Overview
Gord Rodgers brings to projects more than 30 years of experience in all aspects of environmental planning. Through his career, Gord has written and led plans for provincial parks, developed provincial policy and legislation for environmental assessment, natural heritage protection, natural resources management and municipal planning. He has managed highly complex and confrontational projects and has extensive experience dealing with strategic planning, facilitation, public consultation and formal hearings. Over his career he has worked closely with Ontario government ministries (notably Natural Resources, and Municipal Affairs), conservation authorities, municipalities, and non-government organizations. His work has taken him to almost every corner of the province of Ontario, but his specialized skills relate to the environmental and natural resource issues of southern Ontario.

Gord began his career with the former Ontario Water Resources Commission in the late 1960’s and early 70’s where he supervised a bacteriological lab, analysing water quality on recreational lakes and the Great Lakes. After a return to school for a Masters in Environmental Studies, he started a twenty-five year career with the Ministry of Natural Resources. At a time when the Ontario Parks program was going through a period of unprecedented growth, Gord managed the Central Region’s visitor services program, and subsequently the park planning program overall. This involved coordinating an active program of environmental inventories, park management planning, and land acquisition for the parks system. A highlight of his time in Central Region was coordinating the expansion of provincial parks along the Niagara Escarpment, and MNR’s involvement in the first plan for the Niagara Escarpment, which included extensive public hearings.

From 1984 to 1991, a stint in MNR’s Policy and Planning Secretariat offered Gord experience in developing policy and legislation, in the areas of municipal planning, resource planning watershed planning, and environmental assessment. It was at this time that, with Gord’s coordination and leadership, the Ministry developed its Environmental Assessment for Timber Management, and defended it at the lengthy and complex hearings.

Through the Ontario government’s tumultuous years of the 1990’s, Gord was senior manager for the MNR’s Planning Unit in southern Ontario. This was a time of multiple reorganizations, and a time of a shift in the core business of government. As well as participating in, and leading some, of the change management processes of MNR, and coordinating resource and municipal planning for southern Ontario, Gord was fortunate to be involved in managing one of MNR’s most important projects of the 1990’s, Lands for Life (Ontario’s Living Legacy). As manager of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence unit of Lands for Life, Gord led a multi-disciplinary and multi-ministry team through the process of developing a Crown land Plan for the central area of Ontario, and coordinated the extensive public consultation process that was vital to its success.

In 1998, Gord was able to take an early retirement from the Ontario Public Service and he began his company, GKR Consulting. The company has dealt with a variety of projects in environmental planning, and specializes in finding solutions for multi-disciplinary and multi-party issues.

 In 2003 Gord relocated to Eastern Ontario, and built a house on Fourteen Island Lake, north of Kingston.