Splashed across the website of nearly every conservation authority in Ontario is a warning about low water levels.
For nearly 80 years, the provincial agencies have been tasked with protecting public health and safety related to the province’s watersheds. That means safeguarding local drinking water sources and working to reduce the risks from natural hazards like flooding, erosion and drought. As Ontario’s population has grown, they have also been responsible for regulating development to minimize those risks, issuing permits only to those who pay attention to sustainable construction and growth.
Over the last six years, the Doug Ford government has passed four bills that have drastically changed the rules governing the 36 conservation authorities’ ability to do this job — all to speed up development. Those changes have included reducing conservation authorities’ influence over development, weakening their ability to protect water quality and wetlands and having their decisions be overruled by the overseeing minister.
Each change has come with an argument of efficiency, and since then, nearly all conservation authorities have publicly reported permits are being reviewed faster. Still, some 19 months after the last set of changes was imposed, the government has delivered yet another watershed change: it is proposing to consolidate 36 agencies into seven.
On Oct. 31, Environment Minister Todd McCarthy said individual conservation authorities were “operating largely on their own, with fragmented and outdated data systems and a patchwork of standards and service delivery.” This, he said, had led to “unpredictable and inconsistent turnaround times” for development permit approvals.
“This is holding back Ontario,” he said.
Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks Todd McCarthy says Ontario’s conservation authorities are delivering “unpredictable and inconsistent” results. But amalgamating them could make the agencies less efficient, critics say. Photo: Todd McCarthy / X
“Obviously, there’s a fair bit of whiplash or scar tissue, pick your metaphor,” one conservation authority official from northern Ontario said. The Narwhal spoke with 12 people at 12 authorities for this story, many of whom asked to keep their names confidential for fear of retribution from the government.
According to most of the sources, the threat to consolidate conservation authorities has been “the worst-kept secret” for a long time. It’s been talked about since this government took office, especially as Ford has previously moved to consolidate health care, and is rumoured to be planning the same for school boards. The consistent emphasis on efficiency and rapid development has kept conservation authorities in the crosshairs, as they strived to meet the government pressures without losing focus on their mandate to preserve Ontario’s watersheds and protect the public.
Currently, 26 out of 36 conservation authorities have staff closely monitoring worryingly low water levels in rivers and lakes across the province, with some declaring near-drought conditions brought on by a lack of rain. They’re doing this while they also grapple with the impacts of consolidation.
Consolidation of conservation authorities would be ‘a drastic shift’ that may ‘slow approvals, create confusion’
Despite assurances from McCarthy that they will all still be able to do this core job, there is deep skepticism among conservation authorities based on a historically fraught relationship and a litany of recent Progressive Conservative policies that have endangered Ontario’s water, forests and land. In 2023, two watchdog reports on the Greenbelt scandal found the Ford government had prioritized developer requests over environmental and technical considerations.
“The government is right to want a conservation authority system that is more consistent, transparent and efficient, especially when it comes to supporting housing and economic growth,” Jonathan Scott, a councillor for the town of Bradford West Gwillimbury and chair of the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority board, told The Narwhal. “There may be room for targeted, sensible consolidation in Ontario’s conservation system, but moving from 36 authorities to just seven would be a drastic shift.”
Scott said the local environmental expertise in each individual authority is essential. “A merger of that scale could create a larger, more distant bureaucracy that is less responsive to local municipalities, developers and farmers — exactly the people who need timely service and value having a local municipal official or trusted member of staff they can call directly,” he said.
“Losing that connection could slow approvals, create confusion and ultimately have the opposite effect of what the government intends.”
Ontario currently has 36 conservation authorities, most of which are located in the province’s southern region. Map: Conservation Ontario
The Ford government’s proposed amalgamation will leave the province with seven regional conservation authorities instead. Map: Government of Ontario
The government’s proposal to consolidate conservation authorities has been posted on the Environmental Registry of Ontario for public feedback until Dec. 22. It includes three parts: create a central agency to manage conservation authorities, consult on the boundaries and governance structures of the newly proposed seven regional agencies and then create said agencies by spring 2026. Each proposal has sparked several concerns for conservation authority staff who are in the process of consulting with their municipalities and partners.
As has been the case since June 2024, no one from the Ontario Ministry of Environment responded to questions from The Narwhal.
Consolidating conservation authorities means overseeing much larger and more complicated watersheds
Ford has been consistently touting the need for “made-in-Ontario” solutions to the province’s issues: conservation authorities are an example of just that. They were created by a Progressive Conservative government in 1946 in response to deforestation. They were strengthened to prevent repeats of the extreme flooding caused by Hurricane Hazel in 1954. While they were tasked with acquiring land for conservation and recreation, their main job has always been monitoring waterways for potential deadly floods, including by regulating development near waterways and wetlands, in flood plains and on Great Lakes shorelines.
Today, all but five of the 36 conservation authorities are in heavily developed southern Ontario.
Each authority was created to manage its own watershed, an area of land that drains all the streams and rainfall into a lake, bay or river. The government’s proposal to create seven conservation authorities is based only on the Great Lakes watersheds: Lake Erie, Lake Huron-Superior, Lake Ontario, divided into western, central and eastern and the St. Lawrence River.
“It’s not a reduction; it’s a consolidation and an amalgamation, which means that all of the communities currently served by conservation authorities will continue to be served by conservation authorities,” Minister McCarthy said on Oct. 31. He repeatedly promised there will be no layoffs in this new structure, but managers will be redeployed as frontline staff.
Among other responsibilities, Ontario’s conservation authorities are tasked with monitoring waterways for potential flood risk. Critics of the government’s consolidation plan say the move will erase the localized knowledge that informs the agencies’ work. Photo: Geoff Robins / The Canadian Press
Conservation authorities have consolidated before. The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority was once four authorities, merged in 1957 to better manage a larger floodplain. Conservation Sudbury and Conservation Halton are both the result of similar mergers.
Almost all of these consolidations were local decisions made by municipal governments based on specific watershed or development concerns. Earlier this year, municipalities dismissed the idea of merging the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority with Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority, saying it would create more costs and less localized service.
“Geography has always dictated policy,” an eastern Ontario official said. “I’m not sure that’s what’s happening now.”
Every authority oversees a different kind of environment, even if they seem nearby on a map. Water moves differently through varying landscapes and development rates, and the potential effects of flooding on the environment also vary based on geography.
Take the proposed Huron-Superior conservation authority. It would bring together seven authorities spanning roughly 1,400 kilometres and 78 municipalities from Thunder Bay, on Lake Superior through Bruce, Grey and Dufferin Counties, Simcoe County, York Region, Kawartha Lakes and Durham Region. The natural systems that feed Lake Huron, Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay differ significantly from those along the north shore of Lake Superior. Each has distinct geology, land use and flood-risk patterns.
“It’s no joke to say that large of a region is roughly the size of Switzerland, with very different conditions and needs,” Scott said. “The costs of integrating governance, technology and operations across such a vast area could easily outweigh any savings, while adding complexity and distance.”
Carl Jorgensen, general manager of Conservation Sudbury, said that in northern Ontario, conservation authorities are far from each other. That makes sharing resources extremely challenging.
“The work we do is very localized,” he said. “The government has provided so little so far on how this is actually going to be implemented; it’s really hard to figure out how these new regional conservation authorities will work.”
“But assuming local offices remain, with staff who can support and perform that frontline work efficiently, there’s no advantage to reducing 36 to seven.”
McCarthy insists that not much will change. “Conservation authorities will continue to deliver the programs and the services that they deliver today,” he said on Oct. 31.
“Their mandate is not changing. The areas served by conservation authorities are not changing. Their funding is not changing. In fact, they will be better equipped than ever before to meet the changing needs of our communities.”
Conservation authority consolidation threatens their ‘localized approach, localized expertise’
Conservation authorities are governed by provincial law but they are created, funded and managed by municipal governments. Local elected municipal officials sit on the boards to oversee their work and budgets, the majority of which is paid by municipal taxes. Sometimes, municipalities send money to more than one authority because watershed boundaries differ from city or town limits.
“We’re not created equal,” one official from central Ontario told The Narwhal. Larger authorities have more money and more staff. “The system can be kind of dysfunctional and needs a shakeup, but the right kind of shakeup that gives all of us the resources we need to do the important work we do.”
Angela Coleman, executive director of Conservation Ontario, told The Narwhal she’s concerned that consolidation could alter longstanding relationships, something she hopes the advocacy organization can share during the consultation process.
“One of the main drivers that we’re hearing is that municipalities provide funding through their levies, and because of that, representation and decision-making on conservation authority boards must be carefully structured to reflect those financial contributions,” she said.
Conservation authorities are funded by municipalities and work closely with them to regulate urban development. Karen Nesbitt, policy director for the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, told The Narwhal the amalgamation could “weaken local municipal leaders’ voice” over environmental protection in their communities. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal
There is little in the government’s proposal about what the governing boards of amalgamated conservation authorities would look like. But those doing math in their heads are worried about the creation of extremely large boards made up of twice the number of municipal officials currently appointed. Karen Nesbitt, policy director for the Association of Municipalities Ontario, told The Narwhal this would effectively “weaken local municipal leaders’ voice, leading to a major loss of local control over conservation and environmental protection in communities.”
In an email to The Narwhal, Nesbitt said there is general support for streamlining and improving services. “However, we are seriously concerned about how this is being carried out,” she said. “The government is making major changes, but it is not providing any new, ongoing provincial funding to run conservation authorities effectively. Worse, this funding gap is being made harder to manage because the province is taking these steps simultaneously.”
Staff also worry about a reduced level of on-the-ground services. “We are the last vestiges of the Ontario Ministry of Environment,” an official from western Ontario said. “We’re the only ones still on the ground, accountable to our communities and serving them with science-based work. After consolidation, I don’t know how we can keep doing that.”
A new provincial agency will centralize decision-making and oversight over conservation authorities
The consolidation will come via the Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency, a new government organization that will “provide centralized leadership, efficient governance, strategic direction and oversight of Ontario’s conservation authorities.”
That includes helping to “streamline and standardize service delivery” and ensure the “consistent application of provincial standards” for flood risk assessment and management. The agency will also help update floodplain mapping and dam infrastructure and develop a “single, digital permitting platform.”
But while the goals of the agency make sense on paper, conservation authority staff are questioning why consolidation is needed in addition to that. Many already collaborate extensively through shared programs, technical partnerships and joint projects, especially in remote and rural Ontario, where resources are limited.
“If it were only about efficiency, mandate what hardware and software we should use, give us the money for it, impose certain standards on this and be done with it,” an eastern Ontario authority official said. “But this goes so much further than that. It’s not about efficiency; it’s about removing power from the communities and imposing control from above.”
“There is no equivalent model in Ontario where people are being told they have to pay for a provincial agency to oversee them,” the official continued. “It’s bizarre … good technology can’t make up for bad governance.”
Scott agreed. “If governance becomes more centralized under a provincial agency while local boards lose control, we could end up with a system where municipal dollars are being spent under provincial direction without municipal oversight,” he said. “That would be a fundamental change to how Ontario’s watershed management system has operated for nearly eighty years — and not, in my view, a change for the better.”
