Since they resumed sitting the week after Thanksgiving, the Government of Ontario has been throwing a lot at us, and then on Halloween they proposed sweeping changes to conservation authorities in Ontario. If it feels like we’ve been here before we kind of have, and while conservation authorities have weathered provincial meddling before, can they survive it again?

According to Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks Todd McCarthy, the new Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency will provide centralized leadership, efficient governance, strategic direction and oversight of all conservation authorities to - you guessed it! - reduce delays and get shovels in the ground faster! Solving the housing crisis, it seems, passes through barriers being held up by conservation authorities, at least that’s what the government wants us to think.

But no legislation has been tabled, it was just announced in a press release on a busy Friday proposing a massive change to an important sectors whose primary function isn’t actually planning, but flood control. If all this sounds confusing to you, it’s actually just as confusing to the people that live and breathe provincial planning. Why is the provincial government going after conservation authorities again after already committing them to massive changes at least once already.

Phil Pothen, who is Counsel and Ontario Environment Program Manager at the advocacy group Environmental Defence, joins us to talk about his thoughts on these new changes, or at least what we know about these changes so far. He will discuss whether or not there’s room for improvement with the way authorities do planning, if a conservation authority has ever actually scuttled a planning proposal, and what these moves tell us about the Ontario government’s climate change priorities (or lack there of).

So let's talk about what's next for conservation authorities on this week's Guelph Politicast! 

You can learn more about Environmental Defence all its advocacy work on numerous issues, including conservation authorities at their website, or you can follow them on social media on Facebook, Blue Sky, Instagram and YouTube. As of this recording, there’s no announcement about when the Ontario government will table this legislation, but you can read the full press release on the Government of Ontario’s media page here. 

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