Allowing this policy to pass…

Allowing this policy to pass would go against listening to the environmental experts and advocates in the field to prioritize power consolidation and efficiency to destroy our natural habitats that protect us from environmental damage.

The proposed consolidation of Ontario's 36 independent Conservation Authorities (CAs) into a handful of massive regional agencies, overseen by a new central body, poses a threat to environmental protection and public safety across the province. This policy must be avoided. While the government claims the move will create efficiency and faster permitting to "get shovels in the ground sooner," the reality is that centralizing these essential services will erase decades of specialized local knowledge and ultimately increase the risk of catastrophic flooding and environmental damage.

Loss of Critical Local Expertise and Accountability
The most significant danger of this policy is the destruction of the watershed-based model that has been the foundation of conservation in Ontario for nearly 80 years. Current CAs are structured around natural water flow, ensuring their staff possess highly localized, site-specific hydrological and ecological data critical for accurate flood-risk assessment and environmental protection.

For example, a local conservation agency near Belleville noted that their staff have the necessary, on-the-ground knowledge to assess wetlands under pressure from development—expertise that would be lost in the bureaucracy of a distant, consolidated "super agency." Consolidating into a few large bodies, serving potentially 80 or more municipalities, will inevitably dilute local accountability, forcing decisions vital to specific community safety and water quality to be made by boards lacking direct representation and intimate familiarity with the local environment.

Increased Bureaucracy and Compromised Public Safety
Contrary to the goal of speeding up development, this policy risks creating a slow, bureaucratic bottleneck. The immense transition costs and complexity of merging all human resources, IT systems, and regulatory policies across dozens of watersheds could cause significant, long-term delays and uncertainty for builders, farmers, and residents seeking permits. Furthermore, by stripping Conservation Authorities of their independence and centralizing decision-making, the government is undermining their core mandate of protecting people and property from natural hazards.

Critics, including Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner, have directly warned that this centralization will leave Ontarians more exposed to dangerous flooding. This is a pattern—the consolidation follows recent legislative changes, such as the More Homes Built Faster Act, that already narrowed the purview of CAs and diminished their ability to consider critical factors like pollution and conservation in development decisions.

We must urge the government to reject this dangerous path. Consolidating the CAs is not an act of modernization; it is an act of hollowing out the very agencies that defend our land, water, and wildlife. Prioritizing the convenience of developers over the science-based, local expertise required for robust flood control and environmental protection is a profound and reckless disrespect for the safety of our communities. The proposed policy sacrifices essential environmental oversight for illusory administrative consistency and, in the process, endangers our collective future.