KEEP CONSERVATION LOCAL -…

KEEP CONSERVATION LOCAL - Local staff and office understand the land, the people and the issues. Decisions that are made HOURS and 100s of KMs away do not reflect the unique needs of each watershed. Local expertise matters for safety, environmental protection and community protection.
PROTECT EXISTING PROGRAMS AND SERVICES - each watershed delivers programs and services that directly support their communities and landowners - tree planting, wetland restoration, technical advice, outdoor recreation and education. These services need to continue to ensure healthy happy communities.
LOCAL STAFF MATTER - local staff have knowledge about their watershed that benefits their communities. With amalgamation you could have someone who has never been to the area commenting on what can and cannot be done. Ie someone from Cambridge commenting on something happening in Port Stanley.
Where is the Municipal funding going to go? Will it stay local? Probably not when it is one large authority.

QUESTIONS - If you want to have a streamlined permitting system, then why not provide the software? If you want to ensure permits get out faster, how do you expect them to get out faster when someone who doesn't know the region needs to provide comments, therefore having to find someone who does know the area or has to travel multiple hours to have a site visit with the landowner. That is just going to slow things down going against what you wanted.

SUGGESTION - Leave CAs along and streamline permits through a permitting system. OR significantly reduce the jurisdiction of the proposed areas. From Cambridge to Windsor is a massive area. Why not let individual CAs retain their own identities and watersheds, but have planning centralized for each proposed area. So for example all 8 CAs in the Lake Erie proposed region have to have the same practices for permitting. - Would be a lot less work for everyone involved but would still get the same permitting results.