I live in a smaller town…

I live in a smaller town near a large city, that has an active and amazing conservation authority. I volunteer there regularly.

The proposal to consolidate Ontario’s conservation authorities into a mere seven is not modernization - it is calculated dismantling. It is the deliberate shrinking of oversight, expertise, and local stewardship at the exact moment when climate pressures, flooding risks, and biodiversity loss demand more vigilance, not less. Anyone calling this “efficiency” is ignoring the obvious. This move strips communities of their voice, weakens environmental protections, and hands over vast ecological responsibility to bodies too large and too distant to understand the land they’re meant to protect.

Ontario’s conservation authorities were built on a simple truth: watersheds are local. They are complex, interconnected systems that require people who know the terrain, the history, the species, the floodplains, and the communities living within them. This will erase the very local knowledge that keeps people safe and ecosystems functioning.

PLEASE LOOK AT THE IMPACT.

- flooding will get worse; local floodplain mapping, stormwater oversight, and watershed monitoring cannot be done effectively from far‑off centralized offices.

- wildlife will lose critical protection; local wildlife depend on region‑specific habitat management. A handful of oversized authorities cannot possibly maintain the same level of monitoring, restoration, and enforcement across such massive territories.

- local communities will lose their voice; conservation authorities were designed to reflect the needs of the communities they serve. Shrinking them to seven means decisions about local watershed will be made by people who may never have set foot in that community. This makes no sense.

This plan is not about efficiency. It is about erasure.
Erasing local expertise. Erasing environmental safeguards. Erasing the voices of communities who depend on healthy watersheds.

Ontarians deserve better than a system that treats our land, water, and wildlife as administrative inconveniences. We deserve conservation authorities that are strong, local, and empowered. Please do everything in your power to not allow this to pass.