There appears to be no…

There appears to be no change in jurisdiction proposed for Toronto and Region Conservation Area (TRCA) in the proposal and no other CA’s will be amalgamated with it. https://ero.ontario.ca/public/2025-12/Supplemental%20Document_EN.pdf Therefore the proposed name change to Central Lake Ontario Regional Conservation Authority is senseless. TRCA is already a regional CA. Changing the name will come with a lot of unnecessary costs. There is no need to waste the time of TRCA staff, and the staff in all the Municipalities that work with it. It would be a waste of taxpayer dollars to do a name change.
My comments on the criteria applied for determining proposed boundaries for regional convervation authorities:
1.) maintaining watershed-based jurisdictions – Agree with this criteria
2.) reducing administrative duplication and overlap for municipalities and conservation authorities – This needs to be done with care. The current system is not as fragmented as you suggest. Permitting was already standardized across the CAs in 2024, with Ontario Regulation 41/24 replacing 36 separate authority-specific permitting regulations with a single provincial framework. Ontario Regulation 686/21 also prescribes mandatory programs for all authorities, further enhancing standardization. If the proposal is to centralize the permitting process, details of how this would work should be discussed with the CA’s to obtain feedback before sweeping changes are considered. Local expertise on issues facing specific watersheds may be lost with a centralized permitting process.
3.) balancing expertise and capacity (enhance technical skills and resources across CA’s to improve delivery) – The proposal suggests that “With better tools and more resources for front-line staff, the regional conservation authorities would operate with greater consistency and transparency, deliver faster services to municipalities and permit applicants, while ensuring decisions continue to be based on sound science.” In some CA’s staffing levels are insufficient and teams are half the size of what they were but still expected to deliver same number of projects. Some strategy and governance from the province could be beneficial in terms of Human Resources. Recent changes to band levels (job titles & responsibilities) and removing some tech positions have increased workload for project managers. Many positions are contract, not permanent so there can be high turnover causing more work for permanent staff to always be training new contractors.
4.) service continuity (ensuring uninterrupted delivery of local conservation authority programs – including flood forecasting and warning, permitting, and source water protection) through and after consolidation – Agree with this criteria. The government proposal lays out where no changes will be made to the work that the Conservation Authorities currently perform. It is important that the creation of the Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency providing strategy and oversight does not result in a loss of local control over flood management, water quality and land stewardship currently overseen by Conservation Authorities. Disruptions to important frontline services, such as flood forecasting, at a time when climate-related risks are getting worse could have a very detrimental impact. We need to ensure that the focus on making the process more efficient for development permits and supporting provincial priotities does not void the key mission of the Conservation Authorities.