Bill 26 explained in plain English
Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Amendment Act, 2025
Ontario legislature bill summary, status, timeline, sponsor, votes, and official sources.
At a glance
Official Legislative Assembly of Ontario snapshot for 44th 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 26 adds two new classes of provincial parks to Ontario's park system—Adventure Class Parks for recreational activities like rock climbing and off-road vehicles, and Urban Class Parks for nature-based recreation near cities—and classifies specific parks in each category.
Bill 26 amends Ontario's Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act, 2006 to create two new categories of provincial parks: Adventure Class Parks and Urban Class Parks. Adventure Class Parks are designed to provide outdoor recreational activities such as rock climbing, tree-top trekking, mountain biking, and motorized vehicle use—activities that may alter the natural environment. Urban Class Parks aim to improve access to nature-based recreation near cities. The bill classifies Charleston Lake Provincial Park as an Adventure Class Park and Uxbridge Urban Provincial Park as an Urban Class Park. It also allows the government to create additional park classes through regulations. Management plans for Adventure Class Parks must include policies to maintain existing compatible uses. The act came into force on December 11, 2025 (the date it received Royal Assent).
- Adds two new park classes to the Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act, 2006: Adventure Class Parks and Urban Class Parks
- Establishes that Adventure Class Parks shall have the objective of providing opportunities for outdoor recreational activities including rock climbing, tree-top trekking, mountain biking, and driving motorized snow vehicles or off-road vehicles, which may or may not require alterations to the natural environment
- Establishes that Urban Class Parks shall have the objective of improving access to compatible nature-based recreation in or near urban centres
- Classifies Charleston Lake Provincial Park as an Adventure Class Park
- Classifies Uxbridge Urban Provincial Park as an Urban Class Park
- Requires management plans for Adventure Class Parks to include a policy for maintaining existing uses that are compatible with the objectives of Adventure Class Parks
- Authorizes the Lieutenant Governor in Council to prescribe additional classes of parks through regulation and to specify the objectives of those prescribed classes
- Allows the Lieutenant Governor in Council to prescribe which parks fall under the prescribed classes
- Provincial park visitors and users who seek outdoor recreational activities
- Park management authorities responsible for creating and implementing management plans for Adventure Class and Urban Class Parks
- Communities near Charleston Lake Provincial Park, as it is now classified as an Adventure Class Park with specific recreational objectives
- Communities near Uxbridge Urban Provincial Park, as it is now classified as an Urban Class Park with access to nature-based recreation as an objective
- Residents of urban centres seeking access to nature-based recreation through Urban Class Parks
- The Ontario government, which gains authority to create additional park classes through regulation
- Management plans for Adventure Class Parks must include a policy for maintaining existing uses that are compatible with the objectives of Adventure Class Parks (providing outdoor recreational opportunities such as rock climbing, tree-top trekking, mountain biking, and motorized vehicle activities)
- The Lieutenant Governor in Council has the authority to prescribe additional classes of provincial parks through regulation
- The Lieutenant Governor in Council has the authority to specify the objectives of prescribed park classes through regulation
- December 11, 2025: The date Bill 26 received Royal Assent and came into force
- The bill text does not specify what constitutes 'compatible uses' for existing uses in Adventure Class Parks, nor does it explain what happens if existing uses are found to be incompatible with the objectives
- The bill does not provide details on how many additional park classes may be prescribed by regulation or what criteria will guide the creation of new classes
- The bill does not specify the process or timeline for creating management plans for the newly classified parks
- The bill text does not clarify what 'nature-based recreation' means for the purposes of Urban Class Parks
- The bill does not address how the new park classifications affect any existing management plans or policies that may have been in place for Charleston Lake Provincial Park or Uxbridge Urban Provincial Park prior to this amendment
The Act is amended to add two new categories of provincial parks (Adventure Class and Urban Class), define their objectives, classify two specific parks into these categories, add management plan requirements for Adventure Class Parks, and grant regulatory authority to create additional park classes and specify their objectives.
Source: Sections 1-2 of Bill 26
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 does not have a published recorded division in the current official sources, so representative-by-representative vote counts are not shown.
No published representative vote breakdown
The current official sources do not publish a recorded division breakdown for this bill, so there is no representative-by-representative table to show.
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