December 12, 2025 To:…

December 12, 2025

To: Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks
Re: Public Comment on Proposed Consolidation of Ontario’s 36 Conservation Authorities into 7 Regional Entities

Honourable Minister McCarthy,

As a member of the public deeply committed to the health of Ontario’s lands and waters, I wish to express serious concern about the proposal to consolidate Ontario’s 36 conservation authorities into 7 large regional entities. While I appreciate the intent to improve efficiency and streamline operations, such large-scale amalgamation risks eroding the very foundations that have made Ontario’s conservation authority model successful for decades, specifically - local accountability, community connection, and relationship with the land itself.

The watershed is not simply an administrative entity; it is a living, natural land area - a green space that defines community and the shared flow of water that sustains all life here. At the local level, people often know their watershed intimately: its streams and wetlands, its seasonal patterns, and the species that depend on it. In a larger regional system, this close connection risks being lost, replaced by a more distant bureaucratic lens that is simply too large, and too spread out, to sustain the passion and cohesion of local care.

Watersheds connect people. The water that begins in one municipality nourishes farms, forests, and families across the region before rejoining lakes and rivers shared by all. This shared system builds a sense of mutual responsibility among neighbours and communities. It is this local relationship - person to person and place to place that is at risk under broad regional consolidation. We need to enhance connection – not diminish it. We need to encourage agency, engagement and stewardship as it flourishes now under the existing model - not create more layers of centralized oversight.

Beyond these human and ethical considerations, consolidation may not deliver the efficiency it promises. Experiences elsewhere show that administrative amalgamations often increase transition costs, reduce responsiveness, and disrupt community partnerships. Larger authorities also dilute local governance: decisions about budgets, staffing, and programming move farther from the people and municipalities most affected. When public participation is reduced, democratic vitality suffers, and trust in environmental governance weakens.

Finally, broad watershed regions risk favouring urban needs over rural or upstream concerns, undermining the delicate balance that integrated watershed management is meant to protect. Ontario’s legacy of locally driven conservation is something to build upon, not to replace with distant regional bodies.

There is a genuine opportunity at this point to improve coordination and consistency across conservation authorities but please don’t sacrifice what has long made them effective and beloved. Strengthened collaboration, through shared services, aligned standards, and regional partnerships, can achieve efficiencies while preserving locally governed watershed organizations. Such an approach would enhance both fiscal responsibility and ecological integrity, maintaining the essential, intimate relationship between people and the watersheds that sustain them.

Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this important discussion.

Resident, Municipality of Grey Highlands