ECA Executive Director Jarvis Strong and President, Bruce Harbinson, were privileged to be invited to an important, joint Federal – Provincial government announcement this month at Awenda Provincial Park. In the agreement, Federal MP and Environment and Climate Change Parliamentary Secretary Adam van Koeverden and Ontario Minister of Environment, Conservation and Parks, Andrea Khanjin, announced an agreement to strengthen nature conservation across Ontario by expanding protected areas. The Government of Canada will invest nearly $10 million to implement a new agreement to create new—and expand existing—provincial parks and conservation reserves. These projects will result in the protection of up to an additional 170,000 hectares (420,000 acres).
In addition to top provincial and federal political leaders, Jarvis and Bruce were delighted to be joined at the event by leaders from several of Canada’s leading environmental foundations and our friends from the Nature Conservancy of Canada and the Bruce Trail Conservancy.
Over the past two years the ECA has built very solid relationships across our municipal governments. Now, we are pleased to see our hard work paying off as we continue to build important new relationships at the provincial and federal levels. Our mission to create a broad ecological corridor across Southern Georgian Bay will require healthy collaboration between all three levels of government. The ECA is committed to making this happen and showing our elected officials how passionate our communities and partner organizations are about protecting our remarkable Niagara Escarpment. Our work is addressing the critical challenge of near-urban land conservation as well as contributing to Canada’s “30 by 30 goal”.
The ECA is also optimistic that additional land conservation funding it has lobbied for – the Greenlands Conservation Program – will be announced by the province in the upcoming provincial budget and that this will lead to expanded protected areas across South Georgian Bay.
