With consolidation, the…

With consolidation, the manpower of CA's would be stretched too thin and would lose responsiveness to various municipalities and needs within their service regions.

For example, the new  'Lake Erie Regional Conservation Authority' would aggregate 8 conservation authorities, covering 81 municipalities and a vast area from Windsor to north of Waterloo region. Regional CA's at this scale would be admistratively cumbersome, and would undermine the objectives of CA's. Local representation & collaborations would necessarily be diminished under a larger, more removed authority. Larger CA's will forseeably result in greater competition among municipalities for 'a piece of the pie' and between rural/urban voices. This reduces efficacy of CA's rather than imrpoving them. More localized, not centralized, decision making and resources are crucial to CA's work.

Harmonizing memberships, visitor services, staffing and internal structures, IT systems, policies, etc. would be a huge upfront cost in implmeneting the Province's proposal, apparently borne by the CA's budgets. The Province's plan does not explain how consolidating CA's saves money or improves service delivery. The work required to merge would in itself divert resources.

Even if there were some gain in efficiency, it would be far outweighed by these costs. And in fact there is no solid basis to expect a net improvement, let alone a substantial one, in service provision by merging CA's.

Consolidation is not inherently better to achieve cost efficiency, rather it will be to the detriment of communities and the very core of CA's mandate.

The Province's plan notes that regional administration is needed to address inefficiency, but doesn’t detail how existing CA's are falling short. Inconsistencies or outdated systems can be targeted without entirely restructuring the conservation system. Efficiency can instead be achieved by setting clear provincial standards.