The conservation Authorities…

The conservation Authorities have been given a huge role to play in fisheries regulations, flood plain zoning etc. ,environment, and up holding many other laws and acts. But they are not given any money or power to enforce all this. Our family had a criminal extreme neighbor, digging up a river bed for gravel and using swamp land for 4 wheeler mudding, by digging it out by back hoe, and putting roads down the steep long slopes to the river that eroded tons of mud into the river every year. Cutting all the trees out,-half of which were on my property. It took me two years to get the conservation authority to even look at it ( as they were too busy) In the meantime I had Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Natural resources and the police out to have a look at it. all of them said it was bad but nothing they could do and it was in the jurisdiction of the conservation authority. I finally was able to get the bylaw officer out, and because of trees cut and logged on my property ,by this person,- He then came back with a conservation authority person to talk to this extreme person and myself. The conservation authority could not make him stop. They tried to educate him with several visits. To get him to stop would require them to take him to court and win, and the courts are very heavily slanted against the authority and it takes years of their time for one or two people to work on,-that they don't have to spare. So finally,-I kept the police informed of his other criminal activities and they eventually got him arrested etc. and gone now. I had to stand up to him,-at my own risk for years with some help from the By law officer. But the environmental degradation was terrible. Mind boggling and no one would do anything. So now the Gov. wants to cut C.A, funding even more. There is almost nothing now. The people that apply for a permit to do the right thing near environmentally sensitive areas wait for a year or more for a permit and have restrictions. But the pricks who go ahead and do terrible environmental degredation without a permit,-have no consequences,- So the word is out,-that it is better to do that and not even ask. A bit of common sense is needed here and not politics.