TORONTO - Ontario is ripe for widespread ecological scourges that could devastate the province's waterways and environment because the government can't afford to enforce its own hunting and fishing laws, Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller said Wednesday.

The province must establish a formal committee to examine the state of the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of the Environment because 15 years of cuts to frontline staff have made it a poor line of defence against environmental threats like fish disease, he said.

"If you're too thin on your frontline of enforcement and compliance, and the system starts to fail, the consequences could be huge,'' Miller said Wednesday.

"It could be as modest as somebody poaching out of season or as great as spreading a fish disease throughout the entire province.''

Staff at the Ministry of Natural Resources has dwindled from over 5,000 in 1992 to under 4,000 last year, Miller said. Many of those positions are now short-term contracts, Miller said, which doesn't attract the best candidates.

Experienced scientists have been cut and now there aren't enough conservation officers to properly oversee species like the Asian carp, who pose a serious threat if they were ever released into Ontario's water system, Miller said.

"Everybody is living in trepidation that they will become established in the Great Lakes -- that would be a terrible thing,'' he said.

The Liberals, Conservatives and New Democrats all presided over deep cuts at the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Natural Resources, leaving them with only one per cent of the province's overall budget, Miller said in his report released Tuesday.

Minister of Natural Resources David Ramsay admitted the ministry has suffered from over a decade of cuts and a mass retirement of conservation officers.

But he said Ontario's ecosystem is not at risk because the remaining 270 officers are more strategic now in their enforcement.

"What we might do if there's a massive investigation going is put the resources into one district . . . and cut back in some other areas,'' Ramsay said.

"It's just a different way we deploy our resources today than in the old days when people just cruised around and told a person to stop fishing in that lake. It's a more serious business today.''

The ministry did get a slight increase in the last budget, Ramsay said, and will continue to lobby for a greater portion of Ontario's revenue.

"I don't argue that investments in our environment and natural resources is the right thing to do,'' he said. "We've been starting to do that.''

But New Democrat Gilles Bisson said the Liberal government has to do more. The Liberals have a basic responsibility to ensure there is enough cash to back up Ontario laws, he said.

The Liberals are poised to pass new legislation beefing up protection of endangered species but Bisson said that won't be worth the paper it's written on if there aren't enough conservation officers to enforce it.

"We need to _ whenever we create legislation -- look at what the financial implications are for both the economy and for the ministry,'' Bisson said.

"If we continue along this course, the Ministry of Natural Resources is basically going to have to cherry-pick . . . what it is they can do.''