In November 2022, the Ontario government made many moves at once aimed at speeding up housing construction and easing the crunch. Housing is a priority for the Progressive Conservatives and they have changed many rules and processes since coming to power six years ago.
One of the changes that fall saw the government rewrite large sections of the manual used to protect Ontario’s most significant wetlands. Some builders had called for the changes, saying small wetlands didn’t warrant top-notch protections. Conservation groups and municipalities warned it would lead to wetland losses.
Not much was heard about what was happening on the ground after an updated scorecard for wetlands rolled out in January 2023.
It turns out tracking the effects of those changes isn’t easy. The Ministry of Natural Resources now has a very limited role. Clues only surface when lines shift on the official map, or when one of Ontario’s 444 municipalities is sent a copy of a finished report.
CBC Ottawa spent time in the city’s rural areas, did interviews and reviewed many documents to learn more about three local wetlands that have been scored using Ontario’s updated points system.
Two wetlands lost their provincial protections, while a third huge wetland was designated for the first time — but is not as big as it might have been.
Wetland 1: The private rural property
A rural property owner cleared his land near Highway 7 in Ottawa’s rural west, including a few hectares of what was then classified as provincially significant wetland.
The re-evaluation that followed saw the entire 41-hectare wetland lose protection because the new rules meant it could no longer be scored as part of a bigger complex with neighbouring wetlands.
The owner of a rural property in Ottawa has been ordered to let vegetation regrow after he cleared part of a big wetland.
Wetland 2: The quarry
Tomlinson Group has plans to triple the size of its quarry operation west of Stittsville. The expansion lands include two wetlands that used to be labelled provincially significant. They no longer are.
The future of this wetland highlights two priorities: the need for construction materials, and the desire to protect wetlands for flood retention and other benefits.
An Ottawa quarry owner has filed applications to effectively triple the operation’s footprint. Their plan involves removing and then restoring two wetlands that had been designated as “provincially significant.” The CBC’s Kate Porter explains.
Wetland 3: The big urban expansion
When the Algonquins of Ontario and Taggart Group pitched a big development in Ottawa’s rural southeast back in January 2021, they laid out an area they owned that included a number of natural areas.
Before their proposal, the City of Ottawa had not felt a pressing need to evaluate the swamp and marsh in the area.
The results were published in October, and the South Bear Brook wetland now has top-notch provincial protections. At 561 hectares, it’s a big area, but it might have covered more than a thousand hectares under the old rules.
In one of the biggest wetland designations the City of Ottawa has completed in recent years, 561 hectares of swamp and marsh near the future Tewin project are now protected as provincially significant — meaning they can’t be developed or disturbed.