Oro-Medonte Township council is putting its money where its moraine is.
Councillors voted this week to support a motion brought forward by Deputy Mayor Peter Lavoie to provide the Top Aggregate Producing Municipalities of Ontario (TAPMO) with $20,000 to help fund an executive director position for the organization. TAPMO is comprised of municipal representatives who are concerned about the impacts open pit extraction can have on groundwater, traffic, infrastructure, agriculture, rural recreation and a host of other issues.
Springwater Township Mayor Jennifer Coughlin is vice chair of TAPMO.
According to Lavoie, “TAPMO is looking to hire an executive director to assist in overseeing the objective of the municipalities to encourage cooperation of the province and the aggregate producers.”
The executive director’s salary would be $100,000 annually and would be funded by $20,000 contributions from five municipalities in Ontario.
If five municipalities can’t be found to contribute funding for the role, or the executive director is not hired in 2024, Oro-Medonte’s commitment would be cancelled.
“It’s important to realize that the municipality that is the County of Simcoe is the number one aggregate producing municipality in the province by quite a large amount,” Lavoie said. “We don’t know specifically what the impacts of aggregate mining are and we are in a particularly sensitive area having a large geographical percentage of our township covered by a moraine.”
According to the 2022 aggregate production statistics released by The Ontario Aggregate Resources Corporation (TOARC), the most recent year of reported results, Simcoe County was the single largest producer of aggregates — 15.2 million metric tonnes — in the province.
Of those 15.2 million metric tonnes, almost 75 per cent is mined in three townships: Severn (5.4 million), followed by Ramara (3.3 million) and Oro-Medonte (2.3 million).
Lavoie said the effects of mining on a moraine are not well known and should be categorized. Currently, he added, the directors of TAPMO — councillors from a variety of municipalities across the province — are doing the work.
“Clearly we have county and township responsibilities so it would be helpful to have staff available to work on some of these issues,” Lavoie said.
He said an executive director is required and pointed to the recent Auditor General of Ontario’s Value-for-Money Audit: Management of Aggregate Resources as proof that there are too many gaps and deficiencies in the way the system of oversight by the Ministry of Natural Resources is currently working in the aggregate industry.
“This is a good opportunity and I do think because we have realized $120,000 more, so far, in aggregate property tax assessments that will be in our pockets, and we are not taking anything that we don’t already have, we should use some of that surplus to help fund and ensure Ontario municipalities can continue in the same direction,” Lavoie said.
“After this, I will petition the County of Simcoe for a similar amount of money and I expect other members of the TAPMO board will petition their townships and counties for money.”
Coun. Richard Schell opposed the motion.
He felt he was being asked to vote on a motion to which he had insufficient information. He said there was no detailed job description with expected outcomes and methods used to achieve success.
He wondered why the responsibilities outlined in the Auditor General’s report are not the role of provincially elected members of parliament rather than passing both responsibilities and costs on to the municipalities.
“Asking for $20,000 for what is really a provincial responsibility, it keeps me wondering,” he said.
Schell said he was prepared to put forth a motion to defer the request with a report addressing the issues he outlined.
Lavoie said he didn’t disagree with Schell, acknowledging it is a provincial responsibility.
“However, we bear the burden as a municipality and we hear the concerns,” Lavoie said. “Seldom do those concerns make it to the Ministry of Natural Resources or, indeed, the provincial government.”
Lavoie said if the municipalities don’t keep this issue in the face of the public and hold the provincial government responsible through the Ministry of Natural Resources, the issue will go away.
“Members of provincial parliament and members of parliament are not as accessible as we are,” Lavoie said.
“Unless we keep pushing, nothing will happen.”
Schell’s motion to defer couldn’t find a second and Lavoie’s motion was carried.
