Sprawl master plan pushed by Mayor Annette Groves will decimate species at risk in Caledon 

Fading Away is an ongoing series from The Pointer analyzing how government decision making, and its repeated disregard for environmental stewardship, is impacting Ontario’s most at-risk wildlife. Part 1 can be found here. Part 2 can be read here. 

Caledon was once the “greenest town in Ontario”. 

Located mostly in the province's protected Greenbelt, it is steeped in the headwaters of vast, intertwined watersheds that flow down through southern Ontario’s most populous cities and feed much of the GTA. 

Fertile farm fields provide food to hundreds of thousands, those who use well water drink some of the cleanest H2O in the province and Lake Ontario is constantly cleansed by the flowing streams and creeks that run south from Caledon. 

It is home to natural features like the Tottenham Badlands and Forks of the Credit Provincial Park, all surrounded by the verdant rolling hills that attract visitors year round. 

It’s not hard to see why, over a decade ago, the vast rural municipality was bestowed with the moniker.

But a lot has changed since 2011, and for Caledon’s natural spaces, it has not been for the better.

Aggregate operations have ripped, scoured and gouged it so severely, giant expanses of land now look like a lunar landscape, pocked by giant craters. Farm fields are rapidly being sold off for sprawl development, compromising numerous wildlife species and the province’s food security. 

Caledon’s natural spaces have for decades been invaded by giant aggregate operations that have turned forests and other greenspaces into gaping gravel pits. 

(Youtube/James Dick Construction; Alexis Wright/The Pointer)

Recently, this regressive growth received a shot in the arm from a new development plan championed by Mayor Annette Groves and drafted for the Town by a development lawyer (representing the very developers who stand to gain from the now approved proposal).

It greenlights the rezoning of 12 parcels of land to facilitate the development of 35,000 homes. Many of these parcels are on, or adjacent to, the protected Greenbelt. 

The Pointer has detailed the financial implications of this plan—which the Region of Peel says will cost billions of dollars, with no way to pay for it all; the backwards planning process has baffled not only the upper tier municipality which labelled it as “premature” and highlighted a long list of disturbing issues, but the development-happy PC government also took issue with the unprecedented scheme which approved lands for development before any planning studies were done, including critical environmental work. 

An analysis completed by The Pointer has found the plan will have a devastating impact on provincial and federally protected species at risk. 

A study of the Ontario government’s Natural Heritage Information Centre shows that 24 species at risk have been seen in or around these 12 parcels of land over the last 6 months. This includes four endangered species; 6 threatened species and 14 labelled as special concern. While these latter species do not receive legislative protection, avoiding harm to their habitat is widely viewed as a priority due to the precarious state of their populations.

Two restricted species were also identified in the area. These are species whose population is so at risk; or they are vulnerable to sport hunting, that the province does not identify them. 

The findings of this analysis directly contradict statements made by Mayor Groves and Caledon staff who claim the development on these lands would not negatively impact the Greenbelt “in any manner”. 

It was a claim many residents dismissed. 

“Does Council really think that plunking down so much development on lands in some of these applications, some of which are adjacent to or include the Greenbelt, are going to cease to impact the surrounding area just because the property line says so?” Erica McNeice said during one of the town council meetings that were flooded with residents protesting the scheme being championed by Groves.

The vast majority of the 35,000 homes now approved for development will be built right next to the Greenbelt, which provides justification for developers and politicians to continue the domino of construction into the largest protected stretch of greenspace in the world. It’s something Groves vowed to fight against when she ran to be mayor in 2022.

The repeated assertion from Groves and staff during the widespread backlash that ensued following the delivery of the 12 zoning bylaws in April of this year was that any concerns would be addressed through holding provisions placed on the lands. Residents were expected to accept that the proper environmental studies and mitigation measures would be completed and decided ahead of any development. Typical development process has these studies completed before any action is taken to allow development. 

The conditions of a holding provision must be met prior to them being removed so that development can move forward. Groves did not include any holding provisions when she first tried to push her plan through in a snap vote that had been set for April, before hundreds of residents turned out in protest. Groves agreed to wait, claiming she was listening to the public’s concerns, and held a series of public information sessions. During these sessions, held across Caledon, staff simply repeated the mayor’s talking points without providing information on the financial consequences or any of the numerous missing studies. Groves eventually agreed to defer any vote until after the summer, before reneging on her promise and pushing the amendments through at the end of June.

One plot of land was held for council to get further information. The plot in question includes large portions of Greenbelt lands. The delay did not change the proposed zoning change and council voted to move it forward a few weeks later. 

According to Town of Caledon spokesperson Ryan Cowieson, the town is currently working through the secondary planning process for all developments on these parcels of land. 

“Where studies have already been provided and reviewed, the existence of species at risk has been identified and the Town is actively in consultation with the proponents,” he states. “When the studies for the other areas are received, the Town will continue with similar consultations. Moreover, regardless of the status of the studies, the Town has already begun discussions with developers on this matter as part of the pre-consultation processes for the applications.”

Cowieson continues: “The Endangered Species Act prohibits the removal of habitats for species at risk, except in accordance with provincial and federal requirements…The Town would not approve any work until the information about the species at risk are known and conditions for protection are addressed through these conditions.”

Despite nearly half of the species at risk technically protected from habitat destruction by law, the PC government under Premier Doug Ford has significantly weakened the Endangered Species Act and the department responsible for enforcing it. This means it is one less thing standing in the way for developers in Caledon.

It places vulnerable species in an incredibly dangerous situation. 

Groves vows environmental studies and mitigation will be completed ahead of any development. However, with her Strong Mayor powers, she can move projects forward or remove these holding symbols as she sees fit (with only one third support of council). Further, the work of the PC government to weaken the laws and practices meant to protect species at risk means that even if mitigation measures are proposed there is no guarantee they will be implemented by the developers required to do so. 

“The worldwide rate at which species are now going extinct and disappearing is tens to hundreds of times higher than over the past 10 million years—and the rate is accelerating. Experts and world leaders are calling for urgent action to address this global loss of nature,” states Ontario’s Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk in a 2023 audit of the PC government’s efforts to enforce the Endangered Species Act.  “Species loss directly affects how the natural world works, and impacts the many ways in which humans rely on nature and the services it provides. In Canada, habitat loss and degradation— resulting from land use changes and disturbance from human activities—is the biggest threat to species at risk.”

That threat has grown under the tenure of Premier Doug Ford. 

Lysyk’s 2023 audit was a follow-up to a previous analysis completed in 2021 that exposed the disturbing state of Ontario’s efforts to protect species at risk. 

In short, the government wasn’t protecting them at all—despite laws in place requiring them to do so—instead, the ministry tasked with the responsibility was actually doing the opposite. 

“The Environment Ministry is not…acting in the best interests of species and their habitats,” Lysyk’s 2021 audit exposed. “The Environment Ministry’s systems and processes for approvals facilitate and enable harm to species at risk and their habitats.”

The government attempted to deflect blame for this blatant abdication of duty. A PC spokesperson at the time told The Pointer “our government has a strong record of protecting species”, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. 

Lysyk found between 2009 and 2020, permits to harm species at risk habitat increased by 6,262 percent; stewardship funding to help species at risk decreased 10 percent; the Ministry had never turned down a permit to harm species at risk and had no long-term plan to improve the state of these vulnerable species. 

The list goes on: 

• There were no performance metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of the species at risk program.

• Forestry operations on Crown lands were exempted from the Endangered Species Act by the PCs in 2020, resulting in species actually losing habitat protections. 

• The committee that advises Ontario’s Environment Minister on how to implement the Act was dominated by industry stakeholders, whose interests are contrary to protecting species at risk and their habitats. “The Ministry could not explain how six recent appointees had been identified, screened and chosen for the independent science committee that classifies which species are at risk,” Lysyk wrote. 

• Most approvals were granted automatically by the Ministry without review and there were no inspections to ensure that companies and other applicants abided by the conditions of their approvals.

Since this 2021 audit and its 2023 follow-up, the PC government is working to make it much easier for plans like that being pushed through in Caledon to be approved.

They are doing this not only by failing to implement the majority of the recommendations Lysyk requested, but by attempting to strip protections away from vulnerable species. 

The PC government is proposing a number of changes to the Endangered Species Act that would reduce protected habitat for the redside dace (an endangered minnow and one of the 24 species identified by The Pointer inside the 12 parcels rezoned on Caledon). The PCs are also attempting to remove a requirement for a 30-day waiting period between when a health report is submitted for the endangered butternut tree and when a permit for harm can be filed. Finally, the PCs are attempting to add a number of newly listed at-risk species to a list that qualify for “conditional exemptions”—these exemption requests do not go through a review process by ministry staff, unlike other permits and agreements. 

In a posting on the Environmental Registry proposing the changes, the PC government claims these changes are improving the Endangered Species Act, and these measures will “streamline” approvals. 

Thus, “proponents can engage in their proposed activities impacting recently listed species sooner,” the posting reads. 

“We take great exception to the stated rationale,” reads a letter sent to Environment Minister Andrea Khanjin and signed by 68 environmental organizations. “Speeding up harmful activities cannot be seen as improving implementation of a law intended to promote the protection and recovery of species at risk.” 

The letter states this is clearly an effort to maximize profits and benefit the development industry. 

“The job of government is to serve the public interest which, in this case, lies more broadly in protecting and recovering species at risk,” the letter states. 

The expansion of species at risk eligible for conditional exemptions is concerning as these permits rarely see any inspection or follow-up to ensure any proposed mitigation measures are actually followed. It leaves the system incredibly vulnerable to abuse, advocates state. 

Lysyk found the ministry never inspected any activities they allowed through these exemptions; it does not review reports from development proponents. 

According to Lysyk’s report, these exemptions are responsible for harming 123 different species at risk. Since 2013, 50 percent of the conditional exemptions handed out by the Province harmed the bobolink, the eastern meadowlark, the barn swallow, the butternut tree, and the Blanding’s turtle. 

“Their priority is to protect sprawl developers from endangered species. That’s pretty clear,” Tim Gray, the executive director of Environmental Defence told The Pointer. “It’s clearly deliberate and it’s clearly done with a sense that even extirpating a species, say like the redside dace which is endemic to the Great Lakes basin, driving it to extinction to Ontario is totally fine.”

Many advocates are connecting this systematic dismantling of species at risk legislation with the push by the PC government to construct Highway 413. The proposed mega-highway will drastically harm species at risk as it runs from Milton to Vaughan, cutting through Brampton and Caledon directly along the edge, and sometimes through, the protected Greenbelt. 

A 2021 investigation by The Pointer found 29 species at risk along the corridor of the 59-kilometre highway. A 2022 report published by Environmental Defence, Road to Ruin, identified the same number, including the redside dace and butternut tree, two endangered species subject of the most recent proposed legislative alterations.

The PC government is attempting to drastically change the criteria used to identify habitat for the redside dace. Widely accepted criteria for habitat consideration is whether that species has been spotted in that location over the last 20 years. The proposal from the Ford government wants to cut that number in half. They are also trying to limit areas for recovery to only those streams and watercourses adjacent to existing habitat, eliminating other formerly occupied areas, but due to population decline it is no longer home to the dace. 

“The only possible interpretation of these changes is that they are geared towards facilitating development,” the letter from environmental groups to Minister Khanjin states.

“They’ve systematically taken apart the legislation and every time there is something they are thinking of trying to develop, like Highway 413, if it looks like they might have to do something to avoid impacts on endangered species, they just propose legislative or regulatory changes to get around having to do anything about it,” Gray states. “It’s clearly short term financial gain for a particular interests over the long term interests of the public and it's shocking and people should be enraged by it.”

A map and listing of the species at risk that would be impacted if Highway 413 is ever constructed.

(Joel Wittnebel/The Pointer)

Many of the same species identified along the route of Highway 413 are the same that would be harmed by development with the 12 parcels of land rezoned by Mayor Groves and her fellow councillors.

Even if permits, exemptions or mitigation measures are approved for these lands, due to the utter failure by the PC government to enforce the existing legislation, there is no guarantee harm will be avoided. 

The cumulative impact of these numerous projects is something neither the PC government, or the Town of Caledon is willing to study, despite the widespread harm that could result from multiple species being harmed by multiple projects at the same time. 

The species at risk that have been seen in and around the 12 parcels of land rezoned by the Town of Caledon.

(Joel Wittnebel/The Pointer)

The bobolink, a threatened bird species, is found in 11 of the 12 parcels rezoned by Caledon (as well as Highway 413). According to Lysyk’s 2021 audit, since the Endangered Species Act was passed in 2007, there have been 1,124 permits of various types issued to harm species at risk habitat, 306 of them have allowed harmful activities. The species most frequently harmed were the butternut tree (endangered), the redside dace (endangered), the bobolink (endangered), the whip-poor will (threatened), and the Blanding’s turtle (endangered). 

The threatened eastern meadowlark appears in all 12 of Caledon’s rezoned parcels. It’s another species that is being pushed closer to extinction as a result of human development. 

An investigation by The Pointer analyzed 43 major development applications across Southern Ontario, including the 15 parcels of land slated for removal from the Greenbelt before the scandal erupted and the PCs reversed course. The entire scandal is now being investigated by the RCMP.

Using primary source environmental impact assessments and data from the Province's own Natural Heritage Information Centre (NHIC), The Pointer identified 80 endangered, threatened, or species of special concern present across these 43 parcels of land.

The eastern meadowlark showed up in 77 percent (33 of 43) of the land parcels analyzed, representing the most impacted species identified by The Pointer. This included the risk of habitat destruction across the GTA in the municipalities of Vaughan, Oshawa, Richmond Hill and Markham. The Pointer found the eastern meadowlark stands to lose parcels of valuable remaining habitat across a swath of geography that stretches from Niagara Falls in the south to Huntsville in the north, and from Kingston in the east to Kitchener in the west. 

The potential habitat loss for these embattled species is difficult to imagine. For the barn swallow (identified in parcel A2), habitat is also at risk of destruction from development proposals in Markham, Pickering, Caledon, London, Guelph, Barrie, Ajax and Whitchurch-Stouffville. The endangered redside dace (found in parcels A4, A7 and A11) will see habitat also degraded or lost completely in Markham, Richmond Hill, Pickering, and Ajax, to name a few.

“For people who have been involved in trying to protect the habitat for at-risk species, it has been heartbreaking to watch the dismantling of the ESA in Ontario, especially because there is such a wide recognition that we need a systems change in the way that things are done that impact wildlife,” Rachel Plotkin, Boreal Project Manager with the David Suzuki Foundation states. “Instead, we’re seeing, time after time, the act being weakened.”

Why?

“The government is basing its decision on politics and who its buddies are rather than the needs for at-risk species and rather than a commitment and sense of responsibility to recover them,” Plotkin states.

There is no indication the Ford government plans to change course. 

Following the 2023 follow-up audit, the PC government has completely refused to implement the majority of Lysyk’s critical recommendations. The PC refused to create “transparent and accountable procedures” to improving screen efforts for candidates for the Committee on the Status of Species at Risk in Ontario; they refused to increase resources for this committee so that it could “promptly and effectively” assess species; refused to prepare response statements—reports on the status of at-risk wildlife—“that will result in the achievement of meaningful outcomes for species at risk”; they refused to report on the status of species at risk every five years or include the estimated costs required to adequately help the species recover; they refused to development guidelines to support Ministry staff who are considering denying a permit, or ensure that language used on the Environmental Registry clearly identifies threats to species and their habitats. 

They refused to charge for permits to harm species at risk, despite the AG’s audit finding it could result in significant revenues; they refused to approach businesses or the philanthropic sector about potential investments to help species at risk recovery or consider a license plate program to raise funds for species at risk conservation.

“It’s tragic to see the very ministry tasked with upholding the Endangered Species Act and who is responsible for implementing the protections and recovery plans for species at risk be the very ministry proposing to weaken those laws,” Katie Krelove, Ontario Campaigner with Wilderness Committee states. “Someone was clearly tasked with going through the Endangered Species Act with a red pen, laser focused on finding the things that might impede the building of Highway 413 and get rid of them or weaken them.”

Developer involvement has haunted the rezoning of the 12 parcels of land from the first time they appeared on a Caledon agenda in April.

Quinto Annibale, the development lawyer with Loopstra Nixon who played a key role in authoring the amendments on behalf of Groves, previously succeeded in getting these lands rezoned through an appeal directly to the PC government. At the time, he was working on behalf of the consortium of developers who own the golf course and surrounding lands, including Michael Rice and members of the De Gasperis family. However, following the Greenbelt scandal that rocked the PC government, the rezoning was reversed.

But where the previous plan failed, it has succeeded with the help of Mayor Groves. 

Despite repeated complaints from members of the public, Groves repeatedly denied that Annibale has a conflict of interest by representing both the town and developers who stand to gain from these rezonings.

“He’s already said there’s no conflict there,” Groves said last week.

There has been no explanation provided by the Town or Groves detailing how the arrangement is not a conflict. It is a basic practice that if a firm is representing a private entity seeking to earn a profit from a land development, that firm would not be used by the municipality to seek guidance on its decision making. It is unclear why Caledon officials did not make their own determination on a potential conflict before hiring Loopstra Nixon, as the onus was on the municipality to avoid any potential conflict of interest.

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