Deadline for Caledon to update crucial aggregate policies nears; local opposition to proposed mega blasting quarry grows

Time is running out for the Town of Caledon. 

For the past year and a half it has been working to update a series of policies designed to govern and control aggregate operations within the municipality’s borders. A 2022 study ranked Caledon dead last in the quality of these policies which regulate everything from air quality, hydrogeological impacts and First Nations consultation to noise and surface water issues. 

The need to update these overarching policies comes as the Town is considering a proposal for an 800-acre mega blasting quarry from CBM Aggregates, a subsidiary of Brazilian aggregate giant Votorantim Cimentos. 

While residents and advocacy organizations have made dedicated efforts to see the policies updated with essential safeguards for town residents, municipal staff have struggled to finish the update within their own timelines.

The newest update from Town staff, presented to the Planning and Development committee in May suggests they will complete the entire aggregate resources policy review and have it ready for ratification on September 24th — the interim control bylaw expires on October 18th. The bylaw was put in place to pause the approval of any new aggregate operations while the Town was updating its policies. While significant progress has been made since its last update in March, Caledon staff do not have the best track record on sticking to their timelines, which has left residents concerned and pleading with council to ensure the work is completed in a timely manner.

“The ICBL process has been enormously challenging because of the quantity of material and information to process in order to rewrite well crafted aggregate policies, and I knew that it would be a challenge. Time is not our friend,” David Sylvester, one of the members of the Aggregate Resources Community Working Group and President of the Forks of the Credit Preservation Group, told The Pointer. He remains “cautiously optimistic” that the Town will complete its update within the set time.

Caledon council voted to implement an ICBL in October 2022 in a snap decision just before the municipal election, after a presentation at a community meeting revealed that Caledon, according to a study conducted by the Top Ten Aggregate Producing Municipalities of Ontario (TAPMO), is dead last for its aggregate policies. The test results were based on a cumulative score of nine themes: air quality, blasting, cumulative effects, First Nations consultation, haul routes, hydrogeological impacts, natural heritage disruption, noise and surface water issues.

Canada Building Materials (CBM) has an application with the Town of Caledon to transform 800-acres of prime agricultural land into a mega quarry.

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer Files)

Nearly six months into the first year of the ICBL, the Town had failed to make any significant progress, triggering an uproar from citizens — especially those located in Ward 1 where an application for an 800-acre below the water table blasting quarry is looming. At the time, David Donnelley, one of the province’s leading environmental lawyers, said the studies the Town needed to complete would take longer than six months, but staff reassured the public they could meet the deadline of October 2023. 

When this didn’t happen, council was faced with a decision to extend the ICBL for an additional year. Now just three months before the expiration of the ICBL, staff are beginning phase two of a three phase plan of policy formation. The Town is also dealing with an Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT) appeal from CBM Aggregates which is arguing the ICBL is invalid.

CBM has deep interests in the Town of Caledon. The company operates 60 pit and quarry licenses across Ontario and currently has an application for the 800-acre blasting quarry in the hamlet of Cataract, about a 10 minute drive from the intersection of Highway 10 and Highway 24. The proposed operation would dramatically alter approximately 262 hectares of Caledon countryside in the area of Charleston Sideroad and Main Street/Regional Road 136. If approved, CBM estimates it could extract 2.5 million tonnes of aggregate from the site annually over the next 40 years. 

Free reign for aggregate operators is just one issue Caledon residents have with the PC government.

(Rachel Morgan/The Pointer)

The fight against the CBM application, which would bring the first blasting quarry to the Town, decimating vital farmland in the process, has brought together residents from Cataract, the nearby villages of Alton and Belfountain, and others from all across Caledon, in opposition. For over three years, the Forks of the Credit Preservation Group (FCPG) has been leading the fight, holding community meetings and information sessions, and hiring their own experts.

FCPG has been supported by the Reform Gravel Mining Coalition (RGMC) whose mandate is to “protect Ontario from unnecessary gravel mining”. In light of a brutal audit from Ontario’s Auditor General in December on the lack of accountability for aggregate operators in the province, the RGMC initiated the first Provincial Day of Action to protect Ontario from gravel mining.

Eight communities impacted by aggregate operations took to the streets on June 8th demanding the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry strengthen its policies to protect humans and the environment from the effects of gravel mining. The RGMC is also urging communities to sign onto a campaign demanding a moratorium on gravel mining until the province can provide accurate data on how much aggregate is needed across the province and what is currently available.

Over 100 residents from across Caledon attended the event, many wearing red shirts with the word “BOOM” plastered across the front. 

Their message was simple: to construct a quarry that borders on rural properties and eats up vital farmland while contaminating precious stream corridors would be irresponsible.

For Lynda McDougall, the thought that something like this could occur on land that her family has lived and farmed on for over 200 years, brings tears to her eyes.

“We have so much uncertainty in our lives as farmers. So the last thing we need is to have our sod pulled out from underneath us to get at everything that is of personal value underneath and leave us a debt of that lack of dirt,” she told The Pointer. While the McDougall family land has not been sold directly to CBM, the ripple effects from air pollution, water pollution and dust and debris will inhibit her family’s ability to continue to make a living off of their land. 

David Sylvester (left), president of the Forks of the Credit Preservation Group, stands with Ontario Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner along Main Street in Cataract.

(Rachel Morgan/The Pointer)

While McDougall herself lives in Orangeville now, the fight for her is personal, and she is active in the effort to replace Deputy Premier and MPP for Dufferin-Caledon Sylvia Jones, who has provided next to no support for the community on this matter. Ontario Green Party leader Mike Schreiner attended the rally as well. 

As for the local council, some residents like Sylvester are adamant that the mayor and council stand behind them in their fight. In April 2023, Mayor Annette Groves assured residents that all nine councillors stood with the community in their opposition to the quarry, but recently she has not been as outspoken on the issue.

“Certainly the mayor is 100 percent behind us,” Sylvester said. “The strength and influence of aggregate is overwhelming and we recognize that too. So it's no small challenge.”

For others, including some members of the Aggregate Resources Community Working Group—set up to help inform the Town in its effort to draft new policies— they feel their voices are not being heard by those who have the decision making power.

“I think they're still just placating us. [The project manager] in that meeting called us a focus group and I think that just says everything about the process, that they really aren't interested at all in us actually coming up with policy ideas for them,” Cheryl Connors, a member of the working group, told The Pointer in March. “It's just tick a box, we consulted the public.”

She said she was not prepared to continue to attend meetings, “if they have no interest in actually having our input into the process”. 

According to the Terms of Reference set out by the Town, the purpose of the working group is to “liaise with residents to bring a variety of community perspectives, and for public agencies to review and provide comments and data input during the Supplementary Aggregate Resources Policy Study”.

But even before Connors expressed her complaints to The Pointer, working group members were taking a stand against what they saw as a flawed process. In January, four of the six members — including Connors — sent a blistering letter to council demanding their concerns be addressed by senior staff.

The list of issues raised is long and alarming. The working group members even threatened to stop meeting until the Town addressed their concerns and got the process to establish strict policies for the aggregate industry back on track.

“Draft policies were produced without respect for the process approved by Council which was focused on public input to policy formulation,” the four members wrote in the letter which was included on the January 16th Planning and Development Committee agenda. “It has also proceeded without respect for the role of the Working Group. We were told from the outset what the policies and the mapping would be and they have now been drafted before the process provided for in the TOR (Terms of Reference) has even begun.”

A staff report on the May 14th agenda notes that the Aggregate Resources Community Working Group has been meeting more regularly in response to the complaints. 

According to the staff report, it appears some of the demands of the Working Group have been met. By request of the group, the Town has held ten issue-focussed technical briefings which are intended to provide information on specific topics associated with aggregate. The ten topics included aggregate mapping; excess soil; transportation; stream and valley mapping; land use compatibility; blasting and flyrock; hydrology and hydrogeology; other aggregate uses; social impact; and environmental policy framework. The first session was held on March 18th and the last on May 14th.

Some of these topics have already garnered a lot of public interest. In August it was revealed that James Dick Construction Ltd, one of the biggest aggregate companies operating in Caledon, had direct involvement in the process to update regional mapping which would dictate resource areas across the Town. While the Region of Peel confirmed that the data provided had been vetted by the Ontario Geological Survey, the Town provided contradictory statements on where the data came from and would not comment on how a representative from this company having access to the working group material did not qualify as a conflict of interest.

Another issue that hits close to home for many Caledon residents is transportation and traffic. CBM estimates the quarry proposed for Cataract will produce 2-million tonnes of aggregate annually. The average truck can carry 30 tonnes of aggregate in one trip, averaging out to approximately 67,000 additional truck trips per year just to service the quarry. 

The intersection of Highway 10 and Highway 24 is already jammed packed, without the presence of additional trucks from the proposed quarry.

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer Files)

CBM also estimates that 90 percent of truck routes will require turning onto Highway 10 from Highway 24, at the main intersection in Caledon Village. This is a major concern for residents who have watched Highway 10 turn from a major artery for vacationers, to a dangerous zone shared by commercial vehicles, locals and those heading north. 

According to data from the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), between 2018 and mid 2023, there were nine fatal collisions on Highway 10 between Mayfield Road and Highway 9. In November 2022, three fatal crashes happened within four days on Highway 10 between Peel Region and Dufferin County.

The Town is continuing to juggle the updates to its policies with the work necessary to prepare for the upcoming OLT hearings.

Following a pre-merit hearing held in March, a three-day hearing date beginning September 4th was scheduled to hear arguments from the applicant, CBM Aggregates, the Town, and the sole intervener in the case, the Forks of the Credit Preservation Group represented by Donnelley. 

Kim Mullin, legal counsel for CBM, said during the intake that even if a hearing could not happen until after the expiration of the bylaw her clients were still interested in proceeding with the challenge. The Pointer reached out to both Mullin and David Hanratty, the Director of Land, Resources and Environment for CBM, asking what a challenge so close to, or after, the expiration would achieve. Neither responded.

A statutory public meeting is planned for September 3rd on the draft policies before final recommendations are brought to the Planning and Development Committee on September 17th and Council on September 24th.

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