Environment watchdog provides tentative praise for Far North Act

The Ontario government deserves “high praise” for starting a process to protect huge swaths of the province’s Far North through the Far North Act, says the Environmental Commissioner in his 2010-2011 annual report.
But Gord Miller, Ontario’s independent environmental watchdog since 2000, cautioned that the success of the Far North Act depends on the government spending enough money collecting ecological research and helping First Nations communities prepare land use plans.
“The devil is in the details,” Miller wrote. “Inadequate government spending, including the lack of the necessary policy development and support, could jeopardize the long-term success of the Far North Act.”
The legislation, passed in 2010, sets out a goal for Ontario to work with First Nation communities to protect up to half of Ontario’s Far North from development.
The idea is for the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) to work with individual communities to create land use plans outlining traditional use land, areas for protection and areas that are open for mining and forestry development.
Four land use plans have currently been approved under the Act. Cat Lake and Slate Falls First Nations have a combined plan that allows for development in two-thirds of the over 1.5 million hectares covered by their plan.
The land use plan for Little Grand Rapids, on the other hand, protects all of the 180,000 hectares covered by the plan.
Despite the tentative praise for the Far North Act from the Environmental Commissioner, the Act has been widely criticized from both industry groups and First Nation leaders in northern Ontario.
Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Stan Beardy has vowed to oppose the act with any means possible.
Beardy said he supports the idea of community-based land use planning, but does not support how the act was implemented – without consultation with First Nations – and the fact that the MNR minister would have veto power over any decisions made under the act.
Meanwhile the forestry industry, the mining industry and the provincial Conservative party have criticized the plan because they say it will shut down development in the far north.
“If this Act passes, it will freeze northern Ontario as one giant park,” said Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak at a campaign stop in Timmins during the last election. “This is a bad bill, and if it passes, the PC party will do everything we can to make northern Ontario strong again.”
The Environmental Commissioner, however, took exception to claims that the north would be off-limits to development under the Far North Act.
“In reality, the Act opens up half of northern Ontario to different development opportunities through an orderly process that satisfies the requirement to meaningfully involve First Nations,” Miller wrote. “This approach makes practical business sense, on top of its prudent measures to safeguard one of the largest and most intact ecological systems on Earth.”
Miller repeatedly cautioned that the government needs to spend the necessary money in both helping Aboriginal communities complete land use plans, and in collecting the ecological research needed to analyze the region.
Yet the report noted that MNR has seen its funding relative to the overall size of the government shrink by 45 per cent since 1993.
MNR now only receives 0.45 per cent of Ontario’s total budget. The Ministry of the Environment (MOE) receives 0.31 per cent of the budget. As a comparison Ontario spends 37.57 per cent of the budget on health care and 17.97 per cent on education.
“Long years of ‘streamlining’ and ‘realigning’ at MNR and MOE, coupled with steadily growing responsibilities, have brought about a crisis of capacity in those ministries,” the report states.