Heather Wright/The Independent

Dawn-Euphemia Mayor Al Broad says a massive project to merge 36 conservation authorities into seven may actually end up slowing approvals for housing.

The Minister of the Environment announced the plan in October saying it would streamline services and provide better customer service while standardizing practices across the province.

The new Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency is to coordinate the new rules for the regional authorities, Minister Todd McCarthy said. The province plans to have the new bodies in place by October 2026, just after the municipal election.

Conservation authorities are managed by boards of municipal councillors. They were caught off guard by the news. Broad was among municipal leaders part of an online information session recently. He wanted to know what the municipal role on the new regional boards will be and how the province plans to streamline services and save municipalities money as they have said.

Broad told Lambton County councillors Wednesday the information session didn’t provide a lot of answers.

“I can’t imagine how you can move from 36 CAOs down to seven without having to pay severance packages,” Broad told reporters. “Plus there’ll be a bunch of middle management that I would assume won’t be required, and that’s going to also require severence; so I don’t see how they can save money with that situation.

“The other part that I don’t understand is they say they want to unite all the rules and regulations, but they’ve given absolutely no direction on how they’re going to do that.”

Broad asked, and county councillors agreed, to send a letter to the Premier and the Minister of the Environment to put the mergers “on hold” until more information is shared.

Broad told reporters he’s not sure how this change will improve service to residents looking for permissions to build homes.

“They (provincial officials) have said all the facilities are going to remain, all the staff is going to remain, making those decisions. I don’t understand how that’s going to improve on the actual timeframe to get a permit approved,” he said

“I think the province doesn’t like the delays on some of these permits and they think somehow this is going to change things. And I see where it could actually do the opposite, where it could actually extend the amount of time for these permits to get approved,” Broad said.

In Plympton-Wyoming, Councillor Kristen Rodrigues – the current vice-chair of the St. Clair Region Conservation Authority – also has concerns.

She’s confused why the St. Clair Region would be linked to others along Lake Erie. Conservation authorities were set up to manage specific watersheds. Rodrigues says the St. Clair Region is linked to Lake Huron, with the southern Lake Huron shoreline region already under the jurisdiction of the SCRCA.

Rodrigues, in a motion passed by Plympton-Wyoming council, says the water systems between the two Great Lakes are different. Connecting St. Clair to Lake Huron is “more logical and environmentally appropriate framework that respects existing watershed divides and supports effective, locally informed environmental stewardship.”

The motion, which is being sent to the Environmental Registry of Ontario, also asks the province to have meaningful consultation with municipalities, the authorities and Indigenous communities before finalizing any changes.

The ERO is accepting public comments on the proposal until Dec. 22. https://ero.ontario.ca/notice/025-1257