This entire proposal is a…

This entire proposal is a completely transparent move by the provincial government to put profits for corporations over people and ecosystems. "special economic zones" will eliminate transparency and accountability of corporations and the government for their actions likely to cause environmental harm. The extremely limited definition of habitat is obviously not suitable for meaningful species support and will be abused by greedy developers.

I strongly oppose the provincial government giving themselves the ability to arbitrarily remove species from the species at risk list:
"However, the government would have discretion to add extirpated, endangered, and threatened species to the list of protected species. The government would also have discretion to remove protected species from the list." There is no reason elected officials without any kind of background or expertise in ecology, biology, genetics, population dynamics, taxonomy, systematic or wildlife management or aboriginal traditional knowledge should be able to remove species from the list. This signals a complete disregard for informed nature conservation and creates significant opportunity for shady dealings and corruption.

In the face of increasing rates of global biodiversity loss, confirmed by agencies such as the World Health Organization and United Nations, this direction that the provincial government is proposing to take Ontario cannot be accepted in good conscious for nature or for future generations.