The father of Laura Secord (née Ingersoll), the Canadian heroine of the War of 1812, travelled to Upper Canada with 4 associates in 1793 to petition Lieutenant Governor John Simcoe for a land grant.

He was granted land on the condition that he and his associates populate it with 40 other families within 7 years.

They received 66,000 acres and founded Oxford-on-the-Thames, which later became known as Ingersoll, Ontario.

About 60 years later, a post office was established in the tiny hamlet of Mount Elgin. 

That's how our idyllic little village of Mount Elgin was born.

Today we have the opposite problem in Mount Elgin and surrounding area.

We need to slow down the aggressive growth we are currently experiencing.

The land in and around Mount Elgin supports Ontario’s food production, and Ontario is losing 175 acres of agricultural land a day -- the equivalent of 133 football fields -- every single day.

Farmland is a finite resource.

Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Mount Elgin Village was deemed a settlement area in December, 1995. That's when the current official plan was adopted by Oxford County Council. That's 26 years ago. 

The world has changed exponentially since that time.

And now we are in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, which has turned everything on its head, forcing us to re-think everything, and teaching us the importance of growing food for ourselves, for the entire country, and for the rest of the world if necessary.

We've seen first-hand how delicate our food supply chains are.

Mayor David Mayberry is supportive of expansion in Mount Elgin saying, "The decision to make Mount Elgin our serviced village is done and the servicing of any other village is in the future. We can’t and won’t back up the hands of time. I am supportive of maximizing the services available in Mount Elgin, then we will need to consider the next step. The province expects new development to be on services."

Mayor Mayberry even stated that most of the ideas in the Phase 6 draft proposal were encouraged by SWOX.

Mayor Mayberry is aware there are limited services in the area such as grocery stores, medical centres, and restaurants, but he's supportive of the expansion anyway, calling it a "chicken and egg situation."

The County is currently undertaking a Comprehensive Review to support its Official Plan Review. Phase 1 of the comprehensive review was undertaken in 2020, and at the time, there was a need for residential lands identified for all of South West Oxford Township in the amount of 15 ha (gross developable).

The proposed subdivision is approximately 22ha, which exceeds the land needs for all of South West Oxford Township.

Approximately 80 homes have already been approved for Mount Elgin, which are currently under construction.

And the 15 ha's DON'T all have to be in Mount Elgin.

The proposed 15 ha's of residential land for housing development in SWOX for building over the next 20 years is all being forced on us now.

A Planning Justification Report submitted by the local developer indicates that the Mount Elgin settlement area expansion would provide all the land needs identified within the comprehensive review through the proposed development.

Because Mount Elgin is our only fully serviced village in the Township, from a planning perspective, development is preferred in this area. It allows for the development of smaller lots and higher density housing to try to address some of the affordability concerns the County is experiencing.

Since Mount Elgin is the only fully serviced village in the Township, this means Mount Elgin could be the only location for any new development in the entire township. 

This also means the Township and the County could decide to continue to add services to Mount Elgin Village only, which means our idyllic little Village could be in extreme danger of becoming a sprawling urban centre.

The current Mount Elgin expansion application is entirely developer initiated, and it is aggressive. This is likely because the market is hot right now, and significant money can be made.

It's also likely because Doug Ford is pushing for rapid development, under the guise of a housing shortage. We all know Doug Ford wants to keep his developer crony friends happy.

We are not the only community struggling with this rapid, aggressive approach.

Doug Ford just approved 2 major highways projects — Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass — which will have a devastating environmental impact on many communities there. The 413 will harm 2,000 acres of farmland, cut through 85 waterways, damage 220 wetlands and disrupt the habitats of 10 species-at-risk.

In April, an investigation by the Toronto Star and the National Observer found eight powerful developers, many of them prolific PC donors, owned over 3,300 acres of land near the highway’s proposed path, which could skyrocket in value if the highway is built. Some of the developers hired lobbyists with ties to the PCs, including Caroline Mulroney’s former campaign chair.

This is how things really work in Doug Ford Land.

Yes, Oxford County is experiencing unprecedented growth and people have been moving into our area from the Greater Golden Horseshoe and Toronto areas for the past 18 months, but this is not sustainable.

There is no land in the plan for industrial use in Mount Elgin. So there is little potential future job growth here. We likely won't see the retirement home built that is pencilled in for the Peggy Ave area, either, because funding is a nightmare unless it's privately developed, and developers don't care about developing retirement homes. There's no money in that. There will be no shops or restaurants, either, except for what's already here, as there is no land designated for this. We also won't see the building of a school without rapid expansion, and even then there is no money for new schools.

We are being sold a pie-in-the-sky dream, an overcrowded "field of dreams," with houses that aren't truly affordable, with limited services, and very little infrastructure to support the vision.

Current residents even had to help pay for the Village's current water waste system.

The County is currently undertaking a review of its Official Plan (the main policy document for land use planning matters). This is required by the Province to be done every 5 years. But the County is behind in its schedule.

This is part of the problem, too.

York Region, north of Toronto, recently voted to open up protected lands near proposed developments in Markham and Vaughan. In a move that is a first for the province, and one that could have implications for the two million acres of protected green space and farmland across southern Ontario, including us here in Mount Elgin, York Regional councillors voted 15-6 last month, against the advice of their own staff, for an amendment in the official plan, called ROPA 7, which would open up 600 acres of protected land in Markham and Vaughan to be included in nearby developments.

What's happening is local mayors across Ontario are being approached about using Minister Zoning Orders (MZO) -- a tool that allows the minister of municipal affairs to change the zoning of land to fast track development.

So developments are being proposed without any real plans or discussions with the broader community about whether it’s something they even want.

Sound familiar?

It's difficult to reconcile urban and rural landscapes when developers aren't really committed to doing it. They just want to make a fast buck. And they have little to lose.

And to make matters worse, developers are being asked to include affordable housing units, and their plans are being approved and fast tracked. But then the developers are not upholding this requirement, and the ministry is allowing it.

Councilor Marilyn Iafrate from Vaughn says if developers wanted to build affordable housing they would, and "this whole thing about affordable housing is a bunch of nonsense; it's just a way of allowing developers to do what they want.”

Developers are getting away with it because the "traditional authority of a Minister’s Zoning Order (MZO) does not address inclusionary zoning or affordable housing."

This comes from a statement from housing minister Steve Clark's office.

We, in the Mount Elgin community, are not opposed to growth.

We understand that development is generally good, that there is a three-pronged housing crisis, a need for a range and type of housing types and forms, and that local and rural economic development are important.

But there is also a need for extensive discussions with residents, and protection of valuable farmland -- and aggressive developers need to be properly controlled and managed, if not outright shut down.

We do not want developers turning our beautiful little villages into high density sprawling cities for their own personal financial gain.

And that's what will happen in Mount Elgin unless this speeding train is stopped.

We are about to enter a perfect storm -- not enough homes for the homeless, not enough affordable housing for the poor, the elderly or our youth, a building boom based on greed that Doug Ford and many mayors are supporting, rising costs across the board, an aging population, a mass exodus from exploding cities, intensifying weather patterns and climate change. And there is an election on the horizon where everything could change.

We demand that the developer's proposal be rejected, and there be no further development in the Mount Elgin area, until there have been extensive community consultations in order to determine what is best for everyone as it pertains to our unique little community, combined with big picture provincial concerns.

Help us save Mount Elgin Village from aggressive development -- before it's too late.

Please sign the petition.