Citizens getting the boot
Citizen representation on conservation authority (CA) boards will fall dramatically next year. New rules imposed by the Ford provincial government largely eliminate public members from the boards that manage waterways and environmental oversight including flood control. And in at least one local authority the total number of directors is being slashed, forcing the removal of nearly all its citizen members.
Controversial changes to conservation authorities were imposed by the provincial Progressive Conservative government in December 2020 as part of its Protect, Support and Recover from COVID-19 Act. Initially that legislation proposed to entirely ban citizen members from CA boards, but last minute amendments shifted that to a requirement that each individual municipality must ensure at least 70 percent of its appointees are councillors.
That wasn’t much of a change since it means a citizen can only be appointed on the rare occasion when a municipality gets four or more seats on a CA board. In Hamilton this will reduce public appointees from all four boards with jurisdiction over parts of the city. CA borders are defined by watersheds, so their boards have representatives from multiple municipalities.
The city makes two appointments to Conservation Halton and one to the Grand River Conservation Authority. All are currently public members, but all will have to be replaced by city councillors.
The Halton board currently has 8 citizens among its 19 members. No more than three will be possible under the new rules. The Grand River board has 26 members mrepresenting more than a dozen municipalities. Only one of those – the Region of Waterloo gets more than three seats so it will be the only possible source of citizen appointments.
Much of Hamilton’s urban and rural area above the escarpment and around the airport falls under the jurisdiction of the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority. This includes the watersheds of Twenty Mile Creek and the Welland River including Lake Niapenco in the Binbrook Conservation Area.
A report last month to Niagara regional council recommended that the NPCA board be shrunk from its current 21 members down to eleven. Citizen representatives would go from a majority today to only one or two starting in January.
Hamilton’s representation on the NPCA board is currently four – two citizens and two councillors. That would fall to three seats and therefore no citizens. Haldimand County would get two members – both councillors – and Niagara would have six seats. However Niagara council is pushing for eight seats which would permit two citizen members.
The fourth CA with jurisdiction over many of the city’s streams including Spencer Creek and Red Hill Creek is the Hamilton Conservation Authority. Its board currently has six citizens and five Hamilton city councillors. Puslinch gets one seat and the other ten are appointed by Hamilton City Council. No more than three citizens will be possible for the 2023 board.
The NPCA decision to sharply reduce its board size from 21 to 11 could be followed by other local CAs. Currently the GRCA has 26 board members and Conservation Halton has 19.
