Province strips NPCA of citizen members
Changes undermine years of work in Niagara, says conservation chair
More than half of NPCA’S board members stand to lose their positions as a result of new provincial legislation described as “a complete evisceration” of conservation authorities across Ontario.
“What a shock,” Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority chair Brenda Johnson said. “I can’t imagine what the public are feeling. They worked so hard to achieve that and they’re on their way to achieving that and then Bill 288 comes along and goes bam.”
She was referring to a part of the province’s omnibus budget bill, approved last week, that makes sweeping changes to the Conservation Authorities Act, stripping powers from the 36 agencies across Ontario, while also requiring that all conservation board members be municipal councillors.
In Niagara, 12 of NPCA’S 21 board members are citizens appointed by their respective municipalities.
Johnson, a Hamilton city councillor, said NPCA has been working diligently on the implementation of recommendations from the 2018 Auditor General’s report that dealt with past mismanagement of the agency.
The report addressed a concern that councillors serving on
the board can sometimes be placed in a difficult position when municipal interests conflict with the interests and responsibilities of conservation authorities, and recommended the NPCA determine the skills and experience needed to fulfil the organization’s mandate.
“We tried vehemently to do that,” Johnson said. “We got all kinds of people on the board that come from all kinds of backgrounds, which is exactly what the AG was asking for.”
She said the new legislation “just threw that into the garburator.”
Johnson said she was participating in an emergency conference call with vice-chair Bruce Mckenzie and chief administrative officer Chandra Sharma Thursday afternoon to discuss AG report and the legislation.
“We need to reach out to
MPPS, and we need to seriously reconsider the legalese,” Johnson said. “Our citizen participation on the board is very invaluable. They’re our eyes and ears to the ground. Any politician will tell you that. They’re the ones that keep us abreast of the things that are happening out there.”
Mckenzie, a community representative for Grimsby, said the board is working to develop a communications strategy to inform residents about the implications of the legislation.
“We’ve already started to bring people up to speed as well as we can, with the information that we have received to date,” he said.
He said a definite time line of when the changes will be implemented has not been presented.
“We’re not waiting to be told.
We’re trying to be proactive and work with others, such as Conservation Ontario.”
That provincial umbrella organization is warning the new legislation could result in decisions being made “that will have negative environmental impacts on water quality, water quantity and the overall health of our environment,” said its general manager, Kim Gavine.
Liz Benneian from A Better Niagara — a community group that successfully sought legal rulings to bring about changes to NPCA following the 2018 municipal election — called the legislation “a complete evisceration of conservation authorities in Ontario.”
“Certainly here in Niagara, we will lose our citizen representatives who we fought for and who bring a wealth of experience to the table,” she said.
Benneian said he sees the loss of the citizen representatives is minor in comparison to the changes to both the conservation and planning acts, “in terms of wiping out any authority that the conservation authorities had for managing the watershed.”
The changes also diminish the powers of conservation authorities to issue permits to developers, giving them the option of appealing any science-based decision to the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks or to the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal.
“Every development application deserves a thorough review, and that means bringing in the expertise that’s available and the conservation authorities are part of that expertise. If you eliminate that expertise that’s coming in to offer their comments on development applications, you’re missing a huge part of making the environment sustainable,” Johnson said.
“I’m blown away.” NPCA board member Ed Smith, a citizen representative from St. Catharines, called the changes “a move in the wrong direction.”
“To arbitrarily say from this point forward (board members) must be elected officials can only do damage to the system of conservation authorities,” Smith said.