Crown Land Roads Manual

The MNR’s “Crown Land Roads Manual” replaces the “1992 Access Road Manual”. As of late 2009, this is still in the final “proposal” stage as far as we can tell. It seems like it is not yet an approved policy or approved change to the regulations – which is probably why it doesn’t appear as part of the official Crown Land Policies.

The Crown Land Roads Manual deals with the management of roads and bridges on Crown Land in Ontario which are not being managed within the context of a forest management plan. It does not deal with land use planning or resource access road planning, because those issues are dealt with through the MNR’s land use and resource management planning processes.

You can view a summary of the Crown Land Roads Manual proposal at the Ontario Environmental Registry. Here are direct links to each of the Crown Land Roads Manual documents:

• PL 10.00.00 – Introduction and Context
• PL 10.01.00 – Use Management Strategies – Roads
• PL 10.01.01 – Developing Use Management Strategies
• PL 10.02.00 – Road Management and Responsibility
• PL 10.02.01 – Determining Road Responsibility
• PL 10.02.02 – Assigning Road Responsibility: Non-Forestry Roads
• PL 10.02.03 – Road Hazards
• PL 10.02.04 – Road Closures and Restrictions
• PL 10.02.05 – Road Decommissioning
• PL 10.03.00 – Private Forest Roads
• PL 10.03.01 – Assigning Responsibility for a Private Forest Road

This document is one part of the original 1992 Access Roads Manual:

• PL 10.07.00 – Engineering and Detailed Design

Another important document is the final Task Team Report for the “Forest Roads and Water Crossings Initiative”. This task team and report was commissioned because, as the MNR says:

“It became apparent through discussions between the Forest Industry and MNR that there is continuing uncertainty as to who has responsibility for roads and water crossings which are no longer required for forest management purposes. There is also uncertainty as to what obligations come with the responsibility.”

They make everything so complicated that they need a “task team” just to explain what the original task teams were all about! Poor Canada…