Robert Brown

Ontario’s Environmental Registry of Ontario (ERO) is currently the primary way the public shapes environmentally significant laws, regulations and policies. Under the Environmental Bill of Rights (EBR), ministries are required to post proposals, consult for at least 30 days, consider the comments, and explain how feedback influenced their decisions. On paper, that sounds like a meaningful democratic process. In practice, the system is deeply compromised. The Auditor General’s 2024 performance...

If you’ve ever walked through one of the Red Pine plantations that dot the Oak Ridges Moraine (ORM), you’ve seen the legacy of an earlier crisis. By the early 20th century, large swathes of southern Ontario were logged, razed, over-grazed, and eroded into a near-desolate landscape of sand dunes and frequent local dust storms. On the ORM, conservationists responded with ambitious reforestation campaigns and, eventually, with a new regime that managed our natural assets by watersheds rather...

For all but the longest-standing residents of the Oak Ridges Moraine (ORM), it’s easy to believe that the landscape is largely unchanged. Conservation authorities and regional forests still protect core habitat and watersheds, the kettles and drumlins still roll away into the horizon, and the headwaters still cut through clay and sand on their way to Lake Ontario and Lake Simcoe. What we don’t see, from any one vantage point, is how much has changed over the last 25 years: palatial homes...