Garner Marsh future darkens
The procedural rules for the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT) hearing on the Garner Road Marsh have now been set for the three-week hearing beginning on October 2. But the changes to provincial legislation in Bill 23 appear to undermine the potential outcome. And the ultimate fate of the Marsh looks bleaker in the wake of revelations on the other side of the continent where the marsh owners control a much larger environmentally damaging project.
The OLT decision on the hearing rules continues the tribunal’s embrace of the developer’s language about “relocation” of the Marsh. The opening paragraph of the OLT document says the focus of the hearing “involves the relocation of a local wetland” [because] “the Hamilton Conservation Authority refused an application for permission to relocate the wetland.”
The HCA description is pointedly different in its list of issues: “Do HCA’s policies permit the destruction of a wetland with the characteristics of the wetland present on the subject property, including but not limited to the size, significance, positioning within the watershed, and the wetland’s ecology and hydrogeology, and the creation of a proposed wetland feature on the subject
property, as put forward in the appellant’s permit application?”
The City of Hamilton and the non-profit Environmental Defence are also parties to the OLT hearing. There are also 26 individuals registered as participants. They are allowed to submit written statements by July 4 but “a participant cannot present oral submissions at the hearing on the content of their written statement” state the OLT rules.
That July 4 date is also the deadline for the parties to submit the evidence of their experts (usually paid by a party), ensuring that participants can also not argue with the experts who play the dominant role in the hearing processes. The OLT was formed in 2021 by the Ford provincial government by combining five previous boards, one of which would formerly have heard appeals of Conservation Authority permits.
The provincial Progressive Conservative government’s controversial Bill 23 omnibus legislation appears to eliminate the requirement for a Conservation Authority permit. It also specifically bans CAs from considering pollution or “land conservation” in its permit decisions. Despite this, the HCA issues list specifically argues the developer must show how its plans “will not affect the conservation of land, including the existing wetland.”
The owner of the 35 hectare property at 140 Garner Road East is the Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo), a multi-billion pension fund controlled by the Alberta provincial government. AIMCo is also the main shareholder in the Coastal Gas Link project currently constructing a fracked gas pipeline across the unceded lands of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation in northern British Columbia.
That BC project is being fiercely opposed by the hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en but they and their allies have been repeatedly arrested on their territories by the RCMP enforcing provincial court orders. Earlier this month helicopter surveillance by the Wet'suewet'en, after having been denied over-land access, revealed multiple violations of environmental rules by the pipeline construction company including secretly digging up a salmon river.
The pipeline project has already had 37 warnings and 17 orders from the BC government regulator “over the past two years for infractions” including a $200,000 fine last summer, reports the Narwhal. The newest environmental violations are currently being investigated by the BC regulator.
The revelations suggest AIMCo has little regard for environmental rules, and that may extend to its Garner Road property. There was evidence of this soon after it purchased it. A few days after the HCA rejected the planned destruction of the marsh, the farmland surrounding it was sprayed with pesticides, killing all the crops of the farmers who had paid rent in advance to use the lands.
