Conservation Authorities (CA…

Conservation Authorities (CA) play a specific and critical role in the protection of provincial infrastructure and thereby taxpayer assets. CAs were created after the catastrophic loss of life and infrastructure during Hurricane Hazel in 1954. The storm killed 81 people, destroyed homes, washed out highways, and caused widespread devastation across Southern Ontario. It fundamentally reshaped Ontario’s approach to flood management and led directly to the expansion of CA powers to protect life and property.

This is not abstract history—it is the foundational evidence that watershed based governance prevents deaths, protects infrastructure, and saves taxpayers money.

CAs are unique to Ontario and internationally recognized for their integrated watershed management approach. They manage natural hazards, protect water resources, and balance environmental, economic, and community needs - they know the stakeholders in their watersheds. According to Conservation Ontario, 95% of Ontarians live in a watershed managed by a CA, demonstrating their central role in public safety and infrastructure protection.

Local municipal representation on CA boards ensures decisions are grounded in on-the-ground knowledge of watershed conditions, land use, and community needs. Removing or diluting this local governance undermines the very mechanism that makes CAs effective.

I work with the Conservation Authorities providing them with cash resources to support their delivery of a variety of provincial curriculum focussed environmental experiences that are important in raising a literate citizenry. Municipal infrastructure investments ultimately require a taxpaying and voting public that understands the important of such obscure but absolutely critical investments. This makes the Provincial and municipal governments jobs easier when civil projects are being budgeted for and their impacts on property taxes are being discussed by ratepayers.

The proposal to merge 36 CAs into seven large regional bodies contradicts decades of watershed science and governance best practices. Research shows that watershed governance is most effective when decisions are made at the watershed scale with local accountability and local knowledge.
Merging southern Georgian Bay and Lake Huron CAs with Lake Superior watersheds—systems with entirely different hydrology, climate, land use pressures, and risks—creates administrative distance (900km separation), reduces responsiveness, and increases the likelihood of oversight failures and guts local municipal inputs.

CAs are not primarily “approval bodies”; they are hazard management agencies. Slow approvals are overwhelmingly the result of understaffing, not structural flaws. Professional planning organizations have repeatedly recommended increasing staffing capacity at municipal and provincial levels to reduce backlogs, not dismantling governance structures. Blaming the CAs for the ineffectiveness of approvals is like blaming the floodplain for the flood.

If the government’s goal were truly to speed up approvals, the evidence based solution would be to hire more staff, not restructure the system - this raises the concern that CA deconstruction is the real objective of the government -- as is apparent in all of the changes to CAs since 2018. Slow approvals could more reasonably and sustainably be addressed by actually hiring more CA, municipal and provincial government staff instead of trying to choke the life out of these CAs, impose MZOs hyper focused and one dimensional through whatever polictical slight of had you propose, and thus expose people to future hazards.

U.S. jurisdictions around the Great Lakes have repeatedly noted that Ontario’s foresight in watershed based governance model prevents the kinds of legal battles, infrastructure failures, and ecological damages they routinely face. Ontario’s integrated watershed management approach is widely cited as a model that other regions wish they had adopted decades ago.

The government should not implement its proposed changes, but should instead increase the GDP through increased CA, municipal and provincial staffing levels to address the backlogs on approvals and thereby actually improved development approvals, without threatening all of the other balanced functions provided by CAs and the assets that the CAs protect - thereby saving taxpayers significant costs.

Weakening CAs will:
• increase flood risk
• increase infrastructure repair costs
• increase insurance claims and premiums
• reduce the effectiveness of source water protection
• undermine climate resilience

Given that Hurricane Hazel scale storms are becoming more likely due to climate change, dismantling the very system designed to prevent disaster is fiscally irresponsible.

The short term restructuring based on the hyperfocus of development - while no other efforts are achieving real results - leads the public to believe that this is just an excuse to implement a concentration of power within the Provincial government. Creating an CA over-lord agency to provide political cover from the public exposure of the anti-democratic power-concentrating strong arm tactics like strong mayor and imposing Ministerial Zoning Orders lowers the effectiveness of the democratic inputs into the governance of a local community - all focussed on benefiting developers, not on increasing affordable housing inventory. I thought this was an anti-conservative principle.

Developers around the world are adopting innovations—modular construction, pre fabrication, energy efficient building systems. Ontario developers are chomping at the bit to employ these innovations in Ontario — but Ontario has slowed this innovation to reward the dinosaurs of the industry with political connections. Ontario won't support innovation due to outdated building codes. Updating codes and enabling innovation would increase housing supply without dismantling environmental protections.

Housing supply and watershed protection are not mutually exclusive. The government is presenting a false choice and a scapegoat.

Deconstructing the democratic governance and effective local protection activities of CAs is not a sustainable plan and if executed will significantly increase related infrastructure costs for future generations - especially in light of the infrastructure design deficits already in Ontario in light of manmade Climate Change impacts. Make the real changes necessary and put more people to work in the municipal governments to whom all of the responsibilities have been downloaded to.

The pattern is clear: strong mayor powers, expanded Ministerial Zoning Orders, school board takeovers, and now CA amalgamation. Each step centralizes power and reduces local democratic input.
Creating a provincial “CA over lord” agency that can quietly be directed by the minister removes local accountability and cynically shields the government from public scrutiny. This contradicts long standing conservative principles of local decision making and fiscal prudence. Go back to democratic power sharing and provide the resources we need to get the job done.

Let innovation enter the home building development process - update the building code, and approve state-of-the-art best practice energy efficient solutions employed in other countries. Don't destroy the source water protection we need to stay healthy and safe.

Finally, the optics of this process are horrible. Posting legislation the day before consultation opens, passing it before the comment period closes, and avoiding meaningful debate are all actions that erode democratic legitimacy. The optics are not merely “bad”—they suggest a predetermined outcome and disregard (and disrespect) for public input. Please do better!