When I heard about the…

When I heard about the Ontario Conservative government's plan to amalgamate Ontario's 36 conservation authorities into seven regional authorities, I laughed out loud. Our Premier’s words and the actions of his government show an overwhelming desire to drill, mine, develop and exploit our province’s land regardless of the cost to Ontarians. This is just another example.

I grew up in part on a farm in Southwestern Ontario. When I was a child it was quiet and lovely. You could hear wolves in the escarpment forest behind us in the evenings, you could see the Milky Way at night, and we had three months of snow most winters. Now that’s all gone. The wolves lost their habitat & their pack got smaller every year until they were silent. The farmland, wetlands and forests that once surrounded the farm have been bulldozed and covered with industrial parks and suburbs whose lights block out the stars. The 401 has quadrupled in size and fills the farm with the low grating sound of traffic.

So much of this is avoidable. Even the loss of snow. We can choose to invest in renewable energy, now much less expensive than conventional oil, gas and nuclear in order to not only save taxpayer money but also to protect our climate, including our winters and all the businesses and wildlife that depend on them.

But that all falls in the face of the Ford government’s fealty to friends and family. Friends need contracts (https://www.chch.com/chch-news/doug-ford-faces-new-corruption-accusatio…), and a chosen family who value wealth before health and who are salivating at this proposed amalgamation’s promise to shorten and weaken the permitting process so they can bulldoze more wetlands, farms and forests to build McMansions that few can afford. It is an invitation to developers to re-apply for those permits that were rightfully initially denied in order to protect habitats that benefit us by filtering our water, preventing floods, storing carbon and cleaning our air.

I am concerned that this amalgamation may be used to replace or supersede dedicated Conservation Authority staff with Ford loyalists who are hostile to the Conservation Authority’s mission. Restructuring the Conservation Authorities to encourage land development is a violation of the mission of the Conservation Authorities. I stand opposed to it.