To whom it may concern,…

To whom it may concern,

Thank you for providing the opportunity to comment on this proposal.

I have many concerns about the proposed amendments to the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The purpose of the existing act is threefold: first, to identify species at risk based on the best available scientific knowledge; second, to protect species at risk and their habitat, and to promote their recovery; third, to promote stewardship activities to assist in the recovery of species at risk [1]. I believe that the new Species Conservation Act (SCA) fails to meet the three objectives of the existing Endangered Species Act.

The proposed Species Conservation Act provides cabinet with the ability to add or remove species at risk from the list of protected species at its own discretion [2]. This change is incredibly concerning; in effect, it enables the government to ignore the scientific evidence. I believe that scientific decisions such as the classification of species should be left to the experts, not politicians. In any case, it is the automatic listing of classified species that led to Ontario’s ESA being considered (at one point) the gold standard in Canadian species at risk law [3]. With these amendments, it is not clear how the proposed SCA will still be able to “drive species protection and conservation,” as is its stated purpose.

Furthermore, the changes to habitat definition represent a huge scaling-back of protected areas. Under the current ESA, habitat is defined as “an area on which the species depends, directly or indirectly, to carry on its life processes, including life processes such as reproduction, rearing, hibernation, migration or feeding.” The new definition removes consideration of indirect dependencies and, critically, feeding:

“a dwelling place […] or similar place, occupied […] for the purposes of breeding, rearing, staging, wintering, or hibernating”

It is beyond absurd that the new protections only extend to the edge of an animal’s den (or for plants, the “critical root zone”) when species clearly conduct a multitude of activities to sustain themselves, including foraging, hunting, and eating. To make an analogy, it would be as if communities for humans were defined as “a bed, cot, or similar place, and the areas immediately above and below such that one full-sized adult may rest for approximately 8 hours every night”, with no mention of washrooms or kitchens, or schools, parks, recreation centres, pharmacies, and grocery stores. I do not support the new definition of habitat, as it removes any consideration of what a species might actually need in order to survive within its broader ecosystem.

I am also very concerned about the removal of recovery plans from the ESA. Is the purpose of classifying a species as endangered not so that we take immediate action to protect it? Is it not the goal of any endangered species legislation to see species at risk recover to a healthy population? Is there no consideration of the health of an ecosystem? Under the proposed SCA, it seems the only goal is to preserve a token number of nests and dens, then to wash our hands of any responsibility to maintain any semblance of biodiversity.

Overall, I am very disappointed in this government’s proposal to cut back the ESA to a bare minimum token conservation program. Unfortunately, I am not at all surprised, as this government has shown time and time again that it does not take environmental stewardship seriously. Through the cuts to conservation authorities [4], the gutting of wetland protections [5], the Greenbelt scandal [6], its profligate use of MZOs [7], and the original 2019 cuts to the ESA [8], this government has demonstrated that it is willing to bulldoze its way through any and all laws meant to protect the public in order to impose its own will. I only wish that this government will one day recognize that its duality of economy versus environment is a false one, that the economy relies on a healthy environment because we rely on a healthy environment. Laws that protect nature are not red tape; they ensure that we are able to have trees that provide us with oxygen, wetlands that filter and recharge our groundwater, pollinators that help grow our crops, fungi that produce crucial medicines, and so much more. I sincerely hope that these amendments are not passed, as the people of Ontario deserve so much better.

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[1] https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/07e06
[2] https://ero.ontario.ca/notice/025-0380
[3] https://thenarwhal.ca/ontario-endangered-species-act-repealed/
[4] https://thenarwhal.ca/ontario-conservation-authorities-changes/
[5] https://thenarwhal.ca/ontario-environment-ford-explainer/#4
[6] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ont-greenbelt-timeline-1.6974715
[7] https://yourstoprotect.ca/ministers-zoning-order-map/
[8] https://www.ola.org/en/legislative-business/bills/parliament-42/session…