I oppose this proposed…

I oppose this proposed amalgamation of our local conservation authority, the Maitland Valley Conservation Authority, into the Huron Superior Regional Conservation Authority, and urge the Minister of Environment, Conservation, and Parks to withdraw this misguided and hasty proposal and rethink the whole project.

The Province justifies these changes on the grounds that they will allow housing development to happen at a faster pace. The Minister speaks of getting “shovels in the ground” quicker by increasing the speed at which permits are issued. I live in Goderich and our local Conservation Authority is the Maitland Valley Conservation Authority. As the Minister and his staff should know, because they the ones that require Conservation Authorities to track this information, the Maitland Valley Conservation Authority’s average time for processing permits is about five days. This is well below the average for all Conservation Authorities in Ontario of about 12 days. If that isn’t fast enough, what sort of delay is the Minister aiming for? No one knows.

What the Minister is forgetting, or isn’t considering, is that adding two new levels of administration on top of the existing system of local administration offices for each of the Authorities, will simply create more complexity, more errors, and more delays. Instead of working with Conservation Authority staff to make the current system more nimble and responsive to local needs, he is proposing to create a system that will be bureaucratic and cumbersome.

In their book How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between, the authors stress the importance of Thinking Slow and Acting Fast. They provide many examples of projects that went over time and over budget because the promoters of the project failed to take the time needed to understand the requirements of the project, and learn beforehand what will actually be required to make the project a success. Unfortunately, the Minister and his staff are seeking to rush this project through as quickly as possible. They are not Thinking Slow.

Other than the metric of “getting shovels in the ground faster”, there is no clear statement of why this radical change is required, and why the Minister’s goals could not be achieved by working more closely, and more collaboratively, within the existing system. Instead, and like many before him, the Minister appears to believe that by passing the legislation as fast as possible, this will bring the changes he wants sooner. What he is forgetting is the first law of complex systems which states “You can never change just one thing.” The changes proposed here will almost certainly result in changes that the Minister does not expect, and might find unwelcome. Some of these will likely be financial. This project is sure to cost far more than is currently imagined, and because of the additional levels of bureaucracy, this project is also unlikely to result in improved services to the small urban municipalities who will be required to fund these new larger Authorities. When the rural residents of Ontario learn what the Province has taken from them, perhaps there will also be some unexpected and unwelcome political consequences for the Minister and his colleagues.