St. Marys council chooses not to back UTRCA opposition to provincial government’s Bill 68

Galen Simmons, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Though St. Marys council has some concerns with the province’s plan to consolidate the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority (UTRCA) with seven other conservation authorities under a provincially appointed and overseen governance body, council will not endorse the UTRCA’s expressed opposition to that plan.

After Bill 68, the Plan to Protect Ontario Act, received royal assent on Nov. 27, 2025, the UTRCA asked its member municipalities, including St. Marys, to express its formal opposition to the changes proposed to Ontario’s Conservation Authorities Act, as well as to a proposal to consolidate Ontario’s existing 36 conservation authorities into seven regional conservation authorities. That proposal includes the merging of UTRCA with seven other conservation authorities stretching from as far north as Orangeville and Shelburne to as far south as Windsor and Essex County, which would be called the Lake Erie Regional Conservation Authority.

“Instead of being directed by locally elected and appointed representatives in the format that we are currently accustomed to, this action will see your local conservation authority become part of a larger regional authority that will in turn be directed by a provincial agency (the Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency),” UTRCA chair and Perth County Warden Dean Trentowsky wrote in a letter asking the councils for the UTRCA’s member municipalities to formally oppose the formation of the Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency (OPCA) and the subsequent conservation authority consolidations.

“ … The current conservation authority network was built on the concept of making local watershed management decisions by using local resources, local knowledge and local expertise. This also includes the financial resources and the physical infrastructure that has been built up and maintained by the local watershed municipalities over several decades. Therefore, it’s essential and vitally important for our local member municipalities that this decision-making and management process remain in the capable hands of the locally elected and locally appointed representatives who remain directly accountable to the communities that they serve.”

At the Jan. 13 St. Marys council meeting, councillors were provided with details on the province’s plan and more information on why the UTRCA and other conservation authorities are actively opposing it.

After attending an information session hosted by the province on these changes last month, at which he and other municipal representatives had the opportunity to ask questions, voice concerns and provide input on the provincial plan, Mayor Al Strathdee told councillors there are some parts of the plan he supports.

“As we’ve seen in the past, this is another example where all the changes aren’t really spelled out and we’re not exactly sure what the act really means. We’ve gone through this with planning as well, and that is a criticism,” Strathdee said. “ … In some respects, the province was somewhat conciliatory (at the meeting), saying, ‘This is our plan. What do you like? What don’t you like? And where do you want to go forward?’ And I heard consistently (from those who attended) that ‘we don’t want any change.’ If there’s one thing from this government, it’s they believe in change and if they intend to make change, they make change.

“So, it was a little bit disappointing for me because there was a number of people who were just comfortable with status quo and said, ‘We don’t want change, and by the way, we’re making money from campgrounds, so don’t take that away from us.’ … It was disappointing because there’s certain things we could suggest and feedback we could provide in terms of the scope and the size, but by and large, people didn’t want to talk about that.”

While Strathdee said he is concerned with the size of the proposed Lake Erie Regional Conservation Authority and the potential for St. Marys’ seat at the governance table to be diminished, potentially leading to a loss of control over how the local watershed is managed, he said there are a number of components in the provincial plan that could improve how the local conservation authority operates.

“When you talk about the original intent of conservation authorities, the first meeting of (UTRCA) was upstairs in this building (St. Marys town hall) in the upper hall because there was a willingness of the farmers to protect the environment and get together to make change,” Strathdee said. “As we’ve become a more urban country, unfortunately we’ve gotten away from that and municipalities like ourselves have lost a lot of influence.

“The big thing for me … is the standardization of regulations (across all conservation authorities). … There should be a standardization because we consistently run into things that happen in other conservation authorities in other areas that we are not allowed to do here, and it seems to be (about) whoever the engineer at the time is.”

As an example, Strathdee pointed to the 2024 installation of an accessible dock and boat launch on the Thames River in Milt Dunnell Field. While the UTRCA had installed the same style of dock at Wildwood Conservation Area and similar docks have been installed in other parts of the province with conservation authority approval, Strathdee said the St. Marys dock took two and a half years of engineering and $80,000 before it was finally installed and opened for public use.

Strathdee also suggested the UTRCA’s lack of a 20-year capital plan that would allow municipalities to plan for higher capital costs in the future could be another area for improvement under the province’s plan.

“To me, when I read the (UTRCA’s proposed) resolution (for council to endorse), it just says, ‘No, we like what we have,’ ” Strathdee said. “Well, that’s not good enough for me to support the resolution and I think that’s what came out of the City of London as well; they want consistency and they want change and that’s what the government’s proposing.

“ … This isn’t just about Upper Thames, this is about fairness in terms of the process and it seems like every time we get a new engineer, a new person, the rules change. … Part of what they’re trying to do is important, to standardize regulation. The other part of it; I think we should be focusing on how big (the regional conservation authorities are) and how the governance structure should be.”

While the rest of council expressed concerns about the potential for more downloaded costs onto municipalities as a result of the amalgamation and whether the province’s plan would actually result in efficiencies and savings through the creation of larger, regional conservation authorities and the provincial oversight body, they ultimately agreed with Strathdee about the need to improve the current conservation authority system and opted not to endorse the UTRCA’s recommended resolution in opposition of Bill 68 and the conservation authority amalgamations.