The Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act, 2006
In September 2004, the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) proposed revising the legislation governing Ontario’s protected areas. The primary piece of legislation at issue, the Provincial Parks Act, was introduced in 1954, when there were only eight provincial parks in Ontario. Over the years, many different stakeholders, independent experts and government panels have called for its reform, on the grounds that the law did not reflect modern science, planning or environmental realities.
In October 2005, Bill 11, the Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act, 2006 (PPCRA), was introduced for First Reading in the Legislature. In June 2006, it passed Third Reading and received Royal Assent. This Act brings all of Ontario’s protected areas administered by MNR under a single piece of legislation, and makes significant legal changes to their purpose and management. For the first time, the law now explicitly recognizes that these protected areas have been created to safeguard the province’s biodiversity.
Protected areas are the foundation of any concerted effort to conserve biodiversity. The loss of natural areas is one of the greatest threats to biodiversity, both within Ontario and worldwide. Protected areas are meant to maintain and restore ecological and natural heritage values. They should provide havens for wild species, conserving the diversity among and within populations. These areas serve a crucial conservation role at a local level; equally as important, they also should function as an interconnected network at a landscape level. The degree to which the law protects these areas is critical, marking the difference between them existing as simple lines on a map or places where biodiversity is truly safeguarded.
In our 2001/2002 annual report, the ECO recommended that the Ministry of Natural Resources create a new legislative framework for provincial parks and protected areas, including conservation reserves, with the mandate of conserving biodiversity. This recommendation was the result of two separate EBR applications, both of which the ministry denied. The Provincial Parks Act was out of date and severely flawed, the EBR applicants said, because it:
- placed no onus on maintaining and restoring the ecological integrity of parks;
- failed to require adequate public consultation or park management planning; and
- failed to prohibit incompatible activities such as logging, mining, sport hunting and hydroelectric development.
Contents |
Principles to Guide the Management of Protected Areas
The purpose of the PPCRA, 2006 is “to permanently protect a system of provincial parks and conservation reserves that includes ecosystems that are representative of all of Ontario’s natural regions, protects provincially significant elements of Ontario’s natural and cultural heritage, maintains biodiversity and provides opportunities for compatible, ecologically sustainable recreation.” For the first time, Ontario’s protected areas are expressly mandated to maintain biodiversity. Further, it recognizes that provincial parks and conservation reserves are intended to be managed as a system, rather than as isolated areas.
The most significant change to the governance of Ontario’s protected areas is that ecological integrity is now the guiding principle for planning and management. The Act states that the “maintenance of ecological integrity shall be the first priority and the restoration of ecological integrity shall be considered” for all provincial parks and conservation reserves.
The new Act defines ecological integrity as “a condition in which biotic and abiotic components of ecosystems and the composition and abundance of native species and biological communities are characteristic of their natural regions and rates of change and ecosystem processes are unimpeded.” The PPCRA, 2006 further defines ecological integrity as including “healthy and viable populations of native species, including species at risk, and maintenance of the habitat on which the species depend” and “levels of air and water quality consistent with protection of biodiversity and recreational enjoyment.” The inclusion of a definition of ecological integrity is of fundamental importance for both ministry staff to administer the Act and for the public to clearly understand the purpose of Ontario’s protected areas.
Unlike its legislative predecessor, the PPCRA, 2006 explicitly recognizes that opportunities for public consultation shall be provided in the planning and management of protected areas.
Goals and Objectives
The legal objective of both provincial parks and conservation reserves will now be “to permanently protect representative ecosystems, biodiversity and provincially significant elements of Ontario’s natural and cultural heritage and to manage these areas to ensure that ecological integrity is maintained.” This objective is a significant improvement; the old Provincial Parks Act was silent in this regard and somewhat weaker objectives for provincial parks were relegated to ministry policy. Prior to this new legislation, conservation reserves regulated under the Public Lands Act lacked many basic legal protections.
Provincial parks also have the new legal objective to provide opportunities for “ecologically sustainable outdoor recreation,” in addition to providing opportunities for visitors to increase their knowledge of Ontario’s natural and cultural heritage. These objectives vary slightly for conservation reserves in that they may be managed to provide “ecologically sustainable land uses, including traditional outdoor heritage activities.” Both provincial parks and conservation reserves have the objective of facilitating scientific research and serving as benchmarks to monitor ecological change on the broader landscape.
Classification and Zoning
The PPCRA, 2006, akin to its predecessor, recognizes six classes of provincial parks: wilderness, nature reserve, cultural heritage, natural environment, waterway, and recreational class. However, the new Act states the specific objectives of each of these classes; previously, these directions were left to ministry policy. The Act also creates a new aquatic class of provincial park, at a date to be proclaimed later by the Lieutenant Governor.
Mandatory Management Direction and State of Protected Areas Reporting
In our 2003/2004 annual report, the ECO recommended that MNR require the preparation and timely revision of management plans for all protected areas, including provisions for public consultation. At that time, only 38 of 548 (or just seven per cent of) protected areas in Ontario had up-to-date plans that had been approved following public consultation. Without sound planning and conscientious management, Ontario’s provincial parks and conservation reserves are little more than ’paper parks’ – simply lines on a map. The ECO also observed that the province should undertake a review of whether MNR had adequate resources to implement the ministry’s legal responsibilities and policy commitments for protected areas.
Under the PPCRA, MNR is required to prepare “management direction” for all provincial parks and conservation reserves. These directions may apply to one or more protected areas and shall identify site-specific management policies to cover a 20-year period. Management directions may take one of two forms, either a detailed “management plan” or a “management statement” when addressing less complex issues. Unlike the Provincial Parks Act, the new legislation explicitly requires that public consultation occur when producing, reviewing or amending management direction. The PPCRA, 2006 also contains language, similar to that used in the Canada National Parks Act, which would permit MNR to enter into co-management agreements with First Nations for specific provincial parks and conservation reserves.
Given that ecological integrity is now the first priority for all provincial parks and conservation reserves, the ECO believes that indicators of ecological integrity should be expressly identified in the management plan or statement for each protected area. Ideally, the use of identified indicators and measurable objectives in each management direction would form the basis of each protected area’s ecological monitoring program. In addition, MNR should ensure that each management direction contains a description of how visitor use stresses the protected area’s ecological integrity and how such stresses are being mitigated or eliminated.
The PPCRA, 2006 requires the preparation of a planning manual, to replace the Ontario Provincial Parks Management Planning Manual. Formerly known as the MNR Blue Book, it contains the detailed policy directions for provincial parks and last was updated significantly in 1992. MNR states that the policies affecting protected areas that were the result of Ontario’s Living Legacy (OLL) will continue in their current form.
The PPCRA requires that MNR produce a state-of-the-parks report every five years (similar to Parks Canada’s system-wide reports for national parks). The state-of-the-parks report will contain an assessment of the extent to which the objectives of provincial parks and conservation reserves are being achieved, including “ecological and socio-economic conditions and benefits, the degree of ecological representation, number and area of provincial parks and conservation reserves, known threats to ecological integrity of provincial parks and conservation reserves and their ecological health and socio-economic benefits.” The Act states that MNR must post these reports on the Environmental Registry.
Major Industrial Uses
The PPCRA, 2006 explicitly prohibits the following activities in protected areas:
- the commercial harvest of timber;
- the generation of electricity;
- prospecting, staking mining claims, developing mineral interests or working mines; and
- extracting aggregate, topsoil or peat.
The inclusion of these prohibitions is a dramatic improvement compared to the old legislative framework; historically, such details were left to the whim of policy. However, the Act does include numerous exceptions to these prohibitions, such as allowing for electricity generation facilities for communities that are not connected to the Independent Electricity System Operator-controlled grid.
The most environmentally significant exception to these prohibitions is that commercial timber operations are allowed to continue in Algonquin Provincial Park. The Act essentially defers to the Algonquin Forestry Authority Act, which states that the management of this protected area be balanced between recreation and “the public interest in providing a flow of logs from Algonquin Provincial Park.” As stated in our 2005/2006 annual report, the ECO urges MNR to conduct a public review of the appropriateness of commercial logging in Algonquin Provincial Park and to address “how the proposed park management goal of ecological integrity would be achieved if this policy is allowed to continue.”
Non-Industrial Uses
Camping, excursions, fishing and other “non-industrial uses” have long been associated with Ontario’s protected areas. However, the type, intensity and/or timing of certain of these activities may be incompatible with ecological integrity. Further, what may be an appropriate activity in one protected area may not be suitable in another area. Experts also recognize that any determination of what is an appropriate activity should not be based on the potential for revenue generation.
With few exceptions, the new legislation does not address non-industrial uses; their control is left to regulation or policy.
However, the PPCRA, 2006 does borrow from ministry policy on one specific class of non-industrial activity, and states that visitors to Ontario’s eight wilderness class parks may only travel by “non-mechanized means” or engage in “low-impact recreation.” These terms are not defined, but MNR will presumably provide further detail in the regulations to be made under the legislation.
The new Act does not change the manner in which hunting is permitted in Ontario’s protected areas: by default, recreational hunting is permitted in all conservation reserves, and by exception, recreational hunting is permitted in provincial parks. However, that exception has been extended to allow recreational hunting in 132 provincial parks. Consequently, recreational hunting is allowed in more than two-thirds of Ontario’s protected areas. The ECO notes that the recreational harvest of species can conflict with the maintenance of ecological integrity in a protected area and can impair their utility as true ecological benchmarks or reference areas. The Act does not explicitly address trapping, but existing MNR policy dictates that it will be phased out of all provincial parks by no later than January 2010.
One recurring “appropriate use” issue that the new legislation does not address is that of cottages in provincial parks. Algonquin Provincial Park has 305 cottages and Rondeau Provincial Park has 295 privately occupied cottages within their respective boundaries. These cottages currently have 25-year leases that are to expire in 2017. Due to political pressure, governments of the day have routinely renewed these leases, despite a clear commitment in MNR policy that cottages within protected areas are inappropriate. Ideally, this commitment will be asserted in regulations to be made under the Act.
ECO Comment
The Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act, 2006 is a dramatic improvement to the legislative framework governing Ontario’s protected areas. The ECO commends the Ministry of Natural Resources for its diligent effort to enact this legislation. While not flawless, this new legislation moves Ontario from the back of the pack to near the forefront of protected areas law in Canada. It is a promising beginning to the much-needed overhaul of the management regime for our provincial parks and conservation reserves. MNR must now revise the regulations and policies for protected areas and the ECO will report on these changes in future annual reports.
Despite legislative improvements, the ECO has two practical concerns with how Ontario’s protected area system is being managed overall by the Government of Ontario. First, both the ECO and the Auditor General of Ontario have expressed concern that the Ontario Parks branch of MNR does not have sufficient resources to properly fulfill its mandate. Ontario is among the only jurisdictions in North America that is attempting to run its protected areas system on a cost recovery basis; as a result, its funding is very low, especially given the vast amount of land that is involved.
The Government of Ontario allocates approximately $18 million dollars a year for MNR to plan, manage, protect, and monitor almost 94,000 km2 of protected areas in Ontario. In our 2003/2004 annual report, the ECO noted that almost half of all operating provincial parks do not have sufficient staff or funding to meet existing minimum standards of operation. Further, the majority of non-operating parks were visited only once a year or not at all by ministry staff. Therefore, if a protected area is not paying for itself, there is no assurance that the statutory requirement to maintain ecological integrity is being upheld. The ECO believes that it will be extremely difficult for MNR to adequately administer and enforce the PPCRA, 2006 unless there are significant increases to its budget.
Second, the ECO is concerned that the ecological integrity of protected areas continues to be adversely affected by activities undertaken outside their boundaries. It is a common fallacy that protected areas are unimpaired swaths of wilderness exhibiting pristine natural conditions. In reality, Ontario’s provincial parks and conservation reserves are threatened by numerous stresses, some of which originate beyond their boundaries. In most cases, the boundaries of protected areas are artificial constructs that do not reflect natural boundaries. As such, issues of concern outside of a protected area that affects its management cannot be effectively addressed by Ontario Parks staff.
Federally, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act may require that an environmental assessment be conducted for any project outside the boundaries of a national park that may adversely affect its ecological integrity. Ontario’s laws fail to contain any similar safeguards. Unlike national parks, the land inside and outside of most protected areas in Ontario has the benefit of being managed by the same entity; yet, the Government of Ontario has no explicit mechanisms to restrict incompatible land uses near the boundaries of its protected areas.
What is needed is an ecologically sensible landscape-level approach to Crown land management. Different branches or ministries – all part of the same government – should not be seen as threatening or competing against each other’s interests. Protected areas should be given the priority and recognition that they deserve. Provincial parks and conservation reserves must be managed on an greater ecosystem basis in order to fulfill their mandate of protecting Ontario’s biodiversity. Wildlife and natural processes know no boundaries; failing to take this wider perspective imperils our protected areas.
| This is an article from the 2006/07 Annual Report to the Legislature from the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. |
Citing This Article:
Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. 2007. "Protected Areas Law: Ecological Integrity as the First Priority." Reconciling our Priorities, ECO Annual Report, 2006-07. Toronto, ON : Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. 99-106.
