$100 Million Plan to Create Parks, Protected Areas
Copyright 2000, The Toronto Star
November 24, 2000
By Richard Brennan
Premier Mike Harris has promised more than $100 million will be spent over the next few years to create hundreds of new parks and protect sensitive areas as part of Ontario's Living Legacy program.
The announcement comes hard on the heels of a damning report by the provincial auditor accusing the government of poor forest management, citing the natural resources ministry's failure to file a report on the state of Ontario's crown forests in five years.
The Living Legacy program, announced almost a year ago, creates 378 new parks and protected areas covering 2.4 million hectares. That brings the total to 650 parks and protected areas.
"We're expanding our system of parks and open spaces, protecting our streams and forests and preserving our fish and wildlife so that future generations will be able to enjoy everything our province has to offer," Harris told a news conference yesterday at the Brick Works, a reclaimed area in the Don Valley.
Almost $30 million of the $102.55 million will be spent over four years on infrastructure to get the parks ready for visitors.
These parks and protected regions free from logging, mining and hydro- electric development cover 12 per cent of crown-owned land in the area below the 51st Parallel, stretching from the Manitoba border to the Ottawa River and as far south as Orillia.
A Natural Resources spokesperson said $20 million will be spent on acquiring ecologically sensitive areas in southern Ontario, including the Lynde Marsh, which is part of the Rouge Valley system, the Cheltenham Badlands in Caledon, and the Blue Mountain slopes.
Natural Resources Minister John Snobelen said $20 million will be spent over the next couple of years on employment programs for students, including five teams of stewardship rangers who will work on reclamation projects such as tree planting, wetlands rehabilitation and riverbank recovery along the Don River.
John Riley, director of conservation science at the Nature Conservatory of Canada, said one in every 10 acres of the province is now legally set aside for nature and posterity, while the needs of the forest industry are also being met.
Area equivalent to
12 million football fields
The Living Legacy program is the result of environmental groups, communities, mining and forest industries working together for months to agree on what land should be protected under the provincial parks system.
To put the expansion in some kind of context, Harris said the new parks and protected areas would cover an area the size of all of Ontario south of Algonquin Park - or 12 million Canadian football fields.
Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty said Harris' announcement contained no new money, and suggested the only reason the premier made it was as a " diversionary tactic" to turn attention from his government's poor forest management practices.