As a landowner of a farm in…

As a landowner of a farm in Municipality of Trent Hills (Lower Trent Watershed), I have always been very impressed with the work our local conservation authority is doing. I had experience of this first hand when I did a wetland restoration project a few years ago and had to work closely with Lower Trent. They have the local knowledge and access that others outside of our geographical area simply don’t have.

Thus, as much as I believe every government department and agency can and should be made more efficient to save money, consolidation will not achieve those savings. More centralized bureaucracy will inevitably cost more taxpayer dollars than presently. By the way, where is the costed platform for this proposal so we as citizens can compare???

This merger will cause great chaos in every CA in spring of 2026 at a time of year that is the most intense (permitting, tree planting, floods)
It proves that the government in their ivory tower at Queen’s Park has no idea what conservation authorities actually do on the ground. I suspect the government officials at MECP don’t care either. It leads one to wonder if this government is intentionally working towards an eventual dismantling of the conservation authority system in favor of Doug Ford’s big shot wealthy development buddies.

If one sees this consolidation as part of a larger plan to merge and then destroy our public institutions as is happening in education and healthcare, then this latest proposal is another step in Ford’s agenda of weakening and dismantling any environmental protections in this province.

My local conservation authority works well. It is not broken. It doesn’t need to be fixed. Leave it as it is.