Conservation Authorities …

Conservation Authorities (CAs) are run by boards which are not always made up of elected officials who are not accountable to tax payers. There is no transparency. CAs are funded by municipal levies, minimal provincial funding, and donations (private and corporate). As such, CAs are regulating the same entities that are paying to keep them running. All major decisions go through the board and are vetted through the General Manager. This is an obvious conflict.

CAs were created for flood control and their mandates have grown over time as provincial funding for flood control has decreased. CAs have expanded into educations, drought, water quality, groundwater, drinking water, septic systems, federal fisheries act, .... anything to pay the bills. Most of these programs are paid for through user fees, and are not cost effective or sustainable and are subsidized by donations and levies. Most of these programs are duplicated by other municipal, provincial or federal agencies which are accountable to gov't and taxpayers.

100 year floodplain mapping has been around for over 50 years for most urban areas and are protected through land use planning, so why do we need to keep doing floodplain management? The same goes for wetlands, source protection, hazard lands, ... these things are best done by municipalities, provincial agencies.

Flood control structures in many locations are maintained by private or public agencies (utilities) and could easily by inspected and maintained by a municipal engineer at the local or county level. There used to be economy of scale benefits to the work done by CAs, but now most people in the province live in urban areas and most municipalities have the technical staff to undertake the core mandate, or at least all the additional work that CAs have taken on over the years.

CAs have done great work for the Province over the years, but are they still relevant today? Do we still need them? And most importantly are they cost effective and accountable to the government and tax payers? Many CAs have staff who are on the Sunshine List ....