Conservation Authorities…

Conservation Authorities were set up to protect citizens from dangers of flooding and water contamination, to protect land from over development, and for the recreational use of the public. These are public lands, care of which is very largely payed for by municipalities.

The Ontario government’s Bill 68 strips local authority from conservation authorities while expecting them to keep funding their maintenance. That’s wacky!

Bill 68 also further removes public input into these public lands, because there’s no way that every municipality represented in the proposed new authorities will have even one elected official on their boards. They were deliberately set up to provide local, elected voices, so why is the government deliberately eliminating them? Is it so it can sell off land to developers who were “cheated” by the public backlash against the government’s Greenbelt grab? Whatever the deliberate reason for cutting out local voices and true authority, it’s retrograde, and undemocratic.

Similarly, historical and ongoing issues such as flooding and water quality particular to a certain area run a much greater risk of getting out of hand and causing harm to the public without local oversight and control. It’s foolish to take such risks.

So, the Ontario government needs to repeal Bill 68 because it’s retrograde, foolish, and undemocratic.