I have what is perhaps a…

I have what is perhaps a unique perspective on the validity and utility of having Conservation Authorities based upon watershed boundaries and NOT on the basis of contiguous and regional links, by way of having acted in a consulting engineering capacity for numerous Conservation Authorities over the course of my five decades of professional engineering. In a word: “NO”, this is not a progressive or productive change!!!

I am actually old enough to remember the original and formative reason why the Province constituted Conservation Authorities in the first place: Hurricane Hazel, October 1954: 81 Ontarians unnecessarily dead in and around Toronto - when Ontarians and the Progressive Conservative governments of the day collectively said: “Never again!!!” I can personally attest to the efficacy of local oversight over conservation issues and matters, through having dealt with numerous Conservation Authority representatives and Staff whose commitments were palpable because they cared passionately about where they lived and worked, and about their neighbours!!! Homogenizing locally accountable and locally sensitive Conservation Authorities in the name of ‘Stalinist’ bureaucratic cost efficiencies is a truly BAD IDEA, which deserves to be summarily rejected!!! The Conservation Authorities Act and the current system has served this Province well for more than 60 years and I have seen zero evidence to the contrary!!! These proposed amalgamations of Conservation Authorities are mindless, knee jerk, bureaucratic notions that threaten totally to throw the ‘ baby out with the bath water’ and completely deserve to be rejected as the foolishness that they truly are!!!