I am submitting this comment…

I am submitting this comment in my personal capacity as a long-time Lake Simcoe resident, community advocate, and supporter of strong watershed-based environmental protection in Ontario.
For many years, I have actively supported the Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition and the goals of the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan (LSPP). In 2022, I was honoured to receive the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority’s Healthy Community Award, recognition I value deeply because it reflects community-level work rooted in protection, prevention, and stewardship not reaction after harm has already occurred.
The Lake Simcoe Protection Plan was created because incremental, poorly coordinated decisions had already placed the watershed under unacceptable stress. The Plan is explicit in its intent: to protect water quality, safeguard hydrological systems, prevent further degradation, and ensure that land-use decisions are made with cumulative impacts in mind. Those principles are not optional, and they should not be weakened through policy changes that prioritize administrative efficiency or development flexibility over environmental outcomes.
ERO 025-1257 moves in the opposite direction of what the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan requires. Rather than strengthening watershed-based decision-making, it risks fragmenting oversight, diluting science-based review, and weakening the role of Conservation Authorities that were specifically designed to address watershed-scale risks. This is especially concerning in the Lake Simcoe basin, where the consequences of poor land-use decisions are already well documented; including nutrient loading, shoreline degradation, flooding, loss of wetlands, and pressures on groundwater.
As someone who has spent years supporting environmental protection at the community level, I find it deeply troubling that the province would advance changes that undermine the very institutions responsible for implementing the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan. Conservation Authorities are not bureaucratic obstacles; they are a critical line of defence for public safety, drinking water protection, flood mitigation, and ecological health. Weakening their mandate does not remove risk, it transfers that risk directly onto communities.
The Lake Simcoe Protection Plan emphasizes precaution, integration, and long-term thinking. ERO 025-1257 reflects none of those values. Instead, it appears to prioritize short-term development pressures over the long-term resilience of watersheds and the communities that depend on them.
I am particularly concerned that these changes could normalize decision-making that ignores cumulative impacts. In the Lake Simcoe watershed, we already know that “one more approval” logic has real consequences. The LSPP was created precisely because those cumulative effects were not being adequately considered. Rolling back protections now disregards both the science and the lived experience of residents who have watched environmental conditions decline over time.
For these reasons, I strongly oppose ERO 025-1257 and call on the Ministry to withdraw this proposal. At a minimum, any policy changes affecting Conservation Authorities must be demonstrably aligned with and supportive of the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan and other watershed-based protection frameworks across Ontario.
Ontario residents were promised that Lake Simcoe would be protected, not compromised through policy drift. I urge the government to honour that commitment.
I encourage other residents of the Lake Simcoe watershed and across Ontario to review this proposal carefully and submit their own comments. Watershed protection depends on public vigilance, and once these safeguards are weakened, they are extremely difficult to restore.