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Rehabilitating Ontario's |
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Who's Who in Ontario Aggregates
There are two major players in Ontario aggregates:
- Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR). The MNR is responsible for enforcing the Aggregate Resources Act (ARA), which requires progressive rehabilitation.
- Aggregate Producer's Association of Ontario (APAO). APAO is the trade organization for aggregate producers and is a registered lobbyist organization.
The MNR has turned much of the responsibility for managing the aggregate industry over to the industry itself. The operators of pits and quarries are responsible for inspecting themselves (the MNR used to do this). The APAO collects and disperses the taxes on aggregates (the haulage levy) for the MNR. The APAO pays itself, out of collected government haulage levies, to rehabilitate abandoned pits and quarries.
This arrangement in which a lobbyist organization collects and disburses government money for its own industry, and manages rehabilitation of its own industry, is apparently unique, at least in Canada. See details of this arrangement.