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Ontario Municipal Affairs Minister Steve Clark, pictured in 2018. The Greenbelt Council s new chair reports to Clark. File photo by Alex Tétreault
The new chair of Ontario’s Greenbelt Council is under fire over his environmental record again, this time for his approach to climate pollution as environment minister in the 1990s.
Norm Sterling who was lambasted by critics shortly after the Ford government appointed him last week for voting against the creation of the Greenbelt when he was a PC MPP was an environment minister in the Mike Harris government.
A longer look at his record also shows Sterling’s environmental legacy is complex. He was resistant to climate targets in the Kyoto Protocol, and oversaw the Environment Ministry as carbon emissions rose and senior officials instructed staff not to enforce regulations in hundreds of cases. But he also helped shape Canada’s first environmental land use plan and implemented legislation aimed at cracking down on smoki
The new chair of the Ford government’s Greenbelt Council was Ontario’s environment minister leading up to the Walkerton tragedy, an E. coli outbreak that killed seven people two decades ago.
Norm Sterling who oversaw cuts to the environment ministry’s budget that were later found to have contributed to what happened in Walkerton was a Progressive Conservative environment minister under the Mike Harris government. As an MPP in 2005, he voted against the creation of the Greenbelt.
Sterling replaces former chair David Crombie, who resigned along with six others late last year in protest of the Ford government’s move to limit the powers of conservation authorities.
Residents of idyllic small town on Lake Simcoe worried about huge high-rise condo project
Depending on your point of view, it s either a glimpse into the future of development in southern Ontario, or a dangerous waste of good farmland. Either way, the proposed Orbit development planned for Innisfill, a town of 37,000 just southeast of Barrie, is making residents take notice.
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“If built, the road will raze 2,000 acres of farmland, cut across 85 waterways and pave nearly 400 acres of protected Greenbelt land in Vaughan. It would also disrupt 220 wetlands and the habitats of 10 species-at-risk, according to the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority,” according to the report.
The project is a ghost road; it’s been bandied about since its introduction in 2005 in various incarnations, but was killed by the previous Liberal government in 2018 as being too dangerous to the environment, including flood plains. Ford brought it roaring back, despite in 2018 saying, “[t]he people have spoken – we won’t touch the greenbelt. Very simple. That’s it, the people have spoken. I’m going to listen to them, they don’t want me to touch the greenbelt, we won’t touch the greenbelt. Simple as that.”