Good afternoon.
I'm Lorrie Minshall, the water management plan director with the Grand River Conservation Authority. I'm here on behalf of Joe Farwell, our chief administrative officer, who is currently on vacation.
I am pleased to have this opportunity to provide input on urban conservation in the context of a national conservation plan.
The Grand River Conservation Authority is one of 36 conservation authorities in Ontario that manage water, forests, and other natural resources in the most populated areas of the province. We are, by definition, a partnership of the municipalities in a watershed for the management of water and natural resources across municipal boundaries.
Our watershed is located immediately to the west of the greater Toronto area, and it is the largest watershed in southern Ontario, about the size of Prince Edward Island.
There are 39 municipalities in the watershed, with a population of about one million people, most of whom live in the rapidly growing cities of Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, Guelph, and Brantford. It's also one of the richest farming regions in Canada, with 70% of the area being actively farmed.
Seventy percent of the population get their water from groundwater wells and 30% of the population get theirs from the river system, making it the largest urban population in Canada that is reliant on groundwater and an inland river system for its water supply. At the same time, 30 municipal waste water treatment plants are discharging into this river system, so you can appreciate why it's so important that we work so hard to protect our water resources.
The Grand River Conservation Authority is the oldest water management agency in Canada. It was created more than 75 years ago, when the industry leaders of the watershed realized that they needed to work together to address the severe environmental issues of flooding, pollution, and inadequate water supplies.
We're now recognized leaders in integrated water management. In 2000, the GRCA received the International Thiess Riverprize for excellence in river management.
As a result, our river has undergone a remarkable recovery, which was highlighted in 1994 when the Grand River was the first river in a working landscape to be designated a Canadian heritage river.
Here are some of our experiences and our lessons learned.
We have assumed that urban conservation in this context means recognizing and valuing the ecological services that are provided by healthy natural systems and landscapes, and their contribution to economic prosperity in Canada; recognizing and valuing the social benefits of connecting Canadians to natural spaces, and their contribution to public health and wellness; and providing explicitly for access by all Canadians, including urban Canadians, to natural spaces.
After decades of turning their backs on the Grand, our cities and towns now see the river system as a community and economic asset to be valued and integrated into their long-range development plans. The river corridors are uniting cities through interurban trail networks that are giving people new ways to enjoy the Grand.
The reason for that success is clear. The GRCA and its many partners—the municipalities, the provincial and federal agencies, and others—have adopted an integrated, watershed-wide approach to managing our environmental assets.
This can be achieved at the Grand River watershed scale, as I have described, and also at the sub-watershed scale in the smaller streams and wetland systems within cities. Sub-watershed planning is a best practice in urban planning for growth and economic development.
Shifting, for the moment, to the topic of protected spaces, a protected space is, from our perspective, an area in public ownership where the primary goal is to maintain the natural ecosystem functions for which it is valued. However, in the working landscapes of southern Ontario, people need access to protected spaces for two reasons: because there is little enough natural space to meet the need and, perhaps more importantly, because that’s how people come to appreciate the resource.
However, providing access to protected spaces is not as simple as it sounds. Along with passive enjoyment can come overuse, safety hazards, and vandalism. In our experience, the biggest barrier to public access in protected spaces is the cost of maintenance required to achieve both goals.
At the same time, most of southern Ontario is in private ownership. The GRCA is a leader in the delivery of private landowners' stewardship programs and environmental education. Our long-standing rural water quality program has resulted in widespread uptake of best management practices among watershed farmers and has built an excellent working relationship among farmers, farm organizations, municipalities, and the conservation authority.
We have learned that the relationship-building at the heart of successful collaboration takes time and continuity. Canada's best value investment in collaborative stewardship should be in long-term programming. In this case, slow and steady wins this race.
In addition to working with landowners, the GRCA operates five nature centres where it provides outdoor recreation in a natural setting to 50,000 schoolchildren and families each year. Connecting kids to nature is critical because of the health benefits, of course, and to reverse the increasing urban disconnection from nature by introducing kids to nature at a young age.
We believe that the federal role in urban conservation is one of leadership. Create the vision and expectations for urban conservation and connecting urban Canadians with natural spaces, recognizing that the what and how will be specific to the varying local situations across the country. Promote the facts about ecological services and the public health and social benefits of natural spaces, especially in and around urban and urbanizing areas where there is the greatest pressure on them.
Pursue the science and transfer the knowledge to and among the local practitioners. We rely on you for science; we are not the scientists, we're the practitioners. The benefits of natural spaces—the ecological goods and services, the public health benefits, and the social benefits—are huge in relation to the cost. They are a best-value solution.
Integrate the goals and the principles of the national conservation strategy plan across other federal and cost-share programs. For example, recognize blue-green infrastructure or innovation in grey infrastructure in the infrastructure funding programs, and look to long-term stewardship and environmental education programming and support.
Thank you.