I fully support the proposed…

I fully support the proposed amalgamation of CA's and forming regional authorities which will be overseen by a newly formed provincial governance model. In addition i believe the province really needs to bite the bullet and dismantle the CA's altogether, they are an outdated, unnecessary duplication of flood risk planning and hazard land regulations. it appears they were setup as a knee jerk reaction to some serious flooding issues which happened decades ago and long before current planning regulations which now more than adequately protect future development.
The flood prone and hazard lands mapping can easily be made available through provincial mapping platforms and planning authorities are well equipped to ensure all planning approvals comply with regulations.
Consider that other provinces are operating more than satisfactorily without the tremendous tax burden of CA's and there are systems setup to ensure that flood hazard mapping is updated and available to planning authorities and developers/engineering consultants etc.
Existing dam and flood control operations could very easily be separated out from the CA's and assigned to a competent body to manage, heck it may even be possible for hydro electric power to be generated from these facilities and fed back into Hydro ones grid.
this is long overdue and will hopefully lead to saving Ontario taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars which are currently being wasted on overstaffed and overpaid Conservation authorities.
Over the years the CA's have evolved their portfolio of services to include many activities, including but not limited to tree planting, herbicide spraying, invasive plant management, wildlife research and breeding/rescue, renting out their woodlands for hunting, camping and recreation activities, renting out facilities for paid Xmas light display tourism etc. All of which are well outside the mandated core services and all of which could be better and more tax efficiently provided by private enterprise or non profit organisations. for example why should CA's have a monopoly on tree planting in southern Ontario when there are private companies in the province who provide the same and even better services who cannot access this market, due to the presence of a quasi government, taxpayer subsidized entity?.
it really does defy all logic that tax-payer subsidized entities such as the CA's have been allowed to consistently over decades develop for-profit services that could be much more efficiently delivered by the private sector or the municipalities.
i would recommend the province take the time to draw on the experience of other provinces to learn how the core mandated services could be delivered through either existing platforms or a new standalone regulatory platform which is tax efficient and responsible.
i would like to cite just one example of how a CA has through its own negligence created its own make work project for which they are now seeking funding to deal with the problem.
CA buys land in a county at the upper reaches of its watershed with the intent to dam the river and regulate flows. some 15 years ago Giant hogweed colonizes the riverine flood plains of the subject lands and successive flood events vector the hogweed seeds down the river. The CA land management staff have been aware of the infestation for more than ten years but chosen not to deal with the issue. this has meant that countless landowners (literally 100's) downstream of the infested CA land have had to deal with hogweed on their riverfront properties (both residential and farmland).
What a coincidence the CA have trained staff to dig out or herbicide treat the hogweed and for years now they have been actively contracted by the landowners through their forestry services team to deal with the annual/semi annual infestations.
Conclusion the CA staff are negligent in not dealing with the infestation at the source, thereby causing hardship for 100's of landowners and even putting the public at risk (at boat launches and trail locations where hogweed infests). They then profit/generate income by being hired by the very landowners that have been affected by their source infestation. and somehow they now feel it is ok to apply for funding (presumably from the province/taxpayers) to map and create a program to deal with the issue they created.
I guarantee that this is not an isolated incident of gross misconduct on their part.
It is also interesting and you should be aware that the CA's are actively campaigning right now to try and persuade people to lobby the government on their behalf not to approve the proposed changes, even to the point of sending us template responses that they hope we will cut and paste here in the comments. so look out for a multitude of similar responses with the propaganda content that CA's are providing to all and sundry in the contact lists, FB and social media platforms.
I Look forward to province enacting these and more robust changes in the foreseeable future
sincerely
M