Province of Ontario to exercise power over Conservation Authorities

Jeff Green | Dec 09, 2020

The Ford government is changing the way planning decisions are made, providing a way for their own ministry to override an approach that protects the long-term health of local watersheds.

The changes are included in “The COVID Recovery Act” in Schedule 6.

Schedule 6 changes the decades old relationship between Conservation Authorities and the municipalities that they work with. Some of the changes seem minor, but taken as a package, it becomes clear that they make it easier for developers to secure approval for projects, even projects that might have an impact on the long term health and viability of wetlands.

Schedule 6 also includes a provision that allows the Ontario Ministry of the Environment to approve any development they see fit to approve, regardless of any of the environmental issues that are brought forward by Conservation Authorities or municipalities themselves.

The changes are being brought about to make it easier for some large-scale developments to occur in and around urban centres, where development pressures are extreme, but they can, and eventually will, have impacts in more rural settings.

Just about every property in Frontenac County and Addington Highlands is located close to or on some sort of wetland habitat. We are not known as the Land O' Lakes for nothing. This is also one of the very few regions in Southern Ontario that has maintained some wilderness areas. Even our crowded lakes are nothing like the lakes in the Kawartha or the Muskoka regions. And, since there are no municipal sewage systems in our region, and the only municipal water system in 'downtown' Sydenham, there are impacts on the water table and groundwater that come with every single building project.

Development in our region has been ramping up slowly over the last few years, and it seems that the exodus from urban areas that has come with COVID-19 has accelerated that process considerably.

Conservation Authorities are the only institutions in Ontario whose jurisdiction and mission are based entirely on the integrity of the watersheds where they operate, providing a layer of protection for the future well-being of everyone who is lucky enough to own property here now, and everyone who will own property in the future.

Conservation Authorities (CAs) work with municipalities, who govern them and fund them. Together with CAs, municipalities have been trying to develop a ruled based process for the approval of planning and development proposals.

This process is still a work in progress, and disputes between developers and neighboring property owners are common, leaving municipal politicians in the middle at times, as we have seen recently at Johnston's Point and the hamlet of Hartington recently in South Frontenac, and Ardoch Lake in North Frontenac, where it took years to work through the process. But concerted efforts are being made to make for a clearer process for developers while protecting the environment, since all of us, current residents, developers and the people who will eventually purchase new properties, all have to live together in the future.

Introducing a ministerial over-ride makes a mockery of  all those efforts. It allows the Provincial government, a body that is not at all connected to our local watersheds or communities, to override a rules based process with an entirely political one, the will of the party in power at Queen's Park.

And while the current process is subject to appeal, ministerial over-rides will be final.

The health of our relatively unscathed environment is less secure under these changes.