Conservation reversal
There have been dramatic changes in the Hamilton Conservation Authority board with clear echoes of the unsuccessful revolt that took place last year. Two of the revolt leaders now are installed as chair and vice-chair of the environmental oversight agency.
A February 2022 attempt to remove former Ancaster councillor Lloyd Ferguson saw three board members boycott his re-election as HCA chair. Instead Brad Clark, Susan Fielding and Russ Powers issued a statement that they didn’t want “to be complicit in the acclamation of a chair with whom our conservation allies, foundation donors and several past HCA and foundation chairs have lost confidence.”
Public opposition was led by Save Our Streams Hamilton and included over 200 emails from individuals urging the HCA to reject Ferguson. However he was acclaimed by the remaining board members to a third one year term as chair.
But last week’s AGM unanimously chose Clark as the new chair of the HCA board and also elected Fielding as vice-chair. Clark and Fielding are the only two who remain on a board whose eleven-person membership has been almost completely transformed by decisions of the new Hamilton city council.
Provincial rules issued by the Ford government have forced the city to cut citizen representatives down to three and to send seven councillors to this year’s HCA board. The citizens – Lisa DeCesare, Brian McHattie and Wayne Terryberry – are all new board members. McHattie was the HCA chair seven years ago when he was a city councillor while Terryberry chaired the HCA’s conservation advisory committee last year.
They are joined by Fielding, the citizen who was re-appointed as the representative of Puslinch Township. The new Hamilton councillors on the board also include Jeff Beattie, Craig Cassar, Mike Spadafora, Alex Wilson and Maureen Wilson. Ferguson did not seek re-election last fall, and Powers was only temporarily filling a board seat.
Opposition to Ferguson last year centered on his support of a massive warehouse proposal on Garner Road in Ancaster that included destruction of a wetland. One Properties Inc promised to construct a new pond on the edge of the property. The company is owned by AIMCO, an Alberta government pension manager that also holds a two-thirds stake in the controversial Coastal Gas Link fracked gas pipeline being constructed across unceded Indigenous lands in BC.
Despite Ferguson’s endorsement, the project was opposed by HCA staff and the 2021 HCA board turned it down in a secret vote. One Properties is appealing this decision with a hearing scheduled to start in early October before the Ontario Land Tribunal. The Conservation Authority has been joined by the city and by Environmental Defence against the appeal.
