The Friends of the Salmon…

The Friends of the Salmon River - established for over 20 years - is a community-based group working to protect the health of the Salmon River watershed. We urge you not to proceed with the amalgamation of Ontario’s 36 Conservation Authorities into seven regional Conservation Authorities.

Ontario’s watershed-based Conservation Authorities (CAs) are essential to protecting drinking water, reducing flood risk, conserving natural areas, and monitoring watershed health.

Conservation Authorities were established as a direct response to rising concerns about flooding and erosion. They comprehensively regulate development and provide conservation initiatives at a watershed scale for the benefit of people, our species, and the environment. An essential feature of their establishment was that CA’s must embody local needs and be led by local voices. The proposed amalgamation contradicts this principle by concentrating decision-making power in the hands of the province rather than local experts who know our water- and landscapes.
Specifically, the legislative changes proposed in Bill 68 would allow the Minister of Environment, Conservation and Parks to impose directions regarding the new regional CA governance, programs or services at the Minister’s discretion.

Boundaries and Ecology
Regarding the seven proposed regional Conservation Authorities: the proposed boundaries are far too sprawling to enable locally relevant decision-making. This proposed amalgamation ignores the completely different ecology, hydrology and climates of these regions. How will the amalgamated authorities serve dozens of municipalities with unique local needs that span watersheds with very different environmental conditions? It is likely that essential local knowledge will be excluded from key decisions, leaving communities more exposed to the impacts of flooding and other environmental losses.

Public Consultation
ERO #025-1257 does not make any mention of legislative changes being proposed in Bill 68 to enable the amalgamation, leaving no pathway for public consultation on these changes. This undermines the Environmental Bill of Rights, which is meant to ensure all Ontarians have meaningful opportunities to comment on decisions affecting the natural environment.

Support our Conservation Authorities
For these reasons, we urge you not to proceed with the proposed amalgamation. We believe that our current Conservation Authorities should be supported and empowered to do their jobs effectively so that people across Ontario can continue to benefit from flood resilient communities, clean water and a healthy natural environment.

The Friends of the Salmon River has worked in collaboration with Quinte Conservation for 20 years. We depend on their expertise and resources for many aspects of our work. Quinte has generously shared their charitable status to enable funding for many of our projects. They have provided us with excellent, well-researched presentations, educational workshops, and they have supervised many of our field events. The loss of our local partner will reduce our ability to protect the Salmon River watershed.