Conservation authorities…

Conservation authorities were created to manage Ontario watersheds for all members of the province to prevent flooding in additional to other priorities. The current CAs work with the local municipal governments to ensure that local priorities are being addressed and they have specialized knowledge of the watersheds that they are accountable for. This is critical to maintain as impacts of climate change are occurring as we have seen from increases in flash flooding events impacting cities over the past few years. Therefore I disagree with this proposed legislation for the following reasons.
1. Why do we need to create yet another provincial agency - Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency – this seems like a waste of tax payer monies as it is adding yet another layer of Bureaucracy. Instead MCEP should issue guidelines to all existing CAs for processes etc, provide a date for implementation and some funds to the existing CAs to adopt. Once the date there are no further costs instead of funding an ongoing new agency.
2. This is a impact to local government as this new OPCA will now making decisions for funding, projects that the CAs undertake, therefore Toronto will be making decisions for the whole province instead of the local CAs in partnership with the municipal governments whereas local knowledge should decide what is best for their watersheds.
3. The proposed boundaries for the new CAs are far too large, see point 2.
4. I also wonder what the real goal with this act is, as it seems to me that this is yet another land grab like the greenbelt fiasco, but the plan is for the OPCA to determine what is surplus land not the local CAs.