Trouble at the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources

I don’t usually comment on politics but I recently received a letter from Jerry Ouellette (MPP for Oshawa and a former Minister of Natural Resources for the Province of Ontario) that included a copy of the Special Purpose Account Annual Report from the Ministry of Natural Resources Fish and Wildlife Branch for the years 1999-2000 through 2007-2008. This report was recently tabled in the Ontario Legislature and it includes a troubling message.

The Fish and Wildlife Special Purpose Account (SPA) was created to ensure that fish and wildlife licence revenues would be dedicated to the management of these resources. The report documents the annual revenues of the SPA based on the 3-year cycle of the Ontario Outdoor Card and also outlines the goals and achievements of the Ministry’s Fish & Wildlife program and specifies significant expenditures for each fiscal year. The report is supposed to be tabled annually in the Ontario Legislature but the current Minister had failed to table it for the last 2 years. To Mr. Ouellette’s credit he questioned the Minister in the Legislature as to why this report had not been tabled and having now looked at what the McGuinty Government has brought forth it is abundantly clear where anglers, hunters and the MNR rank in the eyes of the McGuinty Government.

Under the previous government 1999-2003, 67% of the fish and wildlife program budget was obtained from the SPA and 33% came from the government’s consolidated revenue fund (CRF). Under the stewardship of the current Minister, Linda Jeffrey, the percentage of the fish & wildlife budget obtained from the SPA ranges from 72% to 83% What this means is that the government of Dalton McGuinty has decreased the funding of the MNR and Ontario hunters and anglers are having to pay more to get less.

The staff of the MNR are overworked, underpaid and increasingly underfunded. I trust the current Minister is a well-intentioned person but in light of what is going on at the Ministry, I suspect she does not fish or hunt on a regular basis otherwise she would do something about this situation. At the very least this report illustrates that she fails to understand the needs of MNR field staff and the the Ontario angling and hunting community. Most importantly, this report illustrates that the Government in office is intent on managing the status quo into the ground instead of addressing a situation which is is dire need of improvement.

If you would like to get more information please contact Mr. Ouellette in his constituency office at 905-723-2411 or via jerry.ouellette@pc.ola.org