a policy network with a diverse set of actors who have different skills and are open to different ideas and perspectives (Healey 1998, 2004; Conroy and Berke 2004; Lebel et al 2006; Booher and Innes 2010; Smith and Wiek 2012). Among these actors need to be relevant experts (Connelly, Markey and Roseland 2009), leaders who can drive the process, generating and articulating solutions, engaging wider publics, and suggesting innovative partnerships and pilot projects (Burch 2011; Lebel et al 2006; Connelly, Markey and Roseland 2009), representatives of relevant governmental levels and agencies, and societal sectors (Lebel et al 2006; Booher and Innes 2010; Wheeler 2000; Connelly, Markey and Roseland 2009). This diversity is productive because it increases the chance that social capital will develop, producing networks of contacts and norms of trust that can help surface creative solutions and reach critical audiences (Rydin 2008). Many researchers identify civil society as embodying these types of networks (Wheeler 2000; Rome 2001; Bengston, Fletcher and Nelson 2004; North 2011).

A third theme concerns attitudes towards knowledge. There should be acceptance that, in addition to technical knowledge, participants should consider “local knowledge” or “tacit knowledge” about direct impacts “on the ground” and local sensibilities about or capacity for certain kinds of solutions (Corburn 2003; Lebel et al 2006; Connelly, Markey and Roseland 2009). There also need to be protocols for dealing with disputes about knowledge (Booher and Innes 2010; Connelly, Markey and Roseland 2009), and a willingness to test knowledge by launching pilot projects and dealing openly with their risks (Lebel et al 2006; Connelly, Markey and Roseland 2009; Booher and Innes 2010).

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Table 2.2 Factors Involved in Successfully Challenging the Status Quo

Success Factor Details

Clear vision and/or Vision should be inclusive and dramatic enough to motivate catalyzing issue action

Policy network with Networks should have different and useful skills, backgrounds diverse actors & perspectives, with actors who are open to new ideas

Different kinds of The networks should have a capacity to learn from both knowledge technical and tacit knowledge sources, and to agree on how to handle disputes about relevant knowledge.

Public engagement Wider publics should be engaged and empowered. Relevant groups should be recruited and involved.

Accountability Mechanisms should ensure transparency, fairness, impacts and effectiveness.

Supportive institutions Mandates, co-ordinating bodies, incentives, and cultural understandings should support agreed-upon goals.

Meaningful public engagement is a fourth critical element of governance for change. Successful projects engaged the public effectively, without defaulting to a lowest- common-denominator compromise, which is the risk with broad-based public participation (Brody 2003). The goal of public engagement is to build a support coalition for meaningful change (Wheeler 2000). This involves recruitment, inclusiveness, engagement and empowerment (Connelly, Markey and Roseland 2009; Conroy and Berke 2004) collaborative learning, understanding and consensus-building (Lebel et al 2006; Booher and Innes 2010; Wheeler 2000; Connelly, Markey and Roseland 2009). Who participates matters; “The challenge to planners, then, is to identify which groups will increase the quality and performance of the adopted plan,” (Brody 2003, 414).

Accountability mechanisms are important to ensure transparency of stakeholder selection and group deliberations (Healey 2004; Taylor 2016), a fair distribution of costs and benefits (Lebel et al 2006), effectiveness and needed adjustments (Booher and Innes 2010; Wheeler 2000), and to leverage results to produce more incremental change (Connelly, Markey and Roseland 2009). Accountability within policy networks helps to reduce misunderstandings among diverse participants (Smith and Wiek 2012) and build trust needed for participants to commit resources to the process (Lebel et al 2006).

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Finally, supportive institutions that make it easier to engage multiple publics, create plans, and co-ordinate resources for implementation and monitoring are also important (Healey 2004; Lebel et al 2006; Booher and Innes 2010; Wheeler 2000). Helpful institutions include: a state mandate to develop sustainability (Conroy and Berke 2004), regional institutions to improve co-ordination and consistency (Wheeler 2000), cultural understandings such as a belief that it is good to rely on best practices (Connelly, Markey and Roseland 2009), and formal regulations and incentives (Wheeler 2000; van Bueren and ten Heuvelhof 2005).

Some policy problems do not require social innovation or “creative” governance. Conventional governance processes such as command and control based on expert advice, voting according to self-interest, or bargaining according to group interests can be acceptable (Fung and Wright 2001). But the more complex and uncertain the way forward, the more important it is to use deliberative public participation processes “to articulate the full range of principles, models, values and assumptions” (Armitage 2008).

3.2 Analyzing Governance Performance

Healey (2004, 2011) conceives of governance as an activity that is performed and experienced at three levels: episodes in the foreground, processes in the middle ground, and cultures in the background. Each of her levels is made up of three dimensions, which correspond to the key elements of policy analysis: institutions, interests and ideas, as shown in Table 2.3. The institutions she identifies are arenas or sites of governance; practices of governance, that is, laws and regulations; and modes of governance, the accepted ways of making those laws and regulations. Interests are actors at the episode level, each with different goals and skills of possible use for policy-making; networks or coalitions at the process level, where partnerships can yield further resources for affecting policy; and, at the level of cultures, values, which motivate but also moderate behaviours. Ideas she identifies are key tools used at each level: narratives used in service of influencing discourses within the acceptable bounds of paradigms. Her model draws attention to the ways that governance is performed at more than one level in more than one way.

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Table 2.3 Levels & Dimensions of Governance Performance

Governance Dimensions Level of Governance

Performance Institutions Interests Ideas

Episodes Arenas Actors Narratives (Foreground: level of (participation (participants) (stories, frames agency dynamics, sites) & metaphors) strategic, most flexible)

Processes Practices Networks Discourses (Middle ground: level of (legal methods) (coalitions) (structuring normative dynamics, often ideas, including the object of contestation) public sentiments)

Cultures Modes Values Paradigms (Background: level of (accepted & (motivations & (basic cognitive-cultural expected ways norms) assumptions structural dynamics, most of governance) about what is embedded) legitimate)

Adapted from Healey 2004, 2011, and Campbell 1998

Healey’s episodes are the level where agency occurs, while her processes and cultures are the institutions that structure that agency. Institutions do not explain why decisions are made: “Institutions do not determine behavior, they simply provide a context for action that helps us to understand why actors make the choices that they do” (Immergut 1998, 26). To understand why certain choices are made, one must look at the public participation arenas for action and the actors in those arenas.

3.2.1 Public Participation Institutions

Healey’s “arenas” range from council chambers to the Internet: “places of encounter where people meet and discuss issues” (2004, 96). All of them are sites of public participation, which is generally understood to mean some kind of involvement of the public in policy development, monitoring and/or implementation (Penderis 2012). But agreement stops there because public participation is a complex institution in its own right. At the level of governance cultures, it is a value of democracy, a way for people to exercise freedoms of speech and self-determination. At the level of processes, it is an expected part of policy practice, often prescribed by law. At the level of episodes, it is a

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strategic arena where actors can make their case. Conflicts most often occur at the episode level, but these affect the other two levels.

Like governance, attitudes about public participation evolved over the three greenspace campaigns in the Greater Toronto Area. Prior to World War II, urban planning was seen as a neutrally technical process, with policy rationally deduced from scientific evidence (Healey 2006). Wartime central planning only served to solidify faith in this model. The decay of inner cities in the 1960s called this model into question, with advocacy planner Paul Davidoff arguing that planning was not value-free and the process should be opened up to a wider set of interests (Ibid.). Public participation was seen as the antidote to an insular planning establishment that had failed to listen to and deal with the concerns of much of the public it was meant to serve. The benefits of public participation were believed to be outcomes that were more democratic – equitable and responsive – and more effective in providing solutions that would be acceptable and durable because they had incorporated a wide range of inputs. But public participation itself became co-opted, prompting responses like Sherry Arnstein’s influential 1969 article, “A Ladder of Citizen Participation,” which conceived of participation as an eight-step hierarchy from non- participation to citizen control. The metaphor remains powerful because it still captures what many citizen activists feel, as indicated by casual surveys of community action websites, which routinely reproduce the ladder.5

The meaning of public participation remains at the heart of the continuing debate about how planning should be performed: as a top-down, rational-technical exercise based on elite forms of evidence and argument that promise to be “efficient,” or as a more broad- based communicative and collaborative exercise with affected stakeholders that incorporates local knowledge and preferences and promises to be “democratic.” The lower rungs of Arnstein’s ladder – Manipulation, Therapy, Informing, Consulting and Placation – fit with a rational-technical view of planning; public participation is seen as

5 So influential has the article been that debates since its publication have often taken the form of asking to what extent Arnstein was right: should we be “pulling down” Arnstein’s ladder (Sharp and Connelly 2002), “jumping off” it (Collins and Ison 2009), “climbing” it (Stout 2010), re- imagining it as a “wheel of empowerment” (Davidson 1998), or reconfiguring it as a “ladder of empowerment” from individual to community empowerment (Rocha 1997)?

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instrumental, a requirement to be met (Penderis 2012). Developers and growth advocates might consider it a “necessary evil.” The upper rungs – Partnership, Delegated Power and Citizen Control – fit better with communicative-collaborative approaches, in which planning is seen as a negotiation.

Not everyone sees a problem with less collaborate approaches. Archon Fung (2006) argues that public participation serves three different democratic goals – legitimacy, justice and effectiveness – and different engagement designs suit different goals. His “Democracy Cube” aligns participation processes along three axes – participants, communication and decision-making modes, and extent of authority – instead of Arnstein’s single power axis. Fung sees citizen participation as a means to solving problems of government deficits in “the knowledge, competence, public purpose, resources, or respect necessary to command compliance and cooperation” (2006, 67). Others agree that, theoretically, public participation can help solve a number of problems, such as securing buy-in, collecting information, and improving implementation (Penderis 2012; Berkes et al 2014; Reed 2008), with some forms of participation being more suitable than others. Increasingly, public participation is seen a crucial site for strategic social learning, especially in a world of information overload where no one can claim to “know it all” (Collins and Ison 2009; Berdej, Armitage and Charles 2015). For solving “wicked” problems, where some sort of institutional change is desired, more intensive processes that engage a diverse range of people more deeply are required, called “authentic participation” (King, Feltey and Susel 1998), “Empowered Deliberative Democracy” (Fung and Wright 2001), “analytic deliberation” (Dietz, Ostrom and Stern 2003), “collaborative participation” (Innes and Booher 2004), “participatory democracy” (Aylett 2010), “participatory governance” (Berdej, Armitage and Charles 2015), and the like.

In practice, public participation has its problems: a tendency to polarization and turf battles, especially in more open processes (Innes and Booher 2004; Ghose 2005); drawn- out deliberations, particularly when there are culture clashes among participants (Innes and Booher 2004; Maginn 2007); poor decisions if technical knowledge, political and economic realities, and long-term concerns are not properly integrated into deliberations (Hajer and Kesselring 1999; Innes and Booher 2004); lack of central support leading to

Chapter 3 - Research Design 43 logistical, economic, language and similar barriers to equal stakeholders participation (King, Feltey and Susel 1998; Fung and Wright 2001; Ghose 2005; Reed 2008; Stout 2010); and citizens who have become apathetic, distrustful or cynical because of past experiences, a perception that a process is a “one-shot deal” (King, Feltey and Susel 1998) or that important options are already “off the table” (Ghose 2005).

For all these reasons, public participation processes can reinforce existing power relations. Public participation is not neutral: participatory processes are often designed to influence outcomes (Fung and Wright 2001; Sharp and Connelly 2002; Gerometta, Haussermann and Longo 2005; Ghose 2005; Reed 2008; Rutland and Aylett 2008; Stout 2010; Penderis 2012; Dodge 2014). These outcomes often turn out to privilege the “community as marketplace” over the “community as home” (Stout 2010, 86).

However, the search continues for ways to analyze participation processes for their potential to challenge what is usually a market-oriented status quo. Sharp and Connelly (2002) propose that five factors need to be explored to determine if a participation process is likely to challenge the status quo, which is the first step towards change. Their factors are: geographic scale, extent of action, agenda, participants and style of engagement. (See Table 2.4 for a summary of this section.)

In the case of geographic scale, Sharp and Connelly theorize that smaller scale processes – on the scale of a neighbourhood, for example – are easier for the sponsors of participation processes to manage and less likely to lead to wider change. Consultations on a large scale are both harder to manipulate and more likely to have impacts on more people in more fundamental ways. Other researchers have addressed the geographic scale issue in terms of fit for different geographic scales (Brondizio, Ostrom and Young 2009; Berdej, Armitage and Charles 2015).

Extent of action refers to the type of the policy that the public is being asked to consult on, ranging from voluntary to government-required policies. The former is less likely to challenge the status quo than the latter. Other researchers have framed this factor in terms of certainty – seeing high uncertainty about what to do as more challenging to the status quo (Armitage 2008) – or piecemeal vs. holistic change (Innes and Booher 2004).

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The agenda of public participation processes refers to the degree of controversy surrounding an issue, and the point in the policy process in which the public is engaged. A controversial issue will have entrenched interests opposing one another and will engage more people. The earlier in the process that people are consulted, before certain options have been closed off, the more likely they are to participate. Fung and Wright (2001) frame the agenda criterion in terms of its salience to the public, with specific, tangible, practical and concrete issues being of greater salience than vague issues whose impact on the public is unclear. In Reed’s 2008 survey of the literature, he finds that without a clear and sincere goal any process is less effective. The most basic aspect of the style of engagement is in the openness of the process. A closed process is highly controlled and sometimes secret. Examples range from surveys with a limited number of pre-set options to choose from and public meetings that are highly structured and channel discussion in a certain direction. More open processes theoretically allow for more points of view.

But it is not entirely clear whether open-to-the-public processes are always the best. Closed meetings may provide safer spaces for learning, risk-taking and collaboration (Hajer and Kesselring 1999; Innes and Booher 2004). This can occur both when participants are “invited,” often to ensure relevant stakeholders are heard, and when participants “claim” a space in which to exchange knowledge and ideas (Penderis 2012). Stakeholder processes, which engage a subset of the public that is directly affected by proposals, have been found to improve decision-making both technically (generating new ideas and basing solutions on scientific evidence) and politically (reaching solutions satisfactory to all) in a majority of cases (Beierle 2002).

Sharp and Connelly distinguish their five design factors from what they call context: the local factors that dictate the “level of commitment” of key actors in a specific situation (57). They conclude that changes to the status quo are possible when the level of commitment among key actors is high and the participation process optimizes the potential for change.

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Table 2.4 Factors of Public Participation Design Least Challenging Most Challenging Best Practices for Authentic Factor to Status Quo to Status Quo Public Participation

Geographic Small scale, Large scale, with Proper fit scale unlikely to be more inputs & widely adopted possibilities for change

Extent of Narrow Broad High uncertainty about what to do action Goal is to promote Goal is to change Holistic systems approach individual / existing practices voluntary & force changes behaviour change in behavior

Agenda Issue is not risky Issue is risky or Early and continuous involvement or controversial controversial Problem is specific, tangible, practical & (less opposition) (more concrete Late engagement opposition) Clear goals of process Early engagement Commitment to on-going engagement (not a one-shot process, like a survey)

Participants Supportive of In opposition to Inclusion of: status quo status quo Diverse range of people / People affected Perceive Highly networked, / Scientists, resource users, interested & themselves as with access to informed publics lacking power info & other People open to new ideas & change / resources committed to reasoned deliberation Networked participants Empowered participants

Style of Closed or Open forms Well-structured dialogue, building engagement managed forms knowledge & trust, open to new ideas, deliberative, reasoned Open accessible forms, stimulating outreach Builds democratic practice through learning by doing Style tailored to goals, context & participants Process ensures equal empowerment by removing logistical & knowledge barriers Skillfully & neutrally facilitated Local & scientific knowledge is integrated Many meetings, to accommodate schedules & build trust & intensify process Closed meetings may provide safer spaces for learning, risk-taking & collaboration

The first three columns summarize Sharp and Connelly’s (2002) theory, while the last column summarizes related empirical research on best practices identified in King, Feltey and Susel 1998; Fung and Wright 2001; Dietz, Ostrom and Stern 2003; Healey 2004; Fung 2006; Reed 2008; and Penderis 2012.

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3.2.2 Networks of Interests & Governing Resources

The state is a mix of actors – politicians and bureaucrats – working within multiple and changeable boundaries, without a pre-ordained unity (Gonzalez and Healey 2005). Family, market and civil society look to the state to provide the conditions for them to flourish. This usually involves some kind of mediation of conflicting interests. For governments to successfully negotiate these conflicts, they are thought to require several key “governing resources” in order to act: legitimacy, knowledge (information and ideas), financial resources, and organizational capacity (Hood and Margetts 2007; Fung 2006).6 These resources underpin the various tools that governments can use to make changes in the environment. The state was seen to have control of these resources in the days of the hegemony of hierarchical, top-down regulation. But with the evolution away from this model and a move towards the conceptualization of citizens as clients, governments were left with the paradoxical problem of more demanding citizens and fewer resources with which to serve them. State actors became more open to having others supply resources to help make up the gaps. This led to an increase in public-private partnerships with business groups and collaborations with non-profit groups – with both groups hoping to move their own agendas forward as part of the exchange.

Turning to civil society as a partner can bring certain benefits to state actors.

In terms of legitimacy, civil society, as a political space that is not explicitly partisan, can help rally public support (Blagescu and Court 2008; Scholte 2010).7 Civil society groups bring more public involvement to participatory processes because of their networks and credibility as trusted and independent parties (Font and Galais 2011). Civil society membership is fluid, made up of people and groups with a larger variety of characteristics, goals, agendas and responsibilities than public servants or businessmen. In this rich “ecology of actors,” there is a greater chance of forging the relationships and

6 Fung adds a fifth – “public purpose” or clear direction – but I consider that part of legitimacy to act. 7 In this conceptualization of the public sphere, political parties are part of the State sector. As either already committed supporters or opponents, they are already “co-opted,” in a sense, so of less use as partners.

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making the connections that could lead to common ground and policy breakthroughs (Evans 2002).

In terms of knowledge, civil society can provide relevant research expertise (Blagescu and Court 2008), especially for local knowledge that outsiders could not know about or might have missed by aggregating data at too high a level (Boyte 2005; Corburn 2003). Civil society can help them spread technical knowledge or an understanding of constraints through “social learning,” learning that enables actors to adjust to change through inquiry and co-operation (Angeles and Gurstein 2007; Blagescu and Court 2008; Holman and Rydin 2013). Civil society’s rich network of participants encourages the flow of ideas in many directions, increasing the possibilities that diverse actors will begin to understand each other and that new ideas will emerge (Healey 1998).

Governments tend to be risk-averse because the public can be unforgiving about risks that fail to pay off economically. In terms of financial resources, civil society can provide free or low-cost “niche” spaces where risky ideas and practices can be safely incubated and nurtured, and new ideas, products or processes can be “sold” to target populations and partners (Seyfang and Haxeltine 2012; Aylett 2013). Failures are less of a problem for civil society than for state actors; they become lessons in what not to do, added to social learning that helps prepare the ground for future experiments (Gonzalez and Healey 2005). Finally, governments can take advantage of the arm’s length character of civil society groups to access foundation and other funds for which the state is not eligible.

In terms of organizational capacity, civil society can help reduce the “collective action problem” – the cost of participating in current government-led planning with uncertain future benefits – thanks to its networks of trusts and norms of participation (Rydin and Pennington 2000; Holman and Rydin 2013). Civil society groups are already organized and engaged in community affairs of some kind and practiced at the skills of “everyday politics”: public speaking, active listening, conflict resolution, negotiation and organizing (Boyte 2005, 542; Tavits 2006; Tusalem 2007). For urgent issues, it pays to engage a group that has already done some of this work and avoid some of these “start-up costs” (Brondizio, Ostrom and Young 2009, 263). Indeed, one statistical study found a robust positive correlation between good governance and a vibrant civil society (Bailer,

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Bodenstein and Heinrich 2008). Compared to government, civil society is flexible and less hierarchical, thus more conducive to creating partnerships that could eventually lead to consensus on approaches to difficult problems (Angeles and Gurstein 2007; Carley, Jenkins and Smith 2001). Civil society has long had a multi-level character, which has become more pronounced as it increasingly relates to multi-level governance and concerns itself with issues that span multiple geographic scales (Scholte 2010).

A question for state actors looking to partner with civil society, though, is “which” civil society to partner with to avoid “un-civil” elements.

3.2.3 Strategic Ideas

Healey’s framework maps neatly onto Campbell’s typology of ideas. Healey’s “narratives” are the same as Campbell’s “frames”: the stories, some based on research, others based on feelings, that get told to persuade people that a new policy idea – a “program” idea in Campbell’s terms – should be adopted. For example, in this research, framing the greenbelt as land necessary for local food has been more compelling for some urban constituencies than arguments about sprawl at the edge of suburbia.

Healey’s “discourses” align with Campbell’s “public sentiments,” being ideas about how things should be, which structure thinking about what to do. For instance, Canadians tend to see themselves as nature-lovers, and believe that “nature” in some form should be preserved as a public good.

Healey and Campbell both use “paradigms” the same way to mean society’s most basic assumptions about how life should unfold. Crown government, with its assumptions of centralized top-down government8, and capitalism, with its assumption that markets are the best way to allocate resources, are the dominant paradigms in this case study.

8 “Crown government” is a phrase sometimes used in place of “monarchy” to draw attention to the fact that, in this form of government, legitimacy flows downward from the Crown rather than upwards from the grassroots. The Constitution Act of 1982 is based on the Constitution Act of 1867, which states, in Subsection 9, “The Executive Government and Authority of and over Canada is hereby declared to continue and be vested in the Queen.” Although the Crown has long delegated powers to Parliament, the norm that power flows from a central, higher authority remains. By contrast, the U.S. Constitution famously begins “We the people . . . do ordain and establish this Constitution” and vests all legislative powers in the elected Congress.

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Healey’s framework helps to clarify that the different types of ideas need to be aligned. Narratives are nested within discourses, which are nested within paradigms.

4 Framework for Analysis

To understand the role of civil society in land use planning in general and greenspace protection in the Toronto region in particular, a framework that explores environmental governance institutions at all three levels of institutional performance – episodes, processes and cultures – is useful (see Table 2.5 on next page). The episode level unpacks the features of arenas of public participation that actors, using their unique resources, including social capital, act within. The process and culture levels can help with an understanding of the structural and cultural dynamics that shape the responses of actors and influence landscape preservation.

This largely sociological institutionalist approach helps identify the factors that shaped the actions of institutional designers of the three protection plans. Comparing these cases then reveals patterns and trajectories more typical of historical institutionalism, with its focus on “the creation, persistence, and change of institutions over time” (Sorensen 2015, 18). One of the key questions about greenbelts has always been about how permanent they are – permanence being the ultimate goal of conservationists. Comparing the cases yields insights into this.

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Table 2.5 Framework for Analyzing Greenspace Protection Campaigns

Level of Dimension Observations performance

EPISODES Arenas What are the institutional sites where governance takes place? (Agency Regarding public In terms of public participation, what is the: dynamics) participation: --Geographic scale – is it large, reducing chances for simplistic --Geographic scale solutions that allow for spillovers or transfers of risk? --Extent of action --Extent of action – is it broad, looking at system change --Agenda rather than (voluntary) changes in individual behavior? --Style of --Agenda – does it deal with early stage & high-level principles engagement or late stage, low-level implementation (or both)? Is it open to change or focused on protecting the status quo? --Style of engagement – are the arenas open, diverse and inclusive, or closed and invitation-only?

Actors Who are the key participants and their interests, roles and strategies? Regarding public --Is there a diverse range of actors? Who are the dominant participation: actors? --Participants --Are the dominant actors interested in change? Do the change agents have a sufficient level of capacity? --What network resources do the change agents bring to the conflict?

Narratives (stories What stories get told? & metaphors) Do these stories invite consideration of change or shut off such discussion?

PROCESSES Governance Is stakeholder selection open, transparent and flexible? practices (formal Do planning processes and related laws and rules structure (Structural & informal rules the policy process? Do they encourage creative thinking and laws) that might lead to challenges to the status quo? dynamics) Networks & Are the networks and coalitions effective, diverse and coalitions flexible, welcoming new and non-traditional members?

Discourses (ideas Do the discourses reflect or challenge existing that structure public/common sentiments of what is acceptable and perceptions of legitimate that have evolved over time? problems & -- Do discourses encourage inclusiveness, information- solutions) sharing, and experimentation (trying something new)?

CULTURES Governance modes What are the accepted modes of governance? Is there an

appreciation of diversity of actors and ideas?

(Cultural Embedded values What cultural values are in play? Is there any conflict among dynamics) them? Does this open up room for less traditional values?

Paradigms What are the existing paradigms of what is thinkable? (assumptions of -- Is there tolerance for diversion from these ideas? How is it what is thinkable) policed?

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Chapter 3 Research Design: Studying the Politics of Landscape Change

“Supposing is good, but finding out is better.” ~ Mark Twain

1 Overall Strategy

The Greenbelt was built upon prior greenspace protection policies. History played an important role. Consequently, the overall strategy for this research was to create a detailed, in-depth case study of the politics of one place – the Greater Golden Horseshoe Greenbelt area – over time. A case study of this kind is the methodology of choice when one wants to “explore in-depth nuances of the phenomenon and the contextual influences on and explanations of that phenomenon” (Baxter 2010, 81), in this study, greenspace protection and land use policy change. Such cases can also be useful for understanding a larger class of similar units (Gerring 2004) and for studying “within-case variance” (Flyvbjerg 2011). The Greenbelt case as I have defined it has a temporal dimension, allowing for comparisons to be made about enduring or recurring features (Baxter 2010). Pierson (2007) argues that policy studies particularly benefit from qualitative analysis with a long time horizon because “the content of policies reflects the interplay of events and processes playing out in different arenas and the interplay between intentional action and often unintentional effects” (155).

The Greenbelt is defined here as both the land area subject to new policies on land use and those policies themselves, which are part of complementary policies on growth management. The Greenbelt case is defined here as having three episodes, as Tilly (2001) would define them: “streams of social life” with clear boundaries, characterized by “processes,” which are made up of “mechanisms” or events that frequently occur in particular combinations or sequences (26). The three episodes that comprise the Greenbelt case are the campaigns to protect the Niagara Escarpment, the Oak Ridges Moraine and

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the Greenbelt. The object of analysis was greenspace protection policy that led to the Greenbelt and those involved in its construction, implementation and embedding.

The campaign to protect the Niagara Escarpment was the first time regional environmentalists focused on preserving a connected landscape in the urban fringe in Ontario. Because it ranged over such a wide territory, it called into being a far-flung coalition, many of whose members made up the environmental coalitions to support protection of the Oak Ridges Moraine and creation of the Greenbelt. This long history with three distinctive yet connected campaigns makes this case attractive for studying the role of civil society groups over time and the impact of historical and other institutions on their actions.9 Comparisons are usually difficult because contexts differ. But in the case of greenspace protection in the region around Toronto, we have a case where some aspects of context are similar: a similar geographic area, a similar culture. But at different moments in time, greenspace protection met first obstacles and then encouragement.

2 Methods & their Limitations

This study relied on the triangulation of documents, semi-structured interviews and participant-observation to overcome the gaps and weaknesses inherent in each method (see Table 3.1).

2.1 Document Review

As with most historical studies, this study relied heavily on archival records: government reports, media articles, campaign histories written by the starring actors, which were usually posted on websites. The surprise was that there was not an easy-to-obtain transcript of the hearings of the Greenbelt Task Force, which was tasked to review the government’s draft proposals and conduct public hearings and workshops. However, one

9 When the Greenbelt was created, it linked up with the Rouge Park on the east side of Toronto. This park was created in 1990 after a 15-year struggle led by a citizens’ group known as Save the Rouge Valley System. Although there are similarities and a few overlapping actors with the Greenbelt case, the Rouge case was a single campaign that involved a different set of environmental and state actors so is not included as part of this case. In particular, the involvement of the federal government, which purchased part of the target land for an airport, made the Rouge case unique in terms of land use institutions.

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of the bureaucrats that advised the task force claimed that the Standing Committee hearings that followed second reading of the Greenbelt Act were a very close replay of the task force hearings. As I had attended one of the workshops and one of the hearings, I was in a position to judge this claim, and I believed it to be accurate. That said, the official did provide about 500 pages of written submissions to the task force from developers and farmers, the groups I was most concerned that I might short-change in my analysis as I had participated in task force gatherings as a representative of a small local environmental group.

The strength of archival research is that it is unobtrusive and non-reactive, compared to interviews with key players, especially after events have occurred and critics have weighed in. But written records are not perfectly non-reactive as their authors have biases that are not always clear from the context (Webb et al. 1981). The larger problems with archival records are selective deposit – the preservation of records that may not be representative of the full record, thus leading to bias – and selective survival – missing or incomplete records, leading to gaps in information (Ibid.). This means the surviving records may be “documenting” a story someone believes or wants the world to believe, rather than what actually happened. However, government hearing transcripts and reports are official documents – compared to, for example, marketing pieces or editorials – and can be relied on to represent the government’s official story (Singleton and Straits 2005).

Ideally, the researcher triangulates official document analysis with analysis of other documents (such as media reports), interviews, observations, other non-reactive measures, and, where possible, experiments or quasi-experiments (Yin 1998). In this case, comparison of environmental actors’ written accounts with other documents and interviews showed that the accounts were usually accurate. Development industry documents and interviews were also consistent.

The historical record pointed to several constraining institutions, such as the Ontario Municipal Board and rules on municipal and provincial campaign financing. Interviewees also mentioned the same institutions, indicating a good degree of reliability.

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2.2 Semi-Structured Interviews

Semi-structured interviews are scheduled encounters outside of normal settings with predetermined opening and open-ended questions (DiCicco-Bloom and Crabtree 2006). They were conducted here because of their strengths in filling gaps in the written record in a convenient and direct way; exploring complex situations, particularly regarding actors’ expectations, motivations and opinions; and empowering informants who might be overlooked or undervalued in the official record (Dunn 2010). These are all relevant for an in-depth understanding of the case. In studying agency, it is important to take a “life history approach” and study the actors involved and their own accounts of how they understood challenges and constructed solutions (Peck 2015).

Interview subjects were identified from participant-observation, documents and by other interviewees. A total of 27 people were interviewed from 2007 to 2014; about a quarter were involved in more than one campaign. (See Appendix A for list of interviewees.) The largest number – nine – were from environmental and community groups, because I saw them as change agents and I was most interested in change. I also interviewed two developers, five people from the agricultural community, four provincial bureaucrats, three political staff and four politicians. Most of them agreed to speak on the record, often because they were already public figures to some extent. Some bureaucrats interviewed were near or in retirement and were very forthcoming. A few people were willing to be mentioned as informants but did not want specific information or quotations to be linked to them. (See Appendixes B and C for the Information Letter to interviewees and the Consent Form.) However, some of them are mentioned by name in the text because other interviewees mentioned them or they were identified in news reports or correspondence.

The main weakness of semi-structured interviews is the need to establish rapport quickly and effectively (Ibid.; DiCicco-Bloom and Crabtree 2006). In this, I was helped by my extensive interviewing experience as a former newspaper reporter. So I knew to be honest about the goal of the research and my possible bias (DiCicco-Bloom and Crabtree 2006) and to respect informants by properly preparing for the interview. I knew to start with the least threatening questions, to gradually encourage the subject to open up and become more comfortable with more difficult questions, and to listen to what was actually being

Chapter 3 - Research Design 55 said and be flexible in following up. My goal was to provide a “safe space” for subjects, to overcome selective recall motivated by fear of how others will react to their statements. Providing a safe space was a concern because I was known to almost all of them to be an environmentalist, married to a local politician who is an environmentalist. If they weren’t aware, I informed them in the interests of openness, trust and reciprocity. My position was both blessing and curse. It provided me with easier access to some people, while putting others on guard. I always reminded interviewees of the control they have in the setting (Corbin and Morse 2003) and their ability to stop the interview at any time. Only one developer never returned my calls. The other developer representatives were frank about their belief that I was biased but participated because they had some obligation to do so as appointees to government committees. As well-known and practiced lobbyists, they probably also did not want to be seen as backing away from my interview requests. But even they seemed to be reassured by my stated focus on long-term processes.

It was expected, of course, that some interviewees might try to manipulate the situation and recall events the way they wished them to be perceived by anyone who might read my study. But, as almost all the players in this story know each other or know of each other, I believe a kind of “social triangulation” was at work, with subjects perceiving that if their accounts did not mesh with others theirs might be discounted.

About half the interviews were conducted in person, the other half by telephone to overcome problems of distance and/or availability; the latter tended to be a bit shorter and more business-like. Interviews ranged from 30 to 90 minutes, with most being about an hour. I took notes and audio-recorded the interviews.

In an attempt to reduce interviewer bias, I began by asking the same questions of all subjects. (See Appendix D for the interview guide.) Yin (1998) and others point out that the best defence against the criticism of qualitative work as too subjective is to work in as systematic and meticulous a way as possible. But, true to their semi-structured nature, most of the interviews took on lives of their own. Indeed, as DiCicco-Bloom and Crabtree (2006) point out, “The interviewer should be prepared to depart from the planned itinerary during the interview because digressions can be very productive as they follow the interviewee’s interest and knowledge” (316).

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Table 3.1 Methods & their Limitations

Method Limitation (Weakness) Remedy

Documents Incomplete, inaccurate or Use of multiple sources to help fill gaps, & archives biased information correct the record and identify biases.

Interviews Selective recall (real or Offer anonymity and seek out multiple feigned), sometimes out of subjects, including those who have fear of jeopardizing current retired from the field who can speak livelihood more freely

Faulty recall Triangulate with other sources

Missing perspectives due to Seek out lobbyists or industry association subjects who refuse to representatives who are paid to handle participate sensitive inquiries

Distrust of interviewer Openness about intentions and possible bias

Participant- Over-familiarity, bias in Gather complementary data. Remain Observation perspective reflexive and aware of personal perspective. Document reflections in journal while doing research.

2.3 Participant-Observation

In 2000, well before I began my graduate studies and before my husband was elected mayor of Oakville, a suburb of Toronto, my husband and I were part of a number of residents in Oakville and Mississauga who formed an environmental group called Clear the Air Coalition (CTAC) to fight local threats to environmental and public health. We quickly found it helpful to work with other, more experienced environmental groups and learned first-hand how many of them work. In 2004, we both delegated at public hearings and workshops leading up to the creation of the Greenbelt. We met people from dozens of local environmental groups throughout Southern Ontario as well as people who had been involved in earlier campaigns to protect the Oak Ridges Moraine and Niagara Escarpment. We also met with developer representatives, government officials and local farmers. I took only sporadic notes at the time so I did not rely heavily on this experience. But it served as what some researchers might think of as an exploratory case study, generating questions for further research (Yin 1998; Lin 1998) as well as supplying

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background understanding of the activities under study, identifying key informants, and providing a measure of triangulation (Flyvbjerg 2011).

CTAC became inactive for a variety of reasons when my husband was elected mayor in 2006. I accepted an invitation to join the board of Environmental Defence Canada in late 2008 when my research was going in a different direction. I left the following year when my research interests solidified. However, I remained on the email list of the Ontario Greenbelt Alliance. In particular, I monitored its activities as it prepared for the 2015 Co- ordinated Land Use Planning Review. OGA meetings were held throughout the Greenbelt area. In January 2015, I attended one such meeting in Oakville.10 I later attended two public consultation workshops – in Milton and Oakville – as part of the land use review.

The strength of participant-observation is the ability to “get into the heads” of the observed. That is also its weakness: the potential for bias. The antidote is reflexivity, the practice of examining one’s role as a researcher and its possible impact on the results (Lincoln and Guba 1986; Shenton 2004; Bradshaw and Stratford 2010; Cresswell 2013). I have had some experience with this in prior careers as a journalist – where I was required to get “both” sides of a story – and as a labour negotiator – where it was crucial to understand the “other” side’s ideas of what was legitimate in order to reach an agreement. Both experiences also indicated the ability of humans to be duplicitous, to use a politically acceptable discourse to mask private interests. At the same time, I could see then and can see now how others might say the same of me: that I was using the protocols of journalism or academic research to support a conclusion I had already reached. My best defence is that my work in journalism, labour, business and politics taught me that the “story” gets better when you can show the complications and the “deal” almost always gets better when you truly listen to what your opponents want and try to think creatively to reach an agreement. But I know from experience that challenging yourself in this way requires constant cultivation and one must always be alert to personal bias.

10 Before I attended, I discussed my position as a researcher with Susan Lloyd Swail, OGA’s Greenbelt program manager at the time. She decided I should be identified as a researcher on my name tag. At the meeting, I was also identified as the wife of the mayor, who spoke briefly about attending a meeting where developers openly attacked the Greenbelt. My participation was uneventful and filled in a few gaps for me about coalition strategies.

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3 Producing the Narrative & Analysis

In analyzing the data, I drew from grounded theory approaches, in the sense that I started with a question rather than a theory to prove and worked inductively from the data, looking for patterns in an iterative manner (Sbaraini et al 2011; Walker and Myrick 2006). Traditional coding was limited, due to the extensive historical period under study; the main categories were groups of actors.

In the first stage of data analysis, I studied documents to create a timeline of what happened. This research revealed gaps and inconsistencies. Interviews were conducted to try to fill out the “historical record” and then to surface strategies and motivations. This usually led interview subjects to discuss key contacts and relationships and how effective they were. For example, environmentalists tended to speak about building networks of groups with complementary skills and contacts, while developers tended to speak primarily about the industry’s relationships with a key minister. These responses had parallels with the literatures on bridging and linking social capital, respectively, and led to post hoc analysis and theorizing about social capital development and deployment.

Findings were conveyed in the form of a chronological narrative, with some analysis interwoven, as befits the many-layered nature of policy studies (Pierson 2007), and some in a separate section in the latter half of each chapter. Adger et al (2003) argue that a “synthetic approach” that combines insights from different social science disciplines is best able to analyze the institutions, scales and contexts that contribute to decisions that are sustainable: economically efficient, environmentally effective, socially equitable and politically legitimate. They invoke the “thick description” espoused by Clifford Geertz (1973), a kind of description half-way between the cataloguing of details and the rush to universal theorizing that he called “generalisation,” in which patterns typical of a particular context are identified while retaining the meanings and textures of a case. They then call for “thick analysis” of environmental decision-making.

Also speaking to policy studies, McCann and Ward (2012) suggest that rather than “studying up” by focusing on elites or “studying down” by focusing on the powerless, one should “study through” by tracing the relationships among actors, institutions and

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discourses created by power. This is best operationalized by following a policy as it travels and mutates and noting how policy actors draw on experiences in different times and places to assemble policies and places. This can also be expected to yield “thick description,” which is also advised in qualitative studies to help build credibility for a case by providing rich detail (Flyvbjerg 2011).

The narrative seeks to convey an understanding of the factors that ultimately led to the Greenbelt, factors being much like Tilly’s mechanisms, the smallest type of event that changes relations among people, organizations or other elements, where “explanation consists of identifying crucial mechanisms and their combination into transforming processes” (Tilly 2001, 37). Mechanisms, he argued, are small enough to likely be true. They get aggregated in different ways to form patterns with different cumulative effects. Mechanisms can tell you how processes work, not where they will necessarily lead; this leaves a role for other theories to explain individual events.

This dovetails nicely with New Institutionalism, which is often described as a methodological approach rather than a theory because it draws on multiple theoretical ideas concerning structure – institutions – and agency. As a methodology, New Institutionalism involves identifying how formal rules and informal conventions guide behaviour, embody values, and conflict or work with one another to constrain or enable particular choices (Lowndes 2010). To understand how institutions change – by design, accident or evolution – researchers need to identify the relationships between actors and institutions, and the spaces that open up for “institutional entrepreneurs” to adapt rules to new ends or new environments (Ibid.).

This approach guided the writing of the narrative. Given the historical dimension of this case study, particular attention was paid to identifying the signposts of path dependence: multiple options, supporters and opponents of different options, and the positive feedbacks that sustain patterns of support or opposition (Sorensen 2015). To explain change, attention was paid to agency: the market actors working to privilege private property interests, the environmental actors working to protect greenspace, and the state actors working to balance conflicting interests. The large number of actors within civil society led me to develop a social capital grid (see Figure 2.1) and a typology and matrix

Chapter 3 - Research Design 60 of civil society groups (see Figure 7.1). These were used to help identify networks and network resources useful to state actors lacking critical governing resources. Comparing the trajectory of one type of policy in one setting in three different time periods helped to identify “what aspects of a specific institutional configuration are (or are not) renegotiable and under what conditions” (Thelen 2003 quoted in Lowndes 2005, 306). The framework for this comparison is summarized in Table 2.5, Framework for Analyzing Greenspace Protection Campaigns.

Trustworthiness of the Narrative & Analysis

The most enduring test of the trustworthiness of qualitative research is Lincoln and Guba’s four criteria: credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability (Lincoln and Guba 1986). This study has sought to be trustworthy by following practices identified in the literature. Consequently, for credibility (are the findings “true”?), I immersed myself over a long period of time in the culture of actors under study; used different sources and methods; employed thick description; compared sources to check on the honesty and authenticity of informants’ responses; described my own background and experience; and examined previous research to frame my findings. For transferability (are the findings applicable to other contexts?), I used thick description, providing enough information about context for readers to judge if the findings may apply elsewhere. For dependability (are the findings consistent and replicable?), I used overlapping methods and detailed description of methodology to allow the study to be repeated. For confirmability (are the findings objective in the sense of being shaped by the evidence rather than the researcher’s bias?), I triangulated to reduce researcher bias, disclosed my bias, and provided details of my methods and their limitations to allow for scrutiny (Lincoln and Guba 1986; Shenton 2004; Bradshaw and Stratford 2010; Cresswell 2013).

Lincoln and Guba (1986) also suggest that to deal with the ethical quandaries of qualitative studies that researchers write an account that is balanced and useful. As a policy researcher, I am interested in how to overcome obstacles to sustainable environments rather than how to assign blame, so I pursued this study with the understanding that useful insights were most likely to result from a clear and fair understanding of the perspectives of opposing actors in this drama.

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Chapter 4 The Niagara Escarpment Campaign (1958-1985): Birth of an Idea

“In wildness is the preservation of the world.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

1 Introduction

Land use conflict within greenbelts is “a continuous struggle between private profit and public interest” (Pacione 2009, 173). This was also true of the struggle to protect the Niagara Escarpment; its protection plan took 27 years to realize. The plan, touted as “Canada’s first large-scale environmental land use plan” (NEC 2015), changed the political landscape while protecting the natural landscape. (See Appendix E, A Greenbelt Timeline, for a summary of the events in this and the next two chapters.)

In this chapter, some background information on the Niagara Escarpment is presented along with some pertinent history indicating patterns that defined the trajectories of two key policy ideas underpinning greenspace protection: the need for conservation of natural resources and the need for central or regional planning. The case itself is divided into three stages: the incubation, implementation and post-campaign institutionalization of the protection plan idea. The analysis then proceeds with a discussion of key governance performance indicators and the resulting institutional trajectories.

2 The Niagara Escarpment Plan Story 2.1 Background

2.1.1 The Land & Its Peoples

The Niagara Escarpment is a 1,100-km ridge of sedimentary rock running in a large arc from west of Lake Michigan in Eastern Wisconsin, north to the land bridge between Lakes Superior and Huron, east across Manitoulin Island to Tobermory on the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario, then southeast through Southern Ontario west of Toronto, and finally east

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Figure 4.1 Cross-Border Map of the Niagara Escarpment

Escarpment is in red. Niagara Escarpment Resource Network 2015 from the Hamilton area across Niagara Falls – for which it is named – to western New York State (see Figure 4.1). Unlike mountains, which are often formed along fault lines, an escarpment is formed when soft rock underlying harder rock erodes faster than the hard rock, resulting in a tilted layer of rocks that forms a cliff on one side and a gentle slope on the other. The Niagara Escarpment began forming 450 million years ago and contains more than 100 sites of geological significance in the Ontario portion alone.

At one time, the Niagara Escarpment area was entirely under a warm, shallow sea, forming the Michigan Basin, whose deposits of shells weathered to form a limestone layer called dolostone (dolomitic limestone), which is a more durable form of limestone (NEC 2015). This unique limestone in the soil is one of the reasons the region is able to grow grapes for wine. Temperatures moderated by the Great Lakes also help make the region ideal for growing wine grapes on both sides of the border; on the Canadian side, the Niagara Peninsula is the country’s largest wine-producing region (VQA Ontario 2015).

From this point on, “Niagara Escarpment” shall be taken to mean the Ontario portion, which has been designated a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve (see Figure 4.2). A World Biosphere Reserve is an area that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and

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Cultural Organization has judged to be representative of the world’s important ecosystems; such areas must demonstrate conservation of biological diversity and practice environmentally-appropriate development. The Escarpment reserve area, also the current plan area, spans 725 kilometres from Tobermory at its northwest boundary to Queenston near Niagara Falls at its southeast, and reaches a height of 510 metres. It protects 194,555 hectares of “working countryside” (NEC 2015): farms, forests, aggregate deposits, wildlife habitats, historic villages, scenic landscapes and recreation facilities, including the Bruce Trail, Canada’s longest and oldest hiking trail. Its ecosystem features: • Forests of boreal needle leaf trees in the north (pines, spruce, fir) and temperate broadleaf trees in the south (maples, beech, red oak, white birch, willow), including 1,000-year-old cedars • More than 36 species of reptiles and amphibians, 53 species of mammals, 90 species of fish, and 300 species of birds – many of them species at risk, such as the bald eagle • 100 varieties of special interest flora, including 37 types of wild orchids, and 40% of Ontario’s rare flora • The headwaters of five major river systems: the Credit, Humber, Nottawasaga, Saugeen, and Grand rivers • Sixty waterfalls in addition to Niagara Falls • Aggregate resources such as sandstone and dolomite. (NEC 2015; Gertler 2004; NERN 2015; CONE 2008; NEBF 2015) The Escarpment is also located at the edge of the most heavily populated part of Ontario and Canada, which makes it vulnerable to human impacts.

The earliest human inhabitants were nomadic tribes of Paleo-Indians, known to have roamed the area about 11,000 years ago. Around 700 A.D., aboriginals were settling in agricultural villages. Between 1360 and 1660, Iroquoian peoples farmed near Crawford Lake (in what is now Milton), living in longhouses and growing corn, beans and squash. In the 1600s, European contact began, bringing missionaries, fur traders and foreign diseases, which devastated the aboriginal population. Over the next decades, tribal wars ensued, with Ojibwa displacing most of the Iroquois peoples in the region.

In the 18th Century, most of the First Nations lands were ceded to the Crown, particularly as American Loyalists fled to Canada and required land to settle on. The top of the Escarpment remained less disturbed than lower levels, largely because it was so hard to

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Figure 4.2 Map of the Niagara Escarpment Plan Area, Ontario, Canada

farm. But even it suffered deforestation as settlers harvested timber for fuel and construction of ships, buildings, fences, railroads and more. In the 19th Century, increasing prosperity created demand for Escarpment limestone and sandstone for more substantial buildings and, later, for roads.

As the Niagara Escarpment, as defined by the government plan area, includes parts of 22 local municipalities in eight counties or regions, population numbers are hard to come by. A 1998 publication by the Coalition on the Niagara Escarpment (Pim, Lindgren and Attridge 1998) estimated that 120,000 people live there; that number continues to be used

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(see, for example, Preston 2012). The major economic activities in the area are agriculture, tourism and recreation (winery tours, theatre festivals, passive recreation), urban services, education (two colleges and two universities), mining, and industry (Ibid.).

2.1.2 Some Pertinent History

Visions of greenbelts and modern-day greenspace protection grew out of earlier ideas about conservation of nature and central planning, both of which converged on the idea of the usefulness of regional planning for effective resource management. Ironically, the seeds of the Niagara Escarpment Plan were planted on the Oak Ridges Moraine – in what is now the Ganaraska Forest – well before creation of the Moraine protection plan.

Conservation of Nature in Early Ontario

Early naturalists were influenced by Romanticism, which dominated thinking in Europe and America from about 1780 to 1830, about the time when thousands of immigrants came to Canada from the United States and Europe. Romanticism was, in part, a reaction against the rationalism of the Enlightenment movement. The Romantics were searching for a way to reconnect with God and they tended to find him in nature, seeing nature as an expression of the infinite, with which they were also fascinated. This resulted in a kind of worship of nature – “Natural Supernaturalism” in the words of Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle – and a desire to reconcile man and nature (Baumer 1973).

One of those immigrants was a Scotsman named John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club who is usually credited with founding the conservation movement. During the American Civil War, the young Muir, whose family had settled in the U.S., spent two years in Southern Ontario, wandering the Niagara Escarpment and working in a saw mill in Meaford, in Grey County. The war created a huge demand for Canadian grain, and Muir watched horrified as land was cleared to reap these windfall profits (Haigh 2015). His experiences in Canada persuaded him of the need for preservation of nature (TRCA 2002). His writings and those of other Americans like ornithologist John James Audubon and philosopher Henry David Thoreau influenced Canadians. The first naturalist club in Canada was established in Ontario in 1863 and focused on cataloguing local flora and fauna (Hummel 2010).

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As the population grew and rail travel was extended, more residents flocked to hunting and fishing lodges in the countryside and built summer homes with a rustic feel (Luka 2006). By the latter part of the 1800s, though, Atlantic salmon was extinct in Lake Ontario and a royal commission had pronounced wildlife to be in severe trouble (TRCA 2002). The logging industry, a major industry that supplied lumber for development, had clear- cut whole forests, leading to dust bowl conditions, with floods, soil erosion and fire wreaking havoc on the landscape, ruining farms, washing out bridges and roads, destroying homes and habitats, and drowning people and livestock. There was increasing conflict between lumbermen and settlers, concerns about declining fish and game stocks, and recognition that polluted water was linked to disease (TRCA 2002).

Forest fires were a particular concern of the Ontario Fruit Growers Association (Bacher 2014). It lobbied for the creation of a Clerk of Forestry, which the province created in 1883, appointing Robert Phipps, an apple grower. He lobbied for the creation of a provincial park to protect the forests in the headwaters of the Muskoka, Little Madawaska, Petawawa, South and Amable du Fond rivers, and succeeded in 1893, when the province created Algonquin Park, patterned after the country’s first national park, created in 1885 in Banff, Alberta.

Although Algonquin Park is considered the first provincial park in Canada, Ontario had already collaborated with the U.S. in 1885 on a regional park system for Niagara Falls, under the supervision of the Niagara Parks Commission. The same government, that of Liberal Premier Oliver Mowat, also enacted in 1883 the Public Parks Act allowing municipalities to create parks. It was a period when public health advocates and women’s groups throughout North America were pushing for improvements in sanitation services, water supplies and parks and open space to improve the lot of children and families in tenement housing in overcrowded and dirty cities (Wolfe 1994; Hodge 2003). Throughout North America, cities created ambitious parks and park systems, such as New York’s Central Park (1858), Buffalo, N.Y.’s park system (1869), Toronto’s High Park (1876), Montreal’s Mount Royal Park (1876), and Boston’s Emerald Necklace (1881) – these examples being among the 100 parks and park systems designed by the legendary landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted in the latter half of the 19th Century

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(Beveridge 2000). Ontario passed the Provincial Parks Act in 1913 to create large-scale parks throughout the province (Eagles 1993). Meanwhile, the Canadian government created the Commission on Conservation of Natural Resources in 1909.

Farmer and nature groups continued to press for more action. In 1912, the Ontario government appointed Edmund Zavitz, a professor at the Ontario Agricultural College who had studied forestry at Yale and the University of Michigan, to create the province’s first department of forestry. He launched forest fire prevention plans, tree nurseries and other measures and became known as the “father of reforestation.” He hired Harvard- educated A.H. Richardson, who was to play a major role in provincial conservation policy. Further progress on reforestation and similar measures was made when the United Farmers of Ontario formed the government and E.C. Drury, a graduate of the Ontario Agricultural College, was Premier of Ontario from 1919 to 1923 (TRCA 2002).

But these measures were not enough. In 1928, the Ontario Federation of Anglers formed to press for programs to increase and enhance fish and game stocks. In 1931, seven naturalist clubs formed the Federation of Ontario Naturalists (FON, now known as Ontario Nature) to support a more expansive vision of nature. Three years later, FON issued one of its first reports, Sanctuaries and the Preservation of Wildlife in Ontario, which eventually led to designation of wildlife sanctuaries within Algonquin Park and Point Pelee National Park. In 1935, FON proposed creation of a provincial system of parks and nature reserves. In 1938, it issued a report calling for reforestation of the Oak Ridges Moraine. That same year, eight municipalities along the Grand River in the regions around Kitchener and Waterloo formed the Grand River Conservation Commission in an attempt to deal with flooding on a regional and cost-shared basis; it became a prototype for conservation authorities (Guthrie 1998). A year later, Frank Kortright, a civil engineer and sportsman, organized the first National Wildlife Conference in Canada (TRCA 2002). Meanwhile, the general public became fascinated with the writings of Grey Owl, later revealed to be Archibald Belaney, an Englishman who re-invented himself after living among the Ojibwa of Northern Ontario (Smith 2008). He published four popular books on conservation from 1931 to 1936.

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Against this backdrop, FON and the Ontario Conservation and Reforestation Association organized the Guelph Conference on the Conservation of the Natural Resources of Ontario at the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph, west of Toronto, in 1941. The event attracted seven other provincial conservation groups. Its conference report, titled Conservation and Post War Rehabilitation, was issued in 1942 and called for a pilot project in comprehensive watershed-based management that could become a template for the province. The report stated: Natural resources form a delicate balanced system in which all parts are interdependent and they cannot be successfully handled piecemeal. The present situation requires the co-ordination of existing relevant knowledge and its amplification where necessary, and then the development of a comprehensive plan for treating the natural resources on a wide public basis. (Excerpt quoted in Martin 2014)

The Guelph Conference leaders convinced the federal Advisory Committee on Reconstruction (the Curtis Committee) that such a pilot watershed study would have application across Canada and could lead to hundreds of post-war jobs. The federal committee created a sub-committee, the Committee on the Conservation and Development of Natural Resources, and promised to jointly fund the research with the province. This sub-committee was headed by Dr. Robert Charles Wallace, a geologist and the principal of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He visited the Tennessee Valley Authority and came away convinced of the need for a river basin approach to resource management. The Guelph Conference leaders met with Ontario Premier Mitchell Hepburn and persuaded his government to participate. The Ontario government then created an Interdepartmental Committee on Conservation and Rehabilitation and appointed A.H. Richardson the full-time chair; he was the primary architect of what became known as the Ganaraska Survey and author of the report that was produced.

The Ganaraska watershed was chosen as the pilot site because it was relatively small and contained and had representative terrain and drainage problems. The Ganaraska River flows from the Oak Ridges Moraine northeast of Toronto to Port Hope, about 100 km east of Toronto, where it empties into Lake Ontario. Local historians believe that the choice of Port Hope probably was also due to the fact that two major wartime industries lay in the path of a possible flood: the Eldorado uranium refining facility that produced the

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uranium for the first atomic bomb and the General Motors military vehicle testing site (Martin 2014).

The Ganaraska Survey – an integrated study of soil, water, plant, animal, climate and agricultural conditions – was conducted in the summer of 1942. The first report of the survey work was published in 1943 and set the standard for watershed studies. In 1944, the province convened the London Conference, where 250 delegates consolidated findings and refined recommendations. The final report, A Report on the Ganaraska Watershed, published in 1944, recommended reforestation of 8,100 hectares on the Oak Ridges Moraine (what is now known as the Ganaraska Forest), the use of natural rather than political boundaries for conservation studies, and the creation of regionally-based conservation authorities (TRCA 2002). In 1946, the Conservation Authorities Act was passed. The act set out a process for partnership with municipalities to manage local natural resources on a watershed basis.

In 1950, the legislature’s Select Committee on Conservation – after six months of hearings in 49 locations and deputations from 111 groups and individuals – recommended further measures to strengthen conservation authorities, reforestation and other measures to prevent flooding damage. “The myth that Canada is a land of unlimited and inexhaustible resources must be exploded,” it said, calling for “conservation as a way of life” (155-156). The committee urged the legislature to act “before disaster makes it a burning issue” (182). Nevertheless, it was only after Hurricane Hazel dumped 2.1 metres of rain on the Toronto area in 12 hours on October 15-16, 1954, causing massive flooding resulting in the loss of 81 lives, more than 4,000 homes and millions of dollars in public infrastructure, that conservation authorities were given additional powers to acquire and regulate land for community safety as well as recreation and conservation (TRCA 2014).

By the early 1950s, much of Southern Ontario had conservation authorities in place. In 1952, the authorities were among the charter members of the Conservation Council of Ontario, created under the leadership of Frank Kortright, who hoped to implement a province-wide conservation plan by bringing together a wide range of civil society groups, including FON, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, and forestry, hunting and fishing groups. In 1954, the province, upon the urging of FON and others, updated its

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1913 Provincial Parks Act – giving cabinet the power to create provincial parks and authorizing the minister to operate them – and created a Parks Branch in the Department of Lands and Forests (now the Ministry of Natural Resources), making it much easier to create parks (Eagles 1993).

The early conservation movement laid the foundations for greenspace protection by pressing for ever more protected areas, and by making the case for comprehensive management on a more natural, watershed basis. Greenbelts were thinkable, if not yet doable. In 1943, the Toronto City Planning Board, a citizens’ advisory group, in issuing Toronto’s first master plan, Master Plan for the City of Toronto and Environs, proposed an inner greenbelt along the central city’s ravines and an outer greenbelt based on the Oak Ridges Moraine (White 2007). The greenbelts were to provide passive and active recreation, serve as land use separators, and contain urban growth (Bonnell 2010). The visionary plan was too radical for Toronto City Council, which shelved it, but it influenced later reports (Ibid.). The greenbelt idea again surfaced in 1950 when the Ontario Department of Planning and Development’s Don Valley Conservation Report called for a regional greenbelt to protect valley habitats and provide the kind of recreational opportunities that only a large connected landscape could offer (Bonnell 2010).

The Rise & Fall of Central Planning in Post-War Ontario

There has long been tension in Canada concerning which level of government should be responsible for municipal affairs. Shortly after the advent of responsible government in the Province of Canada, the Municipal Corporations Act of 1849 (the Baldwin Act) moved municipal administration – the power to enact by-laws and raise taxes – from the hands of Crown-appointed judges to the elected representatives of counties, which were further divided into towns, townships and villages (Siegel 1997). But actions at the municipal level remained circumscribed by the Crown. This was spelled out in the British North America Act of 1867 and its successor, the Constitution Act of 1982, which give provincial governments authority over local governments. This has created enduring conflicts between the two levels of government. As Siegel (1997) puts it: Local governments see themselves as important governing bodies deriving their legitimacy from their close links to the public. Provincial governments sometimes see local governments as simply decentralized service-delivery agencies. The

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turbulence of the provincial-municipal relationship is caused by the fact that there is some truth in both of these perceptions around a number of issues. (128)

For instance, municipalities, which had responsibility for land use decisions, practiced a civic boosterism that produced a tendency to say yes to any development proposed by land speculators, often with inefficient results, in term of infrastructure (Hodge 2003). The federal Commission on Conservation of Natural Resources early drew a link between the lack of town planning and depletion of natural resources. In 1914, it created a model town planning act, hosted a national conference on the topic and hired noted British planner Thomas Adams to promote community planning (Ibid.).

The deterioration of housing during the Depression became an item on the agenda of the federal Advisory Committee on Reconstruction during the Second World War; its recommendations eventually led to the creation of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which fostered programs for community planning as well as housing (Ibid.). In general, the war effort required a high degree of central planning by technocrats; the public became more accepting of central planning as a way to deal with post-war challenges as well (White 2007).

In 1946, Ontario passed the Planning Act, what historian Richard White calls “perhaps the most important single event in the region’s planning history” (Ibid., 10). It gave municipalities the power to create binding official plans as well as joint planning boards for contiguous municipalities interested in a more regional approach. This led to the creation of the Toronto and York Planning Board, which commissioned several important engineering studies before being superseded in 1954 by the Metropolitan Toronto Planning Board, created when the province created Metropolitan Toronto, a federation of Toronto and its suburbs that resulted in two-tier government with an upper tier gaining the capacity to deal with the infrastructure demands of the rapidly-growing city. The new planning board saw its job as “shaping and servicing . . . growth, not resisting or fundamentally rearranging it” (Ibid., 17). In an effort to keep politics out of planning, all its members were citizen appointees, advised by professional staff. It was the heyday of top-down rational comprehensive planning. This allowed the board – in concert with other agencies – to set the city on a course of contiguous growth, public rapid transit to

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supplement highways, a lake-based piped water and sewer system, scattering of industrial employment to manage transportation demand, and intensification (Ibid.).

The province was responsible for building highways, and this job became more urgent as more and more residents of the growing region embraced automobile travel and moved beyond the boundaries of Metropolitan Toronto. In 1962, the Department of Highways launched the Metropolitan Toronto and Region Transportation Study (MTARTS) to assess future needs. The study directors eventually recognized that transportation was linked to other trends affecting land uses, so created a Regional Development Sub-Committee to draft a general plan for the area. In late 1966, Choices for a Growing Region was released. Its lead author was Len Gertler, a planner who would go on to play a major role in the Niagara Escarpment story. The report proposed a Parkway Belt on the suggestion of English-trained architect Humphrey Carver, a member of the sub-committee. A ribbon of protected land throughout the region, the Parkway Belt would secure land for a future highway, separate the primary urban area next to Lake Ontario from proposed new towns just beyond, and possibly provide space for recreational facilities (Ibid.). The final MTARTS report called for expanded public transit, a commuter rail service and nodal development along future transportation corridors (Ibid.).

The selection of a strategy from among the options in Choices for a Growing Region was influenced by a new program on regional development begun in 1966 called Design for Development. In 1970, Design for Development: The Toronto-Centred Region was released. It called for three zones: an inner Toronto-based Zone 1, dealing with population growth largely through suburbanization; a middle Zone 2, remaining mostly rural; and an outer Zone 3, beyond the Toronto commuter shed, where economic development and growth in satellite towns like Barrie and Port Hope was to be encouraged (Ibid.). The principle was to de-congest the central city by dispersing growth in an orderly way. It also called for protection of land for conservation and recreation. But it met with huge opposition from rural areas in Zone 2 and was effectively shelved (White 2003). Pieces of the plan were implemented, such as purchase of the Parkway Belt West lands, eventually used for Highway 407. But the plan itself was never implemented because it was too ambitious

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and interventionist for the day (Ibid.). However, it remained influential as a conceptual document (Whitbread 2013).

The tide had begun to turn against top-down, technocratic planning and development, with critiques such as Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1962) and pushback from communities, such as the campaign that resulted in the province cancelling the Spadina Expressway in 1971. Planning was decentralized to newly-created regional governments in the early 1970s. The new two-tier municipalities aimed to balance a desire for local autonomy with the oversight and fiscal strength of a regional authority. The province would continue to exert central control, but would combine it with increased public participation.

2.2 1958-1973: An Extended Gestation

In the 1950s, rapid growth in Southern Ontario was already taking its toll on the Niagara Escarpment, which had become an area of competing land uses.

At this time, it was not uncommon for farmers to sell development lots in batches of five to 10 acres. This practice, which resulted in a patchwork of owners and land uses, was known as “checker-boarding” (van Donkersgoed 2013). Even when rural municipalities fought to preserve prime agricultural land, the Ontario Municipal Board was likely to approve severances, particularly if they were by the side of a road or on degraded land (Ibid.). This, unsurprisingly, led farmers who wanted to sell land for development to stop proper stewarding of it (Ibid.).

At this time, there was also very little regulation of operators of pits and quarries on the Escarpment, which were busy supplying aggregate to the growing region. Aggregate is coarse, crushed stone used in construction. A component of concrete and asphalt, aggregates are used for roads, foundations, drainage applications and railroad beds. Lack of regulation meant pits could be excavated anywhere and the sites never remediated.

The Escarpment was also a beloved landscape of cliffs, trees and waterfalls, particularly for members of organizations like the Hamilton Field Naturalists Club. The club, founded in 1919, had an activist tradition, having successfully protected or purchased several

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natural areas. In 1958, one of its directors, Norman Pearson, was also a director of the Hamilton-Wentworth Planning Board when the Tri-county Committee of Wentworth, Lincoln, and Welland petitioned the province to protect the Escarpment as a provincial park (Bacher 2013; Preston 2012). Two years later, Pearson presented a paper at a conference of the Conservation Council of Ontario that called for protection of the Escarpment (Preston 2012).

At the time, two of Pearson’s fellow directors of the Hamilton Field Naturalists were Raymond Lowes, a factory metallurgist who had grown up on the Saskatchewan prairies, and Robert Bateman, the famous naturalist painter who was then a high school geography and art teacher. Lowes had walked part of the Appalachian Trail, a hiking trail that meanders through farms and wilderness areas from Maine to Georgia that was proposed in 1921 by American conservationist Benton MacKaye (Bacher 2013). In a conversation with Bateman in late 1959 at a meeting of the Federation of Ontario Naturalists, Lowes suggested the idea of creating a hiking trail from one end of the Escarpment to the other. The following year, Lowes, Bateman, Pearson and fellow Hamilton naturalist Philip Gosling formed the Bruce Trail Committee. Gosling led a team of volunteers that met with landowners and nature enthusiasts all along the Escarpment, selling them on the trail vision and winning their agreement to host and steward parts of it. In 1967, the committee celebrated completion of the trail by erecting a cairn at the northern terminus in Tobermory (Bruce Trail Conservancy 2015).

The Hamilton naturalists were hardly alone in their desire to celebrate and protect nature. The Nature Conservancy of Canada was formed from FON’s Nature Reserves Committee in 1962. A year later, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society was founded. In 1967, a Canadian offshoot of the World Wildlife Fund, founded in 1961, was established. It was, as Len Gertler (2004) recounted, both a time of increasing environmental consciousness and, in Canada, a time when “the mood of Expo11 prevailed – exuberant, positive, progressive, hopeful” (7). What is striking in looking back is the importance of the political mood. The forces that had built the anomalous centennial Canada: capitalist but compassionate,

11 Expo 67 was a highly successful world’s fair held in Montreal, Quebec, in 1967 as part of Canada’s centennial year celebrations.

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corporate but co-operative, and pragmatic, reformist and innovative in public policy – those forces were in high gear. In times like that we dared to dream about a Niagara Escarpment preserved for its entire length by government action. (8)

The catalyst for a campaign to save the Escarpment came in 1962 when Dufferin Aggregates blasted a chunk out of the Escarpment face where Highway 401 passes through Milton, revealing a glimpse of a vast quarry behind the cliff face and creating what came to be known as the Dufferin Gap.

In 1966, the Hamilton and Halton conservation authorities issued a report on the impact of quarrying, calling for protection of the Escarpment (Preston 2012). In January 1967, a loose but large coalition calling itself the Ad Hoc Committee on the Niagara Escarpment formed to lobby the provincial government for protection (Gertler 2004; Whitelaw 2005). The group included technical experts and well-connected professionals, as well as the many members of the Bruce Trail Association, who lived along the entire length of the Escarpment (Gertler 2004). Meanwhile, public hearings into the Conservation Authorities Act revealed “strong and forthright” public interest in protecting natural areas (Select Committee on Conservation Authorities 1967, 12). The Select Committee on Conservation Authorities recommended in March 1967 that the province lead the development of a long-range plan for the Escarpment, giving consideration to aesthetics, hydrologic features, the economic importance of aggregate deposits, the restoration of pits and quarries, the co-ordination of municipal land use laws, and scientific, historical and recreational features (Ibid., 86). That same month, Progressive Conservative Premier John Robarts announced a comprehensive study of the Niagara Escarpment with a view to preserving its entire length. Leonard Gertler, then a professor at the University of Waterloo, was appointed co-ordinator of the study.

Gertler believed in the importance of planning at the regional scale to protect nature, which he felt should be valued intrinsically. He also had a populist streak: The market, however efficient as resource allocator it may be in a general way, cannot be relied upon as an exclusive guide to the sound use of land. This is because land as a productive and ecological resource is limited, and shifts from rural to urban or industrial purposes are irreversible. (Gertler 2004, 9)

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He described his fellow study members as “socially responsible, public and private sector planners” and concluded: This orientation of the Niagara Escarpment Study Group may have played a part in how Premier Robarts’ objectives were pursued – the boldness and scale of the concept – as well as the means, which included public land acquisition and easements for the key features, and regulation, reinforced by Ministerial authority, for the environs of the Escarpment. The point to be made is a general one: that the professional person’s values and broad social awareness, as well as technique, are a factor in the planning process. The really outstanding opportunities for making a contribution arise when the planner (or other professional) has the wit to appreciate and relate to broader movements for improvement, environmental enhancement, or reform. (Ibid.)

In 1968, Ontario released The Niagara Escarpment Study: Conservation and Recreation Report (also known as the Gertler Report), in which Gertler’s team recommended that: • The Escarpment be protected through land acquisition (complete control), easements and leasing (selective control), and land use planning (regulatory control) • Portions of the Escarpment be included in a network of parks for recreational use and environmental protection • Provincial standards to regulate mining operations be established and enforced through a licensing system, site development plans, performance bonds and protected areas • The Escarpment be jointly controlled by the province and municipalities • A Niagara Escarpment Secretariat be created to co-ordinate implementation by providing technical advice, planning and liaison among the province and municipalities. (MTEIA 1973; Whitelaw and Hamilton 2003; Gertler 2004)

The Ontario government adopted the principles of the report and, in 1970, enacted the Niagara Escarpment Protection Act, and, in 1971, the Pits and Quarries Control Act to protect the area in the short-term while long-term solutions were investigated. In the meantime, the Progressive Conservative government of Bill Davis also allocated more funds for purchasing Escarpment land, increased grants to conservation authorities for Escarpment land purchases from 50% to 75% of the cost, and required municipal official plans to have Escarpment preservation measures (MTEIA 1973). Cecil Louis, a retired long-time Niagara Escarpment Commission (NEC) staff member who was then a young provincial planner, recalls that two men from the Ministry of Natural Resources, Mack Kirk and Ted Wilson, “went up and down the Escarpment, making deals with landowners . . . until the

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money ran out.” The ministry, which was the successor to Zavitz’s forestry department, had a conservation mandate and realized it should act quickly and quietly, while land was cheap and awareness of provincial plans was minimal (Louis 2013; Whitbread 2013). Among the properties acquired this way were Short Hills Provincial Park, and Mount Nemo, Kelso and Crawford Lake conservation areas (Whitbread 2013).

In May 1972, the province appointed the inter-ministerial Niagara Escarpment Task Force to advise on how to implement the Gertler Report. The task force conducted a full consultation, hearing from more than 3,500 people (MTEIA 1973). Its report, delivered in December, To Save the Escarpment: Report of the Niagara Escarpment Task Force, recommended that the fundamental goal of Escarpment policy should be “to maintain the Niagara Escarpment as a continuous natural environment while seeking to accommodate demands compatible with that environment” (Ibid., 6-7). It became the basis for the 1973 Niagara Escarpment Planning and Development Act, which provided a legal framework for the preparation of a protection plan, its amendment, review, administration, financing and a development permit system. To do this work, the act created the Niagara Escarpment Commission (NEC), made up of 17 members: eight “municipal” members (elected officials from the counties of Bruce, Dufferin, Grey and Simcoe; the regional municipalities of Halton, Peel and Niagara; and the City of Hamilton) and nine “public- at-large” members appointed by the provincial cabinet. The act, passed in June, was accompanied by a detailed policy statement and maps of the study area to guide the work.12 The policy statement explained that acquisition of the entire area was too expensive, so a “new and innovative planning framework” was needed (Ibid., 10). The government expected that the Commission would rely on the draft regional plan for Niagara, which aimed to protect tender fruit lands in the Escarpment area, and would in turn inform the development of official plans underway in nearby regions. The policy also echoed the task force’s recommendations for extensive public participation in the plan development.

12 Ken Whitbread, who spent his career at the Niagara Escarpment Commission, believes this was the forerunner of the Provincial Policy Statements that now guide municipal land use planning.

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Rather than freeze development on the Escarpment while the plan was being written, the government decided to accept the task force recommendation to use “development control” as an implementation tool. Under development control, a concept imported from the United Kingdom, each development proposal is judged on its own merits and “if found compatible with planning policies, would be subject to special standards designed to implement these planning policies” and allowed to go forward (Ibid., 23). This approach was adopted because zoning in such a large and varied area was considered unworkable (Ibid.). It came into effect in 1975 (Whitbread 2013).

The Ontario Planning and Development Act, Parkway Belt Planning and Development Act, Niagara Escarpment Planning and Development Act and a revised Pits and Quarries Control Act were all proclaimed on the same day in 1973 by the Progressive Conservative government of Bill Davis.13 Only two years into its mandate, it was determined to address problems of growth in an integrated way (Ibid.). The Planning and Development Act required official plans to direct growth and restricted the grounds for severances in an effort to control checker-boarding. The Parkway Belt had two goals that were similar to some greenbelts: to serve as an urban separator and promote unique community identities, and to provide open space for recreation near urban areas. But the land belt reserved for these purposes was so narrow that it became clear that these were not as serious purposes as two others: to provide transportation corridors between communities, and to provide a land reserve for future, unforeseen needs (Robinson 2000).

The work of protecting the Escarpment was just beginning.

13 The minister responsible for shepherding these acts into law was John White, despite the fact that he headed various economic and trade-related ministries rather than Land and Forests or Natural Resources. According to John Bacher (2013), the reason relates to his close friendship with Premier John Robarts, who launched the Escarpment project, and the fact that both were from London, which had experienced disastrous flooding where the Thames and North Thames rivers meet; both were aware of the need for careful land use planning. (White remained in cabinet after Robarts left.) White was married to Beatrice Ivey, whose family set up the Ivey Foundation, which has long supported conservation projects and would play a role in the Greenbelt campaign.

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2.3 1973-1985: Crafting a Protection Plan

Public consultation on the plan was unprecedented. Two advisory committees – one made up of the full range of public interest groups, from environmentalists to aggregate producers, the other made up of upper tier municipal representatives – were created to assist the Commission in developing its first draft (McKibbon, Louis and Shaw 1987). From the start, all stakeholders knew where the Commission was going.

As it became clear that the forthcoming plan aimed to curb sprawl by restricting development rights, a landowners’ revolt began to take shape, first on the Niagara Peninsula in Grimsby, where the council was hoping to convert tender fruit farmland to residences for Hamilton commuters (Bacher 2006). The Niagara Escarpment Land Owners Association began denouncing the Commission in letters to the editor, describing its planning guidelines as “confiscation without compensation” (Ibid., 2). Tensions ran so high that parts of the Bruce Trail were closed (Ibid.). The group denounced the Preservation of Agricultural Lands Society (PALS), which formed in 1976 to support Niagara Region planning proposals for protective agricultural zoning. The landowners also condemned one of PALS’ founders, Mel Swart, the NDP MPP for Welland from 1975 to 1988, who had been fighting environmental degradation since his days as an alderman and reeve for Thorold Township. Swart became a constant spokesman for Escarpment protection, along with his friend, Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, also from the Niagara region, who as a city councillor in St. Catharines saw the need for a clear urban boundary. “Councils are devoted to development,” Bradley (2013) said. And developers love agricultural land because it is flat and clear and easy to build on, he added.

Leadership was important in getting the Commission through these early days. Cecil Louis, who had been seconded to the Commission to set up the development control system, said that Anne MacArthur, a charismatic history teacher and local politician, was an influential founding member. She was the first female reeve for the Township of Nassagaweya (1969-1973) and then the first female mayor of the newly annexed Town of Milton after regional government (1974-1976). A determined fighter for stronger pits and quarry legislation, she served on the Commission from 1973 to 1987. Another municipal member, J.P. Johnstone, reeve for the Tobermory area, was a progressive and prosperous

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farmer who believed in planning and had hired a planner (Don Scott, who later became chairman of the Commission). “It was good we had such a strong person who believed in planning,” Louis said.

Louis recalled those days as both exciting and stressful. The Commission hired young and enthusiastic planners. “It was a new kind of exercise,” he said. It was hard to fill some positions, so people were also seconded from participating ministries, which was usually unpopular. “But the people who came never went back,” he said. The planners looked at models in the United States: the California Coastal Commission, New Jersey Pinelands Commission and the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan, Louis said. In general, they found that the Americans had to be more aggressive and entrepreneurial about land purchases and land swaps, because of the property rights culture there, he said. Their systems were also more legalistic, because they used the courts instead of tribunals to deal with conflicts, he added.

There were also growing pains, staff shortages, tight budgets, personality clashes and delays. The manager of plan preparation was replaced by the official who had led development of the Parkway Belt plan, which was now complete (Louis 2013; Green 1993). Under pressure to release something to the public, the first draft of a protection plan, Preliminary Proposals, was released on February 14, 1978. It was similar to an official plan, with a land use designation system, limits on development, and criteria for evaluating development proposals (Green 1993) – except that it covered the entire Niagara and Bruce peninsulas, an area of about 5,300 square kilometres – large but less than Algonquin Park’s 7,653 square kilometres (Louis 2013).

The outcry was immediate. A North Escarpment Land Owners Association formed in Grey and Bruce counties. Liberal MPP Robert McKessock, a farmer from Grey County, introduced a private member’s bill to reduce the plan area by 80% and organized a series of protests to support it. The largest was a rally on May 5th in Orangeville, where an estimated 1,600 people from the two landowner groups sought to bring pressure on the government, which was to debate McKessock’s bill six days later (Bacher 2006). This was followed by a counter-protest at Queen’s Park, capping a phone and letter-writing campaign organized by the Federation of Ontario Naturalists (Pim 2003). McKessock’s bill

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was defeated at second reading, even though some government members voted with the opposition Liberals. Jim Bradley, though, broke ranks with his own party and voted against McKessock’s bill (Bacher 2006).

Three days before the crucial second reading vote on McKessock’s bill, the minority Davis government had announced it was substantially reducing the plan area. “We assumed the ‘planning area’ would be the ‘plan area,’ ” Cecil Louis noted ruefully. “It was a dose of reality for the planners.” The Commissioners representing municipalities were directed to go back to their municipalities and find out what reductions were acceptable; some areas on the Escarpment were deleted, making the boundaries political instead of natural (Louis 2013). When the second draft of a plan, Proposed Plan for the Niagara Escarpment, was released in 1979, the plan area had been reduced by 63%: from 5,300 to 1,903 square kilometres (MMA 1985b).

Meanwhile, in August 1978, FON decided a more sustained effort was needed to put the plan in place. Its campaign had been led by long-time volunteer Lyn MacMillan, who realized that other groups were also working to defend the Escarpment and that a common front was needed to get a plan in place (Pim 2003). She gathered representatives of all the groups – FON, the Canadian Environmental Law Association, the Canadian Nature Federation, Pollution Probe and the Foundation for Aggregate Studies, a citizens’ group opposed to the aggregates industry – to a meeting in the kitchen of her Toronto home, where they agreed to create the Coalition on the Niagara Escarpment (CONE) (Ibid.; Green 1993).

After the second draft plan was released in 1979, three independent hearing officers seconded from the Ontario Municipal Board spent the next 26 months conducting public hearings on the plan, hearing 743 submissions in all (MMA 1985b). Hearings were acrimonious as environmentalists argued that the plan was sound but should be strengthened, and landowners and municipalities argued that the plan would interfere with landowners’ rights and municipalities’ land use planning. Most of the delegations were against the plan, usually on principle (Louis 2013). Technical aspects such as the proposed land use designations and their related policies were seldom questioned (McKibbon, Louis and Shaw 1987).

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Tensions ran high. “CONE keep out” signs were posted on properties within the plan area and tires of CONE members’ cars were blown out, according to an interviewee who was a member at the time. The hearing officers conducted the hearings in the same manner as OMB hearings, which treat participants like witnesses, subject to cross- examination, in quasi-judicial settings that discourage broad participation (Green 1993). In January 1983, the hearing officers released their recommendations to the minister responsible, calling for more deletions, more flexible zoning, and major changes to the plan (Green 1993). CONE protested that its expert witnesses had been ignored and launched an application for judicial review (Ibid.). The impartiality of the hearing officers was questioned by Toronto newspaper The Globe and Mail in an editorial published in May (Green 1993). The Commission itself chose to ignore the report and, a few months later, released the Final Proposed Plan for the Niagara Escarpment, which was basically the same as the second draft plan (Ibid.).

The minister responsible was Norman Sterling, Provincial Secretary14 for Resource Development, an MPP from a rural area near Ottawa who was personally committed to the Niagara Escarpment and whose political base was far from the Escarpment, also ignored most of the hearing officers’ recommendations (Ibid.). By then, the Ministry of Natural Resources had begun cataloguing Areas of Natural and Scientific Interest (ANSIs) and had already identified dozens (91 by 1987) on the Escarpment (McKibbon, Louis and Shaw 1987). CONE had succeeded in opening up Commission meetings to the public, had rallied its members to defeat a development proposal on the Forks of the Credit in Caledon, and had convinced Premier Bill Davis to increase funds to acquire environmentally sensitive lands and support research (Jenish 2009). Sterling submitted his recommended plan to cabinet in July 1984. However, the minority Progressive Conservative government was falling in the polls. Premier Davis’s base was in the heart of an area where there was fierce opposition to the plan. Finally, on June 12, 1985, the cabinet now under Premier Frank Miller, approved the plan. The government was days

14 The Progressive Conservative governments of Bill Davis and his successor Frank Miller used the title “Provincial Secretary” for cabinet members whose responsibilities spanned more than one ministry.

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away from falling and decided that this might win support from environmentally-minded voters or at least serve as a positive legacy (Green 1993; Whitbread 2013).

The plan was smaller and less protective, but was supported by all three political parties. “It was a success just to do this,” Louis said. Other interview subjects agreed, saying the intrigue around the cabinet decision was considerable. Most believed it took Sterling many tries to get the plan passed (also Green 1993). One felt that Davis had been the stumbling block and that John Tory15, his executive assistant from 1981 to 1985, had kept it alive. Another believed that Mel Swart turned the tide when he convinced Agriculture and Natural Resources Minister Dennis Timbrell to adopt it. There appeared to be real concern that the incoming Liberals might not pass it. One environmentalist called the cabinet decision “a miracle,” while another called it “luck.”

The plan described itself as “a framework of objectives and policies to strike a balance between development, preservation and the enjoyment of this important resource” (MMA 1985a, 6). It was composed of three main parts:

1. Objectives, criteria, permitted land uses and lot creation policies for seven land use designations, ranked from least to most disturbed: • Escarpment Natural Area – Considered a core area, it allowed for all existing uses plus cottage industries, the building of sheds and ponds, limited expansion of the existing quarries, and severances from farm properties to build single-family retirement homes. • Escarpment Protection Area – Considered part core, part buffer area, permitted uses included golf courses, transportation and utility facilities, “small scale” institutions, kennels and golf courses. • Escarpment Rural Area – A buffer area, permitted uses included new mines, small-scale commercial and industrial services for agricultural and rural clients, and low density rural plans of subdivision. • Minor Urban Centre – Only minor growth that maintained the rural heritage of the community was allowed. • Urban Area – Annexation was allowed but a change in the designation of the land would require a plan amendment.

15 John Tory would later become Leader of the Opposition, when Liberal Dalton McGuinty was Premier, and, in 2014, mayor of the City of Toronto.

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• Escarpment Recreation Area – Cottages, lodges, marinas and similar facilities were all allowed. Growth that was compatible with and protective of the Escarpment features was permitted. • Mineral Resource Extraction Area – New mines producing more than 20,000 tonnes required a plan amendment. After excavation, all mined areas were required to be restored to be compatible with and have minimal impact on the surrounding uses and overall objectives of the plan. This part of the plan also explained that the outer boundary of the plan area was fixed and could only be changed by a plan amendment.

2. Criteria for reviewing development proposals to permit development that: does not disrupt existing uses, is directed to locations that are the least environmentally sensitive, does not result in environmental damage or unsafe conditions, has minimum adverse impact on water quality and quantity, preserves as many wooded areas as possible, maintains and enhances forests and associated habitats, protects lands with high agricultural capability, maintains heritage resources, minimizes adverse impact on recreational activities, maintains the integrity of ANSIs, and avoids Escarpment natural areas, in the case of new transportation and utility facilities.

3. Policies for co-ordination of a Niagara Escarpment Parks System, featuring: • 105 existing and proposed parks, owned by seven conservation authorities, two ministries, two federal and two provincial agencies, plus municipalities and civil society groups like the Bruce Trail Association • Co-ordination by the Ministry of Natural Resources • Six park classifications: Nature Reserve, Natural Environment, Recreation, Historical, Escarpment Access, and Resource Management Areas (areas managed to provide trees, fish, wildlife or flood control) • A focus on preserving or recreating a continuous Bruce Trail to link parks and natural features, including provision to purchase land from willing sellers where necessary. (MMA 1985a)

In releasing the plan, the government stated that it was part of an “administrative system” that also included continuation of the development control system, $25 million over 10 years to complete the park system, and a monitoring system to make sure plan policies were incorporated into municipal official plans and implemented (MMA 1985b). The

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statement, called Implementation Proposals, also discussed the rules for plan amendments and re-oriented the role of the Niagara Escarpment Commission. The Commission was directed to ensure consistency in policy implementation by promoting the plan’s objectives, helping municipalities come into conformity, commenting on and monitoring land use activities, advising on proposed plan amendments, and intervening in development applications, if plan policies were at risk. Interestingly, the government contemplated winding down development control once the municipalities had taken on this responsibility, leaving the NEC with mostly oversight responsibilities. But that never happened. At first, some municipalities had only fledgling planning departments and did not want to deal with two sets of rules. Others felt that the Commission was better situated to deal with issues that affected a wider system. But, for many, it was political, Louis says: “Some municipalities didn’t want the expense and tough decisions that the NEC undertook. Being hands off protected them.”

2.4 1985-2005: Struggling for Sustainability

The Commission faced challenges, starting with its basic organization: it was only as strong as its members. Municipal representatives tended to desire “flexibility” that would allow exemptions from the plan, while the provincial appointees were more likely to be against preservation than for it (Green 1993). The Commission reported to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, which some MPPs saw as a conflict of interest, since the ministry was expected to side more often with the concerns of municipal commissioners (Ibid.). The Liberal government of David Peterson moved responsibility to the environment ministry, which was headed by long-time Escarpment defender Jim Bradley, which CONE felt was a good fit (Pim and Thorne 2003).

Public attention had shifted to the Toronto waterfront and the Oak Ridges Moraine. Staff at the Commission, perceiving that Escarpment protection was only as strong as its public support, embraced a suggestion from Canada’s UNESCO Man and Biosphere Program Working Group on Biosphere Reserves to seek designation as a reserve (Whitbread 2013). University of Waterloo Professor George Francis led the project. “We saw the UNESCO designation as an extra protection. It put us in the same league as the Serengeti, the Galapagos and the Everglades,” Louis recalled. After the necessary consultations with

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federal agencies, which responded favorably, the designation was received in February 1990. Also in that year, Environment Minister Bradley initiated the first five-year review of the Niagara Escarpment Plan. The first two reviews improved the plan incrementally, by removing golf courses and ponds from core areas, and forbidding new landfill and incinerators for solid waste disposal within the plan area (Louis 2013; CONE 2014).

1995 marked a difficult turning point for the environmental movement when Mike Harris and his Progressive Conservatives won a majority government on a neo-liberal platform that promised to downsize government. “The Harris government was activist, but in a different way,” Ken Whitbread, in 2013 the manager of the Niagara Escarpment Commission and the last original staff person, commented. The Commission’s budget and staff were cut by 40%. The government shifted responsibility for the Escarpment to the Ministry of Natural Resources, which has a mandate to preserve natural resources for both protection and exploitation (Pim and Thorne 2003). But public-private partnerships became the fashion, and volunteers leveraged their knowledge and relationships to create the ONE (Ontario Niagara Escarpment) Monitoring Program and the Leading Edge conference series to bring researchers and practitioners together (Whitelaw and Hamilton 2003).

To make up for the Commission’s loss of resources, CONE moved into a new phase, publishing a citizen’s guide to the Escarpment in 1998; beginning in 2000 a long period of “grading” the performance of commissioners; getting road signage installed at the boundaries to the plan area; creating the Niagara Escarpment Foundation as a registered charity to aid in fundraising for research and education; in addition to carrying on its watchdog work, challenging problematic development proposals.

As for the Commission staff, “This just strengthened our resolve to continue,” Louis said. “Staff began subsidizing the program with time and effort simply because they loved the program.” According to Whitbread, the staff also engaged in a soft sell. Harris sent people with an attitude that the Commission was a problem. It was difficult at first. They didn’t understand. The staff here was very professional and consistent. They warned of precedents. The Harris appointees were taken on tours. We sold it to them. After a while, they understood this was not just more bureaucracy. It was protection of something unique. After a while, they got it.

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The Commission’s fortunes changed again when Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals formed the government in 2003. Within a few years, funding was restored. In 2005, a revised Niagara Escarpment Plan that reaffirmed the conservation vision was adopted. That year, the Ontario Greenbelt was also put into place, providing a different level of protection for much of the land that had been removed from the plan area back in 1979.

3 Discussion

As discussed in Chapter 2, change is most likely to occur when there are inconsistencies in different sets of rules or in their implementation. The institutions we deal with in the foreground of our everyday lives of “episodes,” as Healey calls them, are the most changeable, but are structured by other institutions that they are nested within: the mid- range “processes” and “cultures” operating in the background. In the discussion that follows (and in later chapters), the related governance performance indicators operating at the three levels, which are set out in Table 4.1, are discussed together to gain a sense of how they influence one another. This then leads to a discussion of the institutional trajectories that resulted, to help understand the ways in which institutional designers succeeded in transforming land use governance.

3.1 Governance Performance

3.1.1 Arenas, Practices & Modes

Arenas

In the early days of the Niagara Escarpment campaign, the key governing sites were within government. Experts within the government bureaucracy or hired by it produced influential reports in the tradition of rational-technical planning. Politicians and bureaucrats then used the information and advice in those reports to carry out policies and supportive activities, such as land purchases. Public participation became a requirement of land use planning during the long period leading to the adoption of a protection plan. At first, the transition to this more communicative and collaborative type of governing was smooth. The design of the first set of hearings was conducive to change: the consultation covered early stage proposals for systemic change to a large geographic

Chapter 4 - Niagara Escarpment Campaign 88 area in hearings that were open to all actors. But after the release of the first draft plan, which suggested a massive area be protected, the pushback from landowners was dramatic. The action shifted to non-traditional arenas: a field in Orangeville, where farmers protested against the proposal, and the front lawn of Queen’s Park, where a smaller group of environmentalists protested in favour of it. The provincial government got spooked. It reduced the plan area and put the next round of hearings under the supervision of chairs seconded from the Ontario Municipal Board, at the time believed by some to be biased in favour of development (which is not unusual, even today). The resulting style of engagement had a managed quality, even though it was nominally open. However, the chairs’ attempt to gut the Niagara Escarpment Plan went too far for a government that had launched the initiative and invested years of development in it; most of its recommendations were ignored by the Niagara Escarpment Commission, the minister responsible for recommending a plan to cabinet, and, finally, the cabinet and legislature.

Practices Several established practices influenced the design of greenspace protection on the Escarpment. First was the fact that Southern Ontario’s conservation authorities had already demonstrated the feasibility of getting multiple jurisdictions to work together on watershed management. This practice enabled the choice of Escarpment protection on a regional basis. Although the Escarpment is the dominant geological landform in Southern Ontario, it is not uniformly dramatic or environmentally significant along its length. The idea of connecting the pieces to create one stronger protected area was an important innovation. The second feature that owed its choice to established practices was administration by a single authority. The creation of agencies, boards or commissions had long been a common strategy in Ontario and Canada to deal with complex problems or problems that did not fit into an existing ministry. For instance, the Niagara Parks Commission dates to 1885. More specifically, the Canadian government had already set up the National Capital Commission in 1959 to deal with land uses, including a greenbelt, in the multiple jurisdictions in the Ottawa-Hull area (NCC 2008). The Ottawa greenbelt, which was created for aesthetic reasons (to frame the capital region), also contributed a template for a landscape amenity approach to greenspace protection.

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Table 4.1 Governance Performance in the Niagara Escarpment Campaign

Level of Dimension Observations performance

EPISODES Arenas Sites: bureaucracy, public hearings, protest sites (Orangeville, Queen’s Park) (Agency Regarding public Public participation: dynamics) participation: --Large geographic scale --Geographic scale --Systemic action --Extent of action --High-level agenda --Agenda --Public request led to expert-led process followed by --Style of engagement wide open then managed engagement

Actors Provincial bureaucrats & politicians Farmer-landowners (dominant, focused on status quo) Regarding public Environmentalists (change agents, reduced participation: capacity/resources) --Participants

Narratives Blasting of Dufferin Gap hurting “quality of life” vs. victimization of the traditional family farm, allegedly threatened with “confiscation without compensation”

PROCESSES Governance practices Reliance on expert-led processes, some consultation (formal & informal Regional watershed management by conservation (Structural rules and laws) authorities dynamics) Commission model Aesthetics-based landscape protection

Networks & coalitions Farmers built on longer tradition of working together, strongly motivated by perceived economic interests ECSO coalition open & flexible but late in forming & less effective

Discourses Landscape amenities vs. private property rights Nature does not need protection

CULTURES Governance modes Top-down responsible government vs. bottom-up localism

(Cultural Embedded values Belief in government intervention to balance conflicts & dynamics) provide for the future Respect for the environment as an amenity vs. as supplier of natural resources for exploitation (aggregates, farming, etc.) Respect for science & experts Children must be provided for

Paradigms Economy 1st – belief that growth is necessary for a successful economy & society Crown government should serve economic interests

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Governance Modes

The progressive weakening of the original Escarpment protection vision can be understood as the result of this vision’s conflict with governance modes based on the historical primacy of private property and private enterprise, particularly its Canadian iteration. While the generic form of private enterprise posits that private owners – not the state – control business and trade for private profit, the Canadian version sees a role for government to help ensure private prosperity as a basis for public prosperity (Noel 1997). In this world view, land is something to be privately owned and controlled. Nature was considered an unlimited resource to be privately exploited (Select Committee on Conservation 1950). Economic growth was – and for the most part still is – considered to be the goal of communities and their leaders.

Noel (1997) points out that Ontarians’ public expectations about government were based on the early settlers’ hopes for prosperity from the new land they were settling and the pervasive clientelism – where patron-client relationships predominate – of the time, both between ordinary settlers and local elites, and between local and provincial elites. The latter created an “expectation of reciprocity in political relationships,” a kind of merit- based patronage system, where “the effort should be genuine, the reward fitting and the recipient deserving” (62). This was acceptable because the government was pursuing its accepted role of ensuring private and public prosperity, and doing so with the “managerial efficiency” that a society formerly under military rule was used to. “The Ontario electorate will forgive some failings, but it will not tolerate demonstrable incompetence,” Noel notes (60). This norm has supported practices such as relying on a professional bureaucracy to bring forward evidence-based policy proposals.

Noel (1997) traces many of these norms to the governance practices of Upper Canada’s first lieutenant-governor from 1791 to 1796, John Graves Simcoe, who believed in an activist state: Simcoe believed that the new province would ultimately stand or fall on the performance of its agricultural economy, and he favoured systematic government intervention on a massive scale to promote its growth: offering attractive inducements to new settlers, improving transportation, facilitating exports, assisting in the formation of capital, discouraging competition for investment from

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the fur trade, drawing the leading merchants into his plans as advisers and recipients of his patronage . . . (54-55)

These leading merchants became the core of the oligarchical Family Compact; Simcoe also believed in a society with an aristocratic elite and a lower class that knew its place (Wilson 2013). But to keep the support of the members of his elite, he discovered that it was important to balance competing interests in order to pursue economic success. This pattern grew into an expectation that all legitimate interests were entitled to be part of the balancing process, a process that became more formal over time, and which has been both contentious and integrative (Noel 1997).

These arrangements only lasted a few decades. Many of Ontario’s early settlers came from the United States, where the town meeting was the normal form of government and people believed that the members of a local community know what is best for it and should have the right to govern themselves accordingly. A belief in localism has always been present in Ontario politics and has been at constant tension with efforts to govern centrally (White 2007). In 1837, tensions boiled over into armed rebellion, which was quickly put down but led to government study and, eventually, “responsible government.” Granted to Ontario in 1849, responsible government retains the monarchy and the central tenet that power devolves from the Crown to lower levels. But the Crown in the form of the sitting government must be accountable to a parliament and the people who elect it. The most important aspect of Crown government to greenspace protection has been the ability of government to regulate land use without purchasing or compensating owners for it. However, a persistent belief in localism as a governance mode continues as a “rebellious streak” in Ontario politics.

Contending Cultures

The balanced and efficient style of responsible government practiced in Ontario enabled the Canadian version of private enterprise by checking its excesses. Nowhere is this clearer than in the regulatory institutions that comprise land use planning. The 1946 Planning Act gives local municipalities the authority to govern land uses in their area. But municipalities are often influenced or controlled by local land interests. So to reassure the public that the correct “balanced” decisions are being made, planning law sets up a

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regulatory framework that requires municipalities to comply with provincial rules and guidelines, get provincial approvals and accede to rulings of the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB), a quasi-judicial body whose members are appointed by the Ontario cabinet, if their decisions are appealed. Key tools at the disposal of municipal councils are official plans, which set out a municipality’s general land use policies, and zoning bylaws, which designate how specific classes of land can be used. Local bodies can provide minor variances to these rules. While the Planning Act is the main law governing land use, many other laws impact land uses, such as environmental legislation, the Development Charges Act and other acts relating to funding tools, and area-specific laws. The Municipal Elections Act also impacts land uses by setting the rules for choosing the people who will set local planning policies.

Land use planning institutions are frequently called upon to balance the competing interests of local growth coalitions and environmental coalitions, which both try to influence the outcomes. Such was the case when conservation authorities were created. Over-logging by the lumber industry conflicted with the needs of the agricultural industry and the “efficiency” imperatives of governments left with the costs of dealing with washed-out bridges and other impacts of deforestation. Later, protection of the Niagara Escarpment was layered on top of that provided by conservation authorities. When the government reduced the size of the plan area, it met stakeholder expectations that government would “balance interests.”

3.1.2 Actors, Networks & Values

Over the long history that led to establishment of the Niagara Escarpment Plan, state actors called on market advocacy and environmental civil society actors for network resources of legitimacy, ideas and information, funding and execution help to varying degrees.

Actors & Networks

State Actors

The Niagara Escarpment case and its contributory campaigns for conservation and regional planning occurred during a time when federal and provincial governments enjoyed a high level of legitimacy, intellectual initiative, funding and administrative

Chapter 4 - Niagara Escarpment Campaign 93 means, so it is not very surprising that state actors were major players. Some of them were politicians, such as the members of the Select Committee on Conservation and Premiers E.C. Drury and John Robarts. Others were government experts: foresters, planners, resource managers who did the research, built up departments and agencies, and bought park land in anticipation of the final product. Many of them were clearly institutional entrepreneurs, engaged in using the resources at hand to create a new set of rules and understandings. “A lot was driven by the bureaucracy. They were visionaries. They knew what the province needed. . . You lead by making a positive suggestion,” according to Ken Whitbread. This involves looking ahead and doing the research needed to meet future needs, to be ready with solutions when politicians are ready to ask for them.

In the early 1970s, the authority of planning professionals suffered and legitimacy shifted to private interests. Government documents of this era continually mentioned the numbers of hearings, attendees and submissions received, no doubt seeking the legitimacy that comes from widespread consultation. After the mid-1990s, the Niagara Escarpment Commission turned increasingly to CONE for both financial and administrative resources (Green 1993; Whitelaw 2005; other interview subjects). The relationship between the Commission’s planning staff and CONE, which monitors every meeting and decision, became more co-operative, with information sharing going both ways (Whitelaw 2005), although NEC staff had had co-operative relationships from the start with any parties who were supportive, including NEC board members (Louis 2013).

Market Actors

By the 1960s, building and development firms were turning the countryside into checker boards and buying family farms or purchase options for development years and even decades before it was likely to occur (Bunce 1985; Harris 2004). For many people, this was hardly an issue. Councillors and family farmers in the target areas saw themselves as entrepreneurs, creating new communities, jobs and prosperity. With the Escarpment plan threatening their prospects for windfall profits, farmers organized themselves into landowner groups, using the tools of civil society to make their case. They provided legitimacy for the government decision to decrease the size of the plan area. They had an all-or-nothing approach to the issue and refused to engage with the nuts and bolts of the

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plan, which is why they had little influence after the 1978 decision to reduce the plan area, despite dominating the hearings over the next two years.

Environmental Actors

In Ontario, the early victims of deforestation – farmers, fishermen, hunters – looked to provincial state actors for relief and found civil servants and their colleagues in academia ready with answers. The years from 1930 to 1950 were a golden era for conservation in Ontario, when there was a strong set of actors focused on the state of natural resources (TRCA 2002): • Audubon Society and other birding groups • Canadian Forestry Association and the Ontario Forestry Association • Federation of Ontario Naturalists (founded by seven naturalists clubs) • Hamilton Field Naturalists and other nature clubs • Ontario Conservation and Reforestation Association • Ontario Federation of Agriculture (1936 alliance of 20 general farm and commodity groups – predecessor groups were numerous, going back to 1791) (Zwerver 1986) • Ontario Federation of Anglers, later becoming the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters • Soil Conservation Society of America. (TRCA 2002)

This broad coalition, which included urban-based sportsmen and amateur naturalists as well as rural-based farm groups, supported the creation of conservation authorities and other reforms that were provincial in scope.

By contrast, the Niagara Escarpment campaign was more of a regional battle, with most farmers and conservationists opposing one another. The coalition promoting protection changed over the 18-year history and was comparatively thin, being made up of: • Ad Hoc Committee on the Niagara Escarpment, a short-lived group formed to lobby for provincial interest in the Escarpment • Bruce Trail Association, which created chapters along the trail to steward their areas • Preservation of Agricultural Lands Society (PALS), a small Niagara-based group launched by Mel Swart

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• Federation of Ontario Naturalists (FON), which was growing but spread thin, hence spinning off groups, such as the Nature Conservancy of Canada and CONE • Coalition on the Niagara Escarpment (CONE), a coalition founded partway through the conflict by campaigners from FON and other groups.

The overall coalition included too many overlapping alliances; members had responsibilities for multiple projects and resources were stretched. They needed to be more creative to overcome the landowners, who predictably were able to turn out far more supporters to rallies than could environmentalists. As already noted, it is easier to mobilize actors to defend their self-interests than to mobilize actors to act in the collective interest (Streeck and Thelen 2005).16

Values

The debate over protection of the Niagara Escarpment reflected the tensions between deeply embedded values of self-reliance and communitarianism. The value of self- reliance is a legacy of the individualism celebrated by the Romantic Movement, while communitarian values stem from religious movements. Ontario was settled by Christians, whose identities were partly defined by their public and spiritual participation in a church community. The presence of a church in people’s lives was taken for granted. Norms included attending church and participating in its activities and helping others, which, in frontier Canada, with its many small, isolated communities, was a matter of necessity (Senate 2004). This followed from the British view that the private and religious sectors were responsible for charity, as opposed to the view in New France, where the state was expected to provide social welfare services (Ibid.). As Canada urbanized, this institution took on features of the Social Gospel movement in the U.S., where churches opposed to Social Darwinist ideas acted as social agencies, helping those – especially children – who fell between the cracks of a rapidly changing society (Putnam 2000). The parks movement, which advocated public spaces for urban dwellers to enjoy the restorative powers of nature, grew out of this tradition. With increasing secularization, groups with charitable purposes organized themselves to meet these needs and lobby for

16 ECSO support has remained thin, in terms of numbers of engaged activists. “People think it’s safe,” Ken Whitbread said. “In theory, the Escarpment has lots of protection. It’s how it’s implemented. A dedicated staff implements it now.” A CONE member agreed: “We’re pretty tight with the staff because the staff is upholding the plan.”

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government action in these areas. Houses of worship and parish halls are the visible evidence of this institution, as are the many laws and regulations that constitute the Canadian social safety net. At times, this institution has existed comfortably with private enterprise and responsible government, operating in the gaps they leave. At other times, it has been in conflict with one or both of them. The actions of communitarian institutions are circumscribed by many political institutions, such as those regulating charities. But these institutions have also shaped political institutions by bringing forward their knowledge of social impacts and harnessing their substantial coalitions in support of social welfare.

Values are very stable, though complex. A 1995 study found that Canadians’ values fell into clusters of conflicting values, starting with “self-reliance/collective responsibility/children” (Peters 1995). The logic holding this cluster together goes like this: in a perfect world, everyone would be self-reliant, but when situations are less than perfect, people should take responsibility for helping others, particularly where children are involved, because some children are innocent victims and children in general are the future and help for them is really an investment. Overall, Canadians feel help for those in need should be a springboard to self-reliance. The second strongest cluster is “democracy/freedom/equality,” reflecting the importance Canadians put on a level playing field to achieve true democracy and freedom of opportunity. The third strongest cluster is “fiscal responsibility,” with affordability, adequacy, efficiency and fairness in balance (Ibid.).

The values of self-reliance and communitarianism were each linked to different values about nature. Those people more invested in self-reliance and private enterprise tended to see nature as a supplier of natural resources for private exploitation, whereas communitarians were more likely to see nature as a resource to be enjoyed by all for their health and spiritual benefits.

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3.1.3 Narratives, Discourses & Paradigms

The narratives at work in the foreground of this conflict were stories about the Dufferin Gap on the environmentalist side and stories about unfairness to the struggling family farm on the landowner side. Landowners claimed they would be victims of “confiscation without compensation,” a clever narrative that over-stated the impacts from restrictions on the use of their land, which many of them unrealistically hoped to see converted to more lucrative urban designations.

These two narratives were linked to discourses about quality of life and the right of families to make a living from their land, respectively. The environmentalist view assumed that community was all-important: aggregate miners and other landowners needed to be good neighbours and respect the right of everyone to enjoy the landscape. They believed, as John Muir did, that “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.” The opposing assumption was that growth was good for everyone because it allowed families to flourish and society to succeed.

In the early days of the landscape protection movement, conservation ideas, which focussed on proper stewardship of natural resources, were more influential than preservation ideas, which focussed on preserving landscapes as refuges for wildlife and people. With the Escarpment, the initial impulses for protection were preservationist and in some ways consumerist in nature: desires for a connected hiking trail and maintenance of landscape amenities for personal pleasure. These were no match for property rights arguments. In the end, the paradigm that allowed any plan to be adopted was the notion that parents must provide for their children and leave a legacy for them. It helped that the related practice provided a short-term payoff in the form of a halo effect for the politicians who approved the long-term plan. The fact that the Escarpment in any form was protected heralded the increasing importance of quality of life issues for the public. But in approving a plan that privileged the interests of landowners more heavily, the government ensured these viewpoints would continue to clash.

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3.2 Institutional Trajectories

Over the long term of the Escarpment campaign, change moved both gradually and suddenly, in progressive and regressive directions at different times, as conflicts among institutions opened up spaces for new ideas.

The lack of controls over logging in the 1800s resulted in environmental and public health problems. Early responses appear to have been mostly incremental: new government units, programs, studies and reports, and protection of areas everyone could agree on or few were inconvenienced by, such as the Niagara Falls area and Algonquin Park.

World War II was a critical juncture that opened people to the possibilities for positive central government action, resulting in the ground-breaking Ganaraska Survey, which became a template for future conservation studies.

In some ways, the most innovative and influential moment in the Niagara Escarpment campaign was the creation of conservation authorities, generally considered a Canadian innovation (TRCA 2014). The authorities overcame cross-boundary issues (Portney 2003). In institutionalist terms, the authorities were “layered” over existing municipal jurisdictions, and have survived changes in the jurisdictions beneath them because they are based on natural boundaries – watersheds – rather than political boundaries. The importance of water systems has helped conservation authorities endure, while also providing a contrast to the Escarpment plan, whose boundaries were contested.

With a mandate to protect water systems and their natural context, the authorities might have eventually sought to protect the parts of the Escarpment that impact flooding. But three events provided critical junctures that increased the pace of change and influenced its direction. The first was Hurricane Hazel, the tragic turning point that finally provided the political will to act. The existence of conservation authorities prior to the hurricane framed responses to it, reinforcing the need for watershed management and diminishing other possible responses, such as total reliance on levees, concrete diversion channels and other man-made technologies. The second event was the decision of the Hamilton Field Naturalists to create the Bruce Trail, which began the work of creating an identity for and public attachment to the Escarpment. The third was the blasting of the Dufferin Gap – a

Chapter 4 - Niagara Escarpment Campaign 99 shock to residents who thought the government was protecting a landscape they loved and probably regarded as integral to property values. This stimulated the creation of an ad hoc group, which supported the activities of public servants with new ideas about landscape management.

These public servants used existing mandates to buy conservation land; these powers were “converted” – in the language of institutions – to permit the purchase of Escarpment properties (Whitbread 2013). But pressure was building generally for more public consultation, an iteration of the long-standing localism norm. By the time the Spadina Expressway was cancelled, it was clear that certain kinds of land use change would not be perceived by the public as fair or legitimate until there had been substantial public consultation with affected groups. When the draft Niagara Escarpment Plan was put before the public, landowner groups opposed to the plan were the most organized and successful at controlling the public discourse and getting the plan area reduced.

However, when the plan was finally adopted, the new Liberal government of David Peterson committed to spending $25 million over 10 years for land purchases; about 20% of the plan area is now in public ownership. Jump-starting implementation in this way was one key to the plan’s success, former NEC planner Cecil Louis believes, constituting a very visible vote of confidence from the Liberals and a signal that this fight was over. Ken Whitbread said he noticed that change is most likely to occur early in a government’s mandate, “when it feels its mandate is strongest,” and that appeared to be the case with the Peterson Liberals. The early-mandate pattern had a different effect – retrenchment – when the Harris Conservatives formed the government in 1995. Most of Harris’s reforms were reversed when the Liberals under Dalton McGuinty came to power in 2003. These institutional “displacements” reflected the ebb and flow of the strength of the environmental coalition supporting the Escarpment plan.

It is interesting to note how many of the ideas used by institutional designers over the years came from abroad. Forestry science came from U.S. universities. Town planning, development control and greenbelt models came from the U.K. River-basin management came from Tennessee. The Bruce Trail was inspired by the Appalachian Trail. Biosphere reserve designation came from UNESCO. It took determined and imaginative actors to

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transfer these innovations to a new setting, but innovations that have proven themselves elsewhere are easier to sell to actors here at home than ideas that are untested.

4 Conclusion

At one time, few thought the countryside needed protection. It was thought of as an endless hinterland that could be exploited without any worry about its ability to regenerate itself (Select Committee on Conservation 1950). Even the Iroquois moved their settlements regularly, when the soil’s nutrients were depleted. Landscape protection was propelled by, first, aesthetic movements, then public health movements, and, finally, economic concerns, as the costs of soil erosion and infrastructure replacement due to flooding mounted. When the province finally responded to crises – Hurricane Hazel and the Dufferin Gap – it was too late to save the credibility of the expert-led planning that was supposed to avert disaster (White 2007). This opened the door to new public participation processes, which served the interests of conservation’s opponents. As landowners sought to undo a state-initiated policy within arenas of public participation, state actors learned that public participation is a politically dangerous undertaking that needs to be controlled.

The campaign revealed a few keys to success (see Table 4.2). First of all, it is important to have a dramatic vision – even a controversial one – to win meaningful change. In the absence of a compelling economic reason to protect the Escarpment, protection required the grand visions of the Bruce Trail founders and other early promoters – emergent statements of claim of a kind of “right to the region,” proposing that the region’s space be shaped to meet the needs of its users, rather than its owners.

For ECSOs, a key lesson was the need for eternal vigilance. The ad hoc group of environmentalists that launched the project disbanded before more of the landscape could be protected. ECSOs later organized a new, more permanent coalition.

The campaign underscored the range of actors within the state and their different roles. Without bureaucrats using the tools at their disposal – mandates to conduct technical studies, purchase land, and provide evidence-based rationales for policy proposals – the

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Table 4.2 Did the Escarpment Campaign Successfully Challenge the Status Quo? YES NO Success Factors The campaign . . . The campaign . . . Clear vision Was a visionary response to Was not a commonly shared vision. and/or catalyzing problems that were viewed as issue critical with the blasting of the Dufferin Gap.

Policy network Involved both ECSOs and farmers, Engaged a lot of actors from only a with diverse with each exhibiting more few groups within civil society. actors influence at different points in the Bureaucratic influence was process. substantial.

Different kinds of Was based on the best planning Was a compromise that leaned knowledge knowledge of the day. heavily towards the desires of farmers to be land speculators.

Public Heard from an enormous number Heard mostly from interest groups, engagement of people at public hearings. with black and white positions.

Supportive Was and is enforced by a single Was and is supported by a board institutions agency with an appointed board that is only as supportive as its that could enforce cases uniformly members: provincial appointees and amend its own plan. and elected local politicians.

Accountability Was subject to five-year (now 10- Made decisions at a distance from year) reviews, with its Commission local communities, which made it operating in public. more difficult for both opponents Once the government had and proponents of development to acceded to private interests by attend and be actively involved. reducing the plan area, it stayed accountable to a larger vision of the public interest.

efforts of a relatively weak set of environmental civil society actors to win protective legislation from politicians would have been drastically hindered.

The process also showed how important it is to “get a foot in the door.” This was the critical starting point of a path for change. The coalition of institutional designers succeeded in, first, getting a study done, then, a process approved, and, finally, an institution created, albeit an imperfect one. But the institution included a review mechanism, which the staff has been able to use to strengthen the plan incrementally. The Commission was always strong enough to resist its critics, because it always had the tools

Chapter 4 - Niagara Escarpment Campaign 102 to educate them, along with opportunities to build a stronger support coalition. It was important in the early days of the Commission to be a single agency at arm’s length from local politics. Few municipalities had strong planning departments that could stand up to land speculators and their friends on council. The uniformity of decision-making was probably important for building credibility for the plan. The ability to amend its own plan without recourse to the provincial government made it a powerful agency (Whitbread 2013).

The extended length of the campaign also provided lessons in how to undermine institutional design. Once NEC staff received development control in 1975, they had little incentive to move quickly to define a plan. They were still studying the issue when local politicians began to pressure the premier to produce a plan (Louis 2013). The NEC had staff and budget shortages and a massive area to map and analyze for degree of landscape disturbance, but the public only saw that it took five years to produce the Preliminary Proposals. When the proposals maintained the planning area as the plan area, landowners complained of a lack of balance, especially considering the many landowners affected in such a large area. Giving them ample time to respond became imperative politically, but doing so gave opponents time to organize and lobby for pro-development hearing officers. Time was also a problem for a thin environmental lobby with few resources.

The plan had to fight powerful private enterprise institutions: ideas about the primacy of private property ownership and its relationship to the realization of individualism, myths about the ability of nature to exist forever without protective intervention, expectations about the role of government, and laws to back these up. Conservationists needed to create a debate by invoking contrasting norms about efficient government and communitarianism. Although successful in the early stages, when landowner opponents were less organized, these opponents seized and held the upper hand in the latter stages and might have killed the project completely but for a dying government’s desire to leave a positive legacy with a policy they had worked on for so many years.

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Chapter 5 The Oak Ridges Moraine Campaign (1989-2002): Building Coalitions

“In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.” ~ Jesse Jackson

1 Introduction

The campaign to protect the Niagara Escarpment resulted in a changed political landscape, with new actors and new land use institutions governing the Escarpment plan area. That institutional model became the goal for residents on the Oak Ridges Moraine, who struggled for 13 years to achieve a protection plan of their own. But their result was different, for reasons that had a lot to do with the changed political environment after the Escarpment struggle played out. The need for a strong coalition to support greenspace protection against the durable landowners’ coalition – now dominated by large land development firms with extensive financial resources – was clearer than ever.

This chapter, after setting out some background information on the Oak Ridges Moraine, outlines the unfolding of the campaign to protect the Oak Ridges Moraine: several years of slow but steady progress, followed by several years of setbacks and regrouping, and the final push when a “window of opportunity” opened. This was a period of volatile politics: all three major political parties formed governments between 1985 and 2002. So a coalition that could weather any storm was required for success. Fittingly, STORM was (and is) the acronym for the main coalition at work: Save the Oak Ridges Moraine. This chapter explores the many governance arenas and other conditions that provided the political spaces for environmental coalitions to mature, identifying key strategies that contributed to their success.

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2 The Oak Ridges Moraine Plan Story 2.1 Background

2.1.1 The Land & Its Peoples

The Oak Ridges Moraine (ORM) was created about 13,000 years ago when the last of the Ice Age glaciers covering the area began to melt and retreat. The ice over Southern Ontario formed two lobes, creating a crack along what is now the ridge of the Moraine (ORM Land Trust 2015). Torrential floods deepened channels beneath the melting glacier, bringing sand and gravel along and depositing them into the crack to form the core of the Moraine. About 4,000 years later, when the glacial ice and its giant lakes seeped away, the result was layers of sediment up to 200 metres thick and more than 300 metres above the level of Lake Ontario (Ibid.). Geological studies indicate that the Moraine was formed from west to east in four wedges and is not a continuous formation underground; the Niagara Escarpment is believed to have restrained and then released water at different intervals to form the wedges, which are roughly identifiable even on general reference maps (see Figure 5.1) (Barnett et al 1998).

Today, the Moraine lies north of the city of Toronto (as little as five kilometres north in

Figure 5.1 Map of the Oak Ridges Moraine

Wikimedia Commons

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one spot) in an eyebrow-shaped arc from the Town of Caledon on the Niagara Escarpment in the west to the Rice Lake area in the municipality of Clarington on the east, a distance of about 160 kilometres. It covers 1,900 square kilometres and has an average width of 13 kilometres. Its rolling hills are distinctive in a region of flat plains. Its ecosystem features: • Old growth forests, tall grass prairie, oak-pine savannah, 37 kettle lakes, 46 bogs, 72 Areas of Natural and Scientific Interest (ANSIs) and 82 Environmentally Sensitive Areas (ESAs) • 30 species of reptiles and amphibians (including Jefferson Salamanders), 51 species of mammals (including white-tailed deer), 73 fish species (including brook trout and red-sided dace), 70 species of butterflies and 70 species of dragonflies and damselflies, and more than 166 bird species (including peregrine falcons, red-tailed hawks, red-shouldered hawks, meadowlarks and eastern bluebirds) – many of these species at risk • 1,171 plant species, including 125 species of moss • The headwaters of 65 river systems, which either run south directly into Lake Ontario, or north to Lakes Scugog, Simcoe or Huron (at Georgian Bay). These watercourses fall under the jurisdiction of nine conservation authorities and include the Credit, Humber, Don, Rouge, Ganaraska, Holland, and Nottawasaga rivers, and the Etobicoke, Duffins, Oshawa, Bowmanville and Innisfil creeks. (Ibid.)

One of the Moraine’s most notable features is its function as a water recharge and discharge system (see Figure 5.2). Thanks to its sand and gravel deposits, rain water and melting snow filter slowly into deep aquifers, ultimately providing drinking water to more than 250,000 people (Ibid.). Those deposits also make the area a target for aggregate mining.

The first human inhabitants were nomadic tribes, who roamed the area in search of caribou and fish. First Nations peoples began to settle in agricultural villages at about the same time European fur traders arrived. European contact brought devastating disease and loss of life. Native populations were further reduced by warfare as the Ojibwa and Iroquois got caught up in disputes for supremacy between the French and English. The remaining natives relocated to the Alderville area, east of Rice Lake, upon the influx of United Empire Loyalists migrating from the United States in the late 1700s. At the time, a common condition for receiving land from the Crown and retaining title to it was to clear 12 acres of land within five years, and so began the felling of trees that was eventually to

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Figure 5.2 Map of the Oak Ridges Moraine River Systems

www.stormcoalition.org

produce so many environmental problems. In many places, what little arable soil existed was washed away. Farming on the Moraine, always difficult, became untenable. Farms were abandoned in ever greater number, particularly as conscription during the First World War and then the hardships of the Great Depression took their toll. “Dust bowl” conditions prevailed. By this time, the province was engaged in reforestation projects, some of which provided work for the local unemployed (Ibid.).

As early as the 1870s, wealthy Toronto families began buying property on the Moraine for hunting lodges, lakeside summer residences and equestrian facilities (Luka 2006). By the 1920s, the area was well-established as a cottaging area for the rich and was on its way to becoming a recreation area for middle-class families as well, with camps, golf courses and ski resorts providing getaways from a polluted city (Ibid.). The explosive growth of the GTA from the 1980s on sent development north of Toronto onto the Oak Ridges Moraine.

Today, an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 people live on the Moraine, which crosses portions of 32 municipalities: eight upper-tier regional municipalities plus 24 lower-tier towns or townships (ORM Foundation 2015). Sixty percent of the Moraine lies within the “905” area ringing Toronto (so-called because of the historic area code for the region),

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specifically in Peel, York and Durham Regions. The rest of the Moraine is located in Northumberland County (20%), the City of Kawartha Lakes (7%), Simcoe County (5%), Peterborough County (3%) and Dufferin County (1%) (Ibid.). The major economic activities are agriculture, recreation and urban services for year-round and summer residents.

2.1.2 Some Pertinent History: Before 1989

The Oak Ridges Moraine was first identified and named by John Bigsby, a physician to a British regiment who was commissioned in 1819 to report on the geology of Upper Canada; his paper on the topography and geology of the Lake Ontario basin was published in 1829 (Barnett et al 1998; Chisholm 1911). Calls for the Moraine’s protection went back at least as far as 1908, when Ontario’s first Chief Forester, Edmund Zavitz, wrote about it in Report on the Reforestation of Waste Lands in Southern Ontario for the Department of Agriculture: Extending through Northumberland and Durham Counties is a sand formation locally known as the “Oak Ridge” or “Pine Ridge” . . . It is safe to say that seventy-five percent is wholly unfit for successful farming. . . These areas should be preserved for the people of Ontario as recreation grounds for all time to come. . . The policy of putting these lands under forest management has many arguments in its favour. . . It will pay as a financial investment; assist in insuring a wood supply; protect the headwaters of streams; provide breeding ground for wild game; provide object lessons in forestry; and prevent citizens from developing under conditions which can end only in failure. (Martin 2014)

Thirty years later, in 1938, the Federation of Ontario Naturalists (FON) issued a report calling for reforestation of the Oak Ridges Moraine. A few years later, Zavitz’s successor, A.H. Richardson, made a similar call before leading the Ganaraska Survey, which led to the planting of the Ganaraska Forest and the creation of conservation authorities. In 1943, the Master Plan for the City of Toronto and Environs proposed an outer greenbelt along the Moraine; the plan was shelved but influenced subsequent thinking, such as the 1967 MTARTS report calling for a parkway belt and the 1970 Toronto-Centred Region, which called for an undeveloped zone beyond the urbanized area that approximates the Moraine area and would have been conserved for recreation and nature protection (White 2007).

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The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) began mapping ANSIs and ESAs in the mid-1970s, so community leaders were more aware than ever of the nature at their doorsteps. Environmentalism was also growing at the global scale: the first Earth Day was in 1970, and the UN’s Stockholm Conference was in 1972.

Throughout the 1970s, greenspace protection battles were being waged to the east of the Moraine by Save the Rouge Valley System (SRVS or Save the Rouge) and to the west by Escarpment groups. By 1984, it was clear that some battles were best fought in the courts, so a group of lawyers and concerned citizens formed the Canadian Environmental Defence Fund, later renamed Environmental Defence with a broader mandate. On the Moraine itself, there were about two dozen community and nature protection groups fighting proposals from well-heeled and well-connected development companies. This was all taking place at a time when environmental issues were climbing higher on the political agenda (Bodansky 2001). In 1987, the Brundtland Commission called for sustainable development. In 1988, the Toronto Conference on the Changing Atmosphere warned of climate change. In 1989, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer went into effect (Ibid.).

Meanwhile, the Peterson Liberal government that had come to power in 1985 created the Office of the Greater Toronto Area in 1988 and launched consultations aimed at considering ways to address infrastructure and environmental needs in the region. This eventually led to the commissioning in 1990 of the Urban Structure Study, which presented alternative scenarios for managing growth (Frisken 2001).

2.2 1989-1995: The Campaign Begins

As Canada’s baby boomers began having children, births increased dramatically from 1988 to 1995, peaking in 1990 (Statistics Canada 2012). Immigration and internal migration added to the skyrocketing demand for housing throughout the GTA; developers were only too happy to meet that demand. Lloyd Cherniak, executive vice-president of Lebovic Enterprises and then president of the Urban Development Institute-Ontario, said at the time, “I’m like a farmer. . . I plant sewers in the spring and houses pop up in the fall” (McAndrew 2000). The problem with that for local residents was that municipalities

Chapter 5 - Oak Ridges Moraine Campaign 109 throughout the Moraine were approving development without regard for the cumulative impacts on natural features – a classic case of the “Tragedy of the Commons.” Several groups formed to fight the quantity and quality of urban development on the Moraine.

In the east end, in Durham Region, Kathy Guselle organized Save the Ganaraska Again (SAGA) to protect the headwaters of the Ganaraska River, previously rescued from the impacts of deforestation. Because of that history, Guselle was aware that the Ganaraska’s headwaters were on the Oak Ridges Moraine, but she could not find any local or regional planning tools to help protect the Moraine. In 1989, she took a new tack, requesting a hearing by the Environmental Assessment Advisory Committee (EAAC), which was set up to advise the Minister of the Environment on environmental assessment issues. The hearing’s findings in Report #38 drew attention to shortcomings in the planning process to deal with cumulative impacts of development on the river’s headwaters as well as on the whole of the Oak Ridges Moraine, now identified officially as a significant landscape (Crandall 2007). The group pursued these issues for the next 15 years. In 1992, they drew on the support of David Donnelly, then executive director of the Canadian Environmental Defence Fund, to organize a press conference at Queen’s Park to raise the profile of their issues (Chau 2011). Donnelly was to play a major role in subsequent events.

The EAAC hearing drew the interest of Don Alexander and John Fisher, graduate students from Trent University in Peterborough, who were part of the Ontario Environment Network Land Use Caucus and called themselves Save the Oak Ridges Moraine. They spoke about the need for an ecosystem approach to watershed management that included citizen engagement (Crandall 2009). They were soon contacted by Dorothy Izzard, who was chair of the Concerned Citizens of King Township (CCKT)’s Save the Oak Ridges Moraine Committee. Until the hearing, neither of the groups knew of the other. In October of 1989, the two groups organized a meeting of environmental and ratepayer groups from Gormley, Ganaraska, Trent and a dozen other locations to discuss common issues. It was at that meeting that they realized a wider approach would help them all; the Save the Oak Ridges Moraine Coalition (STORM) was created (Crandall 2007). It was formally incorporated as a non-profit organization in early 1990. The

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founding board members were Alexander, Izzard, Fisher, Guselle, Gloria Reszler, Tom Meininger and Ene Leivo (Crandall 2009).

At about the same time, an issue developed on the west end of the Moraine, when a municipal politician’s brother bought 100 acres on Mount Wolfe in the Caledon area and proposed the Palgrave Estates development. That became local resident Debbe Crandall’s first foray into activism and she quickly realized in meetings with planners that “I didn’t understand a thing. I realized I was going to have to learn their language.” A municipal councillor suggested she contact STORM, where Gloria Reszler recommended planner Mark Dorfman (who later served as president of FON from 2000 to 2002). When the local council approved the contentious official plan amendment, Crandall appealed the decision to the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB), which suspended approvals until Peel Region (the upper tier government) completed its official plan. By the time this was done, the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan was in effect and the area was designated part core area and part natural linkage – a better outcome, in Crandall’s view.

Some community groups came to STORM for help on local issues and then some left, while others stayed. Crandall stayed. “I could see there was a larger issue at stake. There were principles of fairness, principles of ecological protection. This was a headwaters. My background is in hydrogeology, so I could bring a knowledge and understanding of that bigger system,” she said.

STORM took on policy and lobbying work, spinning off stewardship groups like the Oak Ridges Moraine Land Trust and the Oak Ridges Moraine Trail Association. “We realized from day one what was needed here was provincial legislation. We had the Niagara Escarpment Plan as our model,” Crandall recalled. STORM appeared before David Crombie, the one-man commissioner for the federal Royal Commission on the Future of the Toronto Waterfront, and convinced him that the Moraine needed protection. In his first interim report, released in the summer of 1989, he called for a watershed approach to environmental management, preservation of headwaters as well as river valleys to ensure the health of the waterfront, and a declaration of provincial interest. He also called for “an intergovernmental, regional management framework” (Crombie 1989, 195). His later reports strengthened these recommendations, for instance, specifically calling for

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mandatory protective strategies for the ORM in municipal planning documents in his 1990 interim report.

STORM next talked to MPP Ron Kanter, who had been tasked by the Peterson Liberal government to follow up with a greenlands strategy to protect significant landscapes for the benefit of Ontario residents. In his report, Spaces for All: Options for a Greater Toronto Greenlands Strategy, he also recommended that the province declare a provincial interest in the Oak Ridges Moraine area under section 2 of the Planning Act. He further recommended a comprehensive land use study of the area, with a view to creating “a more consistent treatment of development within the Moraine Area from one municipality to the next” and examining “controls that would be appropriate to help safeguard the sensitivity of the area” (Kanter 1990, 159).

Both of these commissions attracted hundreds of delegations from municipalities, agencies, community groups and members of the public. The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) created a Moraine task force (Crandall 2009). In 1990, the same year that the Peterson Liberals established the Rouge Park and UNESCO designated the Niagara Escarpment a biosphere reserve, the government issued an expression of provincial interest in the Oak Ridges Moraine. On February 22, 1991, Trent University hosted a symposium, “Greenways and Green Space on the Oak Ridges Moraine: Towards Co-operative Planning,” which brought activists and academics together to hear keynote speaker Randall Arendt, an early advocate of conservation-friendly planning (Ibid.).

Shortly after the New Democratic Party formed the government under leader Bob Rae, the government issued the 1991 Implementation Guidelines – Provincial Interest on the Oak Ridges Moraine Area of the Greater Toronto Area (also known as the 1991 ORM Guidelines) as a temporary measure and initiated the area study that Kanter had recommended as a prelude to creating a long-term strategy. The province appointed 14 stakeholders, including STORM and FON, to the ORM Technical Working Committee (TWC) and gave it a budget of close to $2 million. The committee commissioned 15 background studies, which provided baseline data on the area. The TWC conducted extensive public consultation – educating the local public on the need for a long-term strategy – before issuing its final report, The Oak Ridges Moraine Strategy for the Greater Toronto Area: An

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Ecosystem Approach for Long-term Protection and Management (subsequently known as the 1994 Draft Strategy), to NDP Minister of Natural Resources Howard Hampton in December 1994. Then cabinet sat on it. Crandall (2007) says she was told by ministry insiders that it was “just not the time.” One of those insiders told me the stumbling block was the desire for a provincial agency like the NEC to police the legislation, which was politically toxic: “a non-starter – they’ll never do it again.”

But, in other respects, it was “a golden age of environmental regulation,” according to David Donnelly, executive director of the Canadian Environmental Defence Fund during the Peterson and Rae governments. There was intervenor funding for qualifying OMB cases. In 1992, Crombie issued Regeneration, his final report on watershed protection, and the Rio Earth Summit called for a local agenda for the environment. In 1993, John Sewell’s Commission on Planning and Development Reform recommended community-friendly reforms. In 1994, the Planning Act was reformed and the Escarpment Plan strengthened after its first five-year review. A report commissioned by the MNR, The Natural Heritage of Southern Ontario’s Settled Landscapes: A Review of Conservation and Restoration Ecology for Land Use and Landscape Planning by John L. Riley and Pat Mohr, spread the latest science about using a systems approach to conserve natural areas, and influenced the Provincial Policy Statement on planning. “There was so much consultation going on; if you wanted to, you could go to a meeting every night,” recalls planner John MacKenzie, who was a student and volunteer for Save the Rouge at the time.

In May 1995, the Waterfront Regeneration Trust under David Crombie issued its Lake Ontario Greenway Strategy, a detailed blueprint for systemic action to regenerate a healthy waterfront. But a public upset about government spending turfed out the NDP in the general election of June 8, 1995, and replaced it with Mike Harris’s Progressive Conservatives, who repealed most of those planning reforms early the next year.

2.3 1995-1999: The Campaign Stalls

When the neo-liberal Harris government came to power, the chill was almost immediate. Legislation passed in the prior decade in an attempt to level the playing field between developers and their opponents was repealed or reversed, and funding for the Niagara

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Escarpment Commission and conservation authorities was cut 40%. New rules for collecting development charges made it harder for municipalities to pay for roads, hospitals and other community facilities required by new residents.

It was a difficult time for environmental activists. “STORM went ‘underground,’ focusing on education and awareness,” Crandall (2009) said. “There was a deliberate strategy to lay low in the mid-90s in that time when Harris came in because they were terrified,” one interviewee recalled. “Harris came in and began all the unraveling of the environmental protection safety net,” Crandall said. “There was a fear they could take everything.” STORM focused on friend-making and fundraising, publishing a coffee table book (with an introduction by David Crombie) in 1997 that raised $20,000 for the group. That same year, the Oak Ridges Trail Association published a guidebook. A conference that year reported on five years of work by the Geological Society of Canada on the Moraine’s hydrogeology (Crandall 2009). In 1998, the ECSOs persuaded a Star columnist to go on a bus tour of the Moraine (Edey, Seasons and Whitelaw 2006). Until then, the Toronto media had been preoccupied with the political struggle that ended with the provincial government forcing the amalgamation of Metropolitan Toronto into the new City of Toronto. After the bus tour, columns started appearing about the Moraine.

FON’s focus shifted to northern Ontario to participate in the four-year-long Lands for Life project, a Ministry of Natural Resources planning exercise to allocate public lands for wilderness protection, recreation and tourism, and forestry and mining, in order to meet national commitments to complete a national network of ecologically-defined protected areas by 2000 and to identify areas for mineral exploration and extraction (PPL 2015; PDAC 2008). The planning exercise covered 45% of the province, most of it Crown lands, and involved extensive public consultation (PDAC 2008). Failure to produce a consensus led to private negotiations among MNR, the forest industry and the Partnership for Public Lands, a purpose-formed coalition of FON, the Wildlands League (a chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society) and the World Wildlife Fund-Canada. In 1999, the government announced agreement on the Ontario Forest Accord and “Ontario’s Living Legacy,” the creation of 378 new parks and conservation reserves. The measures increased protected areas within the planning area from 6% to 12% (Ibid.). Some of the

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environmental negotiators would take lessons learned from this exercise and apply them to other greenspace protection campaigns.

By the late 1990s, the Harris government’s relaxation of environmental and planning controls had unleashed severe development pressure on the Greater Toronto region, and left local councils to deal with applications for new housing projects while the province went ahead with massive infrastructure projects such as lake-based sewer-treatment pipe systems and highways to support growth in the urban fringe. Crandall, now STORM’s executive director, decided there was nothing to lose and much to gain by ramping up oppositional activities. She called “every ENGO she could think of” at the same time that the Richmond Hill Naturalists (RHN) were reaching out for help to protect a particularly sensitive part of the Moraine (Crandall 2009, 3; Helferty 2016).

Richmond Hill, a few miles north of the city of Toronto, was one of the fastest-growing municipalities in the GTA, its pro-growth councils approving 70 amendments to its official plan to facilitate growth between 1995 and 2000 alone (McClean 2003). The town’s boundaries were set in the early 1970s when the Region of York, in which it is located, was formed. At that time, the former town of Richmond Hill’s boundaries were expanded to include several rural villages on its outskirts in the hilly, forested area of the Oak Ridges Moraine that is home to several kettle lakes, including Bond Lake and Lake Wilcox. A kettle lake is a relatively shallow type of lake, created when glaciers receded, that is fed by surface runoff and underwater springs rather than permanent inflow streams. Most kettle lakes have fragile ecosystems because of this limited inflow and outflow of water. The community around Lake Wilcox was called Oak Ridges and became a target for development applications in the early 1990s. It was part of one of the last undeveloped parcels of land in the town, land entirely owned by 20 developers (McClean 2003). The land was known as the Richmond Hill Corridor, as it was a band of rural land two to three kilometres wide across the entire width of the town. The highest point on the Moraine, it serves as the headwaters for the Humber, Don and Rouge rivers, which flow through the city of Toronto (McAndrew 2000; McClean 2003).

Nearby residents wanted an urban separator between Oak Ridges and the rest of the Town of Richmond Hill to the south to protect Lake Wilcox, Bond Lake, other kettle lakes

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and the Jefferson Forest, which formed a tenuous ecological corridor between the western and eastern parts of the Moraine. In 1994, the Town adopted Official Plan Amendment (OPA) 129, which provided for greater natural feature protection than its former rules under OPA 71, but did not require natural corridors (McClean 2003). Developers around Bond Lake took the case to the OMB, which resulted in a decision to test the idea of 30- metre-wide wildlife corridors through Oak Ridges while the Town updated its official plan (Helferty 2007). After a first phase of development, monitoring was to take place to assess the impact on water quality and wildlife movement. Local naturalists, who had worked with the MNR botanist from the ministry’s nearby Aurora office to map the area feeding the kettle lakes and associated wetlands, were not optimistic about the outcome of this experiment (Ibid.).

A new environmental partnership, occasionally calling itself the Kettle Lakes Coalition, was organized with RHN, FON, STORM, SRVS, West Humber Naturalists and, later, Earthroots (Helferty 2007). It set up an office in a church on Yonge Street in Richmond Hill, installed a hotline, and raised funds to educate the public.

The Town of Richmond Hill was proceeding methodically with studies to update its environmental standards when, in mid-1999, four of the developers with land in the corridor around Bond Lake applied for development approvals under the old, existing standards. Some environmentalists believe the growing pressure for protection of the Moraine spurred the Bond Lake developers to act prematurely. Town planners responded by proposing Official Plan Amendment (OPA) 200, which would urbanize the entire area. “We felt it was a broken promise,” recalled Natalie Helferty, a biologist and member of the Richmond Hill Naturalists who had served on the 1998 Richmond Hill Corridor Study cataloguing local flora and fauna. However, the planners believed the legal framework in place at the time required them to bring the land into the urban envelope so they could provide for environmental protections (Helferty 2007; Crandall 2009).

OPA 200 was a compromise measure designed to be defensible at the OMB, and it satisfied no one (McClean 2003). Local environmentalists, who wanted a natural corridor at least two kilometres wide, called the Town’s proposed corridors through sub-divisions “green spaghetti,” according to Helferty: “They were expecting deer to move just like a

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person does on a highway and that’s not the way wildlife moves.” Helferty and other members of RHN had walked the land repeatedly and knew it well. Helferty, for instance, had volunteered with MNR since 1994 and had been in regular contact with MNR and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority about sightings of significant species.17 She and other residents felt they could work with large-lot rural development or one-acre estate lots abutting a nature corridor, but for the developers, who wanted to build 11,000 units on the land, their proposals as well as those in OPA 200 were too restrictive.

The Kettle Lakes Coalition lobbied for Moraine-wide land use controls at York, Peel and Durham regions (Helferty 2007). Public hearings conducted by the three regions resulted in a September 1999 joint report, Towards a Long Term Strategy for the Oak Ridges Moraine, calling on the province to provide leadership. The joint report warned that the existing framework of official plans and 1991 ORM Guidelines did not provide the tools to protect the long-term ecology and integrity of the Moraine in the face of development applications (ECO 2001).

On July 20, 1999, on Rouge Park Day, the MPP from Scarborough East, Minister of Municipal Affairs & Housing Steve Gilchrist, gave a speech celebrating the world’s largest park in an urban setting and committing to protecting all environmentally sensitive portions of the Oak Ridges Moraine (Ontario Legislative Assembly 2001a). He said he was looking forward to working with stakeholders on the Moraine to achieve the same kind of consensus that had been reached in the Rouge Park. But the Moraine developers were apparently not interested in working with him. A few months later, Stephen Kaiser, president of the Urban Development Institute-Ontario (UDI), accused Gilchrist of bribery (Crandall 2009).

17 Helferty was the biologist who discovered a colony of Jefferson Salamanders in the area where the Bayview Avenue extension was to be built in Richmond Hill through the Moraine. Her discovery came two years after the completion of a provincial environmental assessment. Although she failed in her attempt to get the matter reopened, the Jefferson Salamander became a symbol of endangered wildlife so easily overlooked by the forces of growth. “Jeff” the salamander is now used by conservation authorities and other groups to help children understand the importance of biodiversity within the Greenbelt. For two examples, see the brochure at https://www.richmondhill.ca/documents/prc_jefferson_ salamander_brochure.pdf and the interactive website at http://jeffshome.halton.ca/welcome/. Helferty was also instrumental in getting wildlife underpasses under local roads built through natural areas.

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2.4 1999-2002: The Campaign Advances

The “Gilchrist affair” was the turning point in the Moraine campaign, according to most informants. At that time, the chair of UDI, whom Kaiser worked for, was Lloyd Cherniak, an executive with Lebovic Homes, one of the would-be developers of the land around Bond Lake, who wished to derail Moraine protection. The bribery charge – which turned out to be baseless – had the desired result of forcing Gilchrist to resign as minister; Tony Clement took his place. However, it had the unintended result of bringing public attention to the Moraine and providing the opening that ECSOs had been waiting for. “There were reporters wandering the halls of Queen’s Park saying, ‘where’s the Oak Ridges Moraine?’ So it was a great opportunity for us to do some education of the media,” one ENGO leader said. The Toronto Star printed the first of many editorials demanding the province protect the Moraine (Edey, Seasons and Whitelaw 2006).

ECSOs ramped up their public education and lobbying, holding monthly press conferences at Queen’s Park, promoting an action plan to protect the Moraine; conducting massive leaflet drops and canvassing door-to-door; conducting a poll that indicated widespread support for Moraine protection in Conservative-held “905” ridings; lobbying MPPs; buying radio ads; organizing petition drives; engaging in direct action; and co- ordinating campaigns where supporters called their MPPs on the same day (Crandall 2007). In February 2000, 465 scientists joined FON and STORM in calling for a ban on development on the Moraine. Over the next two years, private member’s bills to protect the Moraine were tabled by Liberal MPP Mike Colle, NDP MPPs Shelley Martel and Marilyn Churley, and even MPP Gilchrist.

As expected, the Richmond Hill developers appealed their case to the OMB in November of 1999. There were many other OMB cases on the Moraine at this time, but stopping this proposal became the highest priority for ECSOs because of the way the proposed developments at what was now a narrow “pinch point” would have cut the Moraine into two unconnected pieces. There followed a series of Richmond Hill council meetings dealing with OPA 200 and the zoning bylaws and other measures needed to give it effect. At one meeting, on January 12, 2000, an estimated 1,000 people showed up. A further measure was set to go before Richmond Hill council on February 23, 2000. The

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environmental coalition went into over-drive to get people out to the meeting. Volunteers bagged wood chips from trees cut in the Jefferson Forest for the highly-contested Bayview Avenue extension and delivered them to 20,000 homes. The Town moved the meeting from the municipal building to a nearby Sheraton Hotel ballroom, where an estimated 1,600 people showed up.

Before the meeting, in a move that confused many, the province had suggested the Town approve a 600-metre wide corridor and had attached a map of where it should go. For Natalie Helferty, who had been doing both volunteer and contract field work for MNR, the stance was not surprising: “MNR’s position was very similar to Save the Rouge’s position in terms of the need to protect this area.” Another informant said some provincial actors, some of whom had been part of the early 1990s Technical Working Committee, had been tracking the issue for years from within the provincial bureaucracy and had made the case for a pushback against the position of the party in power. At the February 23 meeting, Richmond Hill council decided to ask the province to provide funding for the corridor it had recommended and delayed a decision on the amendment for a month. In March, at a council meeting attended by about 400 people, staff reported that developers were not supporting OPA 200, despite efforts to appease them in its drafting. Council voted unanimously not to pass it, meaning the Town had no position at the OMB hearing, leaving the OMB with an ever freer hand to decide the issue itself.18

By this time, Richmond Hill’s planning commissioner and others were calling for the province to adopt the 1994 Draft Strategy for Moraine protection (McAndrew 2000). In March, FON, STORM and two City of Toronto councillors applied through the province’s Environmental Bill of Rights process for adoption of the 1994 Draft Strategy, a temporary

18 Different accounts give different dates for some of these events. Information on the timing of events came from a variety of sources, principally: McClean 2003, whose account was contemporaneous with these events and better than other accounts at noting the developer applications that compelled government responses; Sandberg, Wekerle and Gilbert 2013, whose historical timeline is the most complete available and very good at documenting government and ECSO activity, appearing to draw on an earlier timeline created by Linda Pim when she was at FON; and interviewee recollections, which were stronger on overall motivations and tactics than on dates. It seems possible that some of the meetings the ECSOs drove crowds to attend may have been targeted at least partly because of the ability of groups to get people to them. Natalie Helferty recalled delegating at Richmond Hill council at one point to delay a hearing past the holiday period so more residents could attend.

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moratorium on new development on the Moraine, and a review of the need for special legislation for long-term protection of the Moraine (ECO 2001). They were to be rebuffed in a brief letter from the ministers of Municipal Affairs & Housing, Natural Resources, and Environment dated May 29, the same day hearings for the OMB case began (Ibid.).

In the weeks before the OMB hearing began, pre-hearings attempted to narrow the number of issues to be addressed and parties that could participate in the hearing. In early May, the province filed a statement with the OMB declaring that it opposed OPA 200 and reiterating its call for a natural corridor to preserve the ecological integrity of the Moraine (McClean 2003).

Save the Rouge had been the only ECSO to receive standing; it needed a lawyer. John MacKenzie, then a volunteer for the organization, contacted David Donnelly at the Canadian Environmental Defence Fund. Donnelly had already met SRVS president Glenn De Baeremaeker from a previous campaign but had known MacKenzie only through playing against him in rugby. Donnelly, who was just finishing his own legal training, suggested Alan Heisey, whom he knew slightly from carpooling with his former wife, who was a planner. MacKenzie met him and liked him: “Heisey totally got it. Turns out his hobby was this stuff. He was a naturalist, cyclist, cottager. Plus he knew all about the law on buffers thanks to 20 years of work on compatibility with rail yards.”

Donnelly also knew Toronto city councillor David Miller through rugby. Miller was chair of the city’s ORM Steering Committee, which had applied for standing at the upcoming OMB hearing but been denied. The committee had $800,000 for an OMB hearing and no way to spend it, while Save the Rouge had standing but no money. Miller proposed to council that the funds for the OMB hearing be allocated to SRVS. He marshalled the councillors while MacKenzie and Donnelly made public deputations on the proposal, which passed handily. The immediate benefit was to enable Save the Rouge to call in the City’s expert witnesses. But the funding also guaranteed that the environmental coalition’s point of view would be heard, since Save the Rouge was especially skilled at getting media attention. Further, it strengthened the already strong inclination of Save the Rouge to resist the compromise measures being suggested (Donnelly 2015). As Donnelly (2015), a former planner, put it: “The critical role of Save the Rouge was to ensure there

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were no backroom settlements of a traditional ‘let’s cut the baby in half’ type, which were so prevalent and still are in land use planning.”

Meanwhile, there was tragedy in another part of the province. On May 11, 2000, thousands of people in Walkerton, just west of the Escarpment in Bruce County, became ill from drinking contaminated groundwater. The crisis, precipitated in part by the privatizing of water quality testing by the Harris government and reduction in provincial oversight, resulted in seven deaths and many cases of chronic illness. STORM issued a broadsheet calling the Moraine “another water crisis in the making” (Crandall 2007).

Finally, on May 29, the OMB hearing began. The 11-week schedule stretched into a year, as developers brought motions to exclude expert witnesses testifying for environmentalists. The ECSOs continued massive mailings, demonstrations, radio ads and media events. In January 2001, Premier Harris introduced his Smart Grown initiative; public consultations would take place throughout the year.19

In February of 2001, Chris Hodgson replaced Tony Clement as Minister of Municipal Affairs & Housing. Hodgson had earlier been Minister of Natural Resources, responsible for the Lands for Life project that added the largest number of acres of parkland and protected greenspace in the history of Ontario. But he was moved to another ministry before he could reap the rewards of that work and was irritated at not getting the credit he felt he deserved; he might also have been considering a future leadership run, according to Debbe Crandall. When he was put in charge of the ORM file, he saw a chance to establish his legacy, she said. At the beginning it felt political. But over the process, he came to believe in the Oak Ridges Moraine. He glommed onto the Moraine Trail. He could really visualize that. . . He became quite a champion. . . He pushed it through . . . a hostile cabinet.

Thanks to the Lands for Life negotiations, Hodgson already had relationships with Ric Symmes of FON and John Riley of the Nature Conservancy of Canada. FON had just released a “greenway” strategy for the Moraine that interested him, she said. They began

19 This exercise will be discussed more fully in the next chapter.

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discussing the idea of an advisory panel of stakeholders – like the one that had worked for the Lands for Life project – to devise a long-term solution.

In March 2001, Progressive Conservative MPP Al Palladini for the Moraine riding of Vaughan-King-Aurora died unexpectedly and the by-election campaign for his replacement – Liberal Greg Sorbara, who won by 10,000 votes on June 28 – became another focus for ECSO activity.

In May, events took a dramatic turn when Save the Rouge called its star witness, Reed Noss, an expert in conservation biology and landscape connectivity. According to David Donnelly, the lawyers called him out of sequence because the case was dragging on and he was not available later in the year. He was “our ace in the hole,” an expert expected to persuade the hearing that the bigger the landscape connection, the better the environmental protection. Developer lawyer Thomas Lederer aggressively tried to discredit him and his arguments. Soon after, on May 17, 2001, the provincial government’s Oak Ridges Moraine Protection Act suspended the OMB hearing and froze development on the Moraine for six months. Neither Helferty nor provincial biologists got to present their evidence for wildlife protection (Helferty 2016).

Why did the government suspend the hearing? It appears the government got rattled by Lederer’s withering cross-examination of Noss and the damaging media coverage, which suggested the Harris government was losing the case. A few interview subjects believed the hearing officers did not understand the concepts of conservation biology and landscape connectivity. At one point, Lederer asked whether conservation biology was value-based or science-based, and Noss replied that it was value-based in the sense that medicine is. Others felt that politics and the looming by-election played a role. “It was the galvanization of the barbecue belt,” John MacKenzie said. Erin Shapero had been elected to nearby Markham council in 2000 on a Moraine protection platform. Government leaders were worried about losing the support of their “905” base. Another informant said the government finally realized that nothing was going to be solved by the OMB appeal; the parties involved “were lining up for the next case.”

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The campaign entered a new stage in late June when Minister Hodgson appointed the Oak Ridges Moraine Advisory Panel to consider next steps, working out of the public eye. The 13 stakeholders appointed to the Advisory Panel included Ric Symmes, who had just retired as executive director of FON; Crandall, since 2000 the executive director of STORM; Riley, science director of the Nature Conservancy of Canada; developers Fred De Gasperis, Mario Cortellucci and Peter Gilgan; regional chairmen Bill Fisch of York Region and Roger Anderson of Durham; Dick O’Brian, chair of the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority; and representatives from the aggregate and farming communities. In addition, Ron Vrancart, a former deputy minister of Natural Resources, was appointed chair of the panel and of an Inter-Ministry Team with representatives from the ministries of Municipal Affairs & Housing, Environment, Natural Resources, Finance, and Agriculture, Food & Rural Affairs.

When meetings began in July, the panel’s first recommendation was for the province to negotiate a settlement of the OMB hearing that had been stayed. “We could not move forward as an advisory panel with this hanging over our collective heads,” Crandall said. David Crombie was appointed to mediate the dispute, which ended up with developers agreeing to swap some of their Moraine land for provincially-owned land in the Seaton area of North Pickering (so-called because the land, which is actually in central Pickering, was north of the town’s built-up area at the time).

STORM proposed what it had already sold to the public in 1994: a plan with four zones of land uses – core, linkage, countryside and settlement areas – providing different and appropriate levels of protection. But the process quickly hit an impasse when the developers, who had been stunned by the 600-metre corridor mapped by MNR to protect natural features that was presented during the hearings, insisted that there be no maps, and municipal representatives questioned the need for linkages. “The government was okay with core areas, but not with linkages because now we’re talking some land mass,” Crandall said. Vrancart suggested that the regional municipalities be tasked with defining the linkages, but the environmentalists insisted the job be done by the province. As Crandall put it, “It had to be the province. Otherwise, it would not be consistent or strong enough to counter powerful developers, the Freddies, the Marios, the Peters.”

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Ric Symmes broke the logjam, according to Crandall, by pointing out that science dictated the need for connectors to perform important biological functions and suggesting that they define the function first and let MNR figure out how much land was needed to preserve the features that performed those functions. That was the turning point that got that advisory panel coalescing as a group. We were elevating the discussion out of the political maneuvering and positioning it in a language that made sense to these guys. We have ecological functions here. The Moraine performs a function, right? Yes. What we’re trying to do is protect that and we’re not trying to stop houses. This is not a growth management plan. This is an ecological protection plan.

Then the MNR staff shrewdly reported back not with a map but with language that described a map, Crandall said.

The environmental groups continued public education campaigns, “people’s hearings” and demonstrations to influence the outcome. FON launched a campaign to educate the public about the environmental impacts of urban sprawl with the summer publication of a four-page glossy flyer, “Nature at Risk! Urban Sprawl in Ontario and How to Stop it.” Although meetings were private, the ECSOs were keeping their members informed of the progress of negotiations. They were not all happy. Rifts began to form in the coalition between radicals and moderates, especially when one of the radicals violated the confidentiality agreement and went public with some news.

“The community groups felt they were not being adequately represented by the big groups,” MacKenzie said. “There was in-fighting. The community groups thought they could get a better deal. The feeling was that the big groups were more ready to compromise. STORM was the most torn.”

Crandall, in particular, recalled the criticism STORM received during the NDP years for insisting on legislation instead of settling for a policy statement, which would have been easier to get. “During the Harris years, people were laughing at us,” she said. She remained focused on legislation during the advisory panel process. We were working to steer it through. It was quite a time. We had all these groups telling us we were a sellout. We said you don’t understand planning if you can’t see some value in what we’re trying to get here. No, it’s not perfect, but it’s what we’ve been asking for: specific legislation. We’ve been asking for a provincial plan

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– 92% of the Moraine off limits. And, yes, it’s a 10-year review . . . nothing is in perpetuity. . . . I was quite concerned that the government was going to say, “Well, forget this.”

Crandall said she could also see the need for some sort of deal to settle the Richmond Hill OMB appeal. Under the planning regime in place at the time, the developers had rights, she said, concluding, “You have to be a bit pragmatic if you want to win the big picture.” Or, as Joe Valela, then president of the Greater Toronto Home Builders’ Association put it, developers would be suing for hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation if a deal were not worked out and “I don't think it’s the kind of bill that Ontario taxpayers can afford these days” (Green 2003). The land swap worked for a government that did not want to spend real money on this issue, Crandall said.20

In late August, the proposal that went before the public, called Share Your Vision for the Oak Ridges Moraine, outlined a vision “To protect the moraine and its ecological functions, and ensure a continuous natural environment for future generations, while providing for compatible social and economic opportunities” (5). The “Draft Strategy for Community Growth and Natural Protection” section called for four land use designations with the following definitions and permitted uses: 1. Natural core areas containing large concentrations of key natural features, significant hydrological areas and complex landforms. Permitted uses included passive recreation (e.g., hiking trails), conservation areas, public roads and utilities where there “there is no reasonable alternative,” agriculture, and “Permitted uses in land-use planning applications approved before May 17, 2001.” 2. Natural linkage areas comprising woodlots, wetlands and rural lands that link natural core areas with each other and with other natural corridors, such as the river valleys north and south of the moraine. Permitted uses included new mining operations. 3. Countryside areas where rural and agricultural land uses take place. Permitted uses included active recreation and rural commercial, institutional and industrial uses. Rural residential was mentioned in the consultation document but removed from consideration in late August (McAndrew 2001). 4. Settlement areas made up of lands approved for urban land uses. Permitted uses included the full range of land uses, as identified in approved official plans.

20 Hodgson appointed the North Pickering Land Exchange Review Panel to deal with the land swap, but it was mostly concerned with protections for North Pickering, not with the terms respecting Richmond Hill. Chaired by Crombie, the committee was composed of a majority of environmentalists.

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Natural Core Areas occupy 38% of the Moraine land and water, Natural Linkage Areas 24%, Countryside Areas 30% and Settlement Areas 8% (Fraser and Neary 2004).

The Advisory Panel and Inter-Ministry Team consulted the public over one month, attracting 2,000 attendees at forums and 600 written submissions. The public that responded overwhelmingly demanded full, legislated protection of the Moraine (Crandall 2009). As a result of this input, the technical team recommended a stronger proposal, which the panel endorsed (Sandberg, Wekerle and Gilbert 2013). On November 1, Hodgson introduced the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Act, 2001. On December 5, it received three hours of public hearings after second reading, was passed on December 13 and proclaimed on December 14, 2001. The act provided for the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan; created the Oak Ridges Moraine Foundation, which later received a $15-million start-up grant; and enabled settlement terms involving a land swap.

The plan’s main objectives were to protect the ecological and hydrological integrity of the Moraine area; ensure that only appropriate uses were permitted; maintain, improve and restore the elements that contribute to the ecological and hydrological functions of the Moraine; ensure that the Oak Ridges Moraine is maintained as a continuous natural landform and environment for the benefit of present and future generations; provide for continued development within existing urban settlement areas and recognition of existing rural settlements; and provide public access to recreational uses, including a continuous, accessible recreational trail through the Moraine.

The boundaries were based on topographical, geomorphological and geological studies conducted by the Technical Working Committee in the 1990s (see Figure 5.3). The southern boundary from the Town of Richmond Hill to the eastern boundary of the Municipality of Clarington was along a contour 245 metres above sea level. The plan provided for a 10-year review but specified that the review could not consider removing land from the Natural Core or Natural Linkage areas. Buffers for key natural heritage features were set at 30 metres or left to be determined by a natural heritage evaluation.

Implementation was put in the hands of the 32 municipalities in which the Moraine is located. Each was directed to ensure its official plan and all development decisions were

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Figure 5.3 Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan Land Use Map

Chapter 5 - Oak Ridges Moraine Campaign 127 in conformity with the Moraine plan. The province promised to support municipalities by creating technical manuals, performance indicators and a monitoring network to collect data to assess ecological integrity and implementation problems.

The presentations at the December 5 legislative hearings presaged all the problems that were to follow. Developers complained that it was unfair to change laws retroactively, that the proposed plan did not always respect prior land use approvals and that, even in cases of grandfathering, the proposed law was unclear as to the definition of “applications under way,” creating a situation in which not all applications in the queue would be treated equally. At the same hearing, environmentalists called for clearer language to ensure that the boundaries of each natural core or linkage area not be reduced, and for provincial oversight that would monitor both municipal compliance and environmental performance. But, more significantly, they objected to provisions that would allow the Minister of Municipal Affairs to revoke the plan entirely and to make sweeping changes to the plan without referral to cabinet or the public. As Jim Faught, then executive director of FON, noted with some understatement, “It suggests to the public that the government may lack a long-term commitment to protection of the Moraine” (Ontario Legislative Assembly 2001b).

Their fears were confirmed in March of 2002, when the province admitted that it had given Richmond Hill developers permission to build 4,150 homes on the Moraine (Sandberg, Wekerle and Gilbert 2013). The number of homes was increased to 6,600 in June, when the minister issued a final and binding order to allow all Richmond Hill development proposals still before the OMB to proceed (Ibid.). Crandall pointed out that the original application before the OMB was for 11,000 homes, while Crombie noted that development was always to be allowed on 8% of the Moraine as a whole (Green 2003). This, of course, meant that, in any one place, the percentage of developed land might be higher or lower.

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2.5 Aftermath: The Campaign Never Ends

There was still work to be done on the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan, but roadblocks came from an unlikely source: the McGuinty Liberal government, elected in 2003 on a platform that included the promise of a greenbelt. As Crandall said in 2007, When the plan came into effect, staff were full throttle ahead. . . The Greenbelt came along and everyone got taken off this file and seconded to the Greenbelt file. . . Everything stopped dead. . . We have no technical guidelines, no performance measures, no monitoring framework, no template.

STORM retained its focus as a policy group tracking planning and legislative decisions, identifying needs and creating partnerships to meet them. In 2004, it organized a workshop titled “Loose Threads of the ORMCP” that focused attention on the importance of community-based monitoring for the 10-year review (Crandall 2009). This was the launching pad in 2005 for Monitoring the Moraine (MTM), a partnership between STORM and Citizens’ Environment Watch (CEW, since renamed EcoSpark), which largely put stewardship of the Moraine in the hands of citizen scientists. CEW had been formed in 1996 by three University of Toronto academics in the wake of the Harris cuts to the Ministry of the Environment; in 2005 it received charitable status, making fundraising easier. MTM co-ordinated annual Check your Watershed Days and developed Moraine Watch, a system of checklists for volunteers to use to track landscape and policy compliance issues. It produced status reports in 2006, 2007 and 2012. The group also celebrated successes at anniversary gatherings and lauded 33 “Moraine Heroes.”

Although the partnership attracted funding from several foundations, summer job programs, TRCA and other friendly groups, money was always tight. STORM partnered with the ORM Land Trust and the Oak Ridges Trail Association in 2009 in Moraine for Life to make scarce resources go further (Crandall 2009). However, the groups received another blow when the province announced that it was delaying the Moraine plan’s review to 2015 so it would synchronize with the reviews for the Niagara Escarpment and Greenbelt plans. STORM, Ontario Nature and Earthroots launched a community engagement campaign – “The Moraine Can’t Wait” – to urge the provincial government to support the Oak Ridges Moraine Foundation’s request to review, in advance of 2015, the policies that were supposed to protect the Moraine. Nevertheless, on the eve of what

Chapter 5 - Oak Ridges Moraine Campaign 129 would have been the 10-year review of the Moraine Plan, Moraine supporters found themselves without the resources they needed for monitoring and Moraine protection, and the Moraine for Life partnership suspended its work (STORM 2015).

The ORM Foundation had launched its own Measuring Success project in 2010 in an attempt to deal with gaps that would have been filled if the government had created a dedicated agency with on-going funding for the Moraine. The foundation had leveraged its initial $15 million in funding into $50-million worth of results in the areas of tree planting, prairie and stream restoration, securement of conservation lands through purchases and easements, education and advice, and, notably, the addition of 104 kilometres of trail, which completed the Oak Ridges Moraine Trail in 2010 (ORM Foundation 2015). But it was forced to suspend its granting in 2012 (Ibid.). It partnered with the Greenbelt Foundation and Conservation Ontario to support the Conservation Authorities Moraine Coalition’s project to provide science-based data and analysis on the state of the Moraine for the 2015 review. This resulted in the Report Card on the Environmental Health of the Oak Ridges Moraine and Adjacent Greenbelt Lands (2015), which found that the plans were generally succeeding in maintaining existing conditions but needed to be strengthened to meet their goals of restoring and enhancing natural systems, especially in view of the threats posed by climate change and the cumulative impacts of growth.

When it was clear that the Moraine Plan would be reviewed in 2015, STORM, Earthroots, Ontario Nature and EcoSpark formed the Oak Ridges Moraine Partnership for 2015. Its Marvellous Moraine campaign, with funding from the Greenbelt Foundation, called for “Stronger Laws, Stronger Landscape, Stronger Legacy.” Its areas of concern were: tree cutting, boundary changes, cumulative impacts of water takings, piping of underground water to new developments off the Moraine, contaminated commercial landfill, increasing use of the Moraine as an infrastructure corridor, better balancing the needs of nature and people to sustain public support of the Moraine, and grandfathering of development projects, which it argued needed a sunset date. As STORM entered its 26th year of crusading to protect the Moraine, it included a call in its Marvellous Moraine campaign flyer for “the next generation of champions.”

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Meanwhile, the Oak Ridges Moraine Land Trust, founded in 1999 by Moraine supporters who decided to go ahead with land securement in case the province failed to act, continued with its efforts. By 2015, the group had secured over 3,786 acres of land with 37 registered conservation easements, three restricted covenants, seven properties in direct ownership and two in joint ownership; planted more than 90,000 trees on these properties; and engaged stakeholders in education and fundraising through, among other projects, the annual Charles Sauriol dinner, named for an early conservationist. As one of the Trust’s early presidents, Tom Atkins, wrote in the 2002 Annual Report, “Just because you install a sprinkler system in a building, you do not cancel the fire insurance. The province, with its recent legislation, has provided a sprinkler system. The Oak Ridges Moraine Land Trust and its partners are here to provide the insurance policy.”21

3 Discussion

After the Niagara Escarpment campaign, there now existed the beginnings of a greenspace protection institution: rules for municipalities to follow and an agency to hear appeals, oversee compliance, and monitor impacts. But this new agency was often packed with growth-oriented government appointees, friends of the new “institutional losers” – landowners and their allies in the development industry – the traditional drivers of change. Still, when environmental civil society actors first proposed protection of the Oak Ridges Moraine, they saw the Niagara Escarpment Plan as a precedent and template. At first, state actors agreed and worked with them. But then a new regime came to power and used different governance strategies in attempts to thwart their demands. (See Table 5.1 for a summary.)

21 One of the directors of the Trust from 2001 to 2011 was Steve Gilchrist, the former minister of Municipal Affairs & Housing.

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Table 5.1 Governance Performance in the Oak Ridges Moraine Campaign

Level of Dimension Observations performance

EPISODES Arenas Sites: task forces & stakeholder committees, OMB, local & regional public hearings (Agency Regarding public Public participation: dynamics) participation: --Large & small geographic scales --Geographic scale --Systemic action --Extent of action --High-level agenda --Agenda --Heavy use of stakeholder groups, mandated open --Style of engagement public hearings, CSO open engagement

Actors Professionalized ECSOs, local groups Big developers Regarding public Municipal & regional governments & agencies participation: Provincial bureaucrats & politicians --Participants

Narratives Moraine as rain barrel, Jefferson Salamander, Walkerton vs. over-burdened developers

PROCESSES Governance practices Stakeholder selection biases results of task forces (formal & informal Planning & media processes encourage large turnouts at (Structural rules and laws) statutory meetings dynamics) Media processes encourage sound bite, colourful events, tours, etc. Political finance rules favour developers Charitable rules hamstring ECSOs

Networks & coalitions ECSO networks became more professional, still open Developer network became hegemonic Bureaucratic capacity reduced under Mike Harris

Discourses Water quality, watershed planning, habitat loss, landscape connectivity vs. affordable housing

CULTURES Governance modes Expert-led at first, later rational-technical planning (OP process), stakeholder negotiations

(Cultural Embedded values Nature’s provision of water and habitat for native dynamics) species should take precedent Partnership possible

Paradigms Environment 1st – need for clean air & water Acceptance of appropriate growth – some questioning of growth Crown government should protect nature vs economic interests

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3.1 Governance Performance

3.1.1 Arenas, Practices & Modes

Arenas

Conflicts over the governance of the Oak Ridges Moraine played out in several arenas: statutory public hearings at the municipal level, municipal council meetings, Ontario Municipal Board hearings, task forces and stakeholder committees, and non-traditional settings. The municipal and OMB hearings were open processes: anyone could attend and delegate as long as they observed certain rules of procedure. Some of these rules could silence objectors, such as a rule that a person must have objected at the public hearing stage to get standing at an OMB hearing, meant to eliminate latecomers and repetition of arguments already heard. Most of the ECSOs were aware of the rules and worked with them, exploiting municipal hearing rules that did not limit participants. This was important because developers kept trying to channel nature protection issues to local councils, which were easier for them to control. But the environmentalists pressed for a systemic solution at a regional level that required provincial action. They took their case to many municipalities simultaneously, securing reports and resolutions calling for a provincial solution. When the province was forced to act, it changed tactics, moving the primary governance arena to invitation-only stakeholder committees that were far less risky for state actors hoping to “put a lid” on demands for environmental protection.

The coalition engaged the public in less formal settings such as press conferences where they staged media stunts, such as having members appear in chipmunk costumes. The ECSOs also organized workshops and consultations for community-based learning and other community activities such as planting, trail-blazing, nature walks and environmental monitoring. They supported local as well as regional legal actions, creating partners who were both knowledgeable and indebted to them for their legal expertise.

Task Forces & Stakeholder Committees

The Moraine campaign saw state actors on both sides of the conflict use task forces and stakeholder groups as governance arenas. These task forces were not new to Ontario. An early template was the International Joint Commission (IJC), a stakeholder committee

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created as part of the 1909 Boundary Water Treaty between Canada and the United States to prevent and resolve disputes over water quality and quantity along their shared border (Newton 2006). By the 1980s, many planners also had experience with municipal Environmental Advisory Committees (EACs), which provided advice, rather than decisions (EACO 2015). EACs grew in popularity as environmental values became more common and as more planning responsibility was devolved to the municipal level. The average committee included a few municipal councillors, residents with expertise in environmental management, and representatives from relevant stakeholder groups, such as farmers.

Stakeholder committees are what Lowndes and Sullivan (2004) call “local strategic partnerships”: partnerships that “seek to ‘join up’ the diverse resources and competences of actors from the public, private and voluntary sectors” (52). These partnerships are driven by a need for efficiency and accountability, and are deployed to share responsibility as well as knowledge caught up in sectoral silos (Ibid.). They are made up of a small group of people engaged in intensive, collaborate problem-solving or negotiation over proposed rules (Beierle 2002). Their chief advantages are small size, usually 20 to 30 people, and diversity. There is usually a conscious effort by those setting them up to include representatives from all the groups with an interest in the issue: governments, industries, civil society groups and academia. Properly constructed stakeholder groups have the potential to better reflect the affected public, since other forms of public engagement tend to draw disproportionately from certain groups, such as upper middle class and retired people (Fung 2006).

This small, diverse membership enables face-to-face interactions that can build trust, which is usually necessary in order for learning, discussion, openness, risk-taking and eventually agreement to take place. Having enough time to build trust was found to be a crucial variable in governance innovation in a study of the impact of term limits in the U.S. (Weir, Wolman and Swanstrom 2005). When stakeholder committees meet in secret, as they often did during the Moraine campaign, trust-building can occur more quickly, as the committee becomes a safe space in which people can test ideas without losing face, somewhat like labour negotiations.

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The increasing use of these committees has been bolstered by their effectiveness. An analysis of 239 case studies of stakeholder-based processes found that most resulted in quality decision-making, defined as cost-effective, innovative, providing joint gains, and employing expert scientific knowledge (Beierle 2002). The most effective processes were characterized by “sufficient attention to education, deft choice of participants, and a thoughtful structuring of the process” (Beierle 2002, 742). The norms of face-to-face groups reduce conflicts and create a sense of ownership, which facilitates learning, trust- building, accountability, effectiveness, credibility and, in the end, project sustainability (Newton 2006). Inclusivity and representativeness is particularly important for successful agenda setting, while interdependencies are more important at the implementation stage; collaboration rather than top-down management is important throughout the process (Sproule-Jones 2002). Stakeholder committees are popular with politicians because they put conflict-resolution at some remove, several interview subjects noted. This strategy also appeals to notions of “letting the people work it out for themselves” (White 2007, 40). Parkins (2006) describes the turn to stakeholder group decision-making as the “professionalization” of public participation because it is more strategic, efficient, affordable and expert-driven.

There were several stakeholder committees throughout the Moraine campaign years and they usually included about a dozen people, a few each from the environmental, academic, development, resource industries and local communities. The first such committee was the Technical Working Committee, where a stakeholder group determined how the research budget was to be spent, what ideas were to be taken out for wider public consultation, and what recommendations were to be made. The Lands for Life exercise was not about the Moraine, but it was a learning experience for some key actors, who were later able to use trust built from that more adversarial exercise to approach the Minister of Municipal Affairs & Housing about setting up the Advisory Panel that eventually came up with the solution for the Moraine. Some of the same people later served on the North Pickering Land Exchange Review Panel, Central Ontario Smart Growth Panel and Greenbelt Task Force.

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The stakeholder committees are good examples of what Rydin and Holman (2004) call “bracing” social capital, in which a limited set of actors from multiple sectors reach across scales to focus on a place-based policy problem. They suggested that governments convene these groups in hopes that enough social capital will develop to solve the problem but were unsure of how that social capital was generated. The Moraine examples suggest that civil society actors, with their greater numbers, diversity and reserves of bridging social capital, do a lot of the reaching out and “thinking outside the box” that is required. Secrecy makes it safer to do so.

Practices

The set of practices that structured the Moraine campaign was the Ontario land use planning system. A highly-legalistic system that relies on both lawyers and planning experts, the advantage is held by those with more money to pay these professionals. For instance, in the Richmond Hill OMB hearing on OPA 200, the developers had a budget of $40 million compared to the public agencies’ $2 million, according to John MacKenzie. But that was only part of it, he said: “They had so many years of experience, connections and relationships. When developers have former mayors on retainers working against you . . . [it’s hard to fight that].” Or, as Crandall (2007) put it, “Was it a fair, open process? Absolutely not. It was so stacked.”

The specific regulative institution that channeled so much activity was the Ontario Municipal Board. As an appeal tribunal, it disciplined behaviour of actors even before their cases appeared before it, as actors structured their arguments to win at the board. The OMB has unusual power, not being bound even by its own precedents, and able to define what is “good planning” in any particular case (Chipman 2002). At the time, it was able to basically re-hear cases, discounting council decisions and the public opinion behind them. OMB rules of procedure – 31 pages long, at present – favour the most organized, experienced and deep-pocketed of applicants, with, for example, rules that require parties to be incorporated and that allow the board to award costs. One of the most basic rules of any “game” is who can play. At the Richmond Hill hearing into OPA 200, the board decided that only Save the Rouge Valley System among the environmental groups could have standing, relegating STORM and the City of Toronto to bystanders.

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This type of decision is meant to make an already unwieldy process more efficient and rational, appealing to basic assumptions of Ontario’s political culture. But it puts a different set of actors in charge and explains why STORM was not front and centre at the hearings, as might otherwise have been expected. Fortunately, STORM had longstanding allies it could rely on.

The OMB was but one part of a planning regime that was oriented towards growth. The Planning Act required municipalities to have land and official plan policies to accommodate growth. Local politicians decided when rural land should be rezoned to urban to meet this requirement. The Development Charges Act required municipalities to pay for costs of growth not recoverable from developers; these costs were increased by the Harris government. Local politicians decided what these charges should be within the limits allowed by the province. The Municipal Elections Act then allowed developers to influence the selection of the people who would make these decisions by allowing them to contribute to municipal politicians’ campaigns, sometimes many times over. At the time of the Moraine battles, a developer, though nominally restricted to donating $750 to any one candidate, could also donate personally and through subsidiaries. Developers could suggest to sub-contractors that they donate to particular politicians. Developers donated to pet causes of politicians, improving public perceptions of both parties and their relationship.22 The law provided no real way to track cash “gifts” before or after an election period. There was no electoral commission, as there was at the federal and provincial level, to provide advice or oversight. Complaints were handled locally and could be costly for members of the public. At the same time, the complaint system was open to abuse by both incumbents and political opponents.23

22 For instance, TACC Construction Ltd. (Giovanni, Silvio, Carlo and Michael DeGasperis) donated $1 million in 2008 to the Markham Stouffville Hospital capital campaign and chose to have the MRI Centre named after Don Cousens, the former Progressive Conservative MPP who served as mayor of Markham from 1994 to 2006, years of rapid growth. Cousens was fully retired by then, but it was a nice parting gift. 23 Some of these rules have since been changed, such as the rule that allowed corporations (and unions) to donate through subsidiaries or other closely-held entities. Until 2016, company owners could donate personally as well as corporately. In 2016, reforms banned corporate and union donations and put limits on third party advertising.

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Other practices that structured governance were charitable rules and media conventions. The larger ECSOs had charitable status, which helped in raising funds but also limited the amount of political activity they could undertake. Media conventions favouring the “sound bite” and colourful tactics meant that messages and media campaigns had to be crafted in specific ways to attract media attention.

Governance Modes

The expert-led tradition endured, as the Technical Working Committee produced its technical reports, which were referred to by planners for years. But they were challenged. In disregarding this work, the Harris government was consistent and discounted other research-based best practices, such as provincial government oversight of water control. The failure of the government to prevent the Walkerton tragedy violated norms of balance and governance modes that have assumed that the provincial government will ensure public safety by overseeing actors at the more “junior” level of government with less capacity, to ensure similar outcomes.

3.1.2 Actors, Networks & Values

Actors & Networks

State Actors

In the first stage of the campaign, state actors were unified: the Peterson Liberals and Rae New Democrats supported the environmental experts and activists. A generation of young scientists and planners worked for the provincial government on environmental measures, identifying ANSIs and ESAs in the 1970s and 1980s and then completing the 15 technical studies required by the ORM Technical Working Committee in the 1990s; dozens of municipal and provincial bureaucrats were now schooled in the environmental costs and benefits of Moraine protection (Eagles 1981, 317; interview subjects). Then the Harris government came to power, changing the direction of policy and pushing many of them out of government work and into the ENGO sector. Those who remained were overworked and depended on their colleagues on the outside to help with field work and public education. Research continued, because the professional bureaucracy still had a

Chapter 5 - Oak Ridges Moraine Campaign 138 duty to provide evidence-based advice to their political masters – “speak truth to power” – as well as to enforce existing legislation protecting natural resources.

State actors on the Moraine were increasingly split into two loose factions: politicians, who were generally in favour of growth and supportive of the development industry, and government experts, who were torn between their professional fealty to an evidence base that supported environmentalists and the possible consequences of being insubordinate to elected officials. The result was a curious mix of proponents and opponents at OMB hearings like Richmond Hill’s hearing on OPA 200. Provincial officials were recommending a 600-metre natural corridor through Richmond Hill while their political masters were supporting a process that normally would have allowed developers to build without regard for such environmental protections. There were also creative alliances, with would-be state actors from the City of Toronto turning to civil society because only Save the Rouge had standing – legitimacy – at the Richmond Hill OMB hearing.

ECSOs tried to win over politicians with the appearance of legitimacy achieved by clever use of the mass media and tactics to motivate group members to attend public meetings and contact their MPPs and councillors. Meanwhile, the development industry continued a steady stream of political donations to political parties and candidates. The industry’s ham-fisted attempt to bring down the first minister who got in its way back-fired; suddenly the Oak Ridges Moraine was a sexy scandal. But the market actors were eventually able to secure permissions to build 6,600 homes on the Moraine in addition to receiving compensatory land in North Pickering.

Market Actors

The strength of the pro-growth coalition was its maturity, wealth and cohesiveness. Whereas during the Niagara Escarpment campaign many developers were still building their businesses, leaving farmers to protect landowner interests, by the 1990s, the development firms had purchased most of the remaining farm land in the urban fringe (Bunce 1985; Harris 2004) and had reached spectacular levels of success and influence.

The Southern Ontario development industry provides a lesson in upper class formation. It started innocently, even admirably, as penniless European artisans immigrated to Canada

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after the Second World War to work in the building industry’s sub-trades. Through sacrifice, hard work and good timing, they grew their businesses. In the manner of immigrant communities throughout North America, there was a tendency to look after their own as they built their businesses. When it was time to expand or spin off new businesses, owners tended to put their children into the new jobs.24 Other children became lawyers and accountants who often served the industry. This kind of bonding social capital provides mutual support for group members and obligations to share within the kinship group (Putnam 2000). But there are fewer opportunities and incentives to develop alliances outside the kinship network, especially if they threaten the ability to meet obligations within the network.

Some version of this rags-to-riches story was true for most of the developers in the Greater Toronto Area, which has been developed primarily by Italian or Jewish family businesses (Barber 2005). On the Oak Ridges Moraine, the Italians predominated. Alfredo (Fred Sr.) DeGasperis, Mario Cortellucci, and Giovanni Guglietti all emigrated from Italy in the mid-20th Century. The most successful – even legendary – of this group was DeGasperis, whose story is emblematic of the clannishness of the Southern Ontario development industry (see Figure 5.4).

A penniless labourer, Alfredo came to Canada in the 1950s when he was 18. He soon sent for his younger brother Arcangelo (Angelo), and in 1954 they incorporated Concrete and Drain Ltd., now known as ConDrain. Their brother Antonio (Tony) joined them in 1960 (Countrywide Homes 2015). Their big break came when they got the contract to build the sewers and water mains for Cadillac Fairview’s housing project at Erin Mills, west of Toronto, in the early 1970s. Alfredo won the contract because, even though he had no formal education, he came up with a system that was more effective and cheaper than what had actually been specified (Brennan 2012). The company grew from there, eventually becoming a vertically-integrated development conglomerate that included

24 As Carlo Baldassarra, one of the founders of Greenpark Homes, at one time Canada’s largest home builder, said on the occasion of receiving the 2014 lifetime achievement award from BILD, “I look forward to creating even more opportunities through Greenpark with my sons and my growing family of grandchildren” (BILD 2014). Carlo and his brother Angelo both emigrated from Italy in the 1950s and built home-building empires from humble beginnings. Many of their adult children are also now involved in the development industry.

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Figure 5.4 The DeGasperis Family: A Partial Family Tree

Arcangelo Antonio (Tony) Alfredo (Fred) Concetta Giovanni Rita Mario Giovanni (John) DeGasperis DeGasperis DeGasperis DeGasperis Guglietti Guglietti Baldassarra DeGasperis (ConDrain) (ConDrain) (ConDrain) (Tamarack) (TACC)

Andrew DeGasperis Fred DeGasperis Jr. Silvio Guglietti Silvio DeGasperis (Aspen Ridge) (Aspen Ridge) (Melrose) (TACC)

Christene DeGasperis Jim DeGasperis Marco Guglietti Carlo DeGasperis (Aspen Ridge) (Vineland Estates) (Rosehaven) (TACC)

Johnny Guglietti Michael DeGasperis (Tamarack) (Arista)

Ricardo Guglietti (Tamarack)

KEY: Siblings Spouses Children Cousins

Metrus Development Inc. (since renamed DG Group), a partnership with Marco Muzzo and Rudy Bratty (Ibid.). At his death, Alfredo’s net worth was estimated at $1.41 billion, making him the 49th richest person in Canada (Chown Ovid 2013).

One of the companies spun off from the empire was Aspen Ridge Homes, a partnership among Alfredo’s son Fred Jr. and Tony’s two children, Andrew and Christene. Alfredo’s son Jim became a part owner with his father in Vineland Estates winery (Dolce 2013). Wine has been a popular gift to send to local politicians at Christmas time, since a few bottles can be seen as a “gesture” rather than a bribe (Nuttall-Smith 2009). In the 1990s, Metrus sold 20 building lots to Alfredo’s brother-in-law Giovanni Guglietti, who was married to his sister Concetta. Guglietti gave the lots to his two sons, Marco (who had worked summers for his Uncle Tony’s homebuilding firm) and Silvio, who launched Rosehaven Homes and Melrose Investments, respectively (Hanes 2012). Giovanni Guglietti had already founded Tamarack Lumber, now run by his other two sons, Johnny and Ricardo. Giovanni’s sister, Rita, married a member of the Baldassarra family; there is a Baldassarra family member working for Melrose Investments, according to its website.

A distant cousin of the ConDrain Group owners was Giovanni (John) DeGasperis, who founded TACC (an acronym for The Amazing Construction Company) in 1977 with his

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sons Silvio and Carlo. They also grew their company, also becoming vertically integrated with divisions that supplied pipes and utilities as well as development services and homes. Younger brother Michael heads Arista Homes. Carlo’s daughter Andrea now heads up Opus Homes with lawyer husband Michael Ronco. According to LinkedIn, Silvio’s older daughter Alana works for TACC Developments, while younger daughter Alexandra is an associate with Kagan Shastri LLP, well-known as lawyers to the development industry.

Much of this information is found on the companies’ websites, which typically include a tab about the company’s history as a family business, devoted to quality, community building and giving back through charitable gifts. Business has been good for these families. The Internet is full of pictures and stories about the substantial charitable donations made by these families, especially to hospitals (which as of 1997 did not attract development charges, to the dismay of many local officials) (Ontario Legislative Assembly 1997), as well as the exploits of younger family members, arrayed in designer clothes at posh weddings and galas throughout the GTA. Many of these stories are documented by a luxury lifestyle magazine called Dolce, which operates out of an office in Vaughan, the suburb where many of these families live.

Most of these families also donate generously – both corporately and personally – to local municipal candidates (MacDermid 2006). A particularly fulsome example is evident in the 2014 financial report of Michael DiBiase, a local and regional councillor for Vaughan elected in 2014 (DiBiase 2014). He raised more than $175,000 without ever holding a fundraising event – so much that he was able to refund his own small contribution to the campaign and still have $646.45 to hand over to the City of Vaughan, as required by law in the case of campaign income that exceeds the spending limit.25 His list of donors includes both large and small developers, builders, and sub-contractors, many donating

25 Ontario sets limits on municipal campaign spending based on the number of potential voters. If candidates raise more money than they are allowed to spend, they are required to turn over the excess to the municipality where they are running. Candidates may spend as much of their own money as they wish on their own campaigns, while donors are subject to limits. At the municipal level in Ontario, where there are no political parties and fundraising is confined to a few months before elections, it is far more typical for candidates to have a deficit to cover out of their personal funds than to have excess donations to give to their municipality (Macdermid 2006).

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twice, once as individuals and once as principals of companies. Most gave the maximum donation of $750 (or $1,500, when donating twice), a ceiling that has not changed in two decades and which is much smaller than limits for provincial and federal politicians. In other words, for developers, these are relatively small costs of doing business, especially compared to the potential payoffs.

Municipal politicians are not the only ones to attract support from developers. Provincial politicians from both the Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties have received campaign donations and other kinds of help. In an obituary for Marco Muzzo, believed to have been the richest Ontario developer of his generation, journalist John Barber (2005) described just a few of Muzzo’s ties to politicians of both parties: Never shy about donating to favoured politicians, he became the largest political benefactor in the country by the late 1980s. Mr. Muzzo was close with former Ontario attorney-general Roy McMurtry – the lawyer who defended him at the construction-industry inquiry in the 1970s – as well as former premier Bill Davis. When David Peterson's Liberals took office, Mr. Muzzo came to their aid, buying the Peterson family company for almost $10 million, $3 million of which landed in the premier's blind trust.

Meanwhile, the industry’s two associations – the Urban Development Institute/Ontario26 and the Greater Toronto Home Builders Association – lobbied the provincial governments for favorable treatment. And their activity paid off with lower development charges and other rules and OMB rulings that increased profits and made it easier to find company jobs for siblings, children and cousins.

This all added up to a network that was particularly strong and cohesive, with kinship ties adding to the strength of business ties. This coalition provided narratives and financial resources to the ruling government. But its only bridge to a wider constituency within civil society was to its own captive industry associations, so it was less helpful in providing legitimacy to a government that was under increasing pressure from a public unhappy with urban sprawl and its impacts. Even the coalition’s links to other market

26 The Ontario chapter of the Urban Development Institute merged with the Greater Toronto Home Builders Association in 2006 to create the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD). BILD is affiliated with the Ontario and Canadian Home Builders’ associations. UDI still has chapters in Alberta and British Columbia.

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actors were largely commercial relationships. For instance, unlike developers in other areas who could rely on local newspapers for boosterish coverage (Molotch 1976), Southern Ontario developers often had to buy advertising to get their word out because the dominant daily newspaper, The Toronto Star (whose parent company also controlled many regional weeklies) had a history of supporting social reforms; it called for Moraine protection many times. However, the industry also received dedicated space in the Star’s weekly homes section – space that has been used regularly as a pulpit for the industry’s political opinions.

Environmental Actors

The environmental coalition was a feat of hard-scrabble organizing.27 It did not take very long for groups on the Moraine to realize they needed a single, common solution to their many local environmental problems: a large-scale protected area. But they sometimes differed on tactics, as far back as 1991, when STORM was invited to be a member of the Technical Working Committee. The invitation divided the organization, as some members worried participation in a stakeholder group would lead to co-optation (Crandall 2009). But having a seat at the table also means having an opportunity to explain your proposal fully in a space where participants have made a commitment to learning. In this case, participation paid off, with the ECSOs successfully getting their preferred strategy included as one of the options brought forward (Crandall 2009). By getting their proposal public and validated by a government committee as early as 1994, the ECSOs were able to give the general public and its leaders time to become comfortable with the idea.

STORM’s participation in a stakeholder committee was again criticized at the end of the campaign, when it turned out 6,600 homes were going to be built in the Richmond Hill Corridor after all – a compromise Crandall and the other participating environmental leaders felt they had to agree to for the sake of the larger goal of overall Moraine protection. As Cartwright (2003) notes, one of the dilemmas facing environmental groups is that to gain a seat at the policy-making table, they need to be prepared to compromise,

27 Just how challenging STORM’s work was brought to mind by this comment by Debbe Crandall upon the occasion of the group’s 20th anniversary: “Organizing meetings across 160 kilometres before email was the norm was … well, interesting” (Crandall 2009).

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which may alienate some supporters and allies and which, in more dire situations, may threaten the integrity of the ecosystem they are trying to protect.

The strength of the STORM coalition was its bridging social capital, in which many people were able to bring their knowledge of different parts of the Moraine together in service of the goal of overall protection. The familiar Friends of the Earth slogan “Think globally, act locally” was translated here to mean people should “keep their toes locally and their heads regionally,” in the words of Crandall (2007). STORM helped community groups in their local official plan and rezoning fights, building capacity to deal with a legalistic planning system and building reciprocity for when regional action was needed. The executive moved its meetings around the Moraine, building a network and explaining the need for broader ecosystem principles. The network-building the group did on the Moraine helped it prepare for expanding its network across the GTA, by appealing to Toronto-based groups. Once STORM had identified urban sprawl and its impacts on Toronto watercourses as a compelling idea, Crandall said: We pulled together a number of meetings and, the first meeting, there were 50 organizations from the GTA. We made the pitch and they said, sure, give us your materials, we’ll label it for you and we had this massive outreach. We did two “take action” campaigns. . . We supported this mass mailing with calls and said . . . on one day, we want you to call your MPP and say you want action on the Oak Ridges Moraine. . . It’s all about network building.

The coalition allowed for the combining of complementary talents. STORM had hydrogeology expertise and experience engaging people at the grassroots who knew the territory and were committed to protecting it. Ontario Nature had natural heritage expertise, a large membership base and the apparatus to reach them. Earthroots, which in an earlier incarnation had used civil disobedience to successfully fight for preservation of rare old growth pine forests in the Temagami region of northern Ontario, had a talent for direct action. Save the Rouge was the most media savvy, able to craft messages in sound bites and come up with framing and imagery to catch the public’s attention. The leaders of these groups for this campaign were all women – Debbe Crandall, Linda Pim, Lea Ann Mallett and Ramona Wall, respectively – who were able to “park their egos at the door,” according to interviewees. Tensions arose later when a different leader broke confidentiality, which was one of the ground rules for the stakeholder negotiations.

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What the environmental coalition lacked in cohesion, it made up for in breadth and diversity. It drew strength from many different types of civil society groups: • Community Groups (25 in STORM alone) • Service Agencies (which includes stewardship groups, such as the trail association and the Oak Ridges Moraine Land Trust) • Reform Alliances (STORM itself) • NGOs (FON, NCC, CEDF, among others).

As well, it had support from at least one philanthropist, Neptis Foundation founder Martha Shuttleworth, who, at Save the Rouge’s request, provided some of the funds for educational publicity materials to encourage people to attend the Richmond Hill meetings to show support for Moraine protection. It also had support from experts and others in the state sector. And it had important “silent partners” in the media, reporters from mainstream Toronto and community newspapers whose consistent reporting gave the Moraine issue a high profile. It helped, MacKenzie said, that SRVS spokesman Glenn De Baeremaeker “speaks in sound bites” and that there were several “brash talkative MPPs” like Gilchrist and Clement commenting on the file.

This was a stronger environmental coalition than had existed on the Niagara Escarpment. This coalition provided a lot of legitimacy and support for politicians considering greenspace protection measures, and for decisions to include ECSOs in stakeholder negotiations. Its diversity was helpful in surfacing new strategies and framing ideas. The breadth of the environmental coalition also helped the groups that undertook stakeholder negotiations; having a radical flank – in the form of the more confrontational groups like Save the Rouge – helped make STORM and FON appear reasonable.

Key Actors

Key actors emerged in a number of unpredictable ways.

An old boys’ club of sorts emerged around the sport of rugby. David Donnelly, David Miller and John MacKenzie knew each other from playing in the same league. The league acted very much like Putnam’s bowling league, providing a space of weak ties, validating the character of people from different networks.

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There was also a girls’ club of women leaders who trusted each other to get the work done and share the credit for success appropriately. Their networks were also full of other women, such as Kathy Guselle, who were managing the work of smaller, local groups.

There was a certain amount of luck in the intersection of these key social entrepreneurs. Or, as Crandall (2007) put it, “It’s all been serendipity!” She herself was a good example of this, being one of the prescient and fortunate early investors in the successful board game Trivial Pursuit, one of whose inventors was her brother-in-law Chris Haney. “I could never have done what I did if I had been working to earn a living,” she said (Rollings 2008). A more ironic example of serendipity at work was that of Linda Pim, who was laid off from the Niagara Escarpment Commission due to the Harris budget cuts and landed at Ontario Nature in time for the Moraine campaign.

Successful Strategies

STORM’s goal was to secure passage of legislation that the government didn’t want. First of all, the provincial government of the day as well as most municipal governments were pro-growth, despite some limp efforts and lip service given to putting the environment first. Secondly, as one member of CONE observed after the Escarpment Plan was adopted, “The plan has generated much more controversy and required much more energy than politicians are likely to accept again” (Green 1993, 8). STORM needed to both engage with government and to oppose its status quo policies in order to achieve its goals. Its key strategies and strengths can be summarized in five points:

Sustain the vision over time

The Oak Ridges Moraine campaign spanned more than one electoral cycle. STORM sustained the vision of a Moraine-wide plan over time, keeping the idea alive, nurturing relationships, and engaging in practical work like raising funds, educating the public, and promoting stewardship and recreational projects.

Shape the discourse

The ECSO coalition shaped the discourse over time, adjusting to changing situations and engaging wider publics. Some discourses were deployed to attract members of the public;

Chapter 5 - Oak Ridges Moraine Campaign 147 others were more persuasive with state and other ECSO audiences. As with the Niagara Escarpment campaign, the idea of leaving a legacy played an important role in resolving the issue.

Develop useful partnerships

As STORM partnered with other groups, it increased the number and diversity of its members. The increase in sheer numbers improved its ability to pressure government. The increase in diversity made it easier to make connections with actors in other places and scales or in public or private life. The more the coalition grew, the more it cut across political divides. A larger and more diverse coalition meant access to more resources.

Mobilize the public

It is unlikely government would have acted without the ECSO coalition mobilizing the public to push it to act. Mobilizing the public provided ECSOs with the legitimacy state actors needed to engage with them formally and informally. This increased the roles environmentalists could effectively fill: task force members, sources of research, lobbyists, and participants in public consultations and legal challenges. This furthered their ability to test new ideas in a politically safe space and to build relationships, trust and credibility.

Nurture social entrepreneurs

Civil society also provided a testing ground for social entrepreneurs who learned from one another. In some cases, ECSOs provided a safe landing for sympathetic bureaucrats who lost their jobs with the Harris cuts. Their connections and intimate knowledge of how government worked was helpful to the Moraine campaign. Civil society developed its social entrepreneurs into people who could hold their own against powerful opponents in deliberative settings.

In summary, STORM and its partners built capacity and helped to level the playing field for greenspace protection policies.

Values

Values tend to remain relatively constant over the years, so it is not surprising that the tensions seen on the Escarpment between values related to individualism and

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communitarianism remained. The environmentalists were torn between idealism and pragmatism, between the desire for change and the desire for order. This played out in conflicts about “playing by the rules.” As Crandall (2007) put it, “I think playing by the rules is important, whatever they are. . . If we are criticizing others of taking those rules and throwing them out, aren’t we beholden to play by the rules ourselves?” Playing by the rules helps build public support, even if it makes the battle tougher in other ways.

3.1.3 Narratives, Discourses & Paradigms

The Moraine campaign was a struggle between the forces of landscape exploitation and landscape protection, each with a full array of ideas at their service.

Landscape Exploitation

The suburban growth coalition that argued for greenfield development – landscape exploitation – started from a private enterprise cultural paradigm that saw the goals of economic growth and profit-making go virtually unquestioned. The word “growth” is itself an important frame, as it usually summons visions of children growing into adults and buds growing into flowers. Even bad growth is usually termed a “cancer,” leaving the word “growth” with the positive associations.

But the growth coalition began to become sensitive to criticisms of the financial breaks it was getting from the Harris development charge reforms, which had the effect of pushing more infrastructure costs onto municipal taxpayers. Under the prior development charge rules, most of the costs of building a “complete community” were subject to development charges, to make sure that “growth pays for itself.” Development charge rules are “permissive” legislation, in the sense that municipalities are enabled but not required to collect these charges. Many municipalities, being pro-growth, gave discounts to developers to encourage them to build in their communities. This was a typical strategy in municipalities that had already invested in hard infrastructure like sewers. The 1997 Harris reforms gave municipalities less money from developers and less ability to decide for themselves what their communities needed. Most municipalities continued to discount development charges to get the growth sooner than other locales so that they could more quickly pay off the debt they were now incurring for needed infrastructure.

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Over time, it became clear, though, that property taxes from new homes were not covering these costs. Local residents – old and new – were paying more property taxes for the same or fewer facilities.

The development industry claimed in public hearings for the 1997 Development Charges Act that the reforms would result in lower-priced and more affordable homes. But the existing growth paradigm provides for prices to be set by the market, regardless of inputs such as development charges. In fact, in the years after 1997, average housing prices in the GTA went up (see Figure 5.5). With housing prices and property taxes rising and built facilities failing to keep pace with community needs, the public responded positively to the idea of preserving nature as an amenity – one that incurred few if any property tax increases and for which many residents had moved to the urban fringe.

Figure 5.5 Average House Prices in the GTA, 1954 – 2014

Robinsky and Hanbidge 2015, based on data from the Toronto Real Estate Board

Landscape Protection

The environmentalists who argued for greenspace protection started from a communitarian paradigm that expected people to work together for the health and well- being of the community. Nature was increasingly seen as a public good that should be protected for present and future generations. As Ron Kanter observed in his 1990 report Space for All:

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“Greenlands” have traditionally been viewed primarily as public recreation parks. In recent years, however, a fundamental shift in thinking has been occurring. People are starting to consider greenlands as significant to their own personal health and enjoyment as well as to the overall health of the environment. The importance of natural ecosystems, significant wildlife habitats, forested areas and major physiographic features is an emerging public value. (2)

The growing tendency for Ontarians to embrace nature as a positive value for all was also observed a few years later during the Lands for Life public consultations. A common theme was that the people of Ontario have a great love of the Outdoors. This was seen in the young and the old alike, and even in those without the ability to use it. Presentations to the Round Tables showed that the Outdoors is deeply entrenched as part of Ontario’s culture no matter if one is a logger, camper, hunter, artist, tourist or prospector. (Mackasey 1999, 926)

Attitudes about nature have been complex throughout history. Nature is the source of food, water and beauty, but also of predators, pathogens and extreme weather. Nature was variously to be revered – hence, “Mother Nature” – or tamed. Mace (2014) argues that since 1960 framings about the purpose of nature conservation fall into four categories: • “Nature for itself,” or nature without people, which prioritizes conservation of intact wilderness areas and species preservation • “Nature despite people,” a view that recognizes the increasingly negative impacts of human activity on nature – habitat loss, over-harvesting, introduction of invasive species – and focuses on reversing or reducing threats to habitats and species • “Nature for people,” which recognizes nature as supplier of ecosystem services people need, requiring integrated management to sustain these benefits • “People and nature,” a more nuanced view of nature as ecosystem services supplier, which acknowledges that the needs of both people and wildlife need to be balanced and rules created to promote the resilience of both.

She sees these frames co-existing today even though they emerged historically, beginning with “nature for itself,” which stimulated creation of national and provincial nature preserves by groups like the Federation of Ontario Nature and the Nature Conservancy of Canada. Views of nature then evolved as human impacts on the environment worsened. The Niagara Escarpment would tend to fall into the “nature despite people” category

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because of the focus on reversing habitat loss; and the Moraine would fall into the “nature for people” category because of its focus on preserving water function.28

These framings ignore the less scientific views of nature as landscape amenity, spiritual resource and recreational asset, which are often the motivations behind non-scientists involving themselves in greenspace protection campaigns. Indeed, commercial and political marketers both emphasize the need to appeal to people’s emotions in order to get them to buy a product or support a political candidate (Ries and Trout 2001; Westen 2007). Consequently, the ECSOs used images of fragile-looking Jefferson Salamanders, winsome deer and playful chipmunks to appeal to people with wildlife concerns and win their support. However, the OMB bases its decisions on “evidence” of good planning and ignores wildlife concerns as personal preferences unless they are grounded in technical studies (Makuch, Craik and Leisk 2004).

The ECSOs consequently developed a strategy that relied heavily on the kind of scientific discourse the board might find acceptable and went about educating the public about it, organizing workshops featuring experts in conservation biology. The public was taught that the Moraine is a water recharge area and drinking water source. The Moraine was described as the region’s “rain barrel” in what turned out to be the most influential metaphor of the campaign. It was mentioned repeatedly in pamphlets, flyers and news reports. It was easy to picture and understand. These arguments attracted the interest of Toronto residents and politicians concerned about the condition of rivers that began on the Moraine and flowed through their city. Public concerns about water quality were reinforced by the Walkerton crisis.

Another image, less discussed but influential, was that of a trail crossing the entire length of the Moraine, as the Bruce Trail traverses the Niagara Escarpment. The trail vision captivated Minister Hodges, according to Crandall. As Natalie Helferty noted, people in the city liked the idea that nature was “out there,” waiting for them when they were ready to explore it. The idea of nature as a legacy, to be preserved and passed on to future

28 The Ontario Greenbelt fits squarely into the last category, “people and nature,” as will be discussed in the next chapter.

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generations, was influential for these armchair naturalists and for the minister, just as it had been for the cabinet ministers who finally approved the Niagara Escarpment Plan.

The other ubiquitous images used by the ECSOs were of bulldozers, destroying natural habitat and paving it over, and aerial shots of treeless sub-divisions with row upon row of boxy single family homes. Environmentalists had been railing against urban sprawl for some time. By 2000, they were beginning to realize they needed to develop positive images of what suitable development might look like on the local level, and they embraced smart growth.

Landscape for All?

State actors attempted to find a balanced solution, and deployed old ideas about local autonomy and new ideas about smart growth.

One of the instigating patterns that led to formation of STORM was the many times the Ontario Municipal Board overturned local official plans and upset communities’ expectations about greenspace protection. In downloading more responsibility for local planning to municipalities in the 1996 reforms, the Harris government claimed it was giving municipalities more local autonomy. However, this tended to serve the interests of the development industry, which found it easy to outgun the municipalities. Moreover, by failing to provide a firm legal context in a legalistic planning regime, the province failed to give municipalities the tools they needed to assert local autonomy; instead, there were differences of interpretation, leading to conflict and eventually paralysis (Hanna and Webber 2010). The Harris government began to reluctantly admit it needed a strategy to make development more acceptable to its suburban base, which was “ground zero” for most of the land use conflict. That strategy was smart growth, with its implicit promise of giving people the “best of both worlds”: growth and environmental protection. In January 2001, the government launched its Smart Growth Initiative. When it passed the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan a year later, it said that the act and plan were “key elements of Smart Growth. . . the Ontario government’s long-term strategy for promoting and managing growth in ways that build strong communities, sustain a strong economy and promote a healthy environment” (MMAH 2002b, 3).

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3.2 Institutional Trajectories

As in the Niagara Escarpment campaign, the Moraine campaign followed a pattern that began with an expression of provincial interest, followed by enabling legislation, plan development and finally plan adoption. Getting an expression of provincial interest was the “foot in the door” that provided access to more state resources to do the necessary technical studies that eventually underpinned greenspace protection policies. This suggests that, to make progress on major change, it may be enough to get agreement on a process that begins with studying a specific area or proposal; this appears to have been the point when a new institutional path was created. The process of gathering information followed the pattern of “softening up” that Kingdon (1995) observed in his study of policy-making on the U.S.’s Capitol Hill. Displacing the old pattern of piecemeal protection with a new one of regional protection followed when a “window of opportunity” opened. ECSO actors had been preparing for the moment by raising funds, recruiting volunteers, and lining up political and media allies. It was the venerable Ontario Nature that knew that the Gilchrist affair was the “window” and said, “Now we jump,” Crandall (2007) said.

4 Conclusion

To turn social capital into political capital – the ability to get things done legislatively – a coalition needs to offer state actors one or more of the governing resources they need. At election time, this is votes, which confer legitimacy on the party elected to office. In between elections, public opinion approximates electoral legitimacy. Coalitions that can bridge to the average voter have an edge in building political capital. STORM and its partners were richer in bridging social capital, hence better able to build these bridges than the developer coalition.

The rationale for both coalition-building and provincial legislation on the Oak Ridges Moraine was similar to the logic behind landscape connectivity: piecemeal does not work. Just as biologists were finding that islands of protected space were not sufficient to protect species, environmentalists were finding that the separate efforts of groups and councils to control development on the Moraine were not working. Many of the local disputes had a

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NIMBY character – on both the environmentalist and developer sides. One side didn’t want a back yard full of “industrial-strength suburbanization” (Barber 2005), while the opposing side didn’t want “green sprawl.” The environmental leaders provided the vision and long-range thinking that lifted a series of local environmental disputes into a campaign for a more ecologically sustainable region. They literally and figuratively staked out the higher ground.

But they were only partially able to challenge the status quo (see Table 5.2). The environmental coalition needed to engage with state and market actors and play by their rules to make a stakeholder process work because they could not rely, as the Escarpment activists could, on cabinet members to stand up for them. Some of the ECSO campaigners, in trying to reach an agreement, were almost too reasonable, willing to put up with estate lot development (Helferty 2007). They were not against all growth, just growth that they saw as too damaging ecologically. In the end, they were able to craft an agreement based on a framing of the issue as preservation of the performance of ecological functions.

The ECSO leaders lost a lot of ground on one per cent of the Moraine – in Richmond Hill – but achieved protection on most of the rest of it. In working within the growth framework, the ECSO coalition accepted reality. The ECSOs made the Moraine “safe” for development by finding a regional spatial solution to the growth problem. They also made the Moraine more profitable for developers by drawing attention to the amenity value of natural heritage, which then became featured in developers’ advertising for new housing in Moraine communities.

The environmentalists were forced to pin their hopes on incremental change, with a Moraine land use plan layered on top of other planning rules. The plan was a compromise, with some of STORM’s members feeling short-changed by not getting an oversight agency equivalent to the Niagara Escarpment Commission. But they gained the ORM Foundation, whose membership is theoretically better suited to the task of protection: two nominees from the environmental community, two from the Ontario Government, and one each from Conservation Ontario (usually a conservation authority representative), the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, and the federal government. In 2016, a majority were environmentalists.

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Table 5.2 Did the Moraine Campaign Successfully Challenge the Status Quo? YES NO Success Factors The campaign . . . The campaign . . . Clear vision and/or The Plan was a visionary response to The political party in power catalyzing issue problems that were building up tried to subvert the vision. incrementally. Opponents eventually agreed with the goal of preserving natural functions on the Moraine.

Policy network The policy network included local, The network tended to with diverse regional and provincial groups, and even sideline municipal state actors opponents during stakeholder actors and privilege market negotiations. actors.

Different kinds of The process and plan were based on The process and plan knowledge local knowledge as well as cutting edge continued to privilege science and awareness of current growth. planning practices

Public The process engaged an enormous The process resorted to engagement number of people in social learning, secret stakeholder with civil society leaders actively negotiations when a public engaged in negotiations for legislation consensus was elusive. and implementation.

Accountability During the process, there was regular The plan’s first review was debriefing of coalition members, even delayed, leaving it without when this produced conflict. The Plan is needed improvements and subject to 10-year reviews, with foundation funding. municipal planning decisions taking place in public.

Supportive Provincial interest provided a mandate The Plan is enforced by local institutions for the process. The Plan is enforced by leaders who are too often municipalities, whose local sites make pro-growth; backed up by a them accessible; backed up by a foundation that was not foundation whose board members are given the tools it needed to more likely to be pro-protection. do its job properly.

The Moraine also was short-changed in terms of the money attached to each of these organizations. The Niagara Escarpment Commission was initially given $25 million for land purchases in addition to an annual revenue stream from the province – supporting an operating budget of $2.5 million in 2015 (NEC 2015). Meanwhile, the province suspended funding to the ORM Foundation after it spent most of its 10-year allocation of

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$15 million in 2011, and the foundation was preparing for a possible closure, according to its financial statements.

Failing to get some sort of agency to monitor cumulative impacts of development on the Moraine was truly ironic since it was the identification of this gap by the Environmental Assessment Advisory Committee (EAAC) in its report on the Ganaraska in 1989 that led to the founding of STORM. The impact of development just outside the protected areas on the “skirts” of the Moraine was beginning to add up. Environmentalists realized it might be just as important to protect the hillsides as the hilltops.

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Chapter 6 The Greenbelt Campaign (2002-2005): Consolidating Change

“Great works are performed, not by strength, but endurance.” ~ Samuel Johnson

1 Introduction

By April 2002, when Progressive Conservative Premier Mike Harris stepped down from office and Ernie Eves took his place, it was clear the government was running out of steam. Its “Common Sense Revolution” of less government in exchange for lower taxes was looking less and less like common sense to the electorate, which was worried about failures in systems to protect water quality and was increasingly turning towards greener policies, like the recently proclaimed Oak Ridges Moraine protection legislation that the government had reluctantly passed. The Opposition Liberals seemed poised to form the next government. Environmentalists sensed it was a good time to push for more.

Both the Moraine plan and the Escarpment plan that preceded it contained compromise measures, agreed to in order to get legislation passed. Both plans had nearly died as a result of extended processes that resulted when supportive governments were replaced by less enthusiastic ones. Both plans had fans and detractors, and the detractors were very powerful politically and financially. The problem that faced the environmental coalition after the Moraine campaign was how to consolidate and possibly enhance its victories, perhaps winning back some of the protected area lost during the earlier campaigns.

This chapter examines the campaign to consolidate greenspace protection by creating an extra, larger layer of protection: a greenbelt. The ECSOs saw a probable change of government as a window of opportunity to prepare for. After considering the preparation, execution and aftermath of this campaign, the chapter focuses on the processes involved in designing a new institution and embedding it.

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2 The Greenbelt Plan Story 2.1 Background

The area that now comprises the Greenbelt includes 430,000 acres on the Niagara Escarpment, 470,000 acres on the Oak Ridges Moraine and an additional one million acres of protected greenspace for a total of approximately 1.8 million acres (see Figure 6.1).29 Covering about 21% of the Greater Golden Horseshoe, the Greenbelt runs through parts of 98 municipalities: the cities of Toronto and Hamilton, as well as the lower-tier cities and towns in the 14 regional municipalities of Northumberland, Peterborough, Kawartha Lakes, Durham, York, Simcoe, Dufferin, Grey, Bruce, Peel, Halton, Wellington, Waterloo, and Niagara. Its ecosystem: • Encompasses 535,000 acres of lakes, river valleys, wetlands and forests (Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation 2015) • Provides protected wildlife habitat for 78 species at risk (Ibid.) • Provides woodland cover of 28% in the protected countryside, 38% in the Moraine plan area, and 49% in the Escarpment plan area (MMAH 2015b), and • Wetland cover of 17%, 7% and 9% in the three areas, respectively, as of 2000-2002 when data was last inventoried (Ibid.).

This ecosystem contributes an estimated $2.6 billion a year in environmental services such as water filtration and treatment, flood control and pollination (David Suzuki Foundation and Ontario Nature 2011.). The David Suzuki Foundation estimated in 2012 that the Greenbelt’s forests, wetlands and agricultural lands contributed $378.4 million a year in carbon storage and sequestration that mitigate climate change (Tomalty 2012).

The Greenbelt falls within the jurisdiction of 14 conservation authorities, whose mandate is to protect and manage water and natural resources in partnership with government, landowners and other agencies. Some 70% of the Greenbelt – 85% of protected countryside areas, 80% of the Moraine area and 30% of the Escarpment plan area – is now covered by completed watershed plans (MMAH 2015b).

29 This account uses the units of measurement that the Liberal government and Greenbelt Foundation use to describe the Greenbelt and its features.

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Figure 7.1 Map of GGH Protected Greenspace & Urban Growth

As the Crow Flies Cartography for the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation

The Greenbelt provides the province with an estimated $9.1 billion in economic benefits and the equivalent of 161,000 full-time jobs (Econometric 2012). These figures include $3 billion in direct benefits, including the equivalent of 75,500 full-time jobs in agriculture, forestry, tourism and recreation – labour-intensive industries with jobs that “represent highly recurrent activities whose impacts are considered to be sustainable and cumulative” (Ibid., 2). To provide some perspective, the province’s fish, forestry, mining, quarrying and oil and gas extraction sectors together employ 42,300 (Ibid.). The other $6.1 billion in economic benefits are indirect and induced, for example, involving the processing of crops and livestock into food products.

More than 40% of the Greenbelt is in agricultural production (MMAH 2015b). This land includes the two specialty crop areas that get the highest protection: the 15,000-acre

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Holland Marsh area on the border of Simcoe and York regions, whose major crops are carrots, onions and other vegetables, and the 85,000-acre Niagara Peninsula Tender Fruit and Grape Area, which produces pears, peaches, plums, cherries and grapes (Ibid.). These specialty crops constitute 27% of Greenbelt farm products, followed by grain and field crops, 19%; beef cattle, 18.6%; and other fruit, such as apples, 13.8% (Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation 2015). Other farm products grown, raised or produced in the Greenbelt are horticultural goods (flowers, sod and landscaping plants), pork, lamb, poultry, and maple syrup.

Most of the approximately 5,500 farms in the Greenbelt are still family farms (Ibid.). However, farmland within the Greater Golden Horseshoe has fallen from a historic high of 22.2 million acres (9 million hectares) to 12.4 million acres (5 million hectares) zoned agricultural (5 million hectares), and only 9.9 million acres (4 million hectares) still farmable, according to one interviewee’s estimates.

Although agriculture is the main economic activity within the Greenbelt, the picturesque countryside has generated a growing rural tourism industry, based in part on an extensive trail network. Its 10,000 kilometres of trails includes a 475-kilometre signed cycling route from the east end of Rice Lake in Northumberland to the Niagara River (Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation 2015).

2.2 2001-2003: Sowing the Seeds

2.2.1 Private Conversations

The idea for what would become the GGH Greenbelt was hatched in 2001 during a lull in the Richmond Hill OMB hearing. Conservation biologists Reed Noss and Natalie Helferty, Save the Rouge leader Glenn De Baeremaeker, and lawyers Alan Heisey and David Donnelly were relaxing at a table in a Chinese restaurant in a mall, Donnelly (2015) recalled. We were asking ourselves: what next? Reed Noss said you need to connect them all. Start with the major landforms. Look at A2A [a campaign to protect biodiversity in a connected region from Algonquin Park to the Adirondack

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Mountains in New York30] Why not connect with it? That seemed too large, so on a napkin we sketched out . . . a greenbelt on a bio-regional scale.

It was dubbed by Helferty as the NOAH Project, short for Niagara Escarpment-Oak Ridges-Algonquin to Adirondack Heritage Project, because it looked like an arc and performed like Noah’s Ark, saving wildlife and diversity (Helferty 2002).

Other private conversations were occurring within the Ontario public service, where scientists were beginning to identify lands for a possible greenbelt, Donnelly said. Two of them had identified 600,000 acres that had clear scientific justification, and more acreage could be justified by adding in buffers, he said.

2.2.2 Public Conversations

The private conversations were taking place within a backdrop of public conversations that related to environmental protection.

Environmental activists were excited about research that showed landscape connectivity enhanced conservation efforts aimed at sustaining biodiversity. The Federation of Ontario Naturalists sponsored a symposium June 14-17, 2001, at York University called “Woods Talk: Community Action to Conserve Ontario’s Woodlands,” featuring conservation biologist Reed Noss, then sent a CD from it to every municipality in Ontario with the message, “We need to talk.” With the passage of the Oak Ridges Moraine protection legislation, research and concepts like the NOAH Project and Ontario Nature’s greenway became the topic of conversation at urban forestry and other conferences.

The general public’s conversations, however, leaned more to how to avoid another Walkerton tragedy. As Environmental Defence lawyer David Donnelly (2007) put it: “It changed the public’s perception of government and its responsibility for clean water.”

For public health and other officials, on-going conversations about the loss of agricultural land took on added urgency after the events of September 11, 2001. The closing of the

30 The A2A region includes the Frontenac Arch and Champlain-Adirondack biosphere reserves. At 93,000 square kilometres, it is far larger than the 7,300-square-kilometre Greenbelt. (Information accessed April 5, 2016, from http://www.a2acollaborative.org.)

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border between Canada and the U.S. in the days immediately following the tragedy was a stark reminder of the danger of complacency and the importance of local food supplies to the Toronto region, which imports more than half its produce from the U.S. and Mexico (Halton Region 2007).

Another kind of conversation was about road congestion. Business complained that it was losing millions of dollars a year with people and products idling on highways; public health groups pointed to all that idling as contributing to air pollution and smog-related illness and death; and ECSOs lamented all the wildlife that became road kill. In January 2001, Premier Mike Harris announced the Smart Growth Initiative with six goals: • Grow towards a better future • Improve competitiveness and increase opportunity • Make better decisions about infrastructure • Create transportations choices • Protect and enhance the environment • Build livable communities. (Central Ontario Smart Growth Panel 2003)

2.2.3 Smart Growth

Despite the fact that the Smart Growth Secretariat was set up by a government notoriously opposed to government intervention in planning, it was a serious undertaking, according to several interview subjects. There had been research going on internally showing the need for greater intensification since at least the creation of the Office of the Greater Toronto Area in 1988. Reports showed that billions of dollars in infrastructure spending could be saved by concentrating growth and stopping the spread of residential and commercial development into the rural fringe. At first, this work failed to resonate with the Harris government. Meanwhile, the internal research was increasingly being supported by international groups, advisory panels, and, in the GTA, by local governments such as Toronto’s, whose 2002 report Growing Together: Prospects for Renewal in the Toronto Region called for greenways, greenbelts and “a clearly defined urban boundary that has regional significance”(GHK 2002, 115). Also adding its voice to the conversation was a new urban think tank called the Neptis Foundation.

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The founder of Neptis, Martha Shuttleworth, a member of the philanthropic Ivey family, had inherited money in the early 1980s and decided it should be used for charitable purposes. She worked for years with non-smokers' rights activist Garfield Mahood, learning how to have impact, before setting up her own foundation. She called on her friends for help, advice and credibility: former husband Tony Coombes, who had been chief planner for the City of Toronto; former Toronto mayor John Sewell, who had practiced law with her late brother; and her former neighbours in the downtown Toronto “Annex” neighbourhood, urbanist Jane Jacobs and Toronto Star reporter Sid Adilman. As a result of her international travels, Shuttleworth had come to believe that it was important to consider the needs of both the downtowns and suburbs of cities, leading her to favour a regional approach to improving the functioning of the places where people live. Her aim was to provide non-partisan, inter-disciplinary research that would help policy-makers deal with the obvious problems in the GTA. Its first project was called Portrait of a Region. Within days of its release, the Greater Toronto Services Board ordered 1,700 copies (Shuttleworth 2013).

The Smart Growth Secretariat spent about a year in preliminary consultations before appointing in February 2002 a Central Ontario Panel to study the Greater Golden Horseshoe region with then Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion as its chair. At about this time, Shuttleworth, Jane Jacobs and McCallion were all at the same event. Jacobs introduced Shuttleworth to McCallion (Ibid.). Neptis subsequently was hired to do several important background studies for the panel.

Among the most influential studies published by Neptis was its report on what Southern Ontario (extending from Kitchener-Waterloo to Peterborough) would look like if it were to continue with then-current policies. The report, which became known as the Business- as-Usual scenario, was released in August 2002 and predicted that by 2031: • Population would continue to grow by 100,000 people a year, increasing from 7.4 million to 10.5 million in the study area and consuming an additional 1,070 square kilometres (almost double the area of the City of Toronto). • About 69% of newly urbanized land would be Class 1 agricultural land (as classified by the Canadian Land Inventory), and 92% would be Class 1, 2 or 3.

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• Car ownership would increase by 50%, daily trips by 53%, daily kilometres travelled by car by 64%, fuel consumption by 44% and average rush hour commute times by 45%. • GO train ridership would increase by 58% and GO operating and maintenance costs by 130%. • Capital investments of $44 billion or $1.4 billion a year would be needed for transportation renewal and enhancement. • For households, commuting costs would increase by 35% and auto operating and maintenance costs by 65%. • As traffic volumes increased, so would traffic accidents, rising in costs from $3.8 billion to $6.3 billion a year. • Emissions of greenhouse gases would increase by 42%. (Neptis Foundation 2002) The Neptis research was widely reported and quoted.

The Central Ontario Smart Growth Panel consisted of 18 members: nine mayors, deputy mayors, reeves or regional chairs from Toronto, Hamilton, Mississauga, York Region, Whitby, Brant County, Burlington, Oakville, and Smith-Ennismore-Lakefield; two ECSO leaders; two developers; one academic; and one official each from Waterloo Region transportation and environmental services, GO Transit, Bell Canada and the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation. Another 30 people from municipal government, the planning field, the aggregate industry, and civil society groups concerned with transit, waste management and conservation were recruited a month later to serve on sub-panels on growth management strategy, gridlock and waste management. No one was appointed from the agricultural industry, although the executive director of the Ontario Rural Council31 served on the growth management panel. At that point, growth management was driven by urban concerns of gridlock and infrastructure costs rather than rural or agricultural concerns or impacts.

An important member of the panel was Rob MacIsaac, then mayor of Burlington, a large suburb of both Toronto and Hamilton through which the Niagara Escarpment runs. MacIsaac first became interested in smart growth when he sat on the Greater Toronto Services Board as mayor of Burlington and heard a presentation by planning lawyer Bob

31 The Ontario Rural Council has since merged with the Centre for Rural Leadership to form the Rural Ontario Institute.

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Onyschuk on the topic. MacIsaac then hosted a summit on smart growth in the GTA, featuring noted planner Joe Berridge and attracting Minister Chris Hodgson and Opposition Leader Dalton McGuinty. “So I developed a bit of a profile as a mayor interested in this stuff,” he said. Hodgson and Mike Harris asked him to join the Central Ontario Smart Growth Panel, and chair McCallion asked him to lead the sub-panel on growth management strategy. He agreed because he thought it was important “to get ahead of the issue”: “Regional government had outlived its usefulness. Developers were picking off municipalities one by one. We needed a city-region approach for efficiencies.” He also agreed to serve because a multi-stakeholder approach to smart growth made sense to him. He saw smart growth as a balancing act: “It was about the maximum economic benefit while minimizing the environmental and social impacts.”

The panel established its three sub-panels in March 2002. It discussed about one white paper a month, culminating in one on energy costs. Panel member Jim Faught, then executive director of FON, recalled that McCallion’s reaction was “We should have had this one first! We need smart growth because we can’t afford sprawl. The energy costs will kill us.” Faught added that even the developers could agree on this point, admitting that, where they had been forced to do denser development, they did save on the energy they used.

In November, the panel issued a draft vision and principles for public comment. It consulted the public and stakeholders throughout the region from December 2002 to March 2003, releasing its final report in April. Meanwhile, Neptis released a report on Greenlands in the Central Ontario Zone that recommended a “Central Ontario Zone Plan that knits together the existing Official Plans into a linked and coherent vision” that identifies areas that deserve protection in a “natural heritage system of Central Ontario” (Fraser 2003, 26).

In the end, panel members felt vindicated by the Smart Growth process, which managed to break down silos and force a better integration of policies, according to MacIsaac. Its final report, Shape the Future, made 12 process recommendation and 44 substantive ones aimed at managing growth to protect the environment, reduce gridlock, modernize waste management, and optimize existing infrastructure. It called for a return to comprehensive

Chapter 6 - Greenbelt Campaign 166 planning and clear direction from the province on how to balance resources. Notably, it called on the province to: • “Manage growth within the context of the natural-heritage system and protection of unique and irreplaceable agricultural lands” (Strategic Direction #3) • “Recognize rural lands (outside of settlement areas) as primarily for sustainable resource use and protection (this includes agriculture, forests, water, aggregates, and natural-heritage features, etc.)” (Strategic Direction #8), and • “Identify a natural-heritage system (NHS) of core areas and corridors and linkages, and make growth decision within the context of protecting and managing the system. This NHS should be developed at the scale of the central zone.” (Strategic Direction #11) (Central Ontario Smart Growth Panel 2003, 2-3)

When the Liberals were elected in October 2003, panel members argued that its work should not go to waste. The Liberal government agreed, rebranding the Smart Growth Secretariat as the Ontario Growth Secretariat.

Meanwhile, ECSOs were conducting a smart growth exercise of their own, regularly invoking the idea in their messaging. FON had conducted a strategic planning exercise that identified sprawl as the biggest threat to wildlife and wetlands because of loss of habitat, increased traffic, and air and water pollution from poorly managed growth. In October 2002, it formally launched its smart growth campaign with the publication A Smart Future for Ontario: How to Protect Nature and Curb Urban Sprawl in Your Community, which was widely circulated. FON staff members went on the road, holding workshops co-sponsored by local environmental groups. FON also targeted key politicians from all three parties and lobbied them with the message that the Moraine plan was not enough to stop sprawl.

2.2.4 Building an Election Platform

In late 2002, the Opposition Liberals were busy researching and designing what they hoped would be a winning platform in the provincial election that was expected within the year. The Liberals had a very sweeping municipal reform plan that included such measures as changes to the wording of the Provincial Policy Statement (PPS), which provides direction on matters of provincial interest related to land use planning. At the time, the PPS only required that municipalities’ official plans and policies “have due regard for” provincial direction; environmentalists and many planners felt municipal

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plans and policies should “be consistent with” the PPS. The PPS was important but difficult for the average citizen to understand or care about, said one insider: “We needed concrete ideas to demonstrate we were serious about sprawl.” They turned to two key players from the Moraine campaign: Save the Rouge and FON.

Two meetings took place with McGuinty, senior policy advisor Gerald Butts, and Dave Harvey, McGuinty’s advisor on environmental and municipal issues. At the first meeting, the environmentalists pitched the NOAH concept, explaining that it was a greenbelt, which clicked with McGuinty, who, as an MPP from Ottawa, appreciated the impact a greenbelt could have. As he would later explain, “I sensed we had a unique opportunity to do something of enduring consequence.” 32

At the second meeting, McGuinty’s people asked lots of specific questions. At this point, the environmentalists complained about the deal to allow developers to build 6,600 houses on the Moraine in addition to receiving developable land in Pickering, so the Liberals decided to put the cancellation of those approvals in their platform. The Liberals initially promised to add 600,000 acres to the already protected Escarpment and Moraine areas, for a total greenbelt of 1.5 million acres. This number was comfortably larger than the 469,500 acres protected by the Harris Conservatives on the Moraine. But Save the Rouge leader Glenn De Baeremaeker pressed for a larger and “rounder” number – as much as two million acres. Finally, one million was decided upon as a good pitch (Donnelly 2015). This was important for the Moraine, where activists had been unable to get the two-kilometre buffers that they felt were needed to protect resident wildlife and capture more water for underground aquifers. It was important for the Escarpment, where opposition three decades before had reduced the size of the protected area.

Discussions with planners Joe Berridge and Tony Coombs convinced the Liberals a natural green barrier was doable; the key pieces were already in place and just needed to be connected into a cohesive whole. The ECSOs got a letter of commitment from the

32 Personal communication, November 4, 2015. At a reception awarding McGuinty the 2015 Friend of the Greenbelt Award, he told me he didn’t realize how important the Ottawa greenbelt was in shaping the region until he moved to Toronto to serve as an MPP. That reception was the occasion at which he made the quoted remark.

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Liberals, and the Liberals announced the greenbelt promise, complete with map, in December 2002. In the party’s Strong Communities platform, the greenbelt was paired with a promise for a long-term growth management strategy that came to be known as Places to Grow.

2.3 2003-2005: Reaping the Harvest

2.3.1 Fumble & Recovery

Within days of the McGuinty Liberals’ October 2 victory, builders of Macleod’s Landing on the Oak Ridges Moraine held the grand opening of its sales office. Bulldozers graded the land and buyers began snapping up the 3,000 lots over the weekend. By Monday, David Donnelly was at a protest on the site, declaring that Thursday – the day the new cabinet was to be sworn in – would be the “grand closing” because the Liberals had promised to halt construction on the Moraine (Green 2003).

The sales office did close that Thursday at the new government’s request to allow time for a few weeks of negotiation. But the Liberals quickly decided they couldn’t stop the construction, citing legal advice, which was never made public but suggested they would be liable for millions of dollars in damages, according to John Gerretsen, who was Minister of Municipal Affairs & Housing at the time. Within two months of his election as premier, McGuinty was being tagged as a promise breaker by the media and critics – including some from the environmental movement. McGuinty needed redemption or, at least, a distraction.

For decades, Jim Bradley, the Liberal MPP from St. Catharines and a former environment minister in the Peterson government, had been promoting from within caucus the idea that the provincial government should protect the tender fruit lands in the Niagara region that he represented. As a city councillor, he had been disappointed at how his fellow councillors could not be trusted to protect agricultural land. He, like others, saw a future in local food production, which would secure food sources, preserve or create jobs, and reduce transportation costs, thereby reducing air pollution. “Where we have good agricultural land, we should preserve it,” he said. He wanted to get the job done once and for all. Cabinet saw the greenbelt as a tool for both preventing future sprawl and

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stemming the loss of agricultural land, Bradley said. Growth couldn’t be stopped, but it could be directed to certain areas and made more compact. But speedy action was imperative, given the pace of development.

So in November in the Speech from the Throne, McGuinty announced the government’s intention to create a greenbelt. In December, his government introduced the Greenbelt Protection Act, which put a moratorium on changes from rural to urban uses on land in a large study area to prevent land speculation and changes to official plans while the government consulted the public on the policies for a robust greenbelt and decided where the boundaries should go.33 The strategy worked – for both the government and environmentalists looking to see its greenbelt promise kept. Or, as David Donnelly put it, “We couldn’t stay mad forever, so we jumped on the bandwagon.”

McGuinty at first thought the greenbelt project belonged in the environment ministry, but Municipal Affairs Minister John Gerretsen persuaded him that as a growth management project it belonged in his ministry, where, he added, a lot of work on it had already been done. The ministry staff were motivated: “Some of them had wanted to do this kind of approach 10, 20 years earlier,” Gerretsen said.

But there were issues that didn’t exist 10 or 20 years ago, said John MacKenzie, a planner who had been seconded from the Ministry of the Environment to work on the Greenbelt. “We didn’t know how to wrap it all together. How were we to harmonize the plans? We were a little fuzzy on the agricultural issues.” He was asked to establish a task force that included all the stakeholders and had a “good” process.

2.3.2 The Greenbelt Task Force

The success of the Smart Growth process in creating buy-in led to adoption of a similar structure and process for the Greenbelt Task Force, which was appointed in February 2004. Another important ingredient was getting Rob MacIsaac as chair. MacIsaac was a believer in the greenbelt project but also someone with a reputation of being able to bring differing people together, Gerretsen said. Many people were skeptical about the

33 The Greenbelt Protection Act was eventually passed and proclaimed on June 24, 2004.

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usefulness of the task force. “MacIsaac brought gravitas to the process. He was very balanced,” MacKenzie said.

In addition to MacIsaac, who was then still mayor of Burlington, the task force consisted of 12 other members: ECSO leaders Jim Faught of FON, Natalie Helferty of Natural Heritage Consulting, and Deborah Schulte of the Humber Watershed Alliance; environmental lawyer Rod Northey; Russ Powell, Chief Administrative Officer of the Central Lake Ontario Conservation Authority; Alan Veale, former commissioner of planning and development for Niagara Region; developer representatives David Stewart of Mattamy Homes and Fraser Nelson of Metrus Developments Inc.; Carol Hochu, President of the Aggregate Producers Association of Ontario; Mary Lou Garr, a regional director of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture; Donald Ziraldo, President of Inniskillin Wines; and Associate Professor Michael Bunce of the University of Toronto, who was in the middle of field work for a Neptis Foundation report on farmers’ views on the viability of agriculture in the Toronto region.

An inter-ministry team provided support to the task force. In the early months, before public hearings began, the team briefed members on a wide range of topics – agriculture, the PPS, natural heritage, tourism – to “level the playing field” and make sure members had similar understandings of the issues. This work resulted in a discussion document, Towards a Golden Horseshoe Greenbelt: A Framework for Consultation, released in May, in which the task force said it was considering: • A systems approach for environmental protection that included provincially (and possibly also regionally) significant natural heritage and hydrological features and functions and connections between them • A holistic approach to agricultural resources protection that included land use policies and complementary infrastructure, economic development and taxation measures and related financial and legal tools to ensure agricultural industry viability.

Its only firm recommendation was that the province immediately strike a broadly-based stakeholder task force on agricultural viability, led by the Ministry of Agriculture & Food with membership from the ministries of finance, municipal affairs, natural resources, environment, consumer and business services, federal departments and others whose policies impact farming in Ontario.

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Shortly thereafter, Agriculture Minister Steve Peters appointed a two-person Agricultural Advisory Team, to report back by October. Hopes that the team would deal with pent-up problems farmers were facing were dashed when team members Lyle Vanclief, former federal minister of agriculture under the Chrétien government, and Bob Bedggood, a farmer and agricultural industry leader heavily involved in water quality issues, revealed in their July 13 invitation for submissions that their focus would be on land use policies. In retrospect, it is difficult to see how any team could have dealt with the long list of farmer concerns in such a short time; a later effort to cover the same concerns, the Golden Horseshoe Food and Farming Action Plan 2021 (GTA AAC 2012), took more than two years and involved four partner organizations, a steering committee representing 10 organizations, and funding from 19 governmental and non-governmental agencies.34 The OFA bitterly complained about the team’s chosen mandate and accused it of taking an adversarial approach with delegations (OFA 2004). The farming sector repeated these complaints when the task force began its public consultations.

The task force took its ideas “on the road,” partly to test them and get municipal input, and partly because “public consultation is part of the culture” of planning, MacIsaac said: “The collective wisdom – you benefit when you put stuff in front of any crowd, and you give them voice.” It held about a dozen stakeholder workshops and public meetings, eventually hearing from more than 1,200 people and receiving more than 1,000 submissions (Greenbelt Task Force 2004b).

Public Responses: The Environmentalists

Once the Greenbelt Protection Act was introduced, environmentalists knew a greenbelt would be approved. “The question was how big, how robust, how much retroactivity with some of these horrendous projects already in the pipeline,” said Rick Smith, then executive director of Environmental Defence Canada (EDC). ECSOs were concerned about the boundaries, which were not stipulated in the statute. “We were actually haggling about the boundaries until the end of the debate,” he said.

34 Similarly, Task Force member Michael Bunce, who had just finished interviewing farmers for the Neptis project, was not to issue his own report until a year later, in August 2005.

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EDC had been working with community groups on sprawl issues for years and then trying to use these issues to leverage larger policy change. At that point, the group had several such issues, dubbed “Greenbelt hot spots,” which were developed into a campaign to put a “face” on the need for a regional strategy, Smith said.

Smith also realized there was a need for a group like STORM for the Greenbelt campaign, so EDC created the Ontario Greenbelt Alliance (OGA). “We had these disparate groups and interests and needed a vehicle to knit local concerns into a broader coherent policy goal,” he said. So the hope – achieved – was that all these groups . . . could sit down together and could see their local struggle would be assisted by the Greenbelt being superimposed on top of the entire land mass. And that’s what happened. That was the critical element of our success in totally dominating many public hearings.

EDC’s leaders met in January 2004 with foundations that had supported them over the years to seek emergency funding. One of them was the Ivey Foundation, where EDC’s former executive director, Burkhard Mausberg, was then working. Four months later, the Ontario Greenbelt Alliance launched with 42 member groups and quickly grew to more than 70 (see Table 6.3 in section 3.1.2). Members of these groups wrote briefs and letters to the editor, enlisted friends and neighbours to attend public meetings, spoke at task force hearings, and issued reports like Ontario Nature’s Southern Ontario Greenway Strategy. OGA’s membership included a diverse array of provincial and national organizations, such as the David Suzuki Foundation, Greenpeace, the Ontario College of Family Physicians, the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, the Canadian Organic Growers and the Green Tourism Association. The Alliance argued for a larger greenbelt to protect threatened greenspace and prevent leapfrog development, and inclusion of specific areas, such as Boyd Park in Vaughan. It also wanted wider buffers than the 60 metres that was proposed; a tighter timeline for municipal conformity; a greenbelt-specific appeals tribunal; and a $100-million budget for land acquisition, habitat restoration and management issues. The Alliance was one of many groups that asked for more stringent controls on aggregate mining practices, but environmental leaders did not hold out much hope as the major consumers of aggregates were governments. “I can still remember the numbers,” Jim Faught said. “56 million tonnes of aggregate were going into the GTA every year, and 75% of that was for public infrastructure – roads, hospitals, etc.”

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Another group that formed in 2004 to support the greenbelt was the Municipal Leaders for the Greenbelt, founded by four municipal politicians: Toronto Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker, the former head of Save the Rouge; Markham Councillor Erin Shapero, who was active in the Moraine campaign; Ajax Mayor Steve Parish, an early adopter of “environment first” planning; and Oakville Councillor Allan Elgar, a founder of Oakvillegreen Conservation Association. They recruited another 20 elected officials. The group claimed that together they represented one million people. Their major concern was to get the government to establish permanent boundaries that could not be challenged in a forum where developers could prevail by virtue of their greater financial resources (Shapero 2013).

Public Responses: The Farmers

The loudest opposition to the proposed greenbelt came from the farming sector. For some it was an ideological issue, for others it was a land speculation issue. But, for many, it was an opportunity to raise long-simmering issues about agricultural viability. A common refrain in interviews, hearings and reports (e.g., Bunce and Maurer 2005) was “If you had helped us before, you wouldn’t need a greenbelt now.”

Some farmers argued they were entitled to sell their land for urban development, which was encroaching anyway, bringing with it ever more regulation and complaints from urban neighbours about livestock odors, brush burning and other normal farm features and practices. Some farmers, particularly those who lived in the urban shadow, had already sold off so much land that it was going to be difficult to continue farming for much longer on the land they had retained. They had been looking forward to a “final harvest” of sub-divisions to fund a comfortable retirement. Now that option was being taken away from them.

Other farmers, who wished to continue farming, were frustrated at the prospect of another layer of land use regulations on top of existing planning and environmental regulations. Farming had already become more difficult, they said. They could only see rising costs for a dubious payoff. They saw the main driver of the greenbelt as urban: providing landscape and recreational amenities and environmental services for city folk,

Chapter 6 - Greenbelt Campaign 174 so they could stomach the idea of intensification. Farmers did not believe that a healthy agriculture industry was at the root of the proposed Greenbelt.

These farmers argued for firm urban boundaries, both to give them certainty that they could operate without urban intrusions and to preserve the quality of the land. As Elbert van Donkersgoed, a retired policy advisor for the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario turned publisher of an electronic newsletter on local foods, explained, farmers who expect to sell their land to developers or rent land from developers don’t maintain drainage systems or nutrient levels properly. Many farmers also pointed out that when the number of farmers in an area falls below a certain level, the service providers they use move to larger markets and the old areas lose both supports and a sense of community.

The conflict between the farmers’ agricultural and landowning roles had already caused rifts within their own federations, with the result that they did not speak with one voice except on the issue of farm viability. On this issue they agreed they needed policies that preserved the right to farm and provided for value-added activities (compatible secondary uses) to provide the farm equivalent of vertical integration for more stable incomes. For farmers, it was self-evident that a healthy greenbelt required healthy farms as much as it required healthy forests and water courses.

The most militant farmers – those who wanted nothing to do with a greenbelt – drove tractors to Queen’s Park and blocked the Liberals’ Heritage Dinner to protest the greenbelt proposal. But as far as state actors were concerned, the farmers were not suggesting realistic alternatives. “They were not in favour of anything,” MacKenzie said.

In the end, though, the hearings were useful in shining a light on the problems faced by genuine farmers and producing new initiatives around local food promotion, MacIsaac said.

Public Responses: The Developers

Developers are always looking for ways to reduce the costs of their inputs so their profits – which are dependent on market demand – are greater. The best deal for developers is farmland, which is cheap, as long as it is still zoned agricultural, and often without

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neighbours to mount NIMBY objections. Land abutting natural areas can be attractive, especially if a large number of units can be put there. Land in built-up areas is not nearly as attractive because it is already up-zoned and costs more, especially if it needs rehabilitation. Developers may wait years before they can amass enough adjoining properties to build economically. In built-up areas there are also more demanding and sophisticated urban planning departments to deal with than in rural areas. So they were not happy at being told by the province to shift their attention from greenfield development to intensification of built-up areas.

The development industry response was led by the Urban Development Institute (UDI) and its president Neil Rodgers. In briefs and presentations, they repeatedly argued that: • The development and construction industry accounts for more than 10% of the provincial GDP and employs 354,000 workers. This activity helps underwrite the public goods Ontarians value yet the task force’s discussion paper fails to address economic impacts. • Greenbelts are not effective at growth management, which is not needed anyway, since growth in the GTA has been much more compact and contiguous than growth in the U.S. • There is no shortage of protected greenspace in Central Ontario. But if there is to be more land preserved, all Ontario taxpayers should pay for it. • Boundaries of any greenbelt should be flexible and subject to regular review in order to balance environmental, social and economic interests. • Any greenbelt should be based on environmentally significant land, as measured by “the best available science.” • The Places to Grow growth management process should be leading the Greenbelt process rather than following it to make sure there is enough land for jobs and homes. • The Greenbelt will impact the supply of land for residences and jobs, leading to an increase in the cost of new and resale housing, and jeopardizing Ontario’s economic prosperity. • The process is moving too fast and the government should look to the 13-year Halton Urban Structure Plan review process as a model. (UDI 2004; Ontario Legislative Assembly 2005)

Public Responses: The Municipalities

The municipal reaction was mixed. Some municipalities liked the plan and at least one, Guelph, requested that the study area be larger. Others expressed concerns about the

Chapter 6 - Greenbelt Campaign 176 imposition of the development freeze, the speed of the process, the impact on the tax base, and the possible lack of land to grow. A few accommodations were made “for municipalities that came up with practical solutions,” one insider said.

As had the farmers, some municipal leaders, such as former Markham Mayor Don Cousens, used the call for submissions as an excuse to reiterate requests for other wants: better legislative and financial tools to manage growth, curbs on the appeal powers of the Ontario Municipal Board, changes to the development charges rules for financing infrastructure, and new revenue sources.

There were municipalities that would have preferred no greenbelt, seeing it as a diminution of their own planning authority, task force chair MacIsaac said. But it quickly became clear that the Greenbelt was popular with the public, therefore difficult to oppose politically. One mayor said she was not opposed to the Greenbelt; she was just opposed to it being in her municipality (MacIsaac 2013).

A notable exception was the Regional Municipality of Niagara, which argued cogently that agriculture and rural settlements needed more than land preservation measures to remain viable. In October 2004, it released Healthy Farms, Healthy Towns: Implementation Specifics to Create a Positive Greenbelt Legacy for Niagara and Ontario, which set out three possible futures for the region: “Agriculture Adrift,” “Municipal Malaise,” or, if the right measures were put into place, “Niagara Green and Healthy” (Heron & Company 2004). Recommended measures included: • Protect farmer rights by monitoring land values and compensating farmers for losses in farmland value, encouraging land trusts and agricultural easements to preserve agricultural lands, confirming farmer rights to choose crops and manage wildlife (by hunting if necessary), educating the public to treat private land within the greenbelt as private property, compensating farmers for losses due to public use, and helping farmers near retirement cope with the loss of the sale of lots to fund their retirement; • Improve farm viability by securing a federal agriculture policy, engaging farmers in decision-making and ensuring farmer representation on boards of agencies that affect them, creating farm-friendly tax policies, allowing surplus dwelling severances, funding research, educating the public about the importance of agriculture;

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• Ensure healthy greenbelt communities by creating mechanisms to support sustainable municipal services and infrastructure upgrades, addressing municipal budget impacts of tax measures to improve farm viability, helping greenbelt communities attract infill and brownfield development, and investing in hard infrastructure to assist with growth management. (Ibid.)

Not So Public Responses: Lobbying

There was a lot of lobbying of ministers by municipalities and developer lobbyists – “some of them registered, some not,” one subject noted. Developers were even lobbying municipal councillors, in hopes they might pull strings to delete land they owned in growth “hot spots,” Shapero, then a Markham councillor, said.

The minister met one-on-one with all the mayors. But since municipalities are by law servants of the province and the Liberals held a majority, mayors knew not to expect major deviations from the plan. They tended to say they supported the Greenbelt before asking, “but couldn’t I do something about this,” Gerretsen recalled. Once the task force had set the criteria, Gerretsen only met with municipal officials and planners: “I did not want to meet with any developers because their interests were very obvious.”

McGuinty met with developers and municipalities until a point when he was considering what decisions to make, one interviewee said. The ministers and senior officials also explicitly asked staff to remove information about who owned what land from the maps they were shown.

The developers’ key concern were the buffers, according to MacKenzie. “Developers hated them. A lot of these decisions cost them land. They would work members of cabinet. But the majority of cabinet was not from the GTA. There were no long-term relationships.” The exception was Greg Sorbara, a developer from suburban Vaughan who was the finance minister at the time, who used his knowledge of the industry to “ask good questions,” MacKenzie said. Sorbara was more interested in leaving development charge rules alone, according to another interview subject.

The biggest surprise was that the Greenbelt’s opponents didn’t have a thoughtful response to it. “They couldn’t say, ‘No, here’s our solution,’ ” according to an insider. “So it was easy to manage.”

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The Task Force Completes its Work

The Greenbelt Task Force released its final report, Toward a Golden Horseshoe Greenbelt: Advice and Recommendations to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, in August 2004. It reiterated its recommendation that the province address agricultural viability through measures other than land use policy, and detailed 40 new recommendations, most of which affirmed in greater detail the direction it suggested it was going in its discussion paper. Among the main recommendations were that the province: • Take a multi-disciplinary approach to defining the Greenbelt • Proceed with planning for the Greenbelt and the Growth Plan simultaneously to make sure that urban development is redirected away from protected areas • Take a systems approach to environmental protection, with connections between major features and functions • Identify agricultural lands for protection using the science deployed in ministry Land Evaluation & Area Review (LEAR) studies • Forbid residential severances and urban boundary expansions on key agricultural lands • Avoid locating infrastructure in the Greenbelt and, when it is necessary to locate in the Greenbelt, minimize impacts • Protect aggregate resources but set more rigorous requirements for rehabilitation and recycling of aggregate material • Promote compatible culture, recreation and tourism opportunities in the Greenbelt as a way to build its brand as a publicly valued resource • Develop legislation and a plan that creates a permanent Greenbelt, with provision for additions but no net deletions • Administer the Greenbelt through municipal official plans, with a dedicated appeals tribunal and a 10-year review • Create a Greenbelt Advisory Committee to advise the minister on implementation and monitoring issues • Allocate funds to fulfill Greenbelt objectives.

For MacIsaac, the task force’s “big conclusion” was that a legislated solution, rather than adjustments to and better enforcement of the Provincial Planning Statement, was necessary to achieve an ecosystems-based approach. The next most significant finding, in his view, was that a cultural or value shift to support the Greenbelt needed to be developed. This task was eventually given to the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation.

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2.3.3 Drawing the Boundaries

The task force intentionally avoided the boundary issue, leaving that to an inter- ministerial team, which spent about four months creating a draft plan. This was the biggest challenge, as one observer put it: “You had to end it somewhere.”

The inter-ministerial team began by looking at the natural heritage and water resource systems, along with the Escarpment and Moraine. It did a draft covering the entire Greater Golden Horseshoe, since that was the geography of the proposed growth plan and might have prevented leapfrogging. But the cabinet limited the study area to the GTA, Hamilton and the Niagara tender fruit lands, because that was where the immediate growth pressures were and that was what the party had promised in its platform. There were also practical reasons for not extending the study area into Simcoe County, in particular, said MacKenzie. So much of that land [in South Simcoe] had already been approved for development. . . It was like setting yourself up for failure. And it was ugly and messy, the data on what was approved and not approved. We had GIS and good data from the upper tiers in the rest of the Greenbelt plan area. That really helped us get the regulations out fast. But in Simcoe, it was a dog’s breakfast, the Wild West. Everything was still paper-based.

In the next steps, ecologists used their knowledge about wildlife needs to connect the systems. Then the team looked at the agricultural land. Ontario’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food & Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) did a Land Evaluation and Area Review (LEAR), looking at soil, climate, drainage, farm gate receipts and fragmentation of land by non- farm uses. It identified almost the entire study area as prime agricultural land, usually defined as Canada Land Inventory (CLI) Class 1, 2 and 3 soils plus specialty crop areas (OFA 2015). The worst soils were on the tops of the Escarpment and Moraine, where there was often the best protection. The team tried to provide just enough land for growth “to allow the Greenbelt to soak into society’s mind, like in the U.K., where they’re almost sacrosanct, rather than having to fight boundary issues along the way,” one team member said. The mapping team then met with officials from municipalities, most of whom did not voice major concerns because they were experiencing sprawl and its problems. In a few cases, municipalities seemed to be making the case for particular developers; this particularly appeared to be the case in Caledon and Vaughan, one interviewee said. But,

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mostly, officials wanted clarity, consistency and certainty on requirements like buffers, where the province, municipalities and conservation authorities sometimes had different standards.

The work needed to go fast because of the freeze on development the province had imposed, and it did go fast, thanks to improvements in geographic information systems (GIS) used for mapping, an enthusiastic staff, and years of studies and relationships from the Moraine campaign, according to MacKenzie.

A few interviewees felt the work also went fast because there was less opposition than usual from the development industry. They said the developers agreed to “stay out of the Greenbelt” or make only token objections because it wasn’t their focus. Developers who were interviewed said the Places to Grow Plan was of greater concern to them. Besides, they added, it was clear the government was going to impose the Greenbelt. They saw the task force exercise as window dressing. However, developers still opposed the Greenbelt, officially at hearings and in lobbying with ministers. They claimed they didn’t oppose the concept, just the “arbitrariness” of some of the boundaries. Other interviewees felt developer opposition was just as intense as ever, especially against the inclusion of wildlife corridors – because they cut into developable land – and to river valleys – because developers wanted to be able to hand over these mostly undevelopable hazard lands to municipalities as part of the usual five-per-cent parkland dedication (land for parks and recreation conveyed to a municipality as a condition of a residential development or redevelopment project).

2.3.4 The Greenbelt Act

On October 28, 2004, the McGuinty government introduced the proposed Greenbelt Act (Bill 135), a draft plan and a map. Another round of consultations with stakeholder workshops during the day and public meetings in the evening was held from November 8 to 29 at eight locations throughout the Greenbelt plan area. Submissions tended to deal with specific language and technical issues in this round, while developers also ramped up criticism of the chosen boundaries for inflexibility, “lack of science” and lack of transparency into how they were decided upon. After passing second reading on

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December 8, the bill went to the Standing Committee on General Government for one last round of hearings from January 31 to February 3, 2005. In what was largely a replay of the Greenbelt Task Force hearings, the committee heard from 93 delegations: 16 agricultural groups, seven wine and tourism groups, 16 developer or landowner groups, seven provincial environmental groups, 18 community environmental groups, 10 municipalities, the Niagara Escarpment Commission, the Ontario Professional Planners Institute, and 17 individuals, most of them farmers or landowners arguing that their property should not be part of the Greenbelt.

The act was passed and proclaimed on February 28, 2005. The act provided for creation of a Greenbelt Plan that: • Was administered by municipalities through official plan conformity • Provided that its rules prevailed unless an overlapping plan had more stringent policies • Was appealable but whose boundaries could only be changed by the minister, who could not reduce the overall size of the Greenbelt in any ruling he or she might make • Created a Greenbelt Council to advise the minister.

The Greenbelt Plan was also unveiled, providing for: • A Greenbelt that was larger than originally envisioned, in the end adding one million acres of protected countryside to the Moraine and Escarpment lands • Agricultural protection, with support for the specialty crop areas and protection of prime farm land from further fragmentation • Environmental protection, including enhancement of natural heritage, hydrologic and landform features and functions, and connections • Provision of compatible cultural, recreation and tourism activities • Support for a strong rural economy that sustains the character of the countryside and rural communities • Support for infrastructure and natural resources that minimize environmental impacts.

To minimize opposition, the provincial government maintained existing municipal zoning. The only thing it took away was the ability to change the zoning in future. A swath of land between the urban and Greenbelt boundaries called the Whitebelt – because it was shown as white on provincial maps – was left as agricultural land, undesignated

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for growth, but also unprotected by either the Greenbelt or Places to Grow plans from future development. By 2014, this land was already reduced by about 20% to 118,000 acres (Neptis 2014).

At this point, the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan was only a few years old, but municipal implementation of the plan had already led to inconsistencies across the plan area. As Greenbelt details were being worked out, “everyone asked for certainty,” one insider said. This might have been the time to create a “Greenbelt Commission.” But the Liberal government didn’t want to set up another bureaucracy like the Niagara Escarpment Commission, with its extra costs and monitoring responsibilities, said former MMAH minister John Gerretsen. As a former mayor, he felt that municipal implementation would work, partly because there were enough safeguards in place, such as rules forbidding the OMB to consider boundary changes and stronger language in the PPS. Fellow cabinet minister Bradley added that it helped secure buy-in from municipalities. The requirement for a 10-year review, which provided an opportunity for future redress, if needed, also made acceptance by municipalities smoother.

The Liberals appointed Bob Elgie, a red Tory and former minister under Bill Davis, as the first chair of the Greenbelt Council, knowing that the Progressive Conservative Opposition would be reluctant to criticize the council with him in charge.

Shortly after the Greenbelt’s creation, the government established the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation as an independent charitable organization and gave it a start-up grant of $25 million to co-ordinate and fund activities that bolster the Greenbelt.

2.4 Aftermath: Mending Fences

After the Greenbelt Act was passed, there were several jobs to do.

For municipalities, the job was to bring their plans and policies into compliance with the Greenbelt Act and seek approval of their official plans from the province. Technically, the official plans can be appealed to the Ontario Municipal Board, but since the board was not given authority to change boundaries, there were few appeals, especially compared to the

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Growth Plan, which allowed municipalities to set boundaries and others to challenge them at the OMB, according to John MacKenzie.

For some municipalities, the job was to grow the Greenbelt within their communities. Oakville became the first municipality to grow the Greenbelt by approving the addition of the provincially-owned Glenorchy Conservation Area in 2013 and adding lands along its Fourteen Mile Creek under the new urban river valley designation in 2014 (EDC 2014). In 2009, Markham Councillor Erin Shapero tried to add the Markham Whitebelt to the Greenbelt, calling the contested piece a “food belt,” but was undermined by both the mayor, who told her he wanted to grow Markham into a city of 500,000, and fellow councillors who were beholden to the development industry, said Shapero, who claimed to be the first municipal candidate in York region not to take developer money. Both Oakville and Markham had council members who were members of Municipal Leaders for the Greenbelt, who were urged by the Ontario Greenbelt Alliance to keep the momentum going.

For the environmental community, the job was to “make the Greenbelt unassailable as a social brand for good” to counter its powerful opponents, EDC’s Rick Smith said. To that end, the environmentalists learned to celebrate success. “It’s hard for us to say nice things about government action because we have a culture of outsiders,” Smith said. “We think that it is our role to always ask for more, and it is. Our role is to push the envelope.” But ECSOs realized it was also important to let the public and legislators know when they were happy, he said. At the same time, the Ontario Greenbelt Alliance remained in place, tracking compliance with the act and issuing regular “report cards” and updates on hot spots as its leaders received field reports from its member groups.

For the ministry, the job was to make convincing progress on intensification, to show how growth could be accommodated along existing infrastructure corridors, Gerretsen said. The farming community needed to see that urban dwellers were “shouldering some of the weight” of the environmental planning.

Burkhard Mausberg, CEO of the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation, spent the first year in the job talking to farmers. “Overwhelmingly, they said, ‘Allow me to earn a decent

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living,’ ” he said. The foundation gave $1 million to farmer groups to study the matter. Out of this came the focus on local food. “We broke down silos between urban environmentalists and rural farming types,” he said. In 2010, the foundation spun off the Greenbelt Fund, which as a non-profit, rather than a charity, can work for permanent change in the food value chain. The fund invested in Environmental Farm Plans (voluntary assessment and action plans to improve environmental conditions on farms), sharing costs for multi-purpose solutions like sprayers designed to reduce pesticide use, which saves money for farmers while reducing pollution.

The Greenbelt Council has also tried to grapple with farmer issues, but as an advisory committee with few funds, it has had little power or impact.

For farmers, the activity surrounding the consideration and passage of the Greenbelt Act and the Places to Grow Act was the catalyst for a new round of civil society activity and collaboration with government and business. In 2005, the regional governments and agriculture federations in Halton, Peel, York and Durham, along with the City of Toronto, Toronto Food Policy Council, OMAFRA, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and others in the food sector came together to create the Greater Toronto Area Agricultural Action Committee (GTA AAC). This group joined with the Greenbelt Foundation, Region of Niagara, and City of Hamilton to create the Golden Horseshoe Food & Farming Action Plan 2021. The plan, released in January 2012, set out a multi-part strategy to grow the food and farming cluster to world leadership; educate consumers about the links between locally-sourced food and health; foster innovation and cultivate and pilot new approaches. Since then, the Ontario government has passed the Local Food Act and Premier Kathleen Wynne issued in late 2013 a challenge to the sector to double its annual growth rate and create 120,000 jobs by the year 2020.

3 Discussion

When the Greenbelt campaign began, a template for extending greenspace protection existed, thanks to the work of actors in prior campaigns. However, as environmentalists went from underdogs to “top dogs,” there were differences in how governance was performed (summarized in Table 6.1) and the ensuing institutional trajectories.

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3.1 Governance Performance

3.1.1 Arenas, Practices & Modes

Arenas

Added to the open arenas that were already familiar to the environmentalists were the private meetings they had with the Ontario Liberal Party platform builders. The decisions made in these meetings became campaign promises and eventually government policy. For the Liberals, these were strategy sessions; privacy was business as usual, as the leader’s team drew on the advice and wishes of caucus members and potential supporters. For the ECSOs, these were negotiations. They secured a letter confirming the agreement, but, without performance guarantees, they feared they might still need to take action to hold the Liberals to their commitment. This led to the protests on MacLeod’s Landing. Once the Greenbelt legislation was introduced, governance moved back to more conventional arenas: task force meetings and public hearings.

Because the Greenbelt initiative was regional in scope, it was important for consultation to take place throughout the proposed plan area. Two types of public participation took place: workshops and public hearings. The workshops usually took place first, with at least some of the participants – local politicians and planners – invited, although anyone who showed up was allowed to participate. These were structured, with people sitting at tables, their discussions guided by workbooks with directive questions. These often took place during office hours, while the public hearings took place at night in large halls with task force members at the front and audience members lining up at “pro” or “con” microphones in an effort to reduce conflicts on the floor and assure audience members that differing opinions would be heard.

Civil Society as a Site of Governance

In the Greenbelt campaign, the environmental coalition itself was an arena of governance as ECSOs educated the public, helped the media understand the issues, got people out to public meetings and “helped the public decide it liked the Greenbelt,” according to one state actor. “Liking the Greenbelt” was an important objective because state actors’ next goal was to put growth management rules in place, including intensification targets that

Chapter 6 - Greenbelt Campaign 186 were expected to be less popular with the public. The Greenbelt, it was hoped, would give the public a reason to accept higher densities.

In the Moraine campaign, where the ECSOs were fighting the government, five strategies for success were identified: sustaining the vision over time, shaping the discourse, developing useful partnerships, mobilizing the public and nurturing social entrepreneurs. In the Greenbelt campaign, environmental groups were more often defending, partnering with and cajoling the government for adjustments. This brought to light another strategy in the ECSO toolkit: taking the hits, that is, shielding government partners from criticism.

Sustaining the vision over time

As the Moraine legislation was being passed, environmentalists continued to press for their vision of a connected landscape corridor, focusing on the Opposition Liberals, who were expected to win the next election and whom they knew, from their lobbying and committee work, to be disposed towards smart growth.

Shaping the discourse

Shaping the discourse was critical to selling the Liberal program to as many people as possible to give it as much legitimacy as possible. As the environmentalists crafted their communications strategies, “There were always two audiences: the general public and the legislators,” Rick Smith said. “It was a classic inside-outside campaign. . . At the same time that we were maintaining a constant dialogue with the government and opposition parties . . . we were working in the media, trying to frame the issue, trying to move it forward.” The Ontario Greenbelt Alliance released a steady stream of briefing notes, reports and press releases, culminating with the release on February 1, 2005, of an open letter from prominent members of Ontario’s scientific and planning communities supporting the science behind the Greenbelt – third party validation of the government’s course.

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Table 6.1 Governance Performance in the Greenbelt Campaign

Level of Dimension Observations performance

EPISODES Arenas Sites: bureaucracy, private meetings, NGO partnership meetings, task force, regional public hearings (Agency Regarding public Public participation: dynamics) participation: --Large geographic scale --Geographic scale --Systemic action --Extent of action --High-level agenda --Agenda --Closed, open and managed styles of engagement --Style of engagement

Actors Professionalized ECSOs, foundations, local groups Farmer-landowners Regarding public Developers participation: --Participants

Narratives Hot spots of conflict over urban sprawl vs. struggling farmers & need for land for homes

PROCESSES Governance practices Party platform formation protocols lead to secret (formal & informal rules deals (Structural and laws) Planning & media processes encourage large turnouts dynamics) at statutory meetings Media processes encourage sound bite, colourful events, tours, etc. Political finance rules favour developers (land swaps, homes) Charitable rules hamstring ECSOs

Networks & coalitions ECSO coalitions more mature, creative & disciplined, but also tensions over different strategies Farmer networks reduced in capacity (fewer members, tired strategies)

Discourses Bio-regionalism, growth management vs. affordable housing & collapse of family farming

CULTURES Governance modes Closed stakeholder negotiations, managed public participation

(Cultural Embedded values Nature needs to be preserved so it can provide dynamics) environmental & planning services Belief that science is evolving

Paradigms Environment 1st – underpins healthy economy & society Acceptance of properly located growth – more questioning of growth Crown government can serve both nature & economic interests

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What it didn’t do was criticize farmers. While residents of sub-divisions abutting farms complained about livestock odors, pesticide spraying, and other realities of modern-day industrial farming, most of the public still had an idealized view of farming and held farmers in high regard. For this reason, Alliance leaders advised its local affiliates to avoid criticizing farmers. When they were criticized, they were usually portrayed as pawns of the development industry, which was a popular villain in most of the stories local environmental and community groups told their local audiences.

Developing useful partnerships

Partnerships helped civil society deliver governing resources of legitimacy, information and connections to other useful actors. While the leaders of both STORM and the OGA realized the usefulness of a coalition, the creation of STORM was more of an organic, grassroots process compared to the creation of the OGA, which was more top-down. But different times call for different tactics, and events were moving quickly. Environmental Defence, which in its early days focused on providing legal advice and representation to groups fighting environmental battles, was accustomed to helping groups incorporate so they could have full standing at the Ontario Municipal Board. Creating a new organization was nothing new for it. EDC was also in the rather unique position of having many client groups fighting similar battles against urban sprawl. Many groups were happy to take their cues from EDC’s leaders. There was also a certain amount of participation fatigue. Groups had been fighting their local battles, some of them were involved in the Moraine battle, some had become involved in the Smart Growth consultations, and many of the same volunteers knocked on doors for provincial political candidates. Having elected a government committed to environmental reform, some felt their work was done. But when EDC, the group that had helped many of them with legal and other resources, called them for help, norms of reciprocity required they step up.

The prior relationships of many of the groups with Environmental Defence made it fast and easy to create a cohesive alliance, Smith said. More importantly, the groups were able to give the Alliance detailed knowledge about what was at stake on the ground, he said. For instance, it was allies on the ground that alerted Smith and Donnelly to the bulldozers along the Stouffeville Side Road at Macleod’s Landing. The main challenge, Smith said,

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was the unevenness in organizational abilities, with some groups better able to pack a room and get supporters to a microphone than others. The Alliance held workshops on media management and coached them on how to present at public meetings and what to expect at task force hearings.

Another useful partnership was with environmentally-oriented foundations. At the time, about three-quarters of EDC’s funding came from foundation grants, so it already had relationships with potential funders. Several interview subjects considered the role of private foundations to have been critical in creating an effective education campaign.

Finally, EDC and its larger partners in the OGA had nurtured relationships with many MPPs. Sometimes, they were fortunate to have “friends in high places.” For example, Marilyn Churley, a former executive director of Environmental Defence, was the New Democratic Party’s member on the standing committee that was studying Bill 135 and regularly asked questions of delegations that surfaced environmentalists’ concerns.

Mobilizing the public

The ECSOs used their organizational capacity to mobilize the public. This meant first getting its attention, usually through the media. At times, this involved ECSO volunteers engaging in stunts, such as one that saw 300 pumpkins delivered to politicians and senior officials at Queen’s Park with a briefing note attached to the stem of each one.

Mobilizing members of the public also meant getting enough of them to express public support of the Greenbelt, particularly by showing up at hearings, filling the audience and lining up at the microphone – an important tactic because farmer-developers were trying to do the same, and every hearing was covered by the media. Liberal MPP Jim Bradley admitted it was helpful having the ECSOs balancing the lobbying coming from the pro- growth coalition and putting persuasive evidence before the public in an accessible way.

Some urban members of the public who attended the Greenbelt Task Force hearings told ECSO leaders they were surprised to hear that many farmers had sold land to developers or wanted to sell land to them. They were also surprised to learn about the frustrations of farmers: the encroachment of wildlife on their fields, the high cost of borrowing to finance

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equipment, the low profit margins that made retirement a precarious proposition, and more. This helped the environmental leaders identify the kinds of policies to pursue to build support among farmers for strengthening the Greenbelt.

Nurturing social entrepreneurs

By the time the Greenbelt campaign began, it was evident that civil society provided launching pads into and landing pads out of government or political work. Jim Faught, John Riley and John MacKenzie were only some of the people who had worked in both NGO and government settings; the back-and-forth contributed to knowledge sharing. One person who had crossed back and forth several times explained that it happened for a variety of reasons, including a person’s stage of life and the need for the steady income and retirement savings that come with government jobs. At some points, though, “You ask yourself ‘where can I have the most impact?’ . . . With NGOs, you have a high profile. . . In government, it’s a different way of having an impact, making sure that the minister has the right information to make good things happen.”

The ENGOs gave their leaders room to develop creative solutions, a platform with legitimacy from which to speak, legal status at hearings, and practical support, such as salaries, research assistance, public relations help and administrative back-up. Some interview subjects saw ENGO work as a refuge or sabbatical from government work, the place to go if they wanted to do field work.

Taking the hits

In the Greenbelt campaign, environmental leaders often shielded state actors from sensitive situations, playing “bad cop” with the media, taking the difficult questions and delivering “the bitchy lines,” as one person put it. ECSOs received useful information from officials on the inside who might have risked their positions for speaking publicly, and also supplied information to friendly politicians. The Liberal government was making major changes in a politically risky top-down manner reminiscent of command- and-control environmental politics of an earlier era. In defending the government, the ECSOs helped make it politically safe for the government to act quickly and decisively. However, shortly afterwards, their effectiveness made them a target of expensive SLAPP

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suits – strategic lawsuits against public participation, undertaken less to win than to bleed targets financially in order to silence their criticism.

Practices

Stakeholder Group Work

The role of stakeholder groups in the Greenbelt seemed to be less about public participation and more about issue management. The stakeholders chosen for the Greenbelt Task Force were mostly mainstream, with reputations for being reasonable. Even the developer representatives were described as “people you can talk to.” Farmers felt they had only token representation on the task force and even less on the Central Ontario Smart Growth Panel. They complained that public meetings were held at times that were inconvenient for farmers – evenings in June – yet they nevertheless were able to use the hearings to get the attention of the public and government.

Although developers and farmers said they saw the task force process as window dressing, it provided a good window for institutional designers onto problems that might undermine the Greenbelt. For the government, it pointed to the need to improve oversight and co-ordination. It added the Greenbelt Council, but it was advisory, voluntary and poorly funded. The Greenbelt Council’s terms of reference also called for it to advise the minister on the possible harmonizing of the Greenbelt Plan with selected policies of the two conservation plans (Ibid.). This was no doubt in response to requests from stakeholders to provide more consistency, but it raised concerns among others that the government would settle on definitions and policies closer to the lowest common denominator than to best practices.35 Such was the case when the province passed its 2008 ban on cosmetic pesticides. To provide a harmonized set of regulations for the lawn care industry, the province adopted regulations that were weaker than those in many municipalities that had already passed bans (Benzie 2008).

35 This concern was, indeed, a theme of many comments from the floor at two public meetings on the 2015 Co-ordinated Land Use Review that I attended on April 22 in Milton and May 7 in Oakville.

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As for the environmental community, the task force process highlighted the need to improve public education about the science involved in drawing the boundaries, to counter arguments about the Greenbelt’s supposed impact on housing affordability, to put a dollar value on environmental services provided by the Greenbelt, and to help improve agricultural viability by, among other things, publicizing the importance of a local food supply.

Governance Modes

The dominant governance mode in the Greenbelt was Crown government, which held that only the government – not individual landowners – had property rights, as the one- year development freeze reminded everyone. But the mode that promoted private enterprise also required that the Crown work quickly to remove the freeze as soon as possible.

3.1.2 Actors, Networks & Values

Actors & Networks

State Actors

The Liberals understood the rationale for a greenbelt and it served their political needs to act quickly, especially after the Macleod’s Landing blunder. But more than that, McGuinty wanted to leave a legacy. In speeches and conversations with interview subjects, he described how future generations would not remember much about any administration, but they would remember that far-sighted politicians had created the Greenbelt.

Although not explicitly mentioned by interviewees, the Liberals were probably further motivated to move quickly by the temporary disarray Progressive Conservative politicians were in, as they moved to replace their leader. Ernie Eves announced he was stepping down in March 2004. In September, John Tory was chosen as his replacement. Tory did not have a seat in the house; he finally won a seat on March 17, 2005, after the Greenbelt Act was passed. In the meantime, the Progressive Conservatives were hardly

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feckless. Tim Hudak, the PC MPP from Niagara South36, led the Opposition attack on the bill in the Legislative Assembly, calling it the “green botch.” As well, the PCs requested and received one bureaucrat’s emails under freedom of information rules.

Provincial bureaucrats had been keeping an eye on developments in conservation biology and landscape ecology. Even under the pro-growth Harris administration, officials within the bureaucracy pursued an independent role. “We are forever doing research on stuff we think is going to ‘burble’ to the top,” said one, adding that it is the job of leaders within the civil service to be “looking into the future and seeing how they need to position their ministry with information in order to have an informed conversation with politicians.” Most ministries have research budgets and mandates to track trends and anticipate new developments.

When the Liberals announced plans for the Greenbelt and the tight timelines for consulting stakeholders and developing a plan, the civil service was eager to get the job done. “The civil service felt inspired. They were very passionate about it,” John MacKenzie said. “Everyone was burning the midnight oil,” so much so, that people were working at their desks and eating take-out food. “Whenever you went on the 14th floor, it smelled like Swiss Chalet,” he recalled. The province’s GIS team was also critically important in meeting the timelines, he said. The ministry workers met their deadline and were ready to go to cabinet in December 2004, but sudden demand for legislation banning pit bulls delayed the matter a few weeks, he said.

MacKenzie is a good example of an environmental activist who went to work for the government and was the right person at the right time for the new Liberal government. He had volunteered for Save the Rouge for years and was active on the Moraine file as both a volunteer and contract worker. He had worked for UNESCO in Seoul, Korea, and had seen the problems with its greenbelt. When he was seconded to Gerretsen’s office to work on the Greenbelt, he had been working for the Ministry of the Environment as environmental assessment co-ordinator for the Central Region and knew the territory

36 With redistricting in 2007, Hudak’s riding changed to Niagara-West Glanbrook. He retired from politics in September 2016.

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intimately. Several officials mentioned his unique combination of planning skills, ecological knowledge and connections with the ENGO community.

Other provincial officials and ECSO leaders had worked for GTA municipalities and understood the mindset of local officials who wished to have more control over their communities’ destinies or, more darkly, were beholden to local developers. Some pro- growth councils would pretend to agree with constituents who oppose development but would take measures to undermine these positions when developers inevitably appealed to the OMB, which the councils would then blame for project approvals. As one of the provincial officials put it, “Their actual strategy at the OMB is to go out and lose so badly that the policy-maker [the province] has to intervene and bail you out, bail out the public, bail out the process.”

Erin Shapero, the former Markham councillor, was sure some councillors were acting on behalf of developers. John Gerretsen was more diplomatic, only admitting to having his suspicions. He described the reaction of one 905 mayor at the unveiling of the final map of the Greenbelt. “He chased me around the McMichael Museum [where the final map was unveiled] telling me that I was wrong [about the greenbelt boundary in his community] . . . he was not a happy camper.”

State actors differed as to whether or not they needed the support the environmental movement was providing. Politicians were more likely to see it as something that was nice to have but not necessary since the government was determined to create a greenbelt. But political and ministry staff were more likely to see it as important, even crucial. “Normally, people who are ‘pro’ don’t show up” to public hearings, one political advisor said. “The NGOs made sure the ‘pros’ showed up. . . Even if government is that ‘pro’ voice, it’s always more relevant if others speak.” This person also noted that the ECSOs “pushed the government to move forward, to extend the Greenbelt.”

Market Actors: Developers

Developers said they were not surprised by the greenbelt promise, given the turmoil on the Moraine and the rumblings about insufficient protection. But they argued that sprawl in Ontario was nowhere near the problem it was in the U.S., and they had a point. The

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urban sprawl in Ontario tends to be denser than similar low-rise single-home development in the U.S., and Ontario growth tends to be contiguous, while in the U.S. there are more “islands” of development, due to greater acceptance of septic systems there (Sorensen 2011; Rome 2001). However, as the Smart Growth task force had concluded, sprawl was still a problem in Ontario.

Developers were represented by two industry organizations: the Urban Development Institute/Ontario (UDI), which tended to represent land banking and development companies like Metrus, and the Greater Toronto Home Builders Association, which represented builders like Mattamy Homes, at the time the largest home builder in Ontario. UDI took the lead in the Greenbelt process, arguing that the boundaries were not scientifically-based, and that the Greenbelt would lead to land shortages, less choice, and higher costs for housing. But few observers had any difficulty seeing these arguments as self-serving. It was known by municipal politicians and many ECSOs that developers had already bought farmland throughout the Greenbelt at bargain prices years before and were renting it back to farmers until they could get permissions to turn them into sub- divisions. However, this was seldom if ever mentioned in public.

As opinion polls showed the public was enthusiastic about the Greenbelt, developers saw the writing on the wall and focused their attention on Places to Grow, the growth management rules they felt should have led the land use planning reform process. (Environmentalists had feared that beginning the process of land use reform with the growth management piece would have resulted in green fingers of land fit where municipalities and developers did not want to build.) Developers admitted spending a lot of time with David Caplan, Minister of Public Infrastructure and Renewal and the minister responsible for Places to Grow, which ended up having more flexible rules than the Greenbelt. One development company official said his company viewed the Greenbelt process as an opportunity to learn how this government worked. Privately, they told other interviewees that they were confident a future government would provide them with relief from the firm boundaries of the Greenbelt.

Nevertheless, near the end of the Greenbelt consultations, the developer coalition, seeing the success of the Ontario Greenbelt Alliance, created the Ontario Greenbelt Coalition,

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whose main spokesman was Frank Clayton, a real estate economist who was a long-time consultant to the development industry.37 The group claimed to want to improve the Greenbelt legislation by finding a better balance between environmental goals and economic, agricultural and housing needs. Its website was full of captivating pictures of countryside, but it did not promote preservation of it. “In our view, the current legislation looks a little bit like an environmental Trojan Horse,” Clayton said at the final hearings on Bill 135. “On the surface it looks very, very favourable, but when you get behind it, there are a lot of concerns we have” (Ontario Legislative Assembly 2005, February 3). He then provided a lesson in “Economics 101: the impact of greenbelts” and predicted the Greenbelt would cause housing prices to go up, commuting from outside the proposed Greenbelt to go up, and employment land prices to go up, with the risk that fewer employers would locate in the GTA. Upon being questioned about who was funding the organization he was speaking for, he said he had no idea, as he was serving on an advisory council. He said the coalition included landowners, farmer organizations including the OFA, and unions including the carpenters’ union. An OFA spokesman said it supported the coalition, while others in the real estate industry identified the group as being made up of members of the development community (Adair 2005). The fact that the new group had a name that was very similar to the Ontario Greenbelt Alliance and was headed by a person brandishing his doctorate – in economics, compared to Rick Smith’s Ph.D. in biology – was seen as a blatant attempt to mislead the public. The attempt back- fired, with MPPs on the legislative review committee calling attention to OGC’s dubious provenance. The group and its website vanished shortly after the Greenbelt Act was passed.

In short, market actors had little to offer state actors in the way of short-term social or political capital. They represented voters who did not yet exist: future buyers of single- family homes.

37 Clayton was recognized for his contribution to the building industry with a national award and induction into the GTA’s BILD Hall of Fame in 2009.

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Market Actors: Farmers

The Ontario Federation of Agriculture came late to the discussion, partly because the Greenbelt promise seemed vague and was not a major focus of the election campaign, Peter Jeffery, Senior Farm Policy Researcher for the group, said. The farm community had been virtually excluded from the Smart Growth exercise, so it was taken aback when it looked like it was about to have its way of life and livelihood frozen in time to help stop urban sprawl. When the government was looking for a farmer for the Greenbelt Task Force, it bypassed the OFA, going through other channels to recruit Mary Lou Garr, a former OFA director who had also been a leader on a farm group that tackled environmental issues. Like many farmers, she considered herself a good steward of the land as a farmer with an Environmental Farm Plan of best practices, a pesticide safety licence, and, in general, a solid record on managing water resources and nutrient levels. So farmers like her bristled at the prospect of new land use rules that would restrict their ability to make a living amid claims that farmers who sell their land to developers were to blame for sprawl. “What drives the sales of farm land to non-farmers is the farm not paying the bills,” Jeffery said, emphasizing the need for complementary farm viability policies.

The farmers who appeared at the many hearings were a study in contrasts. Some saw the development industry as a saviour, providing a comfortable retirement after a difficult life; and others saw it as the enemy, bringing sub-divisions of 100 homeowners with 100 complaints about normal farm practices, as Garr put it.

They criticized the public for a view of farming stuck in the old days, before farming became “an industrial workplace,” Garr said; yet they mourned those old days when farmers were more numerous and influential. Farmers make up only 2% of the Canadian population, 1% of the Ontario population and even less within the Greenbelt. As Garr said, “We’ve become so efficient. There used to be many more of us, so we were better understood. Now our biggest challenge is to try to have a voice heard, try to explain.”

Farmers saw environmentalist as purists and simplistic interlopers, with no experience in what they were asking farmers to do. They saw themselves as the true, and pragmatic,

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environmentalists, stewarding the land, sometimes for generations. Farmers and environmentalists are “two solitudes,” Jeffery said, with environmentalists having a naïve picture of agriculture today. “They tend to think big is bad when, in fact, besides the economies of scale, big can better afford the investments that are environmentally- friendly than small, which can be working with old technology and out-dated practices.”

In addition to the right to conduct secondary “value-added” activities on their farms, farmers wanted the right to sever land for retirement homes or homes for hired help. They wanted some kind of tax relief or other financial help to compensate for having parts of their land used as wildlife corridors. This land use usually entails leaving up a woodlot, whose trees take away sunlight and water needed for crops, Peter Lambrick, director-at-large of the OFA and a farmer in Halton region, said. Further, when wild animals start using the linkage, they eat or trample crops, meaning the farmer gives up more land without any compensation, he said.

Other complaints concerned the loss of farm support services as the critical mass of farmers decreased, urban road configurations such as roundabouts that make it difficult to move equipment, and urban visitors treating private open space on farms as public space, Jeffery said.

Although farmers could agree on most of the problems of farming within the proposed Greenbelt, they could not agree on the solutions.

Elbert van Donkersgoed, the Christian Farmers policy advisor, whose parents and siblings farmed in Huron and Bruce counties after emigrating from the Netherlands, advocated a European-inspired solution he called “Farming in the Park”: Staycations out on the farm, so everyone wants a week in the Greenbelt. We need the arrangements to be there, trails, that sort of thing. In Holland, you can rent four-wheel bikes to take on trails. I would allow the farmer to diversify his enterprise: agriculture as of right, a number of short-stay cottages for tourists, use of water for recreational fishing and allow restocking. Allow the farmer to create hiking trails. . . The conservation authorities offer sleigh rides and other activities that provide a good template. We need enterprise. The Greenbelt needs its own quality of enterprise or there is a risk of creating glorified bedroom communities with people commuting to the city from the exurbs.

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Farming in the Park may be part of the solution, but it won’t suit everyone, Jeffery said. “Pick your own does not lend itself to every operation or every personality.” Lambrick agreed, noting the average age of farmers in 2013 was 58. “Some of us are too old to make big changes, to whole-heartedly get into it, to change, in my case, from grains and oil seeds to food. People can make a decent living if they have the tools,” he said. But “there’s a naïveté among policy-makers. Their hope is for young people to respond to the local food movement.” Only about 30% of farmers in the Toronto region believe their own children will take over their farms (Bunce and Maurer 2005).

Garr also scoffed at ideas like Farming in the Park, noting that farmers cannot sell all their product at farmer’s markets or roadside stands; they need to truck to more distant markets. Lambrick agreed that there needs to be a better set of policies, with easier access to international markets.

Garr said the problem is that Canada has settled for a “cheap food policy” rather than a sustainable one. When she was on the Greenbelt Task Force, she pushed for an economic impact analysis of the Greenbelt. She was disappointed when the Agricultural Advisory Team backed away from that mandate.

Garr was an example of the problem faced by anyone trying to get farmers to speak with one voice, namely, who is entitled to speak for farmers? Garr criticized van Donkersgoed for not actually being a farmer, despite his growing up in a large farm family and devoting his life to farm policy advocacy. To her mind, she was the only farm representative on the Greenbelt Task Force, despite the fact that fellow member Don Ziraldo, founder of Inniskillen Wines, was a grape grower. Before she and her husband retired and passed their farm to their son, they farmed grains, hogs and grapes on 350 acres. She was the director to the OFA from the Niagara region for 20 years and served on the national executive and the provincial environmental committee. She was president of AgCare (now Farm and Food Care Ontario), which works on agricultural issues with environmental impacts, such as pesticides laws and the introduction of genetically modified crops.

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The OFA itself is silo-ridden, with 31 affiliated commodity organizations, each with its own agenda. In addition there are organic vs. industrial farming differences among farmers, as well as philosophical differences like those separating the Christian Farmers, who have always championed a sense of responsibility to the land and the community, from the OFA, which for years tolerated land use rules that allowed farmers to sell prime agricultural land to developers.

There is also a culture of aloofness among farmers. “Our farm mindset is too much about wanting to be left alone,” van Donkersgoed said. Jeffery agreed that coalitions and partnerships are difficult to form, partly because of the independent nature of most farmers and partly because interests so often diverge.

Overall, the agricultural network was characterized by bonding social capital: many inward-looking groups that could not bridge in a meaningful or timely way to a wider public. This was consistent with earlier findings that indicated farmers had fewer ties with the non-farm population and its organizations than with the local and regional farm communities (Bunce and Maurer 2005).

Environmental Actors

The environmental coalition was more extensive in the Greenbelt campaign than it was in the Moraine campaign, partly because the Greenbelt covered a larger geographic area and partly because of the bridging social capital at work.

As Table 6.2 shows, the membership of the Ontario Greenbelt Alliance was a rich mix of local, regional, provincial and national groups. The vast majority were environmental or community protection groups, but there were also two public health groups, two farm groups, and two industry associations. A notable addition to the de facto coalition were the foundations that underwrote the Ontario Greenbelt Alliance’s “hot spots” educational campaign. Funding came from the EJLB, Ivey, Maclean, Metcalfe, and Salamander foundations. In addition, there were ties to municipal and provincial politicians and policy experts in the state sector, and, in the market sector, green businesses and environmental lawyers, such as David Donnelly’s employer at the time, Gilbert’s LLP, which paid him to run an environmental law clinic that performed a lot of work on the

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Greenbelt legislation. Together, they formed a powerful support coalition, enhancing the legitimacy of the government and its proposals, providing information on what would be acceptable to its members and the public, and supplying organizational resources to improve the public education and consultation processes.

With so many different kinds of groups trying to work together, there were differences of style and approach. “There is a tension between ‘high-rise environmentalists’ – Queen’s Park-focussed, high-octane national groups – and ones on the ground,” which do a lot of work for a lot less money, one environmentalist noted. There was a divide between those who saw the value of compromise and those who wanted to be more aggressive about expanding the protected area. “We said you can’t get it all now. Wait for the 10-year review. Look at the Niagara Escarpment Plan. Each new plan made it [the protected area] stronger,” recalled Jim Faught. The compromisers tended to be older, more experienced, and heavily involved in lobbying and fundraising for their organizations, so they were practiced at dealing with governments and corporations and had many more contacts, which cast them in a suspicious light to younger environmentalists, who felt the fundraisers could not see past their next donations. Many of the compromisers were in their positions because they had worked in the provincial government. Faught said he had learned the value of finding consensus during the Lands for Life negotiations, when the ENGOs broke the impasse by pointing out that the forest industry could cut fewer trees and still get the yield it needed by more efficiently harvesting the fibre from each tree. He had even persuaded Mike Harris to keep funding a stewardship program because he was able to demonstrate that the ENGOs were able to leverage the government’s grant into a much larger fund thanks to private donations. He himself was persuaded of the efficacy of negotiation when a study by FON found that developers won 70% of OMB cases, no matter who brought them. But other, generally younger environmentalists did not always trust the older hands because they had “collaborated” with the Mike Harris government and had, in their view, given up too much, such as the Moraine land where 6,600 homes got built.

Dissension within the ranks was sometimes due to different understandings of what the Greenbelt should be. Some environmentalists denigrated the Greenbelt because it was a

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greenspace protection plan instead of a natural heritage protection plan. When Greenbelt Foundation money became available, some felt it should be used to secure land for linkages, since these landscape corridors were the least understood by the public and most at risk of being taken away. But others were clear in their minds that they were involved in protection of countryside by using land use designation powers. They did not see land acquisition as being as important for the Greenbelt as for the Escarpment or Moraine. Instead, they felt the foundation’s job was to create a public attachment to the Greenbelt, to make it safe from future developers and their politician allies. Volunteer and donor interest ebbs and flows – and was already flagging, after years of fighting for greenspace protection – so it was important to engage the general public in protection of the Greenbelt. It was also important to placate opponents where possible, which was why the Greenbelt Foundation’s olive branches to the farm community were important.

At bottom, the tensions were an unavoidable by-product of the OGA’s diversity, which helped increase bridging social capital and reach into more communities. This diversity also helped in negotiations, Faught said, with the more moderate negotiators calling on more radical members to “make some noise” and say publicly what they couldn’t say out loud at the bargaining table.

Values

Embedded values both constrained and enabled the Greenbelt campaign. A constraining value was the belief in private property as a personal right. A structuring value was the importance of efficiency in government. Values that fit positively with a greenbelt were nature as a common good worthy of protection and community self-sufficiency as the analog of the deeply embedded personal self-reliance value. Members of the public also deeply valued the idea or myth of the family farm, and felt farmers should be farmers, not developers, and said so at public hearings.

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Table 6.2 Members & Supporters of the Ontario Greenbelt Alliance

Group type Organization Social Movement NGOs Canadian Association of Physicians for Greenpeace Canada (20) the Environment Humane Society of Canada Canadian Environmental Law Assn. Ontario College of Family Physicians Canadian Institute for Environmental Ontario Nature Law and Policy Pembina Institute Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society Pesticide Free Ontario Conservation Council of Ontario Public Spaces Appreciation Assn. of Ont. David Suzuki Foundation Registered Nurses Association of Ont. Earthroots RiverSides Environmental Defence Sierra Club of Canada (Ont. Chapter) Evergreen Sierra Legal Defence Fund (Ont. Office)

Reform Alliances (11) Citizens Environment Alliance of Friends of Rural Communities and the Southwestern Ontario Environment (FORCE) Coalition on the Niagara Escarpment Peel Environmental Network Conservation Development Alliance of Save the Oak Ridges Moraine Coalition Ontario (STORM) Credit River Alliance Smart Growth Network Federation of Urban Neighbourhoods Toronto Environmental Alliance (Ontario) Inc. York Region Environmental Alliance

Service Agencies (4) Citizens’ Environment Watch Halton - Peel Woodlands and Wildlife Community Preservation Initiative Stewardship Council Oak Ridges Trail Association

Benefactors (8) Blue Mountain Watershed Trust Metcalfe Foundation EJLB Foundation Oak Ridges Moraine Land Trust Ivey Foundation Ontario Farmland Trust Maclean Foundation Salamander Foundation

Community Associations Altona Forest Stewardship Committee Oakvillegreen Conservation Assn. (37) Best Environment for Streetsville Preservation of Agricultural Lands Society Bond Head/BWG Residents for Pomona Mills Park Conservationists Responsible Development Preston Lake Environmental Association Brampton Environmental Community Protect our Water and Environmental Advisory Panel Resources (POWER) Castle Glen Ratepayers’ Association Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition Clear the Air Coalition Richmond Hill Naturalists Coalition of Concerned Citizens of Rouge Duffins Greenspace Coalition Caledon St. Catharines CAN (Climate Action Now) Environment Hamilton Save the Maskinonge Friends of Boyd Park Save Our Ravines - Halton Hills Friends of Fairy Lake Save the Rouge Valley System Friends of the Don East South Lake Simcoe Naturalists Friends of the Farewell South Peel Naturalists Club Friends of the Rouge Watershed Sunfish Lake Association Friends of the Twelve West Whitby Community Against 407 Link Innisfil District Association Location (WW-CALL) King Environmental Groups Willow Park Ecology Centre Lakewatch Society www.valleyvoices.ca North East Sutton Ratepayers Assn. 407 Action Group

Market-oriented NGOs (2) Canadian Organic Growers Green Tourism Association

Mutual Aid Societies (1) Whole Village

NOTE: Names in italics were funders of the Alliance. Names in bold were charter members. Information was adapted from the Ontario Greenbelt Alliance website in 2004 and 2007.

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3.1.3 Narratives, Discourses & Paradigms

Environmentalists had been lobbying officials about the NOAH Project, so it was a short leap to a greenbelt when the Liberals said they were looking for a campaign plank that easily communicated to voters that they were offering an “environment first” approach to regional planning. By the time the Liberals were elected, leader Dalton McGuinty had decided the Greenbelt would be a powerful legacy for his government.

Tailoring arguments for the general public was different, as the average person was not aware of the causes of urban sprawl, merely the consequences. The greenbelt as an urban growth boundary made sense to the public as an element of smart growth. As an added bonus, it was promoted as providing scenic drives and hikes, cleaner air and water, and an overall healthier environment. Many residents at public hearings talked about their childhood ramblings along creeks full of fish and frogs, and how they hoped a greenbelt would mean their children could have similar experiences. The legacy argument was powerful for them, too.

But it was the Greenbelt Hot Spots campaign that made the issues relatable, most observers agreed. Rick Smith (2007) explained: Because the Greenbelt is so large and amorphous, we wanted to put a face on it, create some locally specific contexts that people could identify with. We chose 10 specifically threatened areas in the Greenbelt, most of which we had a previous involvement with, like Boyd Park, like North Oakville, and we publicized those as examples of what was at stake. We tried to make sure there were different issues that were represented, different challenges represented. So, for example, we chose in Milton the expansion of the Dufferin quarry to show the threats posed by the aggregate industry… We chose North Oakville as an example of a natural heritage system needing completion to protect threatened waterways.

Environmental Science vs. Political Science

Because the Liberals held a majority, it was clear early on that there was probably going to be some kind of greenbelt in Southern Ontario; narratives focused on boundaries and other specific rules. The landowner coalition claimed that the Greenbelt boundaries were based on “political science.” Even its defenders admitted the Greenbelt boundaries had less scientific credibility than the Moraine’s, because it was “a different beast,” as Jim Faught said: “With the Oak Ridges Moraine, there was a clear line 250 metres above sea

Chapter 6 - Greenbelt Campaign 205 level that demarcated the Moraine.” The Greenbelt was more of a land use plan, with boundaries defined by watershed edges, buffers of different widths and straight lines along political borders and property lines. Most of the straight lines occurred because of the government decision to limit the study area to GTA areas where growth pressures were already intense rather than cover the entire GGH. A more science-based plan would have been much larger if the designers had followed all watershed boundaries or covered the entire GGH, as some planners felt was appropriate, a government insider said.

The developers’ strategy was to try to discredit the Greenbelt by discrediting the foundations on which it was based. They were counting on the general public not understanding concepts like biodiversity and landscape connectivity and not knowing enough geography or biology to understand why boundaries and buffers had different rationales in different places. But the government defended the science behind the Greenbelt in a document called Building a Greenbelt published on its website, and the OGA produced supportive communications.

Most of the truly political decisions about the Greenbelt’s boundaries benefitted developers. “People like [home builder Peter] Gilgan had the power to change the boundary in Milton, where his development was,” Faught said. The Greenbelt mapped the power of the players in the development industry, with the Durham developers getting fewer concessions than those in Milton, he said.

Localism

Developers tried to push the idea that municipalities needed local autonomy to manage growth within their borders. But with so many community groups fighting developers and sometimes their own councils over what they perceived as inappropriate development, these ideas had little impact. Developers also argued that the Greenbelt would limit land available for new housing and hurt housing supply and affordability. But arguments about housing affordability meant little to voters who already owned homes. ECSOs counter-argued that developers charged whatever the market would bear. However, they took notice and in the ensuing years did their own analyses showing that increases in housing costs have been driven by population increases, record low interest

Chapter 6 - Greenbelt Campaign 206 rates, favourable mortgage insurance rules, and sprawl itself, which had increased demand for housing that was close to transit, employment, and amenities (Burda 2013). They also commissioned research that put a dollar value on environmental services (Econometric 2012; Tomalty 2012).

Efficiency, Balance & Self-Reliance

But more studies were hardly necessary. The Greenbelt idea was extremely popular with the public from the start. A November 2004 poll done for Environmental Defence indicated more than 80% supported the greenbelt concept (Ontario Legislative Assembly 2005). Voters had been looking for a solution to the urban sprawl dilemma; they saw the Greenbelt as an efficient, low-cost, multi-purpose solution.

The public was already hearing about Places to Grow and how growth could be accommodated by growing up instead of out, so the Greenbelt proposal did not seem a great violation of the private enterprise paradigm. Developers might not want to change their winning formula, but their desire for profits would persuade them to adapt to a new reality, it was easy to believe. Most of the public was under the mistaken belief that farmers were happy to have agricultural land protected, so they didn’t see the Greenbelt as a conflict with private property values. Indeed, for people who felt it was the role of government to help ensure private prosperity as a basis for public prosperity, the preservation of agricultural land for the local agri-food industry made sense, extending the idea of self-sufficiency from a personal value to a community value.

A Natural Legacy

The Greenbelt concept was also consistent with communitarian ideas of providing for children and grandchildren by preserving nature. Efforts by opponents to brand the Greenbelt as “conservation sprawl” failed to gain traction because of the Ontario public’s view of itself as nature-loving. Natalie Helferty (2007) mentioned one public meeting where the loudest applause was for a Protestant minister who spoke about the spiritual value of nature. “You’re using the science but supporting it with people’s appreciation of nature,” she said.

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Farmers’ Mixed Messages

Farmers that were still committed to farming attempted to change the terms of the public debate and even the definition of environmentalism. They presented a vision of stewardship as pragmatic, balanced environmentalism that put more emphasis on the idea of nature as productive. They fought nostalgia but also appealed to it, talking about how they had been caring for the land for generations. But their narratives were undermined by those of farmers who wanted a “final harvest” of homes to fund their retirements.

3.2 Institutional Trajectories

In each of the three stages of the Greenbelt’s extended history, formal change occurred when it did because of exogenous events that opened a window of opportunity for environmentalists already at work on the idea of protecting greenspace. The Niagara Escarpment campaign had created a new institutional path, supported by its own constituencies: at first, mostly environmentalists, but later recreationalists, tourism- oriented businesses, municipal officials and even, eventually, developers, who adjusted to the new reality by promoting the protected countryside as a valuable amenity (and charging for it). These constituencies plus the new charitable foundations dedicated to each area created adaptations and incentives to reinforce this path: farmers’ markets, agricultural festivals, cultural events, trails groups, campgrounds, and eco-tourism attractions (Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation 2015; Oak Ridges Moraine Foundation 2015).

But winning the war at the formal policy level does not guarantee winning the war at the implementation level, especially if there is a lot of negative feedback. The Niagara Escarpment Commission became synonymous with very public conflict, creating if not a backlash then a desire to blunt the policies’ impact. On the one hand, the existence of the NEC became untouchable; besides the sunk costs involved in creating the Commission, the optics of dismantling an agency meant to protect rolling hills and wildlife against aggregate mines and tract housing would have been poor. But everything else about the Commission came under attack – funding, political appointments, and ministerial

Chapter 6 - Greenbelt Campaign 208 oversight – in what institutionalists call process of conversion and drift. Faced with implementing greenspace protection on the Oak Ridges Moraine, the Harris Conservatives reverted to municipal implementation – layering, in institutional terms – a model preferred by developers and municipal politicians looking to create “made in our town” solutions.

The shift to a decentralized implementation model had several immediate effects.

First of all, most of the costs of implementation were shifted to municipalities. While all three plans placed considerable compliance costs upon municipalities, the latter two shifted the extra burden of appeals costs to municipalities.

Secondly, implementation became fragmented and less coherent. There was only one interpretation of the NEP but there were potentially 32 interpretations of the ORMCP and 98 of the Greenbelt Plan. Jurisdictions trying to uphold a high standard of greenspace protection could find themselves thwarted by neighbouring jurisdictions with lower standards. As Bengston et al. (2004) noted in their scan of growth management policy instruments, both vertical co-ordination of policies at different levels of government and horizontal co-ordination of neighbouring jurisdictions is crucial to effective implementation of growth management and open space tools. The first law of ecology, according to Commoner (1971), is that you cannot change just one thing because everything is connected to everything else. Extending Commoner’s law from ecosystems to urban systems, the policies of one community affect and are affected by the policies of other communities. . . Some form of regional governance and co-ordination is needed to transcend local boundaries and serve as a bridge between local communities and state government. (Bengston et al. 2004, 281-282)

Municipal implementation also resulted in different results at the appeals stage. Appeals of decisions by the NEC were and are handled by hearing officers appointed by the Environmental Review Tribunal. By comparison, when municipal council decisions are appealed, the appeals go to the Ontario Municipal Board, whose officers hear a wide variety of cases and may not have environmental expertise. OMB hearing officers judge each case on its own merits, according to assessments as to what constitutes good

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planning for the area. This means that similar appeals from different municipalities could have different outcomes and set different standards.

Decentralization of decision-making works a bit like divide-and-conquer strategy by sending issues to different arenas where there is usually less government and ECSO capacity to fight well-funded developers. A report commissioned by the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation that looked at greenbelts in Europe and North America found that deregulated and decentralized implementation models weaken greenbelt protection. The report particularly cited the degradation of the London (U.K.) Green Belt when funding cuts and policies encouraging public-private partnerships eroded the ability of local planning authorities to oppose excessive development and protect the environment and agriculture (Carter-Whitney 2008).

The Harris government also in effect downloaded public education and monitoring to an under-resourced civil society sector, and the Liberals followed suit. They each created foundations and gave them one-time grants of millions of dollars – a good public relations move. But these appear to be a case of what Hodgson (2004) calls “manufactured civil society”: “groups that are formed and funded, at least initially, through some type of state initiative” (145). These groups are modelled after successful grassroots organizations in the hope that they can meet specific needs. Unlike the groups they are modelled after, manufactured civil society groups are usually answerable to the state, hence, lacking in true autonomy. In the case of the ORM Foundation, the government controlled the board of directors through the appointment rules. Hodgson’s study of groups in Wales found that the criteria imposed on the manufactured group constituted a new form of command-and-control by the state.

Ontario foundations are more independent of direct state control than Hodgson’s manufactured groups. However, the rules of foundations themselves constrict the range of their activities. Foundations cannot engage in political activity, although they can engage in a small amount of advocacy work. Foundations must invest and raise their own funds to keep up with the needs they have identified. This forces them into a market orientation, focusing scarce resources on the programs that are attractive to donors. Many donors could be members of the public but, more typically, donors to foundations are

Chapter 6 - Greenbelt Campaign 210 high-net-worth individuals and companies. Foundations can operate and fund some programs that are leveraged by volunteerism. But, in the end, this model is designed on a private consumer model: people get the greenspace protection they are willing or able to pay for in time or money, rather than the greenspace protection that may be optimal for the greater good.

4 Conclusion

“All you can do is shape change,” Greenbelt Task Force chairman Rob MacIsaac (2013) said. ECSOs throughout the Niagara Escarpment and Oak Ridges Moraine campaigns also realized change was inevitable and could not be stopped, but they believed they could shape the urban development that was coming, keep it from sensitive areas, and protect and enhance the physical public realm. Paths had been carved out. The Greenbelt campaign was about making those paths deeper, wider, and more “natural” to follow. Most interview subjects believed a dramatic turning point was reached on the Oak Ridges Moraine. The goal with the Greenbelt was to force a tipping point, where enough changes were made in legislation and regulations to tip greenspace protection into the realm of path dependence or, colloquially, a “new normal” that would be close to impossible to undo.

In the Escarpment campaign, the plan area had been drastically cut back as a result of ugly public confrontations. There had also been critical losses on the Moraine at the “pinch point” in Richmond Hill. To ensure a strong protected greenspace corridor, that trend would need to be stopped. It was with the Greenbelt. The OFA’s Peter Jeffery noted that, in public consultations over pipelines and similar changes to the environment, the initially announced study area is usually larger than the final plan area, as different routes are considered; the Greenbelt was unique in that the final plan area was larger than the study area.

Robustness & Revisability

Lowndes and Roberts (2013) suggest that two features need to be built into institutional designs to maximize their success: robustness and revisability. Robustness is

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characterized by clarity of values and enforcement. The underlying values and goals of the institution need to be understood and felt to be legitimate, with enforcement measures that shape actor behaviour over time to give rise to logics of appropriateness. Revisability is characterized by flexibility and variability – sustaining of a “variety engine” – so that institutions can adapt to different environments and circumstances through innovation and learning.

The Greenbelt is both an extra layer of protection for the environmental features protected on the Niagara Escarpment and Oak Ridges Moraine, and a new layer of protection for agricultural land. Like many institutions, the Greenbelt is multi-purpose. But robustness may be in the eye of the beholder. For instance, MacIsaac saw the Greenbelt as primarily a land preservation tool. “Growth will jump this greenbelt. The Greenbelt is not a growth management tool; Places to Grow is,” he said. The lower the expectations for it, the more robust it appears. Still, it regularly gets high approval ratings, reaching 93% in 2013 (Environics 2011, 2013), suggesting that its value and goals are clear to the general public. The Greenbelt Foundation has promoted activities that are meant to make the Greenbelt stronger. The provincial government passed a Local Food Act and devised a Local Food Strategy to improve awareness of and access to local food. By mid-2015, the Local Food Fund had already invested $30 million through the Greenbelt Fund and its new Local Food Fund, leveraging a total investment of more than $100 million to support innovative projects that expand markets for local food (OMAFRA 2015). The Greenbelt Foundation, the Ontario Greenbelt Alliance and other groups continued to work to strengthen the “brand” of the Greenbelt as central to the region’s identity. Adaptation to reduce climate change is a more recent and, for many, compelling rationale for supporting protected greenspace.

In providing for 10-year reviews and rules for enlarging the Greenbelt, actors can adapt to changing circumstances and “revise” the institution they have designed. The 10-year review bought the environmental coalition time to build an even bigger tent – one that might include more farmers – and make it stronger by supporting growth management, agricultural viability and other complementary measures. But gradual retrenchment is always possible.

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By the end of the first 10 years, those worries had not been realized. The Greenbelt had been expanded slightly. Limiting boundary changes to those made by the minister prevented interminable replays of the political science vs. environmental science debate as boundary after boundary got appealed. The one-for-one replacement rule also sent a message that countryside protection was to be a permanent feature of the Greater Golden Horseshoe, even though it also meant the Greenbelt could creep outwards from Lake Ontario. The biggest potential for weaker greenspace protection may come from calls for harmonization of the three protection plans, which could lead to defaulting to the weakest provisions.

Challenging the Status Quo

The policy process leading up to adoption of the Greenbelt Plan challenged the status quo in a number of ways (see Table 6.3). First of all, the internal processes of the Greenbelt Task Force broke down government silos, and empowered more professional voices to speak, according to MacIsaac. The give-and-take among stakeholder members surfaced important issues like farm viability. “The political benefit is that the solution is shielded from criticism because so many people are involved,” making it easier for government to take strong action, he added. Later in the task force process, the hearings gave voice to the public. The expansive vision of the Greenbelt captured the imagination of the public, with many people participating in public consultations and learning about challenges. This later led to new partnerships and strategies on agricultural viability.

The speed of the Greenbelt campaign at a time when scientists were recommending speedier action on climate change seemed to offer hope that the campaign could be a template for further change to improve sustainability. Was the speed of the campaign due solely to circumstances or to something else, such as capacity?

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Table 6.3 Did the Greenbelt Campaign Successfully Challenge the Status Quo? YES NO Success Factors The campaign . . . The campaign . . . Clear vision and/or The Greenbelt was an attractive and catalyzing issue easy-to-understand solution to the sprawl problem.

Policy network The policy network included local, The network tended to sideline with diverse regional and provincial groups, and municipal state actors and to give actors some opponents during insufficient voice to the farmers who stakeholder negotiations. were to bear most of the immediate impacts.

Different kinds of The process engaged local knowledge knowledge and professional knowledge and launched a spirited debate on the merits of the science involved.

Public The task force process and other There was a top-down quality to the engagement hearings engaged an enormous process, with the critical decision to number of people in social learning, include a greenbelt in the Liberal particularly about the challenges of platform made by a small number of agricultural viability in the region. people (who, however, represented a much larger population). Critical decisions about boundaries were done by professional staff and subject to very little public review, although the views of most stakeholders were well-known.

Accountability During the process, there was regular consultation with and debriefing of OGA members. The government publicized its criteria for choosing boundaries. Municipal planning decisions take place in public. The Plan is subject to 10-year public reviews.

Supportive Places to Grow growth The Plan is enforced by municipal institutions management rules are designed to councils, which are often pro- complement the Greenbelt, growth; backed up by a foundation providing for intensification inside that was not given on-going funding. the protected area. Greenbelt rules Compliance and monitoring were made boundary changes unlikely in sub-par. the first 10 years. Delaying review for 10 years gave the Greenbelt time to become familiar to the public.

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EDC’s Rick Smith pointed to a unique set of circumstances. On the government side, there was a detailed and explicit election promise, provocative action by developers before the new government had been sworn in, failure of that government to deal with it appropriately, resulting in a public relations disaster, creating the need for action to reframe the public’s view of the new government. On the environmentalist side, he said, there were private foundations willing to pool resources to support an education campaign on the need for a greenbelt, and a coalition that was able to quickly come together.

But experienced leadership was also important. “Taking advantage of the moment when the bulldozers started moving against Stouffeville Side Road [at the site of the Macleod’s Landing development] was key,” Smith said. “To the extent that it was this organization that identified that moment [as a window of opportunity], that was key.” He and his team also realized they had “a very rich network of organizations ready to go” – allies across the entire length of the proposed Greenbelt. The negative lesson of the Escarpment campaign and the positive lesson of the Moraine campaign was that a strong organization with a united front was needed as a campaign vehicle, a lesson that was ironically validated by the landowners when they belatedly created the Ontario Greenbelt Coalition.

In the end, the ability of civil society to absorb criticism about the hastiness of government action was critically important. The OGA kept pushing the government for better boundaries but knew when to switch gears and defend the government from attack.

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Chapter 7 Comparing the Campaigns: Gaining Common Ground

“The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain . . . until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.” ~ Jane Addams

1 Introduction

Predictably, background cultural values, paradigms and governance modes changed very little during the three campaigns: capitalist growth and the arrangements that support it remained dominant. But conflicting values, paradigms and modes occasionally revealed “chinks in the armour” allowing different understandings to influence outcomes. Over time, there was an evolution in governance. Public participation became more managed. Environmental coalitions became more complex, both in membership and techniques. Discourses used by the ECSOs became more compelling to the public and politicians, moving from consumerist to scientific to economic.

After years of struggle, the campaigners for the protection of the Niagara Escarpment, Oak Ridges Moraine and GGH Greenbelt wanted what greenbelt designers always want: permanence. With each stage, they gained ground, but the victories remained precarious.

2 Governance Performance 2.1 Arenas, Practices & Modes

The “staging” of governance performance became more complex over time (see Table 7.1).

2.1.1 Arenas

The number of sites of governance increased over the three campaigns as governments’ need for partners to help supply governing resources increased. Formal public participation, often seen as a positive force for social innovation, was regressive during the Escarpment campaign during public hearings on the second proposed plan. The

Chapter 7 - Comparing the Campaigns 216 hearings were extremely acrimonious. The government never conducted public participation exercises that way again. Future exercises were more managed. If they became unmanageable, as they did during the Richmond Hill OMB hearing for OPA 200, the government suspended the hearing. This left a gap that ECSOs filled. They educated and consulted the public about environmental science and specific proposals in meetings and workshops of their own. By the time of the Greenbelt campaign, civil society had clearly become a site of governance.

2.1.2 Practices

Public Participation

Public participation is theorized to be most likely to challenge the status quo if (1) the geographic scale is large (with many constituencies and other variables), (2) the action under consideration is systematic rather than fragmented, (3) participation is early in the policy process, (4) the participants are diverse, and (5) the style of engagement is open (Sharp and Connelly 2002). The first four factors were largely true in these campaigns, the fifth one less so.

Public participation over a large geographic scale was a challenge for ECSOs, who needed to agree on a common strategy and deploy it across this wide area. But the investment of time and money was necessary because developers had been successfully using divide- and-conquer strategies at the local level, where public meetings were required by law. This forced the ECSOs to turn a local OPA fight in Richmond Hill into a proxy for regional consultation. When the government turned to a stakeholder strategy that was smaller scale and closed, it regained control of the process. The environmental actors who had shown themselves during the OMB hearing to be the most radical were excluded from participating on stakeholder groups.

Later, during the Greenbelt campaign, a new rationale for public engagement surfaced: risk management. The task force hearings brought to light the weaknesses in the proposed legislation, preparing state actors for the second reading hearings that become part of the public record. The hearings also produced a few minor changes in the proposed legislation and suggested a direction for future action on agriculture.

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Table 7.1 Comparisons of Arenas, Practices & Modes

Policy Proposals (Area-based initiatives) Dimension Niagara Escarpment Oak Ridges Moraine Greenbelt creation & protection protection protection

Arenas Sites: bureaucracy, public Sites: bureaucracy, OMB, Sites: bureaucracy, hearings, protest sites local & regional public private meetings, NGO Regarding (Orangeville, Queen’s hearings, task forces & partnership meetings, public Park) stakeholder committees task force, regional participation: Public participation: Public participation: public hearings --Geographic --Large geographic scale --Large & small scales Public participation: scale --Systemic action --Systemic action --Large geographic scale --Extent of --High-level agenda --High-level agenda --Systemic action action --Public request led to --Heavy use of --High-level agenda --Agenda expert-led process stakeholder groups, --Closed, open and --Style of followed by wide open mandated open public managed styles of engagement then managed hearings, NGO open engagement engagement engagement

Governance Move from expert-led Stakeholder selection Party platform formation practices process to biases results of task protocols lead to secret (formal & communicative forces deals informal rules strategies helped better Planning & media Planning & media and laws) organized landowners processes encourage processes encourage large turnouts at large turnouts at statutory meetings statutory meetings Media processes Media processes encourage sound bite, encourage sound bite, colourful events, tours, colourful events, tours, etc. etc. Political finance rules Political finance rules favour developers favour developers (land Charitable rules hamstring swaps, homes) ECSOs Charitable rules hamstring ECSOs

Governance Crown government Crown government Crown government modes State-managed (led by State-managed (technical State-managed modes experts) experts, later stakeholder talks)

Stakeholder Committees

In getting to a solution, the government turned in the latter two campaigns to the use of stakeholder committees to circumvent existing institutions that were unable to produce a desired result in a timely manner. Long-term processes allow bridging and bonding social capital to develop among the participants: bridging social capital to reach across differences and bonding social capital to produce a cohesive working group. Stakeholder

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approaches are institutional work-arounds, often the only or best way to break down silos, build trust and surface issues. In this case, existing institutions such as the OMB were not working for policy actors.

Stakeholder approaches normally feature a membership that is representative of all the actors in the drama, a specific problem-solving mandate, and a compressed timeline. Ideally, the committee is a microcosm of the public involved in the issue. A rule of engagement is mutual respect; everyone is supposedly on an equal footing, much like Habermas’ (1973) café society metaphor in his theorization about the ideal public sphere. By agreeing to participate, group members acknowledge that they are there to solve the given problem; they share at least this much common ground, which saves time. A compressed timetable provides focus and leaves less time for opponents to regroup and counter-organize, as occurred during the Escarpment campaign.

Rydin and Holman (2004) suggest that this kind of cross-scale, cross-sectoral partnership venture is characterized by “bracing” social capital, a combination of bonding and bridging social capital across sectors, scales and levels of government. The need to develop some kind of working social capital in different contexts of this study resulted in four types of stakeholder committee. The contextual variables were time – did the members have a lot or a little? – and mandate – were they advisory or decision-making in nature? This resulted in an array of four committee types: policy groups, problem-solving groups, steering committees, and stewardship groups (see Table 7.2).

Policy Groups are short-term advisory groups set up to provide guidance on a specific policy or type of policy. The Greenbelt Task Force is an example. Problem-solving Groups are short-term work groups set up to solve a specific problem. The Oak Ridges Moraine Advisory Panel is an example. Steering Committees are long-term advisory groups set up to study an issue and provide direction or suggest priorities to government policy-makers. Although their meetings may technically be private, their membership, particularly on sub-committees, may be so large as to be somewhat porous. The Central Ontario Smart Growth Panel and the GTA Agricultural Action Committee are examples. Stewardship Groups are long-term, often on-going decision-making groups, often in the form of a board of directors, which look after a public asset such as a park or hospital.

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Table 7.2 Types of Public Stakeholder Committees Less Time for Deliberations More Time for Deliberations (more likely to work in secret) (more likely to work in public) Advisory Policy Group Steering Committees e.g., Greenbelt Task Force e.g., ORM Technical Working Committee, Central Ontario Smart Growth Panel

Decision-making Problem-Solving Group Stewardship Group e.g., ORM Advisory Panel e.g., most boards of directors, the NEC to some extent

Usually, diversity of skills and experience is prized so the group can make good decisions. Even when members are elected, there are often mechanisms to remove, isolate or drive off members who do not contribute in a productive way. The foundations and stewardship groups throughout the Greenbelt fall into this category. The Niagara Escarpment Commission might fall into the group, as well.

The less time a committee had to develop social capital, the more likely it was to deliberate in secret. Committee members agreed to non-disclosure of deliberations and “without prejudice” talks, meaning members could suggest ideas without being held to them going forward. Committees with a later deadline had more time to develop relationships and even change members to arrive at a productive working group. Because groups like these had a longer timeline and were usually consuming more public resources, they were more likely to be required to operate all or most of the time in public, although, in practice, the public was not always interested in attending their meetings.

Stakeholder committees were a substitute for more extensive public consultation, which had been counter-productive at times. However, sometimes stakeholder groups or their environmental civil society members augmented their private deliberations with public consultations designed to meet their specific needs, such as for validation. Stakeholder group processes “professionalized” public participation by being more strategic, efficient, affordable and expert-driven (Parkins 2006). Their quasi-governmental nature and compressed timeline made it easier for academic experts and businessmen to participate comfortably. Their diversity made it easier to generate and legitimate more creative

Chapter 7 - Comparing the Campaigns 220 proposals than the “lowest common denominator” solutions often generated in more public settings. Recommendations of these groups were usually put before the public, but the public, seeing the groups as legitimate, seldom made wholesale changes.

2.1.3 Governance Modes

As cultural features, governance modes did not change as much as arenas and practices over the course of the three campaigns. Ontario’s political culture assumes that governance modes will be rational and technical, based on the best available science (although the public can be misled on this point). The public was willing to be advised, led or represented by groups, such as ECSOs, that had done research and “dug out the facts.” Governance modes are also assumed to be fair and balanced, efficient and effective, seeking the best value for money. Norms of fairness and reciprocity were reflected in the shift to greater public participation by those affected by proposals.

Crown government was a basic mode that both enabled and constrained greenspace protection. On the one hand, it asserted that only the Crown had property rights. On the other hand, its traditions of protecting the privileges of the landed gentry continue to give landowners a presumption of entitlement.

2.2 Actors, Networks & Values

The “cast and crew” of the campaigns grew in size and sophistication, but their basic motivations were fairly constant over the three episodes (see Table 7.3).

2.2.1 Actors

State Actors

Three kinds of state actors were involved in creating and contesting greenspace protection institutions: provincial politicians, provincial bureaucrats, and municipal politicians. Provincial politicians were the targets of lobbying by market actors and ENGOs. They were looking to other groups to supply the governing resources they needed. Provincial bureaucrats were custodians of the evidence base for environmental policies. In the early days of conservation, men like Edmund Zavitz, A.H. Richardson and Leonard Gertler led

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Table 7.3 Comparisons of Actors, Networks & Values

Policy Proposals (Area-based initiatives) Dimension Niagara Escarpment Oak Ridges Moraine Greenbelt creation & protection protection protection

Actors Environmentalists Professionalized ECSOs, Professionalized ECSOs, (change agents, local groups foundations, local Regarding reduced capacity) Big developers groups public Farmer-landowners Municipal & regional Farmer-landowners participation: (dominant, focused on governments & Developers --Participants status quo) agencies Provincial bureaucrats & Provincial bureaucrats & politicians politicians

Networks & ECSO coalition open & ECSO networks became ECSO coalitions more coalitions flexible but late in more professional, still mature, creative & forming & less effective open disciplined, but also Farmers built on longer Developer network tensions over different tradition of working became hegemonic strategies together, strongly Bureaucratic capacity Farmer networks reduced motivated by perceived reduced under Mike in capacity (fewer economic interests Harris members, tired strategies) Embedded Respect for the Nature’s provision of Nature needs to be values environment as an water and habitat for preserved so it can amenity vs. as supplier native species should provide environmental of natural resources for take precedent & planning services exploitation Partnership possible Belief that science is (aggregates, farming, evolving etc.) Respect for science & experts

innovative efforts in environmental planning. Bureaucrats quietly continued to conduct research and advise politicians about the necessity for preserving ecologically important features, even during the tenure of anti-environmental governments. Municipal politicians, meanwhile, were the errant wards of the state.

Municipal politicians were generally seen as a problem by both ECSOs and many Liberal politicians. They were seen as too anxious for growth. For most politicians, there has been little questioning of growth as a goal. No one likes to deal with decline. But municipal politicians were seen as too willing to buy into developer claims that “growth pays for itself” and to give discounts on development charges, thereby shifting some infrastructure costs to property taxpayers. The fact that so many of them took campaign donations from

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developers only strengthened these impressions (MacDermid 2006; Eisenberg 2010). So it is little wonder the Harris government felt it could get away with changes to the Development Charges Act in 1997 that reduced the ability of municipalities to collect fees from developers to cover full infrastructure costs – municipalities were already collecting less than they could from developers.

Since then, municipalities have asked for a reversal of the Harris reforms (see, for example, AMO 2006), with only limited success (MMAH 2015a). The municipalities had previously failed to speak with a unified voice and act consistently on growth cost issues and had failed to build a larger coalition of support, particularly among civil society actors. Only recently have ECSOs become partners in this, trying to explain the costs of sprawl to the general public (EDC 2013). Some GTA municipalities have started charging the maximum amount of development charges permitted, which has angered developers, who blame them for the high cost of new housing. But, for years, neo-liberal thinking has shifted both politicians and taxpayers to a preference for “user pay” models for service delivery; in their minds, this is just another, albeit expensive, user fee – but one that costs existing “homevoters” nothing (Fischel 2001).

Municipal politicians complained about being wards of the province, and their pleas for more local autonomy were agreed to by the province when it suited neo-liberal governments like Harris’s. But their short-sightedness and frequent appeals to the province for help (however warranted) have made the province slow to change its policies. Many provincial politicians come from the municipal sector and are also pro- growth. But responsibility for a different set of taxpayers has given them a different perspective, even though they continue to allocate provincial funding for infrastructure on a case-by-case basis, often politically motivated, instead of aligning such decisions with the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe.

Developers

The regional growth coalition was dominated by the larger members of the land development industry, which was disciplined by kinship ties. Ties with other coalition members – farmers, local businesses, sub-contractors, politicians – were mostly secured in

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traditional market fashion by financial exchanges. Its attempts to bridge to a wider public for support were also financial: philanthropic donations to hospitals, Habitat for Humanity, and other causes that, while generous, were small compared to the wealth of the donors.38 Developers’ primary contribution to state actors has been donations to election campaigns and to favourite causes that politicians are associated with. This helps ensure that politicians remember their friends.

Throughout this case, developers fought for cheaper land and building costs. For them, the Greenbelt was a problem but less important than the growth management rules in the Places to Grow Act and the infrastructure financing rules in the Development Charges Act; they continued to press for changes in all three. In the 2015 review, BILD claimed to want to “improve” the Greenbelt, not dismantle it (Tenuta 2015). In recent years, they opened up a new front, attacking the greenspace rules for building in built-up areas – known as the parkland dedication – at both the OMB and provincial policy level (LaRusic 2015; OHBA and BILD 2014). They have also launched SLAPP suits – strategic lawsuits against public participation – against ECSOs to weaken and silence them (Anti-SLAPP Advisory Panel 2010), such as a suit against the tiny Richmond Hill Naturalists by DG Group (formerly known as Metrus) for more than $200,000 in legal costs in a case the developer won (Zarzour 2015).

Farmers

Farmers went from a force to be reckoned with during the Escarpment campaign to policy victim in the Greenbelt campaign. With their dwindling numbers, they became less of a political force, particularly since they were divided between farmers who wanted to sell their land for development and farmers who wanted to farm more successfully. As a result, they failed to provide alternative proposals or useful contributions during public consultations. However, they did learn from the process, finally working with non-farm

38 In 2007, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto unveiled the Galleria Italia, a multi-purpose space at the front of the gallery designed by Canadian-born architect Frank Gehry to look like the frame of a canoe. On each rib of the canoe is the name of a $500,000 donor to the project. At least six of them are families of major developers: Carlo Baldassarra, Rudy Bratty, Mario Cortellucci, Fred De Gasperis, Greg Sorbara, and Jack Del Zotto.

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groups to produce a strategy for agricultural viability and win new provincial legislation to promote local foods.

When it looked like the province was starting to listen to the agricultural viability issues of farmers, OFA director Peter Lambrick and one of the convenors of the new strategy group, admitted the Greenbelt is “something we can be proud of.” He warned that it would only reach its potential if politicians and the public looked at the “big picture,” including making agriculture a business that could attract a new generation of farmers.

Environmental Actors

Environmental actors from the more public-interested part of civil society led the experimentation with institutional design and idea framing and built a supportive coalition for greenspace protection. In the court of public opinion that is so important to politicians, the ECSO coalition was also the most inclusive and consequently had the most network resources to offer: legitimacy, framing ideas, funding from foundations the state could not access, and execution of support strategies.

One of the most important features of civil society was its very endurance. It carried forward greenspace protection ideas across time and governments, overcoming the two- to five-year election cycle.

Another important feature was its sense of timing, knowing when to force open a “window of opportunity.” For instance, when the Liberals won the election in 2003, there were any number of initiatives that might have distracted it from pursuing greenbelt legislation. If the Greenbelt had been considered after Places to Grow, the Toronto region might have looked very different.

The ECSOs were alert to potential partners. For example, ECSOs looked for people who could help them make their case. Speaking of David Crombie, Crandall said, “We found a champion in a man with profile and he found people who were advancing his goal.”

Some interview subjects saw key individuals as more important than groups. But the effectiveness of these leaders relied on volunteers backing them up. Most of the groups in the ECSO coalitions were led by a handful of people with passion, time and/or money.

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Most of their members were supporters and volunteers, many of whom understood that the most important job they could do was to put “bums in seats” – show up at public meetings, fill halls, bear witness to decision-making, and attract media attention by their numbers. Many people who attend municipal council meetings or OMB hearings find them boring exercises, filled with obscure planning and legal language and strict rules about who may speak and when. The media tends to see attendance at these meetings as a sign of support for the issue under discussion.

The ECSO coalitions were most effective when their leaders risked the ire of their own members and partners by moving at strategic times from purist, confrontational strategies to collaborative approaches where they were willing to compromise. They reasoned that having part of something was better than having all of nothing.

2.2.2 Networks

In each of the three campaigns, the coalition with the larger number of members and supporters won the day: farmer-landowners in the first campaign and environmentalists in the next two, with the environmental coalitions becoming stronger over time. This raised a question of quantity vs. quality: did the successful coalitions grow only geographically in size, as the proposed plan areas grew, or did they also grow in complexity? Given that civil society’s networks are associated with social capital, were there interesting differences in the types or amounts of social capital? All the actors in this saga, including the market ones, had a foot in civil society. To analyze network-building within civil society, some sort of parsing of civil society was important.

Two empirical studies pointed the way to a possible classification system. Stolle and Rochon’s (1998) comparison of 102 associations asked what traits of associations contributed to a more civic-minded form of social capital they called “public social capital.” They hypothesized that inclusiveness was a driver, and found a positive relationship. They also looked at the missions of associations, grouping them into sectors, and finding that some scored higher than others on their social capital measures, which were based on 10 indicators measured by survey questions. The other study was by Brown and Ashman (1996), a study of 13 development projects that found a positive

Chapter 7 - Comparing the Campaigns 226 association between social capital and successful projects. They further found that there were two types of social capital, each of which was associated with a particular kind of organization. Local grassroots organizations exhibited what Putnam and others call “bonding” social capital, useful for building up local co-operatives to solve local problems, while NGOs, which exhibited “bridging” social capital, provided links among donors, government agencies and local communities.

These two studies suggest that one key to understanding the relationship between civil society and social capital is to build a classification system based on two properties of civil society groups: interest orientation and inclusiveness. This approximates how groups tend to describe themselves: by their missions and memberships. Each factor can be considered as a continuum, ranging from more inward-looking and private-interested to outward-looking and public-interested, these two extremes corresponding to bonding and bridging social capital respectively. Placing the two continua on x and y axes yields a matrix on which different groups can be located. (See Figure 7.1.)

Private vs. public interest orientation is measured by looking at a group’s activities as well as its stated goals or mission. Inclusivity is measured by the presence or absence of barriers to membership and number of individual members (as opposed to number of member groups, in the case of co-ordinating bodies). Barriers are usually mentioned in group bylaws on membership or obvious by the name or nature of the group. (So, for instance, the Toronto Chinese Community Services Association is clearly limited to people of a certain ethnicity living within a particular city.) As a rule, the fewer the barriers or limitations, the greater the number of members. Some groups have very few formal members – people with voting rights in an organization – but many supporters or donors, which may be the more useful metric in particular cases.

The Interest Orientation Scale moves from the most self-interested, even perverse kind of social capital – the kind that can undermine the social fabric with divisive demands – to a middle area with a mix of private and public interests – the pragmatists, comfortable with compromise – to the most public-spirited and philanthropic, even utopian.

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Figure 7.1 A Civil Society Matrix

Inclusive (BRIDGING (Market (Social (Reform Social Advocacy Movement Alliances) Capital) NGOs) NGOs)

(Property (Community (Service Rights ↕ Associations) Agencies) Groups)

(Defence of Exclusive (Mutual Aid Privilege (Benefactors) (BONDING Societies) Groups) Social Capital) Private- Public- interested ↔ interested (BONDING (BRIDGING Social Capital) Social Capital) Source: Author

The Inclusivity Scale moves from the most exclusive endpoint, where there are barriers to membership such as personal invitation, money, identity, ethnic group or profession. Bonding social capital is prevalent at this level, where strong ties are valued. Belonging sometimes entails a sense of privilege or, at the more public-spirited end of the scale, noblesse oblige. Members back other members or projects. Less exclusive is the middle range of groups whose membership is technically open to all but practically limited by geography, interests, beliefs or identities. Members have a common interest that usually is best or only realized within a group setting. These groups tend to be community-based with activist members: society’s “players,” as Putnam (2000) described them. The most inclusive groups have no barriers to membership. In fact, their coin is membership and they seek to have the largest possible so they can influence the public agenda. This is the sector of weak ties, which by their very weakness make bridging social capital easier to achieve (Granovetter 1973; Putnam 2000). Many members will be supporters or “fans,” as Putnam (2000) dubs them, of a cause that is managed by organizations with professional staff. Organizations at this level are often co-ordinating bodies, bringing together groups and people from other levels to support common causes (Gurza Lavalle and Bueno 2011).

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Although the two axes represent continua, they can be used to create a typology of civil society groups. These types are more like roles; some groups will encompass more than one type, particularly in different contexts. Some, like the United Way, are designed to be vertically-integrated. Moving approximately from most inward-looking to most outward- looking yields this typology:

• Defence of Privilege Groups, such as elite country clubs that benefit from landscape preservation but do not contribute to saving them. • Property Rights Groups, ranging from NIMBY groups and rent-seeking business networks to more innocuous condo boards and homeowner associations. • Market Advocacy Non-Governmental Organizations (MANGOs), generally industry groups or provincial, state or national versions of the previous groups. • Mutual Aid Societies, which offer support to people who meet specific membership criteria, such as commitment to organic farming, as in the case of Whole Village. • Community Associations, such as local “green” groups, that require association to achieve their aims. • Reform Alliances, such as STORM and OGA, with large aggregate memberships, formed to achieve a social movement purpose or a similar goal spanning multiple geographical areas or fields of interest. Goals are public-interested but also compromises due to the necessity of building a broad coalition. • Benefactors, such as foundations that have restricted membership but public interest purposes like promoting environmental protection. • Service Agencies, such as nature stewardship groups that are activity-oriented. • Social Movement Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), such as Ontario Nature and Environmental Defence Canada, which have large memberships supporting professional staff in pursuing utopian missions. 39

This typology makes it clearer that, in each campaign, the side with the richer “ecology of actors” won the day. Further, social innovation was driven by networks formed from the more inclusive and public-interested parts of civil society: NGOs, Service Agencies, Benefactors, Reform Alliances and Community Associations (with token support from green MANGOs and Mutual Aid Societies). When successful, as in the Greenbelt campaign, these networks produced authoritative, informational, financial and organizational resources that met the provincial government’s need for “governing

39 For a more detailed discussions of these categories, see Appendix F: Varieties of Civil Society.

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resources” of legitimacy, knowledge, financial strength and operational follow-through, thus converting their social capital into political capital. Their diversity acted as a “variety engine,” producing new solutions to problems, and reliable links to disparate communities of voters and each other. This was important because the groups varied in abilities, risk-tolerance, ethics, style and agendas. In the Moraine campaign, there were times when differences led to a need for damage control. The leaders of the Greenbelt campaign were more disciplined, but they also had a short time-frame, which probably made compliance with internal rules easier to enforce. That said, the ECSO coalitions also became more professional as time went on, learning more management skills, adopting more businesslike strategies, and hiring more paid staff. They made it easier for their opponents in business and government to relate to them as peers.

2.2.3 Embedded Values

The most central value in this saga was Ontarians’ valuing of nature. In the three campaigns it was expressed first in terms of landscape amenities, then in terms of environmental services, and finally in terms of both environmental and planning services.

Also important was self-reliance as a basic value of Ontario culture that morphed into a more community-oriented notion of self-sufficiency. This might have had more to do with the closed international borders after 9/11 than anything else, but environmentalists used it to advance their narratives.

Respect for science has underpinned rational-technical planning, which remains strong in Ontario and enabled by OMB rules of procedure, among other things. People may argue about the science, but it is presumed that science is worth arguing about.

2.3 Narratives, Discourses & Paradigms

The successful “scripts” in these episodes of governance performance paid attention to fundamental expectations about life in Ontario (see Table 7.4).

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2.3.1 Narratives

The environmental narratives became more community-minded and pragmatic over time. The stories that launched the modern greenspace protection campaigns were based on a view of nature as landscape amenity: the beauties of the Bruce Trail, the destruction of nature with the blasting of the Dufferin Gap. These aesthetic pitches suffered in comparison to farmers’ claims that they were about to become victims of “confiscation without compensation.”

Environmentalists on the Moraine found more compelling stories with descriptions of the Moraine as the region’s “rain barrel” and habitat for fragile and endangered species. Meanwhile, the developers on the Moraine talked about the need for more housing in a region where new houses seemed to pop up everywhere people looked. They claimed “growth pays for itself” without acknowledging its true costs.

During the Greenbelt campaign, environmentalists focused on “hot spots” of conflict over urban sprawl to bring the issue down to a community scale. The “hot spots” illustrated a wide range of problems the Greenbelt could solve, helping the public see it as an efficient, multi-purpose solution. The developers, who seemed somewhat resigned to a greenbelt, argued for “flexible” policies that could have completely undermined the Greenbelt. Farmers also wanted flexibility, some to be able to have ancillary uses to help them make more money, others to be able to sell to developers and reap a “final harvest” to retire on. But they undermined their own myth-making about the traditional family farm when they demanded the right to sell out to urban sprawl.

2.3.2 Discourses

Discourses used by the campaigners evolved from consumerist arguments about landscape amenities and habitat loss on the Escarpment to more scientific arguments about water systems and bio-regionalism on the Moraine, and, finally, to arguments about securing regional economic security by creating an attractive region with permanent access to local food products – a productivist discourse masking what was for many a desire for a healthier environment and access to nature. This discourse was, ironically, a variation on a discourse from well before the Escarpment campaign.

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Table 7.4 Comparisons of Narratives, Discourses & Paradigms

Policy Proposals (Area-based initiatives) Dimension Niagara Escarpment Oak Ridges Moraine Greenbelt creation &

protection protection protection

Narratives Dufferin Gap vs. Moraine as rain barrel, Hot spots of conflict over (stories & “confiscation without wildlife refuge, “next urban sprawl vs. metaphors) compensation” Walkerton” vs. “growth developers & farmers’ pays for itself” need for “flexibility”

Discourses Consumerist (focused on Scientific (focused on Economic (healthy (ideas that landscape amenities) vs. water quality, region) vs. affordable structure private property rights watershed planning, housing & farmers as perceptions) habitat loss, landscape stewards connectivity) vs. affordable housing

Paradigms Economy 1st – belief that Environment 1st – need for Environment 1st – (what is growth is necessary for clean air & water underpins healthy thinkable) a successful economy & Acceptance of economy & society society appropriate growth – Acceptance of properly Crown government some questioning of located growth – more should serve economic growth questioning of growth interests Crown government Crown government can should protect nature vs serve both nature & economic interests economic interests

The ability to “grow our own” food has long been a priority of Ontarians, who value self- reliance. In 1950, the Select Committee on Conservation wrote: “Soil, as we see it, is our heritage from the dead and our dowry to countless numbers yet unborn; it represents the future at our feet” (27). Their concern was that soil would be washed away by flood waters in areas stripped of trees and other ground cover. Over time, the concern was less about soil being washed away and more about soil being paved over with asphalt as urban sprawl crept further into the countryside. This remains a concern where land is farmed in the shadow of urban areas because of the way some farmers allow their soil quality to degrade. Stewardship programs, like the Environmental Farm Program, while popular are still voluntary.40 ECSOs still use the soil discourse in promoting the local wine and food industries.

40 More than 35,000 farms have participated in the Environmental Farm Plan Program since it began in 1993 (see http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/environment/efp/efp.htm). As of 2011, there were 51,950 farms in Ontario, down from 67,520 in 1996 (http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/stats/ census/summary.htm).

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ECSOs extended early discourses about habitat loss to more scientific discussions about the need for landscape connectivity across a bio-region. They held workshops and appeared at eco-fairs. More importantly, the environmental coalition persuaded Premier McGuinty to expand greenspace protection when they reframed their NOAH Project as a greenbelt – something the Ottawa-area MPP could relate to.

A notable discourse used with politicians in all three campaigns was greenspace protection as legacy. Every decision of government leaves a legacy, but it is hard to know how each one will turn out and how it will be seen by future generations. MPPs in the Harris Conservative government had discovered to their chagrin that the vote-rich GTA region barely noticed the thousands of acres of land protected in Northern Ontario as part of the Lands for Life exercise. Greenspace protection in the shadow of the GTA, though, was more likely to be noticed and appreciated.

In the run-up to the 2015 review, the Greenbelt Foundation and BILD both published full- page advertorials in the high-circulation Saturday Toronto Star, promoting their framings of countryside protection. The Foundation promoted the Greenbelt as a source of wholesome local food and award-winning wines, and a location for healthy recreational activities. Developers reprised claims about land shortages and housing prices. But one developer admitted the housing affordability message is not getting through, possibly because low interest rates are preventing a true housing crisis. A few interviewees believe that values are shifting: younger people are more interested in urban lifestyles. Recent research shows that demand for transit and other urban amenities among all age groups is likely driving high home prices inside the Greenbelt; the greenfields available for new ground-oriented housing are often far from desirable services (Burda 2012, 2013).

2.3.3 Paradigms

In this study, new ideas succeeded best when they were nested within old and familiar ideas of what was thinkable. The dominant paradigms in Ontario life during the time of this study were Canadian variations on private enterprise, which calls for the Crown to help business in exchange for fealty to it; efficiency in government, which entails getting value for money spent; and communitarianism, which assumes the community in some

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guise will ensure that the riches of society are shared with the poor, disadvantaged and young, in some kind of “fair” manner.

The basic paradigm at first was “economy first”: growth is needed for a strong economy that can pay for social benefits. Over time, there was growing acceptance of an “environment first” paradigm, where a healthy environment is linked to public and personal health, the foundation needed for any kind of flourishing. It was tentatively deployed during the Moraine campaign, while, in the Greenbelt campaign, Premier McGuinty himself claimed to be putting the environment first by deciding on greenbelt boundaries before dealing with growth permissions. Growth was never abandoned as a fundamental paradigm, but there was an increasing need for it to be seen as balanced and appropriately managed.

Collision of a Newer Idea with Older Paradigms

Greenspace protection was an idea at odds with the private enterprise paradigm that held that nature’s bounty was unlimited and was to be exploited for commercial benefit. Conservationist John Muir was one of the first people to challenge this idea, defending nature on spiritual grounds. In the 1960s, the arguments for preserving the Niagara Escarpment were aesthetic and recreational. Proponents of Escarpment protection struggled in particular against the idea that people’s right to self-determination extended to their property. Canadian enterprise norms acknowledged that Canadians live within a Crown system, but emphasized that the Crown will not unreasonably deny them control over their assets. For many landowners, the Escarpment plan seemed an unreasonable abrogation of their rights.

The idea of greenspace protection fared better during the Oak Ridges Moraine Campaign, when environmental arguments based on water quality ultimately prevailed with the general public. It was a better fit with communitarian ideas about public health, efficiency ideas about thinking ahead to ensure adequate provisioning, and even private enterprise notions about ensuring the conditions for economic success. Even the developers on the Moraine accepted during stakeholder talks that ecological functions need to be protected, though they differed on how much land was needed to preserve those functions.

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With the Greenbelt, greenspace protection advocates promoted nature to the public as productive, necessary to preserve prime farm land and create livable urban communities. The fit with norms of efficiency and effectiveness in government has improved since passage of the Greenbelt Act, with new information on the value of ecosystem services showing that nature is productive in another way.

Several interviewees said they believed greenspace protection had become non-partisan, with all three parties having moved the project forward. The increasing salience of environmental issues to the Canadian public in general and suburban voters in particular helps explain this (Boyd 2003).

3 Institutional Trajectories

Overall, in this case, institutional legacies influenced the choice of greenspace protection as a tool to deal with urban sprawl and structured the trajectory of attempts to deploy and embed it. Early initiatives to reduce flooding impacts had instilled the idea that the cure for natural disasters lay as much in nature as in man-made technologies. Reforestation, conservation areas and conservation authorities were the norm when public dismay over damage to the Niagara Escarpment that was related to urban sprawl required a response. An approach to greenspace protection based on a regional land use regulation resulted. Creation of a dedicated agency, the Niagara Escarpment Commission, followed from a practice of appointing “ABCs” – agencies, boards or commissions – to deal with new initiatives. This approach was a game-changer. Residents on the Oak Ridges Moraine sought a similar plan and commission for their area.

Unpopular and inappropriate development had been occurring on the Moraine because institutions like the OMB that appeared fair and efficient on paper were not in practice. In actuality, land use institutions ran up against other rules such as those governing municipal election finances that so privileged the “urban growth machine” that the agricultural and housing industries were distorted and nature protection thwarted. But strong incentives, profits and support coalitions kept these institutions in place. The Niagara Escarpment, Oak Ridges Moraine and Greenbelt plans were all geographic “fixes” for problems that could not be solved by existing institutions. As with any fix,

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these were not perfect. Even the best greenbelts still fail to protect all the environmental features they should; as recreational areas they are relatively inaccessible, especially to the urban poor; and they put more of the burden of ecological service costs on farmers and rural communities. But by protecting some environmental features, particularly those related to safe water, cleaner air and productive soil, they improved environmental sustainability while making growth more acceptable to the public.

Abrupt vs. Incremental Change

The institutional path of greenspace protection was characterized more by a series of abrupt changes – or “displacement,” with new rules displacing old ones – than by incremental change. All three campaigns experienced “windows of opportunity” that increased the likelihood that environmentalists’ preferred solutions would get exposure and prominence (Kingdon 1995): the Dufferin Gap, the Richmond Hill hearings, the destruction caused by bulldozers at Macleod’s Landing.

Gradual changes also occurred, although some were so severe as to seem abrupt. For instance, the Harris conservatives, unwilling to dismantle the Niagara Escarpment Commission, which was unpopular with its pro-growth base but a legacy of an earlier Progressive Conservative government, tried to undermine it by “conversion,” or changes in operational rules, in this case, appointment of pro-growth commissioners and a drastic cut in funding that forced greater reliance on civil society partners.

Both the Harris Conservatives and McGuinty Liberals displayed a certain reluctance to fully commit to regional greenspace protection by failing to put into place a unified monitoring structure and a supervisory agency with teeth, and by underfunding the essentially captive foundations they set up. The seeds for the undermining of the Moraine and Greenbelt plans were planted within the plans themselves; in institutionalist terms, the governments engaged in layering the protection policies over the existing land use institutions. As Mahoney and Thelen (2010) point out, “Processes of layering often take place when institutional challengers lack the capacity to actually change the original rules (or, as in displacement, to set up an explicit alternative institution or system)” (17). This has put regional greenspace protection in the hands of local councils and local

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environmental groups, with its strength dependent on their ability and willingness to engage in monitoring, lobbying and stewardship activities.

4 Conclusion

The three campaigns surfaced some new aspects of already identified success factors for challenging the status quo (see Table 7.5 on the next page). • Vision: ECSOs focused on quality (of life) rather than quantity (of acres of protected greenspace), something different instead of something more or less. • Policy networks: ECSOs refined their ability to be nimble by strategically engaging in private negotiations, and to pivot from fighting state actors to defending them when necessary. Openness to different solutions included openness to incrementalism: getting a “foot in the door” towards legislation and working with periodic reviews to improve plans over time. • Different types of knowledge: Environmental actors used NIMBYism as a resource, harnessing groups’ useful local knowledge. • Public engagement: Normally used to bridge to wider support communities, engagement was also used to bring to light the problems of “institutional losers” who could threaten the new status quo. • Accountability: ECSOs kept their networks informed, even when secrecy was required, occasionally “ratifying” decisions by holding “people’s hearings.” • Supportive institutions: While the Niagara Escarpment Commission was not duplicated, ECSOs gained new hybrid public-private agencies – foundations – designed to strengthen the protected areas. They also adapted existing public participation institutions to support their goals.

Table 7.5 Additional Strategies for Challenging the Status Quo

Success Factors Strategies

Clear vision / issue Vision is expressed as something different, not “more” or “less”

Policy network with Actors are open to meeting opponents’ terms of engagement (such as diverse actors meeting in secret), & to defend government partners as needed

Different kinds of Ability to use NIMBYism as a resource knowledge Openness to incrementalism

Public engagement Engagement processes are used to surface problems of “institutional losers” who need placating.

Accountability Networks are kept informed of any secret deliberations

Supportive institutions New institutions may be public-private projects Institutions may be re-purposed

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Chapter 8 Conclusion: The Nature of Civil Society

“Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

1 Introduction

This dissertation began by asking how ordinary people in the region surrounding Toronto managed to do an extraordinary thing: protect substantial amounts of greenspace from development in a period of rapid growth. The simple answer is: by working together over a very long time. But the details of their years of struggle reveal more complex dynamics of governance and the nature of the sector – civil society – in which they laboured.

The role of environmental civil society organizations was to create among residents the belief that they had a say in how their region should look, how it should be used and how it should be enjoyed. ECSOs persuaded them that the Toronto region was not just a place for building homes and businesses; it was a place for creating communities that lived in better balance with nature. In so doing, the ECSOs adapted existing governance institutions to build the constituency the state needed in order to act to create new environmental governance institutions that protected greenspace.

Were these members of civil society change agents? Absolutely. Would there have been greenspace protection on this scale without them? No. The idea and its rationale came from environmental civil society groups, several times in several forms. They educated the public, introducing and explaining new science and trying different frames of reference to persuade. They built networks and constituencies, crossing partisan boundaries. As a solution to problems of environmental degradation and urban sprawl, greenspace protection departed from a faith that capitalism would come up with a technical fix for any problem and it departed from notions that private property was inviolable. Incidents such as the blasting of the Dufferin Gap, the Richmond Hill hearings

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and the McLeod’s Landing construction might have spawned government land use reforms, but, without environmentalist pressure, governments would have likely acceded to more growth coalition demands and made only token changes to protected greenspace.

2 Civil Society & Governance Performance 2.1 Cultural Dynamics

The choice of greenspace protection and greenbelt creation as tools to fight environmental degradation flowed from historical legacies of deploying natural solutions to prevent natural disasters. At the same time, aspects of Ontario’s political culture – the valorisation of private enterprise, private property and value for money in government policy – put constraints on how far and how fast greenspace protection could go. However, the environmentalists’ steady efforts over five decades chipped away at the growth paradigm, making managed growth more of a default value than unrestricted growth. Many municipal official plans now claim to practice “environment first” planning. In May 2016, the Ontario government announced plans to require municipalities to include climate change policies in official plans.

Another influential cultural paradigm was the notion of putting a priority on the needs of children. This expressed itself in this case as leaving a legacy of greenspace for our children and grandchildren. While interview subjects reported that it was a private motivation for politicians on the Escarpment and Moraine, in the Greenbelt campaign it was an explicit rationale put forth by Premier Dalton McGuinty to the public.

2.2 Structural Dynamics

Of the processes and modes that shaped the responses of civil society actors in the Greenbelt region, public participation processes were the most important. Civil society groups achieved many of their goals by making the most of the participation processes available to them. In this way, OPA and OMB hearings became public forums for the environmentalists, and Greenbelt task force hearings became forums for farmers.

ECSOs made use of both open and closed forms of participation at different points of the policy process, suggesting, as Fung (2006) does, that different types are useful for

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different kinds of problems. While theory maintains that public participation ideally proceeds in open and inclusive settings to ensure transparency, accountability and legitimacy, in this study closed processes were useful when there was less time to build trust needed for risky “outside-the-box” thinking. Open processes were vital as an accountability mechanism – private meeting results were checked against the public’s understanding of the problems and suitable solutions – and as a mechanism for risk management, that is, collecting information on issues not yet resolved. Participating in closed or invited sessions alienated some fellow environmental civil society actors, while others accepted some secrecy as one of the rules of parliamentary government, where caucuses meet in secret to discuss strategy. For others, who had held out for “perfect” only to get nothing in earlier stages of campaigns, the ends justified the means in a system that was already rigged in favour of developers.

Government-appointed stakeholder committees with closed deliberations and hand- picked participants served as a shortcut to creating the social capital needed for deliberations capable of reaching a resolution. Participating environmentalists adapted by widening the circle of those who were kept informed. Unsurprisingly, governments tended to appoint people more likely to support their views or moderate their demands in the interests of reaching a compromise. As previous research has found, problem-solvers willing to forgo perfection and settle for a “good enough” solution are more likely to implement innovative projects (Connelly, Markey and Roseland 2009).

Overall, civil society became a site of governance in itself, taking on or augmenting civic engagement roles previously undertaken by government. Environmental groups conducted both internal briefing and workshops, and external “people’s hearings.”

2.3 Agency Dynamics

This case called into question definitions of civil society that exclude less “civil” or progressive groups. In this case, that would have excluded many farmer groups, which are some of the oldest civil society groups in Canadian society. Considering a wider range of groups led to questions about the nature of civil society and the social capital that makes it a valuable partner in governance.

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2.3.1 The Civil Society Debates

This study supported the conceptualization of civil society put forward by Foley and Edwards, among others, as a fragmented but neutral zone whose content is not necessarily progressive. Market-oriented actors played a prominent role in supporting the “urban growth machine” and fighting any expansion of the commons, and they did it within the terrain of civil society.

In terms of the classification debate, this study found it useful to base a classification on social capital attributes based on group mission and membership, as suggested in particular by statistical research by Stolle and Rochon (1998). Several researchers identified inclusiveness as an important factor related to public-interested forms of social capital, and many suggested some version of interests – such as “world views” (Mejido Costoya 2007), beneficiaries (Gurza Lavalle and Bueno 2011), “recognition of the other” (Rucht 2011), or mandates (Uhlin 2009) – as an important driver. But the notion of a continuum of both inclusiveness and interest eluded them, giving them results that appeared to disappoint them. The typology resulting from the matrix formed by assigning these two factors to x and y axes describes a space that ranges incrementally from groups dominated by bonding social capital -- groups that are exclusive and self- interested – to groups dominated by bridging social capital – that is, groups with inclusive memberships and interests focused outward on obtaining more publicly- available benefits.. In the case of greenspace protection, successful environmental coalitions drew from many parts of civil society to create diverse alliances with many resources to help provide would-be state partners with the governing resources – authoritative, informational, organizational and financial – they needed to stand up to growth interests.

Bonding social capital is necessary for all civil society groups to function, because members need to feel some sort of kinship in order to build trust in working together. But too much bonding social capital leads to inward-looking tendencies more typical of kinship networks. The importance of kinship networks within the building and development industry makes that industry formidable, as kinship obligations are a

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powerful motivator. But it also makes that industry less inclined to bridge to other networks, forcing a reliance on financial relationships that, in its case, it can well afford.

In terms of the civil society-state relationship debate, this study suggests that Maloney, Smith and Stoker (2000) were correct in seeing the relationship as both top-down and bottom up: the state sets rules that empower and constrain civil society groups, but civil society can use its nimbleness, resourcefulness and inventiveness to devise new strategies to work around or within these structures, as was evident in the responses to evolving public participation methods. Similarly, strategies of partnership and opposition were both useful to civil society actors, depending on the context. Both developers and environmentalists had “linking social capital” relationships with state actors with the potential to be productive. But the institutional context determined the benefits they each received.

Finally, regarding Putnam’s civic engagement debate, especially the claim that a dense civil society leads to generalized trust towards government institutions, this research found that the density of civil society contributed to coalition success rather than democratic renewal. Trust was built within the coalition. There was often distrust of government institutions. At a very general level, there was an assumption that the greenspace issue could eventually be resolved through governance channels, but this was probably more a function of cultural-cognitive institutional understandings.

2.3.2 Overcoming Barriers to Greenspace Protection

Environmental civil society was well-suited to dealing with the barriers to greenspace protection noted in Chapter 1.

To deal with the urban growth coalition and the growth paradigms supporting it, ECSOs invoked competing paradigms about nature, community and the needs of future generations.

To deal with funding issues, including the Ottawa precedent where the greenbelt was purchased, ECSOs pursued a land use designation approach.

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To deal with a lack of bureaucratic leadership and technical capacity, ECSOs nurtured social entrepreneurs who moved between government and ENGO work, transferring knowledge and working together.

To deal with a lack of jurisdiction and problems of scale, ECSOs scaled up their demands to the provincial level of government, achieving a regional authority in the case of the Niagara Escarpment Commission and special district status in the other campaigns. To deal with the related problem of space – the huge geography covered by the desired protection plans – the ECSOs built and maintained coalitions by building a sense of common cause and providing practical support for local issues.

To deal with a political process that was regularly disrupted by government changes and a planning process that delivered unpredictable results, ECSOs committed themselves to a long process of adaptation to changing circumstances.

To deal with a public that preferred protecting the local nature they could see and use instead of protecting nature at a distance, some of which needed to be inaccessible in order to perform vital ecological functions, ECSOs educated the public and engaged it in stewardship activities in order to build a different relationship with nature at a regional scale.

Finally, to deal with a lack of political will, ECSOs built a coalition backed by public support to reduce the political risk of protecting greenspace.

2.3.3 The Civil Society Approach

This study showed that what defines civil society is not so much its ends as its means: its ability to stay with a problem for a long time, actively and pragmatically moving it forward, enduring risk, nurturing problem-solvers, and developing and sharing resources, while maintaining sufficient independence to preserve integrity.

Longevity

While the flexibility of civil society and the ease with which it spins off new groups for new projects has often been observed, this research found that the stability, endurance

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and longevity of civil society groups was important. Civil society groups played the long game, tenaciously sticking to their vision while governments changed and science caught up to them. Groups that took their success for granted and became less active lost their place on the policy agenda.

Action Orientation

No matter what the interest orientation of civil society groups, their action orientation earned respect and attention. Civil society actors are the do-it-yourself enthusiasts of the public realm: ready to organize themselves into voluntary groups, learn what they need to know, and do what they need to do to get the job done.

In the Toronto region, environmentally-minded civil society actors needed to build a “nature protection machine” that was able to take on the “urban growth machine.” They channelled local NIMBY impulses to protect local landscapes into an understanding of the need for broader environmental protection at a distance from their back yards. They created a vision and showed their audiences how it fit with historical legacies and community norms. They found frames of references, such as water quality, that brought urban and suburban dwellers together. They organized meetings and protests. They worked with bureaucrats and politicians of all stripes.

Pragmatism

The environmentalists accepted the need for incrementalism. One of the most important lessons of the three campaigns was to get a “foot in the door.” This usually meant getting agreement on a process, rather than a product or result. All three campaigns followed a similar pattern: an expression of provincial interest, technical studies, public consultation, compromise legislation, then periodic review, where improvements could be made. The Greenbelt itself began as a narrow protected area and grew by steps, and it continues to grow as municipalities petition to add pieces to it.

Risk Tolerance

ECSOs took risks joining up with various partners and participating in government-run collaborative exercises, particularly stakeholder committees. Bridging to their opponents

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to seek their goals often caused tensions with their existing partners and networks. In the Greenbelt campaign, they took risks in trusting the Liberal government and defending it. In all three campaigns, they took a risk on periodic reviews, which theoretically could weaken as well as strengthen plans.

Nurturing Social Entrepreneurs

One of civil society’s key roles was to nurture social entrepreneurs, people who could craft new understandings, processes and solutions from available resources. Occasionally, these social entrepreneurs were also group leaders, at the centre of decision-making. But more often they were agents moving freely among different people and groups, collecting data, and testing ideas. Notably, individuals moving between ECSO and government work helped improve mutual understanding and reveal spaces for interventions.

Resourcefulness & Adaptability

Environmental civil society actors were resourceful, both in using materials at hand in inventive ways and in terms of sharing resources with state actors. ECSOs adapted ideas from other places to the Toronto regional context, and adapted existing arenas to serve their purposes, even to becoming an arena of governance itself. Civil society provided sites both for private strategizing and exploration of risks, and for public education, consultation and validation. This was enabled by its social capital: bonding social capital that helps group members build constructive relationships for internal strategizing, risk- reduction and mutual learning, and bridging social capital that helps groups reach out to others with ideas and resources.

Over time, environmental civil society actors were better at adapting to changing times than were farmer groups, who failed to adjust to their falling numbers.

Independence

Part of civil society’s effectiveness comes from its non-partisan nature; the sector is available to partner with anyone willing to barter resources. Civil society groups often chafe at restrictions on their ability to lobby politicians, and there is some disagreement over where the boundary between advocacy and partisanship is located. However, this

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non-partisan quality should be protected, since it adds public legitimacy to civil society claims and makes it easier to recruit and pursue its objectives with a wide range of actors. Perceptions that civil society groups are independent of government and industry influence makes their messages appear more trustworthy to the public they are trying to bridge to.

3 Civil Society & Institutional Trajectories

Rather than a story about path dependence, this was a story about conflicting institutions and how those conflicts were resolved with the intervention of civil society actors.

In the interviews, people usually volunteered that the Richmond Hill OMB hearing was the “turning point”: the dramatic moment when the provincial government faced a decision to continue with its policies or choose a new path. This climactic event was itself the result of an accumulation of many smaller events performed under mundane institutional rules about planning that influenced choices, such as decisions to take disputes to the Ontario Municipal Board or to participate in public processes.

The much earlier decision to create conservation authorities on the heels of the catastrophic Hurricane Hazel may have been the closest thing to a true fork in the road, but even it was not uniformly either/or. There were concrete diversion channels built in places, particularly in built-up areas where there wasn’t much choice. But the conservation authorities made natural solutions more than competitive. It helped that conservation authorities and their strategies were relatively low in cost.

Environmental civil society’s struggle to design a new institution for greenspace protection was a tale of perseverance as dramatic in its own way as anything else in this policy process. Desperate to make their case for support, ECSOs were the most creative at bricolage: designing new institutions from available resources. But traditional power relations that favoured development hemmed them in at each stage of greenbelt creation, giving environmentalists less than what would have been ideal: less natural space, fewer protective buffers and policies, inadequate oversight, and deficient monitoring of environmental impacts, all adding up to uneven implementation. This pattern continues.

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Advocates for protected greenspace achieved a “good enough” result but one that requires constant attention to preserve, so questions about the permanence of this greenbelt remain. This fits with a preference of neo-liberal governments for user-pay approaches in which users of trails and environmental services are expected to invest in the level and quality of (local) greenspace protection they desire.

This, of course, is not the kind of user-pay model farmers were looking for; they still are advocating for financial compensation for providing environmental services and they have a point. However, since the province has authority over land use planning and farmers are a less significant political force than they used to be, there is little incentive for the province to provide compensation for these costs. Indeed, given the budget strictures most governments find themselves in, with voters unhappy at any kind of tax increase, there is every incentive for governments to assign costs elsewhere.

4 Implications

The most optimistic implication of this research for environmental civil society activists is that land use planning is somewhat less path dependent than they might have thought. The growth paradigm is firmly entrenched, but regulative institutions can be changed, partly because normative institutions such as Canadian norms about protecting nature, particularly for the sake of our heirs, can be appealed to.

The implication for both activists and planners is: choose your partners carefully. Holman and Rydin (2013) suggest that finding the right mix of community actors and networks is important in order to develop the social capital needed to promote effective citizen engagement. Useful roles for planners include analyzing networks for imbalances, advising community groups on who to network with to improve their bargaining position, and constructing networks themselves to solve local problems (Holman 2008; Holman and Rydin 2013). The Civil Society Matrix can be useful in this regard, helping to identify the more inclusive, commons-oriented groups, or what Evans (2002) calls the “ecology of agents of sustainability.” The stakeholder typology could help guide the construction of these work groups when shortcuts are needed.

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Further research might test the usefulness of these tools in other geographical and policy settings.

5 Post Script

In 2015, the province conducted the Co-ordinated Land Use Planning Review, which combined the 10-year reviews of the Niagara Escarpment, Oak Ridges Moraine and Greenbelt protection plans with the review of the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe. As part of that process, Hazel McCallion, the newly-retired mayor of Mississauga, sent a letter to Premier Kathleen Wynne arguing that the Greenbelt Act should be revised to remove the guarantee of no reductions in the quantity of acres in the plan and focus on “quality” of designated land, as determined by “science-based” evaluations of the land and municipal “leadership” of the process (McCallion 2015). Her other recommendations, which mimicked proposals made by developers (Tenuta 2015; Tuckey 2014), would drastically remake and undermine the current Greenbelt. McCallion, who went from being the “queen of sprawl” to the chief disciple of smart growth, had seemingly come full circle in her retirement, when she was recruited onto the board of Kaneff Corporation, a development company based in her region.

Her letter was circulated widely to municipal and provincial officials as a government- appointed panel of experts led by David Crombie completed public hearings on the future of the plans. On December 7, 2015, the panel issued a report with 87 recommendations including calls for the province to grow the Greenbelt and strengthen intensification policies. It left implementation of the protection plans in municipal hands, declining to create a provincial oversight agency to improve consistency, which could become even more of an issue if its proposals to allow limited boundary reviews are adopted. The reaction of environmental groups to the Crombie Report was generally positive (EDC 2015).

On May 10, 2016, the province responded, issuing proposed changes to all four plans, including the addition to the Greenbelt of 21 urban river valleys and seven coastal wetlands and a wide range of policies to help farmers thrive (MMAH 2016a). Complementary policies in the proposed Growth Plan include a higher intensification

Chapter 8 - Conclusion 248 target: at least 60% of residential development occurring annually within each upper- or single-tier municipality is to occur in a built-up area. The Growth Plan also allows “modest” expansion of settlement areas and “alternative” intensification targets at the time of official plan revisions and review by the province (MMAH 2016b). Overall, the Ontario Greenbelt Alliance praised the province’s direction, while urging stronger measures to compel municipal compliance with intensification targets (OGA 2016). The province is conducting public consultations and accepting public comments until September 30.

Clearly, there will continue to be a role for civil society in greenspace protection.

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Appendix A: Interview Subjects (Titles given relate to events under study)

John Bacher, researcher and member, Preservation of Agricultural Lands Society (PALS) Jim Bradley, MPP for St. Catharines, holder of several Liberal cabinet posts under Premiers David Peterson and Dalton McGuinty Debbe Crandall, Executive Director, Save the Oak Ridges Moraine (STORM) David Donnelly, Legal Director, Environmental Defence Canada Victor Doyle, planner (various positions), Ministry of Municipal Affairs & Housing Jim Faught, executive director, Federation of Ontario Naturalists, and former bureaucrat in the Ministry of Natural Resources Mary Lou Garr, retired farmer and member of the Greenbelt Task Force John Gerretsen, Minister of Municipal Affairs & Housing (2003-2007) Dave Harvey, Senior Advisor to the Premier (Dalton McGuinty) Natalie Helferty, biologist and past president, Richmond Hill Naturalists Peter Jeffery, Senior Farm Policy Researcher, Ontario Federation of Agriculture Peter Lambrick, farmer and Director-at-large, Ontario Federation of Agriculture Cecil Louis, retired planner and former Asst. Director, Niagara Escarpment Commission, and member of the Niagara Escarpment Commission and Greenbelt Council Rob MacIsaac, Chair of Greenbelt Task Force, and chair of Central Ontario Smart Growth sub-panel on growth management John MacKenzie, Special Advisor to the Minister of Municipal Affairs & Housing (John Gerretsen) Burkhard Mausberg, CEO, Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation Fraser Nelson, Senior Vice-President, Metrus Development Inc., and member of Greenbelt Task Force and Central Ontario Smart Growth Panel Neil Rodgers, Executive Vice-President, Tribute Communities and former president, Urban Development Institute/Ontario Erin Shapero, Markham councillor and co-founder, Municipal Leaders for the Greenbelt Martha Shuttleworth, founder, Neptis Foundation Rick Smith, executive director, Environment Defence Canada Elbert van Donkersgoed, retired Strategic Policy Advisor for Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario and former executive director of the GTA Agricultural Action Committee Ken Whitbread, Manager, Niagara Escarpment Commission Debbie Zimmerman, CEO, Grape Growers of Ontario, and former Niagara regional chair Three anonymous subjects

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Appendix B: Information Letter Sent to Interview Subjects

[University of Toronto letterhead]

INFORMATION LETTER The policy development process of the Southern Ontario Greenbelt

[Date]

Dear Participant:

I am a PhD student in geography at the University of Toronto. Under the supervision of Professor André Sorensen, I am researching the creation of the Southern Ontario Greenbelt in an effort to improve understanding of the land use policy development process. I am especially interested in how and why this particular tool was chosen to help deal with urban sprawl and whether the process has any lessons for sustainable development. Because of your knowledge of and/or involvement in the events I am studying, I am writing to request an interview.

The interview will take about an hour. Participation is voluntary. You may decline to answer any questions and can withdraw from the study at any time. While all information you provide will be considered public, you will not be identified by name or organization in any publication or presentation unless I obtain your prior consent.

I am also requesting your permission to tape record our interview to ensure accuracy in information collection. All data will remain in my possession and will never be used for other than academic purposes.

If you have any questions about this study or would like additional information, please contact me at 905-338-2787 or [email protected]. You may also contact my supervisor at 416-287-5607 or [email protected]. Any questions about your rights as a participant in an academic study may be directed to the university’s Office of Research Ethics at 416-946-3273 or [email protected].

If you are willing to participate in this study, please sign the attached consent form in the indicated place, make a copy for your files and return the signed form to me at our interview. Alternatively, if you are replying from a personal email address, you may reply to this email with a note indicating the permissions you agree to.

Thank you for considering this request.

Sincerely,

Wendy Burton, PhD Candidate University of Toronto Department of Geography Home office: 380 Aspen Forest Dr., Oakville, ON L6J 6H5

Appendixes 283

Appendix C: Consent Form

[University of Toronto letterhead] CONSENT FORM The policy development process of the Southern Ontario Greenbelt

I agree to participate in an interview as part of a study on the creation of the Southern Ontario Greenbelt being conducted by Wendy Burton, a PhD Candidate, and supervised by Professor André Sorensen, both of the University of Toronto. While any information I provide will be considered public, my identity and privacy will be protected; I will not be identified by name or organization in any publication or presentation unless I give my consent.

The level of identifying information I consent to the release of at this time is [choose one]:  A. I agree to let you freely use my name and relevant title (my title at the time of the events I am being interviewed about) in the body of any publication or presentation.  B. I agree to a journalism format, where we agree during the interview what is on the record or off the record/not for attribution.  C. I agree to let you mention me by name and relevant title ONLY in an appendix to the study (where at least two dozen interview subjects will be listed in alphabetical order). I understand you may contact me at a later date about the possibility of identifying me by name and/or title in a specific context.  D. I can NOT agree at this time to let you use my name. I understand you may contact me at a later date about the possibility of identifying me by name and/or title in a specific context.

I  DO  DO NOT [ Not Applicable – interview being conducted by e-mail] agree to the audio-taping of my interview to facilitate the accurate collection of information. I understand that all data will remain in Wendy Burton’s possession; it will never be passed on to others or used for other than academic purposes (i.e., evaluating Wendy Burton’s work).

Name (Please print): ______Title & Organization (at the time of the events under study): ______Current & preferred manner of contact (please provide e-mail, phone number or address): ______Signature: ______Date: ______

Please return to Wendy Burton at the interview or email to [email protected]. Thank you!

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Appendix D: Interview Guide

Section A: Introduction to the greenbelt concept and proposal 1. When and how did you first hear or learn about the greenbelt concept? a. Were you familiar with any related concepts, like greenways or wilderness corridors? b. If it was new to you, how did you learn more about it? c. What did you understand a greenbelt to be or do? What are its chief purposes? How permanent is it? What are its strengths and weaknesses?

2. At the time, why did you think the Liberals proposed a greenbelt, as opposed to other approaches to growth management? a. What benefits do you think they were expecting? b. What risks do you think they were taking? c. How important was recent history on the Oak Ridges Moraine and Niagara Escarpment? Did the greenbelt feel like a gradual evolution or radical departure from previous policy?

Section B: Involvement in the policy process

3. When and why did you or your organization get involved?

4. What specific activities or strategies did you or your organization engage in to try to achieve your goals? a. What obstacles or weaknesses did you face? b. What advantages or strengths? c. What was effective or not?

5. What did you think about the consultation process?

6. In your opinion, was there anything else going on – such as economic trends, demographic shifts, changes in values, political scandals, perceptions about global warming – that contributed to the adoption of the Greenbelt?

7. Looking at the process as a whole (over the long term as well as the short term), were there any decisive turning points that led to the creation of the Greenbelt, in your view?

8. What impact do you feel you or your organization had on the plan finally adopted?

Section C: Opinions on impacts of the policy

9. What impact has the Greenbelt had so far?

10. What do you think should happen next?

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Appendix E: A Greenbelt Timeline

SOME EARLY MILESTONES

1863 First naturalist club in Canada established in Ontario. For decades, conservationists are amateur naturalists, cataloguing local flora and fauna.

1893 The Ontario government creates Algonquin Park, the first provincial park in Canada, patterned after Canada’s first national park in Banff, Alberta, established in 1885. Park management pioneers techniques for balancing conservation, recreation and logging activities.

1912 Ontario appoints Edmund Zavitz (1875-1968) provincial forester. He creates department of forestry, forest fire prevention plans, tree nurseries and other measures to reforest dust bowl-like areas ravaged by floods, erosion and fire.

1931 Several naturalist clubs come together to form the Federation of Ontario Naturalists (FON).

1934 A FON report, Sanctuaries and the Preservation of Wildlife in Ontario, leads to designation of wildlife sanctuaries in Algonquin Park and Point Pelee National Park.

1935 FON proposes creation of a provincial system of parks and nature reserves.

1938 FON issues a report calling for reforestation of the Oak Ridges Moraine.

1943 - 1949 PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENTS of GEORGE DREW and T. L. KENNEDY

1943 Master Plan for the City of Toronto and Environs proposes inner and outer greenbelts.

1946 Ontario passes Planning Act.

1946 Ontario passes Conservation Authorities Act in response to concerns expressed by FON, Ontario Conservation and Reforestation Association, and some farm advocates. The Act sets out a process for partnering with municipalities to manage local natural resources on a watershed basis.

1949 - 1961 PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT of LESLIE FROST

1950 Select Committee on Conservation makes 81 recommendations to Queen’s Park, key ones involving landscape preservation for the prevention of floods.

Appendixes 286

1954 - 75 Metropolitan Toronto Planning Board (MTPB), created by the province, oversees planning in Metro Toronto and surrounding municipalities.

1954 Ontario passes Ontario Parks Act (now Provincial Parks Act), after pressure from FON.

1954 Hurricane Hazel dumps 2.1 metres of rain on the Toronto area in 12 hours on Oct. 15-16, causing massive flooding resulting in 81 deaths, thousands of destroyed homes, and millions of dollars in damage to public infrastructure.

1958 Wentworth, Lincoln and Welland petition the province to protect the Niagara Escarpment as a provincial park.

1960 The Bruce Trail Association is formed at a FON committee meeting.

1961 - 1971 PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT of JOHN ROBARTS

1961 Jane Jacobs publishes The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

1962 Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring.

1962 Ontario Department of Highways launches Metropolitan Toronto and Region Transportation Study (MTARTS) to assess future transportation needs.

1962 Dufferin Aggregates blasts a hole in the Escarpment, creating “the gap.”

1962 The Nature Conservancy of Canada is formed from FON’s Nature Reserves Committee.

1963 Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society is founded.

1966 Ontario initiates regional economic development exercise, Design for Development.

1967 World Wildlife Fund-Canada is founded.

1967 MTARTS releases report Choices for a Growing Region, whose lead author is provincial planner Len Gertler. The report proposes a Parkway Belt. A ribbon of protected land, it would secure land for a future highway, separate Tier 1 from Tier 2 municipalities and possibly provide space for recreational facilities.

1967 Ontario premier calls for “a wide-ranging study of the Niagara Escarpment with a view to preserving its entire length.”

1968 Ontario releases Niagara Escarpment Study: Conservation and Recreation Report, by lead author Len Gertler, now a University of Waterloo planning professor. A task force is formed to determine how to implement its recommendations.

Appendixes 287

1970 Design for Development: The Toronto-Centred Region calls for development east and west of Toronto and creation of the Parkway Belt. To earlier calls for Tier 1 (for further lakeside development, later called the Central Ontario Lakeshore Urban Complex) and Tier 2 areas (to remain rural), it adds a Tier 3, creating satellite cities. It calls for protection of land for conservation and recreation.

1970 Ontario enacts Niagara Escarpment Protection Act.

1971 - 1985 PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT of BILL DAVIS

1971 Cancellation of the Spadina Expressway spells the end of the MTPB.

1971 - 74 Ontario sets up regional governments in York in 1971 and in Halton, Peel and Durham in 1974, fragmenting supra-regional governance.

1972 David Crombie is elected mayor of Toronto as part of a sweep by reform- minded anti-development councillors. He serves until 1978, when he goes into federal politics.

1972 Ontario appoints Niagara Escarpment Task Force to recommend ways to implement the Gertler Report. Recommendations become basis for 1973 Act.

June 1973 Niagara Escarpment Planning and Development Act is passed, creating the Niagara Escarpment Commission (NEC). The Planning and Development Act and Parkway Belt Planning and Development Act are also passed at the same time.

1975 Save the Rouge Valley System (SRVS) is founded.

1976 Preservation of Agricultural Lands Society (PALS) is formed by Mel Swart (NDP MPP 1975-88) to support Niagara Region planning proposals for protective agricultural zoning.

1978 Progressive councillor John Sewell is elected mayor of Toronto.

1978 NEC releases its first proposed plan, inciting controversy.

May 1978 Opposition Liberal MPP Robert McKessock’s bill to repeal the Niagara Escarpment Planning and Development Act approaches second reading on May 11. This spawns large rallies against it (in Orangeville) and in favour of it (at Queen’s Park). The Davis minority government defeats the bill but subsequently severely reduces the plan area.

1978 FON asks Lyn MacMillan, one of its most active volunteers, to organize the Coalition on the Niagara Escarpment (CONE).

1978 Parkway Belt West Plan is approved.

Appendixes 288

1979 A revised Niagara Escarpment Plan, which reduces the plan area by 63%, is released.

1970s Province begins identifying Areas of Natural and Scientific Interest for protection.

1980-83 Independent hearing officers conduct 26 months of public hearings on the proposed Niagara Escarpment Plan.

1983 The Niagara Escarpment hearing officers release their recommendations to the minister responsible.

1984 The minister submits his final recommended plan for the Niagara Escarpment to cabinet, which spends a year reviewing it.

1984 A small group of lawyers and concerned citizens found the Canadian Environmental Defence Fund, later known simply as Environmental Defence.

1985 PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT of FRANK MILLER

1985 The first Niagara Escarpment Plan is approved just before the Miller government falls.

1985 - 1990 LIBERAL GOVERNMENT of DAVID PETERSON

1986 Earthroots (originally the Temagami Wilderness Society) is founded.

1987 The Brundtland Commission calls for sustainable development.

1988 The Toronto Conference on the Changing Atmosphere puts climate change on the world agenda.

1988 Ontario creates the Office of the Greater Toronto Area, which in 1990 commissions the Urban Structure Study on future urban growth.

1988 Public dismay over development on the Toronto waterfront leads to creation of the Royal Commission on the Future of the Toronto Waterfront, with David Crombie as commissioner.

1989 The Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer goes into effect.

1989 Save the Oak Ridges Moraine Coalition (STORM), an alliance of Save the Ganaraska Again (SAGA) and two dozen other grassroots groups on the moraine, is formed.

1989 First Interim Report of the Royal Commission on the Future of the Toronto Waterfront (Crombie Commission) recommends a green strategy for the Toronto region watershed.

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1990 Second Interim Report of the Royal Commission on the Future of the Toronto Waterfront: Watershed recommends an ecosystem approach to waterfront planning.

1990 Liberal MPP Ron Kanter’s Space for All: Options for a Greater Toronto Greenlands Strategy calls for protection of greenlands and the Oak Ridges Moraine (ORM).

1990 Liberal government issues “expression of provincial interest” in the ORM.

1990 Province establishes Rouge Park, a 10,500-acre (4,250-hectare) park from Lake Ontario to the Oak Ridges Moraine

1990 - 1995 NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY GOVERNMENT of BOB RAE

1991 Following up on the Kanter Report, the NDP government declares the Moraine an area of provincial interest.

1991-94 Province appoints 14 stakeholders (including STORM) to Oak Ridges Moraine Technical Working Committee to produce a comprehensive long- term strategy for the Moraine. STORM is also involved in the citizens’ advisory committee appointed to co-ordinate public consultation on the strategy. The province never implements the strategy.

1992 David Crombie promotes the idea of greater protection and watershed planning in Regeneration, the final report of the Royal Commission on the Future of the Toronto Waterfront.

1992 Oak Ridges Moraine Trail Association is founded.

1993 John Sewell recommends reforms in New Planning for Ontario, report of the Commission on Planning and Development Reform.

1994 Planning Act is reformed. Reforms are mostly undone by Mike Harris later.

1994 An improved Niagara Escarpment Plan is adopted after 1st 5-year review.

1995 - 2003 PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT of MIKE HARRIS

1996 40% cut in Niagara Escarpment Commission budget and staff.

1996 Dalton McGuinty, Liberal MPP for Ottawa South since 1990, becomes Liberal party leader and Leader of the Official Opposition.

1997 FON, Wildlands League (a chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society) and World Wildlife Fund-Canada form the Partnership for Public Lands to participate in the Lands for Life land use planning program and campaign for completion of provincial parks system.

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1997 STORM publishes coffee table book as fundraiser.

1998 Province forces amalgamation of Toronto.

1998 - 2001 Greater Toronto Services Board (a recommendation of both Crombie’s Who Does What panel and Anne Golden’s Report of the GTA Task Force) tries and fails at regional co-ordination.

1999 Regions of York, Peel and Durham urge protection of the Moraine in a joint report to the province (Towards a Long Term Strategy for the Oak Ridges Moraine) asking for it to provide leadership.

1999 Gilchrist affair provides opening for ECSO publicity campaign. STORM, SRVS, FON and Earthroots work together to raise awareness.

Feb. 23, 2000 Richmond Hill council meeting on OPA 200 attracts 1,600 people.

May 11, 2000 Walkerton tainted drinking water crisis begins.

May 29, 2000 The Richmond Hill case goes to the Ontario Municipal Board. A year of legal wrangling over witnesses, media events and protests follow.

January 2001 Government introduces Smart Growth initiative. Several months of consultations ensue.

February 2001 FON calls for protection of Moraine as a greenway.

May 17, 2001 The government passes the Oak Ridges Moraine Protection Act passes, suspending the OMB hearing and providing for a six-month development freeze. MMAH Minister Chris Hodgson appoints a stakeholder committee, the Oak Ridges Moraine Advisory Panel, to consider next steps.

June 2001 FON holds “Woods Talk” Conference at York University.

Dec. 14, 2001 The Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Act passes.

February 2002 Province creates Smart Growth Secretariat and Smart Growth Panels. Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion chairs Central Ontario panel.

Feb. - Mar. 2002 Central Ontario Smart Growth Panel stakeholder consultations take place.

April 2002 The Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan is approved and ORM Foundation created.

April 2002 – PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT of ERNIE EVES October 2003

August 2002 Central Ontario Smart Growth Panel issues interim advice on gridlock.

October 2002 FON launches Smart Growth project, releases A Smart Future for Ontario.

November 2002 Central Panel draft vision for public comment.

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December 2002 Opposition Liberals announce a greenbelt as part of their platform.

April 2003 Central Ontario Smart Growth Panel issues its final report, Shape the Future.

2003 - 2013 LIBERAL GOVERNMENT of DALTON MCGUINTY

October 2003 Liberals take office and almost immediately must deal with construction occurring on the Moraine at MacLeod’s Landing. They freeze development for two weeks and a month later claim legalities force them to break campaign promise to forbid construction on the Moraine.

November 2003 Premier Dalton McGuinty promises a greenbelt in his Speech from the Throne.

December 16, Bill 27, Greenbelt Protection Act, is introduced. Development is frozen in a 2003 designated study area. The Greenbelt Task Force is set up with then- mayor of Burlington Rob MacIsaac as chair.

2004 FON rebrands itself as Ontario Nature (ON) and launches the Southern Ontario Greenway Strategy.

January 2004 Environmental Defence meets with foundations concerning emergency support.

February 2004 MMAH Minister John Gerretsen appoints Greenbelt Task Force.

April 2004 Environmental Defence formally launches Ontario Greenbelt Alliance, a coalition of some 70 groups anchored by STORM, ON and CONE.

May 2004 Greenbelt Task Force issues Discussion Paper and recommends creation of an Agricultural Advisory Team to address farmer issues.

May - June Greenbelt Task Force holds public meetings and stakeholder workshops. 2004 It hears from more than 1,200 people, receives more than 1,000 submissions, with representations from more than 60 stakeholder groups.

June 2004 Agriculture Minister Steve Peters appoints Agricultural Advisory Team.

June 24, 2004 Bill 27, Greenbelt Protection Act, becomes law, creating a study area and placing a development moratorium on the study area until Dec. 16. This is later extended three months.

July 2004 Ontario Federation of Agriculture criticizes Agricultural Advisory Team for failing to deal with farmer concerns in a meaningful way.

August 2004 Greenbelt Task Force issues final report and recommendations.

October 2004 Agricultural Advisory Team reports; Niagara issues Healthy Farms, Healthy Towns.

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Oct. 28, 2004 Bill 135, Greenbelt Act, is introduced for first reading. A draft Greenbelt Plan is released.

Dec. 8, 2004 Bill 135 passes second reading.

Jan. 31 - Feb. 10, Standing Committee on General Government hears delegations and deals 2005 with proposed amendments to the Greenbelt Act.

Feb. 28, 2005 Greenbelt Act becomes law. Hearings and lobbying result in some enlargement of boundaries. Greenbelt Council and Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation are established.

2005 ECSO s launch moraine stewardship group, Monitoring the Moraine.

2005 A revised Niagara Escarpment Plan, reaffirming the conservation vision, is adopted.

2006 Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe becomes law.

2013 Province adds Oakville’s Glenorchy Conservation Area to the Greenbelt and approves a new urban river valley designation.

2013 - LIBERAL GOVERNMENT of KATHLEEN WYNNE

2015 Co-ordinated review of the Niagara Escarpment, Oak Ridges Moraine and Greenbelt protection plans along with Places to Grow’s Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe takes place. David Crombie heads expert panel, which conducts hearings before releasing 87 mostly supportive recommendations in December.

2016 Province issues its proposed changes to the three protection plans and the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe.

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Appendix F: Varieties of Civil Society

This typology is based on a matrix formed by two axes: inclusiveness (based on membership numbers, criteria and the presence or absence of barriers to joining) and interest orientation (based on group mission and activities: are they more private or public oriented?). Greater inclusiveness and a public interest orientation are both associated with bridging social capital, which is more outward-looking. Exclusiveness and self-interest are both associated with bonding social capital, which is more inward- looking.

Although each axis represents a continuum, the resulting grid can be used to create a typology of civil society groups. These types are somewhat like roles; some groups will encompass more than one type, particularly in different contexts. Moving from most inward-looking to most outward-looking yields this typology: • Defence of Privilege Groups are the most exclusive and most self-interested of civil society groups, ranging from country clubs with a discriminatory character to criminal gangs and hate groups (Rubio 1997; McIlwaine and Moser 2001). They sometimes sponsor scholarships and other good works for the “halo effect” (Cox 2008; Putnam 2000). • Property Rights Groups are groups, usually within a local setting, whose members need each other to achieve personal goals, usually related to their property. Condominium boards, homeowner associations and neighbourhood associations may both enforce membership compliance with local rules and seek benefits from a local municipality. At their more pernicious, they become NIMBY groups. Business networks and chambers of commerce seek to promote their own well- being, often by shifting their tax burdens to others. In the right context, these groups might be persuaded to become Benefactors. • Market Advocacy Non-Governmental Organizations (MANGOs) are industry groups or the scaled-up versions of the previous groups: provincial, state or national organizations that lobby to obtain or maintain privileges or promote moral positions they favour while transferring the costs to others. Often these special interests are well-financed and can manipulate the policy process to their advantage (Rydin and Pennington 2000). Because the issues at stake affect them personally, they tend to be better informed than the many passive donors found among large membership groups (Ibid.). • Mutual Aid Societies offer support to people who meet specific membership criteria, such as ethnic background (e.g., the Toronto Chinese Community Services Association) or professional standing (e.g., Canadian Association of University Teachers). In the course of helping each other, these associations strengthen both their members and their ability to contribute to the larger community. • Community Associations are technically open to anyone although only persons who share a particular interest are likely to join. Typically, these activities will require a group setting; examples include amateur sports leagues, little theatre and tree-planting groups. These are the groups celebrated by Robert Putnam.

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• Benefactors have restricted membership but public interest purposes, such as the Rotary Club and similar service clubs. Some charities, foundations and not-for- profits fall into this category because they are run by small boards of self- appointed members who are invited to replace departing members. These foundations are the “angel investors” of the non-profit world. • Reform Alliances are sub-national and national membership organizations or federations of groups with large aggregate memberships formed to achieve a social movement purpose or a similar goal spanning multiple geographical areas or fields of interest. Goals are more public-interested than those of rent-seekers but are compromises on the goals of Social Movement NGOs due to the necessity of building a broad coalition. While most of the groups in this category operate at provincial, state and national levels (often with chapters of active volunteers at the community level), civic leagues like the Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance or Guelph (Ontario) Civic League can play similar roles at the municipal level. These groups, while powerful, are based on weaker ties than more hands-on groups and can be shorter-lived than other civil society groups, especially after they reach the goal that caused most members to rally to them. (One such example is the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, which began losing support in the mid-1980s after securing gender equality provisions in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.) It is usual for members to be restricted to being passive supporters at this level, even though they may be activists at a more local level. In most of North America, where municipalities and counties are legally “creatures” of provinces or states, local groups often need to “scale up” to the provincial or state level – create a coalition or other presence at the higher level – in order to make sure their plans at the local level are supported at the higher level. • Service Agencies are the community-level secular and faith-based charities and non-profit agencies that help those in need – the poor, diseased and disabled – and take up other causes beneficial to the local or regional community, such as preservation of natural and built heritage. Members may be engaged in program delivery or in fundraising to support professional staff or research, especially into serious diseases. • Social Movement Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are groups with broad memberships supporting secular or faith-based missions to alleviate poverty, suffering, injustice or ecological damage. Oxfam, Greenpeace and Amnesty International are examples. Most members are passive supporters, donating funds to support the work of professionalized staff. However, some have local chapters where members are more actively involved. These groups may also have captive foundations, which would fall into the Benefactor category. This kind of vertical organization strengthens the NGO and allows it to provide more kinds of governing resources to partnerships with government. Social movement organizations differ from social movements in having formal legal and financial structures.

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