Research

Research forms the foundation of the OHI’s interests and focuses on science, policy, and performance as they relate to watershed security.

Many of our research efforts result in papers or submissions; educational projects such as Headwater Hikes or our YouTube Channel; and/or civic engagement initiatives such as creating the Coalition of Ontario Watershed Guardians. 

Examples of positive outcomes from policy research and submissions have included:

• Ensuring the inclusion of watershed management in the Great Lakes Strategy;
• Submitting the first set of targets under the Great Lakes Protection Act, suggesting a series of goals for natural heritage protection;
• Helping to get words in the Provincial Policy Statement that watershed management can be a foundation for considering cumulative impacts of development;
• Securing some of those targets in land use planning prior to the election of a new government in 2018; and,
• Making numerous submissions on many issues, including those that helped influence the withdrawal of Schedule 10 of Bill 66 to create special bylaw areas that could have ignored the Clean Water Act.

Many of these accomplishments are in jeopardy given the direction of the current Ontario government to reduce the role of conservation authorities and aligned environmental protections as it pushes  its Housing Action Plan, which lacks a sustainability lens for integrated land use and watershed planning.  .

​