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Editorial — Wanted: a court test of ‘development’

September 7, 2016   ·   0 Comments

“Development” is a noun that can have different meanings, but the most common one, as found in Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary, is this: “a tract of land developed as a unit by public or private enterprise for residential or industrial purposes, with the houses, factories, shops, etc., built on it.”
And that’s no doubt the definition thought of when the Ontario government long ago created the Niagara Escarpment Commission (NEC) to control development in the Escarpment area.
Clearly, no one wanted to see huge new industrial, commercial or residential developments on lands that should be preserved as natural settings for posterity.
But now we have a case where NEC has interpreted its mandate as extending to weekend activities on a man-made lake in a worked-out gravel pit near Mono Mills.
We think the Dufferin Landowners Association has good reason for asking Mono Mayor Laura Ryan, whose council wants to ban the waterski competitions, to reflect on what the issue could mean for other landowners in NEC-controlled areas of the Town.
We think the time has come for a test court case that will settle once and for all how far the NEC can extend its definition of “development.”

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