Minister says it’s part of a plan to build more homes faster

Heather Wright/The Independent

There are big changes coming to the organizations which work to prevent flooding in Ontario.

Conservation authorities were set up in the 1940’s in response to severe flooding and erosion problems. Each authority was set up deal with single watershed. In Lambton, there are two different conservation authorities, St. Clair and the Ausable, which serves Lambton Shores starting around Port Franks.

The province announced Friday will be merging 36 organizations into seven regional conservation authorities. The St. Clair Region Conservation Authority, which governs most of Lambton County and some of Chatham-Kent, will be merged into a regional authority called Lake Erie Regional Conservation Authority. It may stretch from Windsor to the Niagara Region to the Lake Erie shoreline. It doesn’t include Huron, Bruce and Grey County. The province plans consultations on the regional boards.

The government has also set up the Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency. It, according to Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks, Todd McCarthy, will set up the rules and procedures for the new regional authorities.

McCarthy says the “consolidations” are “about streamlining.

“It is about more efficiency. It is about better customer service and it’s about making sure we have standardized practices across the province.”

McCarthy believes the current system “has not been working for homeowners or for builders or for farmers or even for municipalities” particularly in areas where more than one conservation authority serves one municipality. “That means we’re getting inconsistent outcomes even within a municipality. So we want to make sure that that is consistent, transparent and predictable.

“Part of this is also about the motivation to build critical infrastructure faster, to build housing faster to get national projects in the ground faster,” says the minister. “Conservation authorities should enhance that. They shouldn’t be an impediment to it and that shouldn’t be unequal standards applied across the province.”

McCarthy says there will be no layoffs, adding executives will be offered “front line” jobs in the new regions.

The province wants to have the change take place in late 2026, after the municipal election. It’s not clear if there will be role for municipal councillors in the new structure. Currently, conservation authorities have a board of directors made up of municipal councillors and people appointed by local councils.

St. Clair conservation authority officials learned about the changes a couple of hours before the minister made a public announcement. Ken Phillips, the general manager of SCRCA, says conservation authorities already work together.

“Over the last few decades, we’ve strived, collectively as conservation authorities, to make sure that all of our policies and operations procedures are similar, if not the same. The challenge or beauty of conservation authorities is that we’re able to adapt to local circumstances or local conditions … our watershed is typically different from Toronto watershed…you’re literally talking night and day, urban versus rural,” he says.

And Phillips says there are already provincial standards for permits needed for building homes. “We have to meet certain deadlines and timelines that are mandated by the province and we do have to report on those currently, so those types of things are already in place.”

Phillips and Chair Greg Grimes are taking a wait-and-see approach to the possible changes.

“I think you know bigger is not always better, but at the same time, the ability to share best practices and create efficiencies and streamline processes can obviously improve conservation authorities, so I support that aspect of it, where we can better learn from each other and streamline some of the activities across the watersheds,” says Grimes.

There are critics of the idea. Phil Pothen, Counsel and Ontario Environment Program Manager for Environmental Defence, suggests the province is more concerned about building homes than protecting Ontarians from flooding.

“While Environment Minister McCarthy paid lip service to protecting the public from “floods and natural hazards”, this morning’s announcement strongly suggested that the chief task of the Agency… will be to standardize Conservation Authority policies and standards to “get shovels in the ground sooner” for wasteful, McMansion-style sprawl development,” Pothen said in a news release. “Unless it is expressly prohibited, this would almost certainly mean lowering many current Conservation Authority approval standards, or reducing the level of scrutiny applied to permit applications. That would put Ontarians at risk.”

The plan was also criticized by Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner. “The Ford government is leaving Ontarians exposed to dangerous flooding—with lives, livelihoods and property at stake,” he said in a statement.

“Slashing conservation authorities and replacing them with a provincial oversight agency will gut protections for our parks, lakes and rivers. It will result in more job losses. And it will continue this government’s pattern of centralizing power into fewer and fewer hands—undermining local expertise and decision-making.”