ERO number 025-1257 This is…

ERO number 025-1257

This is my response to the Ontario Government’s proposal to consolidate the existing conservation areas and place them under the direct control of a provincial board-governed agency.

After this government’s Green Belt fiasco of 2022; it’s apparent inability to even initiate the Green Belt review scheduled for this year; or even to maintain the qualified group that was to conduct this review; I can only view it’s current proposal to amalgamate the existing Conservation Areas under a new set of, as yet, unidentified groups of individuals, as totally in keeping with this government’s demonstrated desire to turn over these sensitive environmental and agricultural lands to be sectioned off and bull dozed by developers — who could presumably make more money doing this than by developing lands that have already been approved for development by the various municipalities.

But, setting aside this highly likely ulterior motive, what sense does it make to take away control from the existing, long-established Conservation Authorities. They already have the intimate local knowledge needed to properly monitor and protect the environmental areas under their control. They’ve seen these areas in both good and bad years. They know what needs and can be done to protect them with the changing climate. And, on top of that, they’ve used that knowledge to set-up long-established programs to assist the people in their communities to get in touch with and learn about these remarkable environments.

And now this government, with its “big, clumsy boots”, wants to replace this expert local knowledge with … what?! A group of real estate developers who can assess, remove, and build on the most commercially valuable pieces of land — regardless of the environmental consequences?

No, in an age of rapidly changing climate, when massive forest fires, floods, droughts, the expanding territories of disease carrying pests have become regular occurrences and, as a result, the availability of adequate supplies of drinking water is no longer a foregone conclusion & the availability of affordable food is shrinking, we need to maintain the local experts who can best protect our local environmental resources and advise the governments, at all levels, on how best to counter and adapt to the changing conditions in each region. Consolidation of these groups, throws away that hard-earned knowledge and replaces it with “best guesses” and ulterior motives.

The Ontario government should concentrate instead on the things that it’s already responsible for: like improving staffing levels in our hospitals & primary medicine; improving staffing levels in public education; and how about those long-delayed and way-over-budget LRT projects. Then how about the Ontario Place fiasco — with much of the benefits, if any, going to a private spa; the closure of the much-loved Ontario Science Centre, when all it needed was some roof repairs. And are we still thinking of doubling or tripling the capacity of the 401 by tunnelling underneath it. Far from being a purveyor of increased efficiency, I think this government would be well advised to try to improve the performance of those entities and projects that it already has complete control of. And not go around making a mess of still other areas of our province.

So, I am strongly against the Ontario government’s proposal to amalgamate the existing Conservation Authorities and to place the resulting regions under the direct control of a provincial board-governed agency.