Bill 193 explained in plain English
Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Amendment Act, 2024
Ontario legislature bill summary, status, timeline, sponsor, votes, and official sources.
At a glance
Official Legislative Assembly of Ontario snapshot for 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. Representative vote breakdowns appear when the Assembly publishes an Ayes and Nays page for the bill.
Our plain-language take, written for civic education.
Source: By PoliticalData.ca
Bill 193 adds a new "Urban Class Parks" category to Ontario's provincial parks system, aimed at improving access to nature-based recreation near cities, and allows the government to create additional park classes through regulations.
Bill 193 amends the Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act, 2006 in Ontario. The bill creates a new category called "Urban Class Parks" within the provincial parks system. The stated purpose of Urban Class Parks is to provide people with better access to nature-based recreational activities in or near urban centres (cities and towns). The bill also gives the Ontario government the power to create additional classes of provincial parks in the future through regulations, and to set objectives for those new classes. This is a Private Member's Bill introduced by Mr. A. Dowie. It received Royal Assent, meaning it has become law. The changes take effect immediately upon Royal Assent.
- Adds 'Urban Class Parks' as a new category of provincial park in Ontario's parks system
- Establishes that the objective of Urban Class Parks is to improve access to compatible nature-based recreation in or near urban centres
- Allows the Ontario government (Lieutenant Governor in Council) to prescribe additional classes of parks through regulations
- Allows the Ontario government to specify the objectives for each prescribed class of parks through regulations
- Comes into force on the day it receives Royal Assent
- People living in or near urban centres who want access to nature-based recreational activities
- Ontario provincial park management and operations
- The Ontario government, which gains authority to create additional park classes by regulation
- Communities that may benefit from new Urban Class Parks in or near their cities and towns
- The Ontario government has the authority to establish regulations prescribing new classes of parks and their objectives
- The Act comes into force on the day it receives Royal Assent (the bill has already received Royal Assent and is now law)
- The bill does not specify what constitutes 'compatible nature-based recreation' or define the geographic scope of 'urban centres'
- The bill does not provide details on how Urban Class Parks will be implemented, managed, or funded
- The bill does not specify timelines for when or how the government will use its new authority to prescribe additional park classes
- The bill does not describe specific parks that will be designated as Urban Class Parks
- The term 'compatible' in relation to nature-based recreation is not defined in the bill text
The Act now includes 'Urban Class Parks' (paragraph 7) and allows for additional park classes to be created by regulation (paragraph 8). The Act now defines the objective of Urban Class Parks as improving access to compatible nature-based recreation in or near urban centres.
Source: Section 1(1) and 1(2)
Two new paragraphs are added listing Urban Class Parks and allowing other park classes to be prescribed by regulation.
Source: Section 1(1)
The regulation-making authority is expanded to allow the government to prescribe new classes of parks and specify their objectives.
Source: Section 2
Generated using AI from official bill text. Not legal advice. It is written by PoliticalData.ca for civic education, automatically checked and spot-reviewed before publishing.
Official textProcess Snapshot
Vote Summary
This bill is still active. We only show vote counts after the legislature publishes a recorded division.
No published representative vote breakdown
This bill is still moving through the process. When a recorded division is published, representative positions can be listed here.
Official sources
Status, sponsor, votes, and timeline on this page are drawn from these official legislative sources and public records. Each summary above is attributed to its own source.
How this data is sourced