As a professional who has…

As a professional who has spent close to 50 years working in the environmental field, I have a wide variety of experience working and partnering with conservation authorities (CAs) in various parts of Ontario, and I want to express my extreme concern with the proposed amalgamation of CAs into large regional bodies. Designed to plan and manage resources on a watershed by watershed basis (e.g. using physical features of the landscape to drive landscape-sized decision-making vs that of artificial political boundaries), these entities were (and still are) state-of-the-art/best practice for good environmental planning and decision-making. They allow for planning that works with natural systems -THAT is what makes them highly effective AND efficient. They have been the subject of study and case studies in academic institutions around the world, and various CAs in Ontario have hosted delegations of politicians and planners from many countries over the decades since the first CAs were incorporated, resulting in a spread in watershed-based planning globally. Some CAs are more rural in nature, others very urbanized, but each is deeply rooted in their communities and each has the local 'boots on the land' knowledge of the intricacies and complexities of the ecology of the local environment that is an absolute necessity for well-informed planning. While combining small watersheds has been successful (as is the case for Central Lake Ontario CA and other more regional CAs), making large scale changes to the current configuration will create inefficiencies that far outweigh the so-called administrative efficiencies. Most CAs have already downsized & Kaizen-ed themselves into much leaner organizations, and have been very entreprenurial in their outlook and ability to offset a lack of financial support from the province. While reorganization of others may or may not be appropriate or helpful to the proposed outcomes of this proposed change, this should be on a case by case basis vs trying to 'fix' a large and important part of the environmental planning ecosystem in Ontario that is working much more efficiently and effectively than most government departments. Finally, at a time when climate change is driving rapid change in our water systems, watershed-based conservation authorities are more more important than ever - the conservation authority movement of the 1940s grew rapidly after Hurricane Hazel's devastating impacts in Ontario proved that local watershed-based planning was needed. The future outlook is for more and increasingly intense weather events, not less.
It's very sad to even think this, but is undermining effective environmental planning the more likely desired outcome of this government? Is that what they would prefer, rather than having a 'made in Ontario' network of effective organizations that work with communities to find win/win solutions that don't degrade the environment that sustains us all (and, by the way, is borrowed from our grandchildren).