New Hope Church Covets Greenbelt Lands

New Hope Church wants to build on Greenbelt in St. Catharine's. Municipal officials made an informed, conscious decision to ignore city, regional and provincial government policies to make it happen.

Doug Ford at New Hope Church Day Camp Photo Credit: New Hope Church FaceBook

St. Catharine’s is a fabulous city that’s home to the amazing Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, Mahtay Café, Beechwood Doughnuts – an Ontario Living Wage Employer and a stunning FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre.

Surrounded by prime agricultural land, St. Catharine’s has the distinction of having added eight farms between 2011 and 2016 while the overall number of farms in the Niagara region declined.

The Niagara Agricultural Profile prepared by Niagara Region, found fully 97 per cent of St. Catharine’s farms are owned rather than rented or share cropped. That is the highest per centage for the entire Niagara Region. Regional farms generated $838,113,788 in gross farm receipts up 15 percent over 2011,

That’s fabulous news for everyone who loves to eat local especially grapes and other soft fruits which thrive in the unique soil and microclimate found in the area.

But that source of local food is increasingly under threat as the land it’s grown on is usurped by a few to the detriment of the majority.

In 2001, St. Catharine’s city council was approached by a group that wanted to build a church on prime agricultural land outside of the urban boundary. City staff neither recommended nor supported building on that parcel of land because it ran counter to city policies put in place to protect and preserve agricultural lands. Council approved the application any way.

At the regional level, staff opposed the application as it ran counter to their policy. Yet, Niagara Regional council also passed the motion.

This took place before the Greenbelt Act (2005) was passed by the Ontario government protecting two million acres of productive farmland and environmentally sensitive areas.

The Greenbelt ensures that future generations will be able to enjoy local foods, outdoor activities in natural settings and have natural spaces to help mitigate the effects of climate change while ensuring resilience during extreme weather events.

The unserviced, undeveloped land that the church owned was included in the official Greenbelt lands.

In 2013, New Hope Church (NHC) was built at 2360 First Street Louth. It is 1,216 square meters (13,088 square feet), has 400 seats, 95 parking spaces and two driveway accesses.

In 2022, NHC applied for an expansion amendment that exceeded the lot coverage. The expansion would increase the size of the building by 2,397 square meters (25,801 square feet) for a total of 3,613 square meters (38,889 square feet) to hold 1,000 seats. The church also wants to expand the parking lot to 229 spaces and add an additional driveway access from Rykert Street.

“Because the church already existed on the land it was considered a non-conforming existing use. So, the church was allowed to stay as were other [structures] that were contained within the Greenbelt,” Liz Benneian, Environmental Science Educator and Advocate, told Small Change.

“The Greenbelt Act is actually very clear that you cannot build if you’re an existing non-conforming use and you’re not doing something related to agriculture or that would bring the property more into conformity with the Greenbelt plan,” Benneian explained.

At the April 3, 2023 council meeting, the City of St. Catharine’s planning staff presented their report citing policy from various sources including, the Ontario Planning Act, Niagara Region Planning policy, and The Greenbelt Act. Based on these policies and the city’s own strategic plan, staff recommended against the expansion.

The meeting was packed with NHC members who then listened to the NHC planner trying to justify the expansion despite the fact that no policy exists to allow for it.

Then, the two NHC pastors spoke about community work the church does. At that point the change in the room is palpable.

NHC helps ‘less fortunate’ community members. However, it’s important to remember that political choices created a dearth of municipal and provincial policies that should be ensuring universal access to basic human rights like affordable housing and food in tandem with a living wage, basic income, $10-a-day daycare and rent caps. Seems certain council members were more affraid of losing those free services rather than addressing the issues themselves.

Ultimately, the vote ended with nine councillors and the mayor supporting the expansion and two councillors supporting staff recommendations to follow city, regional and provincial planning policy.

View the full council meeting here with the NHC issue starting at 50:00:00 and the vote taking place at roughly 2:40:00. But be sure to watch the ensuing chaos when Ward 2 Councillor, Matt Harris challenges a staff member pointing out that any decision in favour of amendments that go against the Official City Plan must be deferred until regional council has a chance to hear from staff and delegations before voting on the matter. Neither Harris nor Siscoe was able to grasp the concept so council goes in camera to discuss the matter with the city’s legal team.

When the motion went before the Regional Municipality of Niagara, those planners recommended the amendment be opposed. Once again, they were ignored and regional council approved the amendment.

Essentially, city and regional councillors made an informed, conscious decision to ignore city, regional and provincial government policies. Which, Benneian maintains, begs the question, if you don’t have policy, what do you have to stand on?

“My concern as a citizen is this is another way to nibble away at the Greenbelt,” Benneian shared.

“The reason the land is in the Greenbelt is to protect its agricultural or natural heritage value for future generations. That’s why it’s there. If we pave it over with parking lots and continue to expand businesses and buildings, we are not protecting the soil,” she added.

In the case of NHC, the land is specialty crop land which has the highest level of environmental protection. Interestingly, the church implied that the land is scrubland full of little rocks. This mistruth is often used by delegations grasping at straws to justify coveting Greenbelt lands.

Truth is, the NHC land is located within a micro-climate that is ideal for growing grapes and tender fruit. As for rocks in the soil, Niagara-on-the-Lake Councillor Andrea Kaiser, who is in the wine making industry, pointed out that’s exactly the kind of soil grapes love and it’s the reason Niagara wines are so exceptional.

St. Catharine’s planning staff regularly get requests to alter, build and add onto preexisting structures on Greenbelt land and they say no. In the future, planning staff will have a much more challenging time saying no since the city and region endorsed this amendment.

Benneian is appealing the decision to the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT). She will be attending her third case management meeting on February 8, 2024 to establish the issues to be focused on during the five-day hearing – the date of which will be decided during that meeting.

NHC has a very good lawyer along with an array of expensive experts and witnesses. Individuals like Benneian don’t have the funds to hire lawyers, soil experts and land planners, so she will be calling on city and regional planners.

Since this is the Greenbelt, the million dollar question is, exactly how does Doug Ford figure into all of this? Well, it just so happens that not long after Benneian filed the appeal, Ford spent some time at the NHC.

There’s a Facebook picture (August 20/22) showing Ford at the NHC Day Camp as well as an Instagram post comment (August 20/22) that states, “What a surreal week! We are blessed! So many kids coming home to Christ! New hope knows how to party it up! I gotta tell you, to see Doug Ford stay for an entire service then hang around outside truly blew my mind. The Holy Spirit never stops and I pray a seed was planted in him today. Amen!”

The MPP for the area is Sam Oosterhoff. He’s from a large, very religious farm family, was homeschooled and spent a month at Brock University before being elected MPP for the Niagara West-Glanbrook riding with the help of his church congregation at the age of 19.

Although a backbencher, Oosterhoff is a staunch Ford supporter. He is also anti-abortion, opposes same-sex marriage, opposed the Liberal sex education update and called police when 15 seniors held a silent read-in in his constituency office to protest provincial cuts to library funding.

With policy from every level of government on her side, Benneian should win at the OLT hearing. But ultimately, she could lose and that will make things very interesting in deed because OLT decisions are final.

Meanwhile, NHC is so sure they are going to win that they have already purchased the steel girders for the expansion and are storing them on site.

At the beginning of the public portion of the April 3rd council meeting, Siscoe stated, “Council chambers in all municipalities in our country represent the seed of local democracy. The many acts that govern us understand the necessity of the collective voice when decisions are being made to grow our spaces, pass our bylaws and seek opinions into very complex issues.”

He went on to state in part, “It is imperative that elected officials, citizens and staff have input and it is paramount that we listen to one another and question one another.”

Siscoe’s statements raise a number of questions. The first three are for Siscoe himself. Does St. Catharine’s have planning policy or not? Does the region have planning policy or not? If so, why are you not adhering to them?

Members of these local governing bodies need to tell constituents whether they intend to follow the provincial Greenbelt Act and protect the province’s most valuable agricultural land or not. And, if not, then what happened to democracy? And, the collective voice? Especially, the voice of city and regional staff with degrees in planning and years of expertise around policy unlike most elected officials. Or, those of environmental experts, grape and tender fruit growers and climate change experts.

And, Ford, when is the Ontario Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Affairs going to intervene in this case? Where is Lisa Thompson, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs?

Why is Benneian having to uphold government policies that defend this specialty crop land in front of a land tribunal known to overwhelmingly side with developers when this amendment should never have seen the light of day?

And, finally, which of you reading this article is going to stand beside Benneian to save this Greenbelt land not only for the sake of future generations, but also the resurrection of the democratic process?