The Ford government’s plan to merge Ontario’s conservation authorities into much larger entities is not sitting well with two members of The Blue Mountains council.
Collingwood council isn’t on board either.
If the change were approved, both Collingwood and the Town of the Blue Mountains, alongside 78+ other municipalities, would become part of a new Huron-Superior Regional Conservation Authority.
At TBM council’s meeting on Dec. 16, councillors June Porter and Paula Hope each expressed their frustrations with the province taking aim at conservation authorities. At their meeting on Dec. 15, Collingwood council went further, by voting unanimously to publicly oppose the reorganization, and to have Mayor Yvonne Hamlin send a letter to the province, AMO, multiple existing conservation authorities and Simcoe-Grey MPP Brian Saunderson to express their concerns.
“I can’t imagine how service, particularly for natural hazards would be improved when we have a conglomerate of this many conservation authorities over this kind of geographic span. It makes no sense,” said Coun. Deb Doherty.
Mayor Yvonne Hamlin agreed, and added she wanted to also send the letter to MPPs from all other areas under the proposed Huron-Superior Regional Conservation Authority.
Recently, the government announced that it would merge Ontario’s 36 conservation authorities into seven new, massive regional entities. At the same time, the government announced plans to create a provincial conservation oversight authority to oversee the new structure. Public comments are being accepted by the province on the proposal up until Dec. 22.
The provincial plans have generated serious concerns from local conservation authorities and municipal leaders about the potential loss of local influence if the new regional entities become a reality.
Coun. Christopher Baines, who sits on the board with the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority and put Collingwood’s motion forward, openly wondered who would be responsible to still fund the work of the new authorities should they go ahead.
“Municipalities, somehow, are going to have to be funding a new upper-tier overseer. To have 78 municipalities in the new conservation authorities… is going to be a bureaucratic challenge, to say the least,” he said.
Collingwood councillors voted unanimously in favour to send the letter on Monday night.
Meanwhile, at TBM council on Tuesday, Porter and Hope made their comments after council received a letter from the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority (NVCA) expressing concerns and reservations about the province’s plans.
The letter, authored by NVCA chair Jonathan Scott, noted that the new Huron-Superior regional conservation authority would stretch from Thunder Bay all the way to the outskirts of Toronto.
“This is huge. It’s so diverse,” said Porter. “This is like trying to put square pegs in road holes all over the place.”
Porter compared the conservation authority changes to the government’s decision in 2019 to create new Ontario Health Teams to manage health care services in the province. Porter said, thus far, the health care changes haven’t led to improvements.
“We really haven’t seen a lot of substantial change,” she said.
In her comments, Hope said she was very concerned the changes to conservation authorities were being made haphazardly with no real reason.
“I wonder what the point is. What’s broken? What are we fixing?” Hope asked. “Conservation authorities play a really important role.”
