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Published Nov 03, 2025 • 8 minute read
The shoreline at Kelso Beach at Nawash Park in Owen Sound. Photo by Rob Gowan The Sun Times /Postmedia NetworkArticle content
The Ontario government’s plans to make sweeping changes to the province’s conservation authority system has some concerned about the impacts in Grey-Bruce.
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On Friday, the province announced it would soon introduce legislation to create an Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency (OPCA) that will oversee a revamped system in which the province’s current makeup of 36 conservation authorities could be consolidated into seven larger regional bodies.
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The province says the move will “help get shovels in the ground faster on homes and other local infrastructure projects, while strengthening the vital role conservation authorities play in managing watersheds and protecting communities from floods and natural hazards.”
But locally, officials are concerned about how the changes could impact current staff, the involvement of local municipalities and continue to ensure development is properly managed and the area’s land and waterways are protected.
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“It is a big change,” Robert Uhrig, chair of the Grey Sauble Conservation Authority said Monday. “There has been a lot of clawback already on various things the last few years, and you hope this isn’t making things more difficult.
“Obviously with Walkerton, water is too important of a topic to not administer properly so we have got to make sure whatever is done is adequate to meet the needs.”
Uhrig said conservation authorities from across the province participated in a call on Friday along with Minister of Environment, Conservation and Parks Todd McCarthy where they were provided with some early details about the planned changes.
Uhrig said they were assured that the work being done by the local conservation authorities wouldn’t change, and he doesn’t believe there will be changes to staffing at the local level because they are going to continue to need to do the work mandated by the province. McCarthy has indicated that job losses are not anticipated, though some positions could be redeployed.
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Uhrig said the early plans presented had the GSCA joining five other conservation authorities to form a larger regional body.
He said it is his understanding that the larger body will be overseen by one board, which raises concerns about how much municipal representation there will be going forward “seeing as it is the municipalities that are partially funding conservation authorities through their tax base.”
“The different municipalities are paying into the conservation authorities and how is this going to affect the budgeting process, knowing that the funding is there and where it is coming from,” said Uhrig, a Municipality of Meaford councillor.
“These are the things we don’t know yet that are going to have to be worked out and advised on.”
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There are currently five conservation authorities whose watersheds are fully or partially situated in Grey and Bruce counties.
The Grey Sauble Conservation Authority has eight member municipalities and includes the Beaver, Bighead, Pottawatomi, Sauble and Sydenham watersheds and stretches from the Hope Bay area in the north to the Desboro and Williamsford areas in the south and east into the Blue Mountains and Grey Highlands.
The Saugeen Valley Conservation Authority includes 15 municipalities and encompasses the Saugeen, Pine and Penetangore rivers and the Lake Huron shoreline, stretching from the Southampton area in the north, down to the Point Clark, Wingham and Mount Forest areas in the south, and east into the Dundalk and Markdale areas.
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The Maitland Valley Conservation Authority is mostly south of Grey-Bruce, but stretches up into Huron-Kinloss and South Bruce in southern Bruce County. The Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority is mostly in Simcoe County, but includes areas of Grey Highlands and the Blue Mountains in Grey County, along with areas of Dufferin County and Peel Region. And the Grand River Conservation Authority includes some areas of Southgate.
Saugeen Valley Conservation Authority board chair Tom Hutchinson said Monday that the province has indicated that they are very early on in their proposal, but their focus seems to be to cut down on any duplication or overlays of services. Some municipalities, for example, have multiple conservation authorities within their boundaries.
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“At this time our status quo is to continue as a conservation authority to protect our waterways, everybody that lives within the watershed and all those wonderful things that we do behind the scenes,” said Hutchinson. “Right now that is the focus we are taking until such a time they come forward with more.”
Hutchinson, the deputy-mayor of West Grey, said he believes the province is respectful of the work that conservation authorities do in protecting ecosystems, waterways and people.
“They see value in that because there certainly is value,” said Hutchinson. “You take that layer of protection away and they are going to be taking on potential significant future legal liability if people are building right on the river and they shouldn’t be.”
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In announcing the planned changes, which will be introduced in amendments to the Conservation Authorities Act in the coming weeks, the province said it will help deliver on its plan to “protect Ontario by cutting red tape and building an economy that is more competitive, resilient and self-reliant, to help keep workers on the job in the face of tariffs and economic uncertainty.”
In a news release, McCarthy acknowledged that the conservation authorities play a vital role in protecting communities and managing watersheds, but said the system is too fragmented, inconsistent and outdated.
“The new, dedicated agency would work with conservation leaders to ensure faster, more transparent permitting and more front-line services so we can reduce delays to get shovels in the ground sooner, support economic growth and keep our communities safe from floods and other natural hazards,” McCarthy said.
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The province said under the current system the conservation authorities have different policies, standards, fees and levels of staffing and technical capabilities, resulting in unpredictable and inconsistent turnaround times for approvals which create uncertainty and delay for those seeking permits and undermine the abilities of the conservation authorities to protect communities from flood and natural hazards.
The OPCA will provide centralized leadership, efficient governance, strategic direction and oversight, the province said, and free up resources for front-line conservation and ensure faster, more consistent and transparent permitting while supporting conservation authorities in their core mandate of managing watersheds and protecting people and property from natural hazards.
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Among the areas the OPCA will oversee are modernization projects including a single digital permitting platform, and the streamlining and standardizing of service delivery by setting provincewide performance standards and supporting their consistent application.
The province says that under the planned new system, conservation authorities will continue to deliver existing programs like protecting people from property and natural hazards, drinking water source protection and the management of lands and recreational trails.
Ed McGugan, a Huron-Kinloss councillor who is chair of the Maitland Valley Conservation Authority and vice-chair of Conservation Ontario, said Monday that he expects the province will be open to input on the planned changes.
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The government has said it will consult on the proposed consolidation with impacted stakeholders, municipalities, conservation authorities and Indigenous communities. There is to be a posting on the Environmental Registry of Ontario for 45 days inviting review and comments on the proposal.
“They are very committed to consultation and they have made it very clear that we need to talk and I believe that we have a lot of discussions ahead of us,” McGugan said. “The province seems to be very good about saying, we want to hear from you folks.
“I think we can contribute a lot to making whatever changes that are coming forward work really well for the public, for our municipalities and for the environment.”
McGugan said Conservation Ontario has provided input in the past on ways conservation authorities with similar shoreline geography could work together.
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“If you can kind of group conservation authorities together along a consistent shoreline like say Lake Huron here along the west coast, you would get very similar kind of geography, water flows and different things than what you would see in say rocky areas along eastern Lake Ontario,” said McGugan. “We proposed that back in 2018, and now I think there is some work on the provincial government’s part to try to make things work more efficiently.”
McGugan said he has concerns about the scale of the reduction in conservation authorities the province is proposing.
If you go down from 36 to seven you are going to have some pretty big geographic areas, and those geographic areas are going to vary by tremendous amounts and from a technical standpoint you have got concerns about how well that is going to work,” McGugan said. “The second part of that is that as soon as you get to really big geographical areas your governance costs are going to go higher because you have to have people travel a lot more to be able to see what is going on, to be involved with the people. You can’t do everything by Zoom.”
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McGugan was skeptical that a centralized system will result in quicker permit approvals. He said the average turnaround time for permits at MVCA is eight days.
“Eight days is pretty quick. The Ontario Building Code doesn’t require building officials to get back to a building application that quick,” said McGugan. “Consistency across the province is a big deal, but the guidelines and the rules we work to are all decided by the provincial government.”
He said that the interpretation of the guidelines and rules can vary slightly by conservation authority, but that is usually because the geography and water flows are different in each area.
“The shorelines are not the same even in one lake, let alone across the whole province,” McGugan said. “You go out to Kingston and it is mostly granite bedrock with a little bit of topsoil, and that is very different from our part of the country where we have got some of the best farmland around.”
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And McGugan said it will be vital that municipalities continue to play a central role in the conservation authorities, since the majority of the funding for conservation authorities comes from the local municipalities – to the tune of 95 per cent in the case of the MVCA.
“They need a fairly big say in how things are done when they are paying 95 per cent,” McGugan said. “I think the province wants to hear from everybody and wants municipalities involved still, and that is one of the questions that has been asked is how the local municipalities will still be directly involved.”
He said the MVCA has some fantastic municipal partners who are familiar with the local landscape and work closely with local landowners, cottagers and others. He said there are examples across the province of conservation authorities working closely with other partners to protect their residents and he wants to see that continue.
“A big part of our job is protecting people from exactly what happened in Texas last summer,” said McGugan. “If you want to build a house and it looks pretty decent, but we know from previous mapping and work that that is a flood hazard zone or an erosion hazard zone, we don’t want you to wake up in the middle of the night with you and your cottage sliding down an embankment into the lake.
“That is where the people who have had decades of experience are able to protect people’s lives and property.”
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