‘Death knell for watersheds’: Ford set to shrink conservation authorities, plunge Ontario into chaos

When Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks were discovered, they revealed how he saw the one element responsible for all that fascinated his limitless genius: “Water is the driving force of all nature.”

It nourishes food systems and sustains every living being. It takes shapes and forms that mystify and bewilder us.

For Canadian microbiologist Andrea Kirkwood, its sheer force has been a lifelong focus. 

She has spent decades studying how urbanization impacts freshwater ecosystems, advocating for their protection and working alongside several conservation authorities.

Kirkwood’s career, rooted in both research and advocacy, has made her one of Ontario’s most respected voices in conservation, which led her to share the stage with four other long-time conservation leaders to receive the 2025 Latornell Leadership Award on November 3, recognizing their contributions to Ontario’s conservation movement at a time when “the province has pretty much gutted [the] Conservation Authority Act”.

On November 3, Deborah Martin-Downs, Former Chief Administrative Officer, Credit Valley Conservation, Barbara Veale, Former Director, Planning and Watershed Management, Conservation Halton, Andrea Kirkwood, Professor of Aquatic Ecology, Ontario Tech University, Leora Berman, Founder and Chief Operating Officer, The Land Between, and Rick Portiss, Former Senior Manager, Aquatic Monitoring & Research, Toronto and Region Conservation Authority were honoured for their lifelong conservation efforts with the Latornell Leadership Award.

(Conservation Ontario)

The celebration came amid mounting uncertainty, and “muted discussions” about major changes announced by the Doug Ford government to conservation authorities in the province.

On October 31, the province announced plans to amalgamate its 36 conservation authorities into seven regional bodies under a new centralized agency called the Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency (OPCA) a decision PC officials claim is meant to speed up housing and infrastructure projects. Alarm has spread quickly among environmental scientists, municipal leaders and legal experts who warn the move could dismantle decades of watershed protection.

“Conservation authorities play a vital role in protecting our communities and managing our watersheds, but the system has become too fragmented, inconsistent and outdated,” environment, conservation and parks minister Todd McCarthy said during the announcement, arguing that varying standards and policies among the 36 conservation authorities have created “unpredictable” turnaround times for developers and municipalities.

McCarthy claimed the consolidation “will ensure faster, more transparent permitting and more front-line services, so that we can reduce delays to get shovels in the ground sooner, so that we can support economic growth and so that we can keep our community safe from floods and other natural hazards.” This is the latest in a long line of legislative changes the PCs have introduced since 2018 that have completely rewritten how land use planning is done in Ontario and gutted environmental protections—all in the name of accelerating housing development. Yet, last year, housing starts reached the lowest they have been in Ontario at any point in the last decade.

Compounding the strain on the housing system, the federal government’s latest budget eliminated the underused housing tax, a one-percent levy on vacant or underutilized homes introduced in January 2022, a move critics warn could further fuel the housing crisis.

Ontario’s modern conservation authorities were created after Hurricane Hazel struck Toronto in 1954, a storm that dumped nearly 30 cm of rain, killed 81 people, destroyed bridges, and caused $1.3 billion in property damage (using today’s dollar). 

To prevent future disasters, the Province gave these authorities the power to buy land, restrict construction on floodplains, and manage dams, reservoirs and channels to control floodwaters — powers that are now being systematically butchered, one piece of legislation at a time.

The legislation is expected to be tabled in the upcoming weeks and the new structure is expected to roll out between late 2026 and into 2027, but for Whitelaw Twining lawyer Laura Bowman, “it appears to be another attack on conservation authorities.”

“There's clearly been a mentality with this particular government that conservation authorities had too much power and that they need to be kept in line,” Bowman told The Pointer. 

“It's hard to see this as a benign administrative change when it's happening in that broader context.”

“No one would argue that we need housing, no one would argue that the Conservation Authority system needs some modernization, especially when it comes to administrative aspects…However, the amalgamation is what's very worrying,” Kirkwood told The Pointer.

“What is ultimately being proposed is just another death knell to CA (conservation authority) mandates and functions by the provincial government.”

Bowman says, “at this point, it's not clear exactly how this will play out, but it's certainly concerning at the level that conservation authorities were originally set up to govern on a watershed basis.”

Both Kirkwood and Bowman point to the Doug Ford government’s track record to understand the implications of this change.

When the Ford government passed Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act, in November 2022, it promised to supercharge housing construction and cut through what it called “red tape” by stripping Ontario’s Conservation Authorities (CAs) of many of their core powers. It was labelled as "ecological insanity” by prominent environment advocates. 

Bill 23 removed their ability to block developments that threaten rivers, wetlands, and floodplains, prohibiting them from considering pollution, conservation, or natural heritage when issuing permits. CAs were tasked with identifying “surplus land” they own or manage by December 31, 2024, that could be repurposed for housing development, an effort that raised concerns over the potential risk to protected areas.

The legislation also barred them from partnering with municipalities to review planning proposals, effectively silencing the scientific voices that once helped local governments make safe, sustainable land-use decisions.

This was on top of Bill 229, dubbed the Protect, Support and Recover from COVID-19 Act, which included amendments to the Conservation Authorities Act, and received Royal Assent on December 8, 2020. 

One of the amendments allowed the government to use Ministerial Zoning Orders to force conservation authorities to approve developments, even if they had concerns about flooding risks, while another provision required conservation authorities to enter into agreements with developers, allowing them to pay a fee in exchange for the destruction of endangered species habitats.

Angela Coleman, general manager of Conservation Ontario, warned the Ford government that separating environmental protection from land-use planning would have dangerous consequences. 

“It’s not the average day Conservation Authorities prepare for. We are planning for the 1:100 year flood, or larger storm. It’s the day the waters rise, when the roads are underwater, and the emergency vehicles must rescue people from their homes,” Coleman said during a Standing Committee session on Heritage, Infrastructure, and Cultural Policy while discussing Bill 23.

The PCs rejected claims that Bill 23 undermined conservation authorities, but since receiving royal assent, two things have become clear:

1. Flooding has worsened across Ontario, driving insurance premiums up and coverage down: A new Rates.ca report found that a single water damage claim can increase home insurance costs by an average of $376 a year, a 19 percent jump. “Repairing a flooded basement costs at least $43,000 out of pocket, with weather-related repair costs surging 485 percent since 2019,” the report said. Mississauga is now the sixth most expensive city for home insurance in the Greater Toronto Area, with areas like Port Credit and Cooksville bearing much of the risk.
2. Housing crisis has not been solved: The Ford government recently updated Ontario’s housing tracker for the first time in eight months, revealing that all three Peel Region cities missed their new-home targets, with first-quarter 2025 housing starts at their lowest since 2009 and the province's six-month average falling to a decade low, pushing the PCs further from their goal of 1.5 million new homes by 2031.

Ontario ranks third among Canadian provinces with a decline in housing starts.

(CMHC)

All three municipalities in the region of Peel are not on track to meet their housing goals set forth by the Progressive Conservative government.

(Anushka Yadav/The Pointer, Data: Ontario housing tracker)

“It’s hard to see this as a benign administrative change when it’s happening in that context,” Bowman said. 

“There’s also a real concern this could open the door to selling off conservation lands for development, similar to the government’s approach to the Greenbelt and school board lands.”

She stressed that conservation authorities bring local expertise, develop sub-watershed plans, and have staff with in-depth knowledge of their areas. 

“Amalgamating them risks diluting that local knowledge. While there may be some administrative duplication, development regulations have already been standardized and streamlined, so it’s not clear why further consolidation is necessary,” Bowman added.

The province insists the changes won’t lead to job cuts, but employees in senior positions could be reassigned to front-line roles, a claim Kirkwood called “comical.”

“Imagine working for a CA for 20 years, building your expertise, and being punished and told you’re now taking an entry-level job,” she said. 

“That’s not a promotion…Does that mean demotions, a pay cut? Is that just a way to try to drive attrition for people to leave?”

Bowman also does not “really understand how you could operationalize this without any job losses,” when in the past the PC government has backtracked on its promises.

In 2019, when conservation authorities were already underfunded, sharing just $7.4 million among 36 CAs, Ford cut their provincial funding in half, despite having promised that “the province is 100 percent behind them.”

Credit Valley Conservation (CVC), which just celebrated 70 years of managing flood risk, parks, education, and wildlife, has played a critical role in shaping the Region of Peel’s green spaces and environmental stewardship.

Peel Region encompasses five major watersheds and numerous smaller sub-watersheds, managed by three conservation authorities namely Credit Valley Conservation, Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, and Halton.

(TOP: Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, Bottom: Region of Peel)

In a statement shared with The Pointer, CVC’s chief administrative officer Terri LeRoux emphasized that the province’s “made-in-Ontario,” watershed-based management model remains one of the province’s most effective tools for protecting both “public health and safety from natural hazards like flooding”.

LeRoux added that CVC will be reviewing the proposed framework in collaboration with Conservation Ontario, other conservation authorities, and municipal partners to provide feedback during the consultation period.

Ontario’s environment, conservation and parks minister Todd McCarthy with chief conservation officer Hassaan Basit announcing the “bold changes” to the province’s conservation authorities. “The Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency will work with conservation authorities to reduce duplication, implement consistent processes and standards, and leverage shared technology and other resources,” Basit said in a statement. “With better tools and more resources for front-line staff, local conservation authorities will have a greater ability to use technical data, research and analysis to make decisions, operate with greater consistency and transparency, and deliver faster services to municipalities, residents and permit applicants.”

(Top: Todd McCarthy/X, Bottom: Some reactions from Ontarians to McCarthy’s social media post)

Kirkwood says many of the things mentioned in the province’s press statement seem like “good modernizations of the system,” but “the devil is in the details”.

Kirkwood believes the amalgamation will undermine one of Ontario’s greatest environmental innovations: managing land and water based on natural watershed boundaries, not political ones.

“These conservation authorities were intentionally allocated based on watershed boundaries…that’s what makes Ontario’s model the envy of the world,” she said.

She criticized the government’s portrayal of the system as fragmented — “disingenuous.”

“That’s a dishonest way of framing CAs…making it seem like they're bumbling and inefficient and that's not the truth,” Kirkwood told The Pointer.

“There’s no real difficulty for municipalities like Durham Region that deal with multiple conservation authorities. They’ve worked together effectively for decades. This feels like a made-up problem for a solution that no one's asked for, except for the province.”

The risk, she says, is that a “top-down approach” will strip local authorities of their autonomy, replacing collaboration with political directives that prioritize development over conservation.

“It might allow development to go through with very little consultation at the local level,” Kirkwood warned.

“I approach this from the perspective of water quality, since urbanization has significant negative impacts on the health of our rivers and lakes. Beyond that, there’s a real concern about flood risks and climate change. Allowing development in areas prone to flooding could put homeowners at risk, and people rely on their government to ensure that such development isn’t permitted.”

Quoting Hurricane Hazel as a historical example of why watershed-based management is critical for protecting lives and property, she expressed concern that amalgamation would dilute local expertise and disrupt the relationships that make conservation authorities effective.

“Managing at a watershed scale makes far more sense than adhering to political boundaries, especially when considering flood prevention and sustainable development,” Kirkwood said.

A tangible example of this principle in action is Rattray Marsh in Mississauga, which was once almost lost to development over 60 years ago.

After the death of Colonel James Halliday Rattray, the estate that bore his name was proposed to be converted into a private yacht club. 

Dr. Ruth Hussey was known as the “guardian angel” of the Rattray Marsh.

(Credit Valley Conservation)

But under the leadership of Dr. Ruth Hussey, a dedicated group of citizens formed the Rattray Marsh Preservation Committee, which successfully rallied to protect the area, and in 1973, Credit Valley Conservation (CVC), with the support of the newly formed City of Mississauga, acquired the environmentally sensitive lands, establishing Rattray Marsh Conservation Area.

Today, the marsh remains a rare lakefront coastal wetland along Lake Ontario, protected in perpetuity. It is recognized as a Provincially Significant Wetland, an Area of Natural and Scientific Interest, and an Environmentally Significant Area. 

The Rattray Marsh’s unique shingle bar beach, a rare feature along western Lake Ontario, intersects with wetlands, mature forest, and upland slopes to create a mosaic of habitats that support hundreds of species of plants, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and fish.

(Credit Valley Conservation)

The marsh serves as a biodiversity hotspot, a critical stopover for migratory birds, a transition zone between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, and provides natural climate resilience by buffering storm surges, high lake levels, and shoreline erosion, and functions as a natural filter improving water quality in the Credit River Watershed.

At an environmental action committee meeting on November 3, Mississauga ward 2 councillor Alvin Tedjo, said those protections could be at risk since Credit Valley Conservation (CVC), Conservation Halton, Hamilton Conservation Authority and Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority would probably be merged into a “Mega West Lake Ontario Conservation Authority”.

“This is a massive change,” Tedjo said in a social media video.

“These seven regions would be enormous, merging everything in our area, from Mississauga all the way to Niagara Falls. Now we have a close working relationship with the CVC, and there are local experts who work and live in our region. How sure are we that politicians from Hamilton or Niagara Falls are going to understand the challenges that we face right here in Mississauga? How are you going to represent our residents and ensure that the right flood mitigation projects get funded in our neighbourhoods?”

Credit Valley Conservation’s 2023 Watershed Report Card shows troubling trends across the Credit River watershed, with surface and groundwater quality in Brampton, Mississauga, and Halton rated poor to very poor. Forest conditions in the urbanized lower watershed also received fair to very poor grades, with limited interior habitat threatening species sensitive to noise, light, and encroachment. “As Ontario grows and climate change exerts increasing pressure on communities, identifying and understanding the value of natural corridors and increased tree covering have never been more important,” Edward McDonnell, CEO of the Greenbelt Foundation said.

(Credit Valley Conservation)

Tedjo, who sits on the boards of CVC and Conservation Halton, shared that both the CAs were caught off guard by the announcement, confirming there had been no consultation with conservation authorities prior to the provincial release.

If the legislation passes, how long would it take for Ontarians to notice changes in their water and their surrounding environment?

“It probably wouldn’t take long,” Kirkwood warns. 

“The science is pretty clear. When unfettered development happens without proper mitigation for flooding and environmental impacts, water quality degrades quickly. It’s a physical process…streams and rivers just become dirtier.”

She notes that while mitigation strategies like stormwater ponds exist, which she has been studying, they are not substitutes for wetlands and other sensitive areas that naturally absorb stormwater. 

“There’s this notion that we have a ‘fix’ for the problem, but we know there will be downstream impacts. Once environmentally sensitive or flood-prone areas are bulldozed for development, it’s like the genie is out of the bottle — very difficult and costly to restore. That’s why there’s so much pushback on this legislation: preventing pollution and flooding in the first place is far cheaper and more effective than trying to fix it afterward.”

On September 25, Ontario Nature sent a letter to Minister Jill Dunlop urging stronger action to reduce flooding across Ontario, emphasizing that wetlands act as natural sponges that absorb rain and snowmelt to prevent downstream flooding and drought impacts, and calling for restored Conservation Authority roles, a provincial flood risk map, and greater support for wetland conservation as a cost-effective, climate-resilient solution.

Within watersheds, wetlands act like natural sponges, absorbing large amounts of rainwater and snowmelt during wet periods and slowly releasing it over time, a process that helps reduce downstream flooding and maintain streamflow during droughts. Southern Ontario lost about 18,000 hectares of wetlands from 2000 to 2020, equivalent to over 114,000 NHL hockey rinks or over ten times the size of Downtown Toronto. Ontario Nature warns that most municipalities in Ontario are unable to map urban flood risk areas due to a lack of data, expertise and funding.

(Rosa Fragomeni/Ontario Nature)

The letter points to the Auditor General’s 2022 report identifying wetland conservation as a key strategy for reducing urban flood risk, warning that further loss of wetlands to urbanization, infrastructure, or agriculture will only heighten future flooding, an alarming reality already evident in Southern Ontario, where over 70 percent of original wetlands have been lost, and in the Greater Toronto Area and southwestern Ontario, where losses exceed 85 percent, coinciding with most of the province’s urban floods between 2010 and 2020.

Ontario Nature recommended creating a provincial flood risk map, funding municipalities to assess natural assets and guide sustainable land use, restoring Conservation Authorities’ mandates and resources, supporting Indigenous communities and municipalities in conserving wetlands, and increasing public awareness of wetlands’ vital role in mitigating floods and building climate resilience.

As Ontario moves ahead with consultations on the OPCA and its consolidation plan, conservationists, lawyers, and scientists are watching closely for the fine print. Whether the new agency truly “protects communities,” as the province promises, or quietly opens the floodgates to unchecked development, may depend on how loudly the public demands transparency before it’s too late.

Kirkwood acknowledges the public, after years of rapid policy changes and scandals, might be too exhausted to respond but she remains hopeful.

“The government is flooding the zone…They're trying to push through as many pieces of legislation as possible while they can, without allowing for proper consultation, and it's very disheartening,” she said. 

“I just worry that the public may just be kind of now numb to all of this, and I hope not. At this moment in time, I'm really hopeful that people recognize there are plenty of ways to build housing, especially where people want to live, not in natural and currently protected areas. I hope we don't lose sight of that.”

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