From The Narwhal, a…

From The Narwhal, a reputable media outlet with expertise in environmental issues, Nov 2025: "Ford has been consistently touting the need for “made-in-Ontario” solutions to the province’s issues: conservation authorities are an example of just that. They were created by a Progressive Conservative government in 1946 in response to deforestation. They were strengthened to prevent repeats of the extreme flooding caused by Hurricane Hazel in 1954. While they were tasked with acquiring land for conservation and recreation, their main job has always been monitoring waterways for potential deadly floods, including by regulating development near waterways and wetlands, in flood plains and on Great Lakes shorelines."

The environment is inherently a local thing - rivers, parks, farmland - these all have a specific location. A geography, if you will. If you are not located where that environment is, you do not know what the issues are, who those issue affect the most, and what needs to be done. This is simply a fact. Amalgamating local expertise into centralized government bodies is not economically wise, because all you will end up doing is create so much more bureaucracy, which I thought conservatives hated? When your governance structure is far away from the actual issues, you create multiple new layers to deliver services that can currently be provided by only one or two layers of public service. You will still need boots on the ground (that now cost more money to travel), you will then need layers of operational management to deliver those boots to the ground, you will need multiple layers of approval, someone in HQ asking the wrong questions and wasting time, etc etc. - trust me, I work in the public service and have for several years.

It's clear that the Ford government does not prioritize environmental protection, fine (not really), but if you do in fact prioritize the bottom line and economic outcomes, you are making the wrong decision financially if you centralize. You will waste time and resources, and you are fixing a problem that does not exist. Instead, consider standardizing processes to streamline between regions and take out any guess work/inconsistencies - HQs can't do that because they don't know the issues anyway (and boy does consulting take time and waste money!). Consider science, which actually does end up being wise economically because it's evidence-based, aka efficient, decision-making.