Ontario's Living Legacy Brochures touting Ontario's Living Legacy circulated throughout the province are masterly created advertisement documents produced in Madison Avenue style with flare and class. The photos were compelling and the text superficially convincing. However, if one were to peel off some of the veneer, carefully scrutinize the content and reflect on the consequences of these land withdrawal initiative, a not so convincing scenario may emerge. If one would examine anew the map of Ontario with its green blobs( Parks ) and yellow blotches ( Regulated and Restricted Areas ), it would appear that the Ontario landscape is afflicted with a disfiguring disease. Well, it can be characterised as a disease and it can aptly be called 'creeping park disease '. It is very contagious and incurable. Also, if one can accept Ministry of Natural Resource (MNR) doctrine, parks as well as Regulated and Restricted Areas ( RRA's ) are forever. They may be said to even outlast the cosmos itself.

These exclusion zones are not the parks so loved and revered by our forefathers and mothers. They are massive land grabs under a myriad of designations designed both to impress and to confuse. They are no longer parks in the traditional homey spirit. These new RRA's are presented in a variety of designations such as: buffers, connectors, corridors, shoreline, watershed, waterway, heritage, stewardship, headwaters and so on ad infinitum. It will be virtually impossible to travel anywhere within Ontario's landscape without encountering one of these exclusion zones where entry may require an application for a permit, pass, ticket, subscription or permission from an MNR official. Freedom to manoeuver on the landscape is being eroded at an accelerating rate and the risk of being a penalized trespasser on your own territory is escalating. An ominous outcome of these new RRA creations is that they have encumbered and compromised pre-established land tenure. So far, only one sector of the northern economy has been affected. Nevertheless, these infringements begin as subtle intrusions which over time ultimately develop to the point where no class of tenure anywhere on the landscape is immune from encroachment. At that point everyone is at risk. A further erosion of basic freedoms is the ultimate result.

The comic irony in all this is that it has occurred, not as a result of overwhelming public demand, but by a slyly orchestrated, richly funded lobby exercise supported and promoted by trained domestic and international environmental activists. They have deviously managed to influence government to accede to their demands regardless of the consequences to the general public and without regard to the needs of northern communities and the resource industry sector of Ontario's economy. Whether or not you agree, partially agree or disagree with any of the foregoing, you owe it to yourself, to your children and to future generations to be fully informed, to seriously reflect and to realistically contemplate the consequences of massive land withdrawal projects that are now in process on Ontario's landscape