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Mono fears diminished role after province amalgamates conservation authority

February 5, 2026   ·   0 Comments

By JAMES MATTHEWS

Municipal taxpayers cover the lion’s share of conservation authority costs.

The provincial government introduced legislation in October to create the Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency (OPCA) that will consolidate the 36 existing agencies into seven regional authorities.

According to the crowd at Queen’s Park, the amalgamation is to streamline watershed management, speed up infrastructure projects, and reduce fragmentation.

Authorities will continue delivering existing programs and services, while the OPCA will oversee streamlining and standardizing service delivery.

Mono council heard in a presentation during its Jan. 27 meeting that the move currently has no anticipated impact on the CVC’s 2026 budget, which is funded by municipalities within its watershed.

Deputy Mayor Fred Nix asked who is to foot the bill for that umbrella agency?

“Just so the audience knows, I know the answer to this question,” Nix said. “I want more residents to hear the answer.”

“Currently, the plan is for conservation authorities themselves to pay for the costs associated with the agency,” said Andrew Kett, Credit Valley Conservation Authority’s corporate services director.

But the conservation authorities get money from municipalities, Nix said.

“In effect, municipalities will pay for this provincial agency,” Nix said. “And the municipalities get their money from the property tax.”

Taxpayers in the respective municipalities served by the CVC will actually pay for the provincial agency.

“I think that’s a fair assumption,” Kett said. “I think the details are to come in terms of the formula for how conservation authorities will be levied by the agency for funding.”

Nix asked what percentage of the CVC’s budget will be met by the province in 2026.

Kett said the provincial government supports the CVC in many ways. That includes base funding of $96,000.

“And it has been flat at $96,000 for many years,” he said.

That’s 0.02 per cent of CVC’s cost, Nix said. Down from 50 per cent of funding from the province years ago.

“Just so our residents understand what’s happening,” Nix said.

Of a $45-million budget, that amount comes in at “a very low percentage,” Kett said. “However, I would note that the province does support us in other ways.”

There’s money for special projects, other initiatives and grants that can be provided by the province.

Councillor Melinda Davie asked whether those sources help address the need created when the government began funding below 50 per cent as in the past.

“It’s still a very modest amount of money that a Mono resident pays for what we seem to be getting,” Davie said.

Kett said the major shift in the municipal-provincial funding ratio happened in the 1990s. The base money and some smaller funding streams are available, Kett said, without really describing how they compare to the former 50 per cent arrangement.

Should the province merge authorities as was announced in October, Nix asked how much sway a small town like Mono and others have in the governance of the larger body that would reach as far south as Niagara Falls.

“That is to be determined,” said Terri LeRoux, the CVC’s CAO. “But that is definitely one of our major concerns, is the loss of local voices.”

The province hasn’t released much information on governance structure, she said.

Davie said people with much management experience will continue to be involved in the merged authority’s governance.

“Do you think that, by us not being at the table monthly on something, that there’s a risk that mismanagement is going to happen?” Davie said. “Is that a worry that we have?”

“I haven’t been asked the question, but I can give a response to that, Melinda,” Nix said.

“I’m asking them the question,” Davie said. “The professionals. Not the people with just an opinion.”

Mayor John Creelman suggested it was unfair to ask LeRoux and Kett political questions.

“I wasn’t asking it politically,” Davie said. “I was asking it nuts and bolts.”

She said the need to maintain the watershed’s integrity doesn’t change because there’s a new makeup at the authority.

“I think the struggle in answering that forthright right now is that there are so many gaps in our understanding,” LeRoux said.

The province hasn’t further defined what is meant by streamlining conservation authority services. That complicates knowing what the daily operations will be like in any geography, she said.

Nix said there’s a larger point to be illuminated.

“The possibility is that we small municipalities would continue to be taxed, paying for conservation authorities over which we have no say in what they do or how they’re governed, and a provincial agency that sits above them,” Nix said. “It would be taxation with no say in governance.”

Creelman said nobody asked that the conservation authorities be merged. And he said it is an appalling overreach by the province, which provides so little funding to the authorities.

“The other thing that strikes me as so ironic is the people that contribute 0.02 per cent of revenue have the amount of say that they are exercising here,” Creelman said. “If they were at 50 per cent (funding level), I could understand their right to be at the table and to say this isn’t working.”

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