Plan to merge Ausable Bayfield conservation authority with Thunder Bay dropped

A plan that would have seen the region’s conservation authorities merge to include Thunder Bay has been revised by the province. Under the new proposal, the Ausable Bayfield Conservation Authority would be amalgamated into one of Ontario’s nine new authorities.

By John Miner

South Huron will lose its representation on the local conservation authority under the Ontario government’s latest consolidation plan.

The same goes for other municipal councils such as Bluewater, Huron East and Lucan Biddulph.

In his latest update, Environment Minister Todd McCarthy announced the province plans to shrink the number of conservation authorities from 36 to nine instead of the seven originally planned.

The newly created regional conservation authorities will still be municipally governed by cities, regional municipalities and counties, but lower-tier municipalities such as rural townships and towns will not be participating, he said.

Board chair of the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority Brian Petrie said the new system means a loss of valuable rural and farm representation.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the rural voice is getting eroded,” said Petrie. “We need that perspective and it is going to get lost for sure.”

The new consolidation plan, which still needs approval of the Ontario Legislature, drops the proposal to merge the Ausable Bayfield Conservation Authority and other authorities along Lake Huron with the Lakehead Region Conservation Authority 1,500 kilometres away.

Instead, the plan is to create a Lake Huron Regional Conservation Authority that will merge the Ausable Bayfield Conservation Authority with Maitland Valley, Saugeen Valley, Grey Sauble, Nottawasaga Valley and Lake Simcoe.

After receiving more than 14,000 comments on its original plan, the province also dropped the idea of creating a regional conservation authority that stretched from Windsor to the Kitchener-Waterloo area.

The plan now is to split that area into two separate conservation authorities with the Upper Thames part of the Western Lake Erie Regional Conservation Authority along with the Lower Thames Valley, Essex Region and St. Clair Region conservation authorities.

Ray Chartrand, chair of the Ausable Bayfield Conservation Authority, said they had advocated for merging with just the Maitland Valley and the Saugeen Valley conservation authorities.

“Those three conservation authorities, their watersheds butt up to each other. Those three made perfect sense,” he said.

The suggestion, however, went nowhere.

Chartrand said the local municipalities, which pay the levies for the conservation authority, still want to be involved.

The hope is that will happen through the creation of “Watershed Councils” that the province has promised to set up as part of the overhaul of conservation authorities.

“They made a commitment that watershed protection at the local level with local expertise and local service delivery will still be in place. That is what we are hoping for with the watershed councils,” Chartrand said in an interview.

In the transition to the new regional conservation authority, Chartrand said it will be business as usual at the Ausable Bayfield.

“We are still going to go after the same programs and deliver the same services right through this transition and keep doing it the same way as we have always done,” he said.

“There is not much more we can do than make it work the best way we can.”

Environment Minister McCarthy has maintained the conservation authority system needed to be overhauled to provide consistent standards, reduce administrative overlap and provide faster permit approvals for housing development. The regional conservation authorities will have stronger capacities for watershed management and flood resilience.

The Opposition NDP has condemned the plan, saying it will undermine local control and the ability to respond to local problems.

“Conservation authorities were created to safeguard Ontarians and their homes from environmental disasters. Doug Ford and Minister McCarthy see them as an unnecessary hurdle for their developer friends looking to make a profit,” said NDP environment critic Peter Tabuns.