Heather Wright/The Independent

Chatham-Kent’s mayor says allowing the York1 Environmental project to move ahead without an Environmental Assessment sets a dangerous precedent.

But the Energy Minister and Ministry of Environment staffers continue to say the derelict Dresden dump is an existing landfill and is the quickest option to ease Ontario’s landfill worries in the face of US tariffs.

Chatham-Kent Mayor Darrin Canniff was one of more than two dozen people who spoke before a committee reviewing Bill 5 Thursday.

The Protecting Ontario by Unleashing the Economy bill removes the requirement for a full Environmental Assessment placed on the Mississauga waste company by the Ford government just a year ago.York1 officials plan what they have said is an essentially new landfill and a construction and soil waste recycling centre less than a kilometre away from Dresden on former dump.

“I walked that and it was 10-minute walk to get there (from the edge of the land owned by the company) to basically downtown Dresden; (it’s) 550 meters away from a high school,” Canniff told the committee holding up large maps of the community.

“This would also set a dangerous precedent for all rural communities if a massive landfill could be forced on the edge of our town without full environmental review. Whose town is next?”

Canniff says CK is not a NIMBY community, noting it already has a massive landfill near Ridgetown. He says the Ridge Landfill is ready to accept more garbage to help in the crisis.  

“If we need to do something, we need to improve the process, not bypass the process. And there are alternatives to this – to look at the landfills across Ontario talk to them and say, ‘what can you do to expand your landfills?”

York1 purchased the Irish School Road property in 2022. It had once been a dump for the fly ash from Dresden’s incinerator. There was an Environmental Compliance Approval for wood waste and a small amount of residential garbage. The waste wood facility operated there until York1. When the Ford government first agreed to an EA of the project which would be one of the largest landfills in the province, it said the Dresden site was developed in a time before landfills were regulated and a deep dive was necessary.

But at Thursday’s committee hearing, the Minister of Energy, Stephen Lecce, contradicted that statement. “As I understand, this particular location already has waste permissions. It’s not a new landfill,” said Lecce adding 40 per cent of Ontario’s waste goes to landfills to the US and with the threat of tariffs from the US, there is a concern that source would be cut off making a new site in Dresden necessary.

“The Ministry of the Environment Conservation Parks has identified this particular location because they believe is the fastest (way to) increase Ontario’s internal waste capacity, which reduces us on international reliance,” said Lecce.

Lisa Travis, Assistant Deputy Minister, added; “this is not a closed landfill nor is it a new landfill. It is an existing landfill. And to the members point, yes, one of the things that government can do is allow an existing landfill to change its operations to expand.”

Canniff, in his testimony after Lecce spoke said the dump was established in an old tile yard in the 1960s.

“Our experts indicate the types of environmental reviews that would be typical for a landfill, recycling and waste facility of this size would not have been performed when very limited waste uses were established in the 1960s,” he said.

Dresden CARED representative Stefan Premdas also presented to the committee.

“How does this company (York1) become a trusted proponent,” he asked noting the ministry was looking for additional information from York1 when it originally filed to reopen the dump last February. “And while this was still ongoing, they failed to record 458 truckloads of contaminated soil in their Toronto property, racking up penalties of $62,000 and they were also fined for providing false and misleading information.” Representatives for York1 tell The Independent it “an administrative error while compiling the annual report which omitted 10 days of receiving soil at the facility.”  York1 reported and corrected the information with the ministry “proactively” and paid a fine.

Members of several First Nations from across the province came to speak against Bill 5 saying it ignores the Duty Consult rules which the Supreme Court of Canada issued as the standard for dealing with projects on Indigenous lands.

NDP MPP and the vice chair of the committee,Sol Mamakwa, said Bill 5 is “going back to the old ways of a colonial way of divide and conquer, the colonial way of this is our land.”

Walpole Island First Nation Chief Leela Thomas, agreed, adding First Nations are not going to let that happen.

“I think that a lot of First Nations that will be taking this to the courts if that’s our only recourse, you know, possibly protesting in certain areas,” she said. “This all could be avoided if the consultation started earlier.”

And Thomas added “I just find it odd that proposed Dresden landfill is the only project under Bill 5 that the province is planning to revoke its EA requirements. Why is that? I never seen a bill do that.”

The Interior committee will hear more testimony in Queen’s Park Monday. Then Wednesday, the committee of MPPs  will go through the bill in detail before it returns to the Ontario Legislature.

With the PC Party holding a majority government in February, it is likely Bill 5 will be passed into law before the Legislature rises for the summer June 5.