[All] Susan's K's column this week on Schedule 6 in Bill 229 - changes to conservation authorities

[Susan Koswan]

Hi GRENers,

My column this week, copied and pasted. But please get a subscription to 
the Record if you can afford it. Keep local journalism alive.

Susan K

https://www.therecord.com/opinion/2020/11/25/provincial-conservatives-playing-risky-game-with-our-conservation-authorities.html


  Provincial Conservatives playing risky game with our conservation
  authorities

SK
By Susan KoswanSpecial to Waterloo Region Record
Wed., Nov. 25, 2020/timer/3 min. read
/update/Article was updated 2 hrs ago

American linguist Noam Chomsky warned that the standard technique of 
privatization is to “defund, make sure things don’t work, people get 
angry; you hand it over to private capital.”

So, with conservative governments’ penchant for privatization, how 
worried should we be about our conservation authorities?

*Defund:* Provincial funding for conservation authorities plummeted from 
$50 million in the mid-’90s to an all-time low of $3.58 million today, 
downloading funding to municipalities and program fees.

*Make sure things don’t work:* Schedule 6, buried deep within the 260 
pages of Ontario’s 2021 Budget Bill 229 
<https://www.ola.org/en/legislative-business/bills/parliament-42/session-1/bill-229>, 
proposes changes that would undermine the important work of conservation 
authorities. Tim Gray, executive director of Environmental Defence, did 
not mince words: Schedule 6 was “written by the development industry.”

*People are angry: *But this is not going down without a fight.

Conservation authorities are unique to Ontario. Their mandate is to 
“undertake watershed-based programs to protect people and property from 
flooding and other natural hazards, and to conserve natural resources 
for economic, social and environmental benefits.”

Our conservation authorities do this well — the Grand River Conservation 
Authority received international recognition for management of the Grand 
River watershed.

Schedule 6 in Bill 229 would fragment the watershed approach needed for 
good land-use planning. As well, the conservation authorities’ 
science-based authority for reviewing and approving development permits 
could be bypassed by direct requests to the Minister of Municipal 
Affairs and Housing or the local planning tribunal.

We would lose valuable, non-political expertise and knowledge on 
conservation authority boards, since all board members would have to be 
municipal councillors. Municipal interests would supersede watershed 
protection. The reality is that watersheds are not confined to political 
borders; we all live upstream and downstream from others.

Schedule 6 would also not cut red tape. In a webinar 
<https://cela.ca/we-need-our-conservation-authorities-webinar/> 
co-hosted by the Canadian Environmental Law Association, Environmental 
Defence and Ontario Nature, Deborah Martin-Downs, the chief 
administration officer of Credit Valley Conservation, outlined the 
current permit application-to-approval process. She shared that 92 per 
cent of permit applications were approved by conservation authorities in 
2018. That doesn’t sound like a system that’s broken.

If this bill passes and conservation authorities are sidestepped in the 
permit process, who would then take responsibility for permit compliance 
and liability for bad decisions? What criteria would the ministry use to 
make data-based decisions?

There is no doubt that regulations can be at odds with landowners, but 
they have to be; we cannot build or develop whatever we want wherever we 
want. Conservation authorities were created to keep people and property 
safe. Our population has increased substantially since they were 
established and so has our impact. The climate crisis has added an extra 
level of hazard from flooding that requires expert management of our 
water courses, slopes, flood plains, wetlands, and buffer zones.

We do not want to see a return to the days before conservation 
authorities were created in the mid-1940s in Ontario. Bad land-use 
management then led to deforestation, erosion and drought. How well we 
manage our land impacts directly on water quality and quantity.

This government’s dismantling of environmental protection is not going 
unnoticed by the auditor general of Ontario. The recently released 2020 
Annual Report 
<https://www.auditor.on.ca/en/content/annualreports/arbyyear/ar2020.html> 
is highly critical of the Environment Ministry, Natural Resources 
Ministry, and Municipal Affairs Ministry, and Technical Standards and 
Safety Authority, particularly, “the consistent and significant level of 
noncompliance with the Environmental Bill of Rights Act by the Ministry 
of the Environment, Conservation and Parks.”

The auditor goes on to say, “Biodiversity loss has been ranked as a 
top-five risk — by likelihood and impact — to economies over the next 
decade. Unlike other provinces, Ontario does not have a long-term plan 
or target to expand its network of protected areas.” On the contrary, if 
this government has its way, we also have to worry about Schedule 8 in 
this budget bill that would exempt logging from certain provisions in 
the Endangered Species Act.


      Give the gift of trusted news.

If you refuse to settle for second hand news and think that your loved 
ones shouldn’t either, give them the gift of The Record.

The short-term thinking of this government is going to cause us all 
long-term pain.

Our members of provincial parliament need to hear from us. This 
government’s actions are not in line with the public good. Contact your 
MPP and share your concerns. Environmental Defence has made that easy 
for us through its website 
<https://environmentaldefence.ca/newmode/conservation-authorities-need-help/>.

Susan Koswan is a University of Waterloo graduate with a sustainable 
business management certificate from Conestoga College.
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