Don’t Hesitate To Have Your Say Over How Ontario’s Conservation Authorities Should Be Governed

By John Bacher

From now until October 19^th , the Province of Ontario is engaged in an important public consultation concerning the governance, funding, and roles and responsibilities of Ontario’s Conservation Authorities.

A Trail curling through the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority’s Balls Falls Conservation Park

This is an important matter since Conservation Authorities, including the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority, have a very important role to play given where they exist – in the formerly deforested regions south of the Canadian Shield.

Just as doctors and mental health and other care workers seek to safeguard the health of human populations, Conservation Authorities are responsible for the wellbeing of our watershed-based ecosystems. In comparison however, Conservation Authorities have tiny budgets.

The discussion paper for the province’s review of Conservation Authorities gives a good explanation of why they were created through the passage of the Conservation Authorities Act of 1946. It notes how the passage of the Act was “in response to extensive flooding, erosion, deforestation and soil loss resulting from poor land, water and forestry management practices in prior decades.”

The paper also notes that they have established “a successful legacy of resource stewardship and an impressive record of protecting people, property and communities from water-related natural hazards (eg. flooding, drought, erosion, etc.)”

Few are aware of the difficult struggle that led to the passage of the Conservation Authorities Act. It emerged as a result of a small but highly dedicated group of conservationists, led by the late Chief Forester of Ontario, Edmund Zavitz, to increase forest cover in southern Ontario. What galvanized these conservationists into action was the Thames River flood of 1938, which swamped a quarter of the City of London, Ontario.

To persuade the Ontario government to pass the Conservation Authority Act, Zavitz’s band of conservationists had to resort to strange, but effective tactics. What proved critical was a creation of Men of the Trees, an organization composed primarily of veterans of the First World War.

Men of the Trees was inspired by a British-based organization with origins in Africa, created as a result of concerns over the spread of the Sahara Desert. It involved massive parades of army veterans that culminated in tree planting ceremonies, including one attended by Britain’s King George VI.

Although passed into law in 1946, the creation of a watershed-based Conservation Authorities required the support of local municipal governments and overcoming the hostility of landowners critical of any regulation of their property rights.

The wonders achieved by Conservation Authorities across the province included their role in tripling forest cover in Southern Ontario to its current level of 23 percent.

In the mid-1980s, Conservation Authorities began to find themselves undermined in their ability to carry out their mandates by provincial funding cuts and by governance changes brought in as part of then-Ontario Premier Mike Harris’s so-called ‘Common Sense Revolution. This all happened with minimal public consultation and as part of an Omnibus Bill affecting other programs and bodies (such as hospital boards) in the province that had nothing to do with conservation.

Previous to the Harris’s nonsense revolution, the province played a stronger role in the governance of Conservation Authorities. For example, the province appointed the chair of all Conservation Authorities and it also appointed five members of their governing boards. This basic provision of the Conservation Authorities Act was swept away in late night legislative sessions marred by closure motions.

The need for provincial involvement in Conservation Authority boards was explained to me by the late Mel Swart who was a long-time provincial NDP representative for the former Riding of Welland, and one of the men who led the campaign to form the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority (NPCA). The provincially appointed chair of the NPCA was Swart’s close friend Francis Goldring, who with him led the campaign for its creation.

There was so much landowner hostility to his achieving the NPCA that Goldring could not be appointed from where he lived in Welland County. He owned his appointment instead to Moulton Township, in Haldimand County.

I got training in the value of provincial appointees to Conservation Authority boards through working with a friend aand fellow peace activist, Brian Wiles-Heap. He assisted the Iroquois Confederacy on such issues as using their land claim as a method to foster planting buffer strips of trees along streams to reduce pollution. The only people on the Grand River Conservation Authority board who assisted his efforts were the provincially appointed members.

Currently, much of the controversy at the NPCA, including logging on fragile sites such as the Wainfleet Wetlands, can be seen as a consequence of the decline of provincial involvement on its board.

The current public consultation process offers people who care about the environment an opportunity to urge the undoing of some of the worst damage of Harris’ nonsense revolution. It also provides a chance to add a requirement for Native representation on Conservation Authority boards to ensure that these communities that have been damaged by past ecological abuses, can have a direct say around the board table.

Review the current Ontario Conservation Authorities Act by clicking on http://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90c27 .

There are three ways that the public can have input into the province’s Conservation Authority Act Review by the October 19^th deadline.   One is the Survey Moneky which you can access by clicking on – www.surveymonkey.com/s/caactdiscussionpaper ..… or by the Environmental Bill of Rights Registry search for EBR registry number 012-4590 on website www.ontario.ca/EBR or, most simply, by sending your comments via email to mnrwaterpolicy@ontario.ca .

John Bacher is a veteran conservationist in Niagara, Ontario and  long-time member of the citizen group, Preservation of Agricultural Lands Society. A contributor of posts to Niagara At Large, his most recent book is called ‘Two Billion Trees and Counting – The Legacy of Edmund Zavitz’,

Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary for and from the greater bi-national Niagara region.

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