BARRIE: The Ontario government is engaging with local partners, Indigenous communities and residents from the Lake Simcoe area to get their input on the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan.
The plan is the roadmap to improve the lake’s water quality, reduce pollutants such as phosphorus, support sustainable fisheries and address the impacts of invasive species. The feedback received will help determine if the document needs to be amended or updated.
“Thanks to the hard work of local environmental and conservation organizations, advocates and all levels of government, considerable progress has been made to restore Lake Simcoe over the past 10 years,” said Andrea Khanjin, Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks and MPP for Barrie-Innisfil.
“While this progress is encouraging, we know the watershed is under increasing pressure as the result of population growth and climate change.
That’s why we are inviting all our partners, including the general public to participate in the
review of the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan to ensure we are doing everything we can to keep the lake beautiful for generations to come.”
Members of the public can take part in the 75-day public review of the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan by completing an online public survey between December 18, 2020 and March 3, 2021 and participating in a virtual town hall early in the new year.
For more information and other ways to get involved in the review, visit the Protecting Lake Simcoe webpage.
Based on the engagement and the findings from the review, the Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks will consider making amendments to the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan by the summer of 2021.
Restoring Lake Simcoe and its watershed is a key commitment of the government’s Made-in Ontario Environment Plan.
• Since 2009, the province’s actions to protect and restore Lake Simcoe have been guided by the expansive Lake Simcoe Protection Plan.
• The province released the 10- year report on Lake Simcoe in July 2020, which highlighted progress towards the government’s commitments and results of monitoring programs.
• The province recently invested $581,000 in four new projects to help find better ways to reduce the amount of pollutants and nutrients, such as phosphorus, from entering Lake Simcoe.
• Over 450,000 people living in 22 municipalities depend on the Lake Simcoe watershed every day. Lake Simcoe wasn’t always known as Lake Simcoe.
• The earliest known name for the lake was Ouentironk (oo-ent’- er-onk) the Huron word meaning “beautiful water”
• Early European settlers called it Lake Toronto
• In 1793 John Graves Simcoe the first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, renamed it
Lake Simcoe in memory of his father, Captain John Simcoe of the Royal Navy
• Lake Simcoe’s bays were named for his father’s naval colleagues – Rear Admiral Richard Kempenfelt and Captain James Cook Lake Simcoe is the 4th largest lake wholly in Ontario.
• Its surface area is 722 square kilometres
• If you walked around its shoreline, you would travel 240 kilometres
• Its average depth is 15 metres, but it gets as deep as 42 metres near the mouth of Kempenfelt Bay
• The lake is part of a much larger system known as the TrentSevern Waterway
• Lake Simcoe water levels are managed by Parks Canada.