We need a proactive and positive approach to streamline consultation and approval processes.
While both a provincial and provincially-mandated municipal framework exist to help guide the extractive licensing approval processes, in practice, these procedures are often onerous, inconsistent, fraught with appeals and delays that benefit no one.
But they don’t have to be.
By agreeing to and adopting a proactive, positive, and aligned provincial and municipal consultation and application review process, community stakeholders and the aggregate industry do not have to be at odds with each other during these proceedings. In establishing such a process, the criteria should, at the very least:
- Introduce and ensure fairness.
- Establish a community engagement process that is comprehensive, consistent and fully accessible;
- Identify for the aggregate industry, clear provincial and municipal requirements in assessing new pit and quarry sites;
- Demonstrate to provincial and industry partners that municipalities act positively and appropriately in protecting our finite resources for future use;
- Lay out finite license approvals that establish a predictable conclusion and aim to limit aggregate disruption for host communities;
- Ensure that clear policies are put in place to manage ancilliary uses where activities have ceased but licenses remain in place;
- Place the onus on the aggregate industry for self-discipline of its substandard companies relative to their community responsibility records;
- Strive to minimize time and dollars invested by all parties for this land use by avoiding arbitration or litigation of aggregate matters.
By adopting a review and approval process that is fair and reliable, we can improve the consultation and application review process for both industry and municipalities.
