Not seeing the forest for the trees

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Ontario’s 36 conservation authorities are under fire by a provincial government that may not fully grasp the authorities’ scope of operations, nor their involvement in stewardship.

They have been ordered by Environment and Conservation Minister Jeff Yurek to “wind down” programs not related to their “core mandates”, although it would appear the ministry isn’t fully aware of some of those programs nor how they are funded.

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Not seeing the forest for the trees Back to video

A letter from Yurek was sent to the authorities on Aug. 16. They were told to “re-focus their efforts on the delivery of programs and services related to their core mandate.”

Specifically, Yurek asked that those programs and services be related to only five issues: risk of natural hazards; conservation and management of land owned or controlled by conservation authorities; drinking water source protection; protection of watersheds; and other programs or services as prescribed by provincial regulation.

But there are some programs that authorities are involved in that could fall under any of these issues but aren’t specifically funded by the province.

Among them are tree-planting programs, soil erosion programs, the planting of windbreaks and outdoor education programs.

Most are funded by grants, by municipal partners, or by private donors. And although the argument could be made that outdoor education programs could be dropped without any immediate impact to the authorities’ mandate, initiatives that take on the challenge of windbreaks, tree planting and soil erosion are part-and-parcel of the authorities’ legislated mandate to protect watersheds, manage the properties placed under their stewardship, and lower the possibility of natural hazards.

Most everyone realizes the province has a financial problem. Its debt is staggering and unsustainable, and despite effort by the Ford government, Ontarians are probably going to be living with budget deficits for quite some time.

But to order conservation authorities to close activities that aren’t specifically or directly funded by the provincial government makes little sense. Conservation authorities have over several decades of operation cultivated valuable partnerships with municipalities, landowners and other private citizens. Some of the lands these authorities manage were entrusted by private landowners. The projects the authorities take on that involve issues of reforestation and soil erosion often involve partners from the agricultural community.

In short, conservation authorities have become trusted agencies of stewardship. They’ve accomplished that with public money, but they’ve also done that with private money and goodwill.

Yurek needs to hold consultations to determine exactly how the conservation authorities’ core mandate might be negatively impacted by what appears to be an uninformed directive from his ministry.

– Peter Epp