Broadly, I welcome this…

Broadly, I welcome this proposal with its overarching intent to improve and speed up a cumbersome process. As a Registered Professional Forester I have a deep professional commitment to species protection through careful management of shared habitats with all species, not just endangered ones. The current process makes project panning very uncertain, with even the simplest projects such as managing invasive species (weeds) requiring advance planning of about a year, not only because of the process being ill defined (5 calls to MECP before you find a person who can advise next steps to notify an activity online, it's all very secret and not at all transparent) but because my employer requires careful scrutiny of anything "legal" which take months, typically. I have suggestions for improving this proposal further, including clarifying intentions:
1. Re "habitat" - yes, fully agree this should extend so far as the species requires it for life; but that will vary by species and quality of habitat available (accepting usually species at risk are in a very biologically diverse habitat with structural diversity already). For example, a polar bear or elk requires thousands of kms of range versus a monarch butterfly caterpillar that requires one or a few milkweed plants. Setting limits (e.g. within X m of Y) is not appropriate and I welcome that this has not been suggested.
2. But how will most people know and navigate when and why they must register when this habitat variable is so broad? The answer may be in requiring a qualified or competent person to register the activity - meaning a qualified professional (Registered Professional Forester?) and by way of introducing a provincial qualification for Biologists/Ecologists based on the existing model in BC - a RPBio (Registered Professional Biologist). And other professional designations as appropriate.
3. Enforcement is key - no point having any rules if they are not enforced. I strongly endorse the commentary around improving enforcement and look forward to seeing this in action.
4. In particular, the cozy relationships of past (from the days of MNR through to MECP) where oversight was and still is effectively delegated to municipalities, especially Planning Department (Planning Act purposes, with de-motivated employees in constant flux and with managers rarely qualified in any aspect of biology, or even caring about species requirements, has to end. There should be no assumption that a municipality is always doing the right thing!
5. The Planning Act need to "jive" better with the proposed new Act so there are no 'convenient' loopholes e.g. where one process trumps another or must be done within X days in an unrealistic timeframe for the other values and interests.
6. The existing process of a DAR/EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) already assumes a certain outcome will happen (= a detailed plan is already drawn and the expense of changing it is fiercely resisted), what harm it will do, and what will be done about that. Replace this with an Environmental Impact Assessment to - basically - identify values up front, identify where to leave something alone, or leave it in a better condition by planning around it, NOT vice versa. Only then move to the expensive design stage and perform the EIS if harm to a species is impossible to avoid.
7. Ensure all these phases are transparent and accountable. There are too many "copy/paste" templates in circulation, with poor to no critical oversight of what consultants say they did or what they did not do (like, Did they actually enter the lands? Use a drone? Drive by?). Lazy practices have to end.
8. Tighten up the sources of information, to one centralised repository (the NHIC?) with public records made more freely available at least to the 1km x 1km level. This means also evaluating and adding citizen science records such as the amphibians Atlas and iNaturalist or, alternately, making it clear those records don't count, to drive observers to report to the centralised repository instead.
9. Require Registrants to talk to landowners and consult neighbouring landowners to ensure local and anecdotal knowledge is received and considered with equal or better weighting to historic records. Landowners are not always bad player, many are well-educated in species to risk and may have continued land management practices for decades to support them; losing or ignoring this knowledge by reliance on searches for written records or maps, is unsatisfactory.
10. Ensure fairness. A landowner who has supported species at risk on their lands, possibly while their neighbours pursue a more aggressive approach should not then find themselves at a financial and economic barrier. For example, a landowner who manages hay meadows among a broad landscape of cash-cropped lands cleared of all vegetation 2-3 times every year is likely to have a lot of species at risk, while their neighbours have none. That one landowner has to jump through many hoops, while their neighbours do not, and this is all after being a good custodian and probably accepting some economic harms (such as delaying harvests) for decades.
11. Rather than cancel the current funding model, instead apply those funds to support landowners that have managed and continue to manage lands with Species At Risk, up to and including the costs of negotiating the Registration process and mitigating future harms. It's only fair that good players be recognised and to some extent rewarded for the things they have done to ensure there are species at risk there for all of us to marvel at and enjoy.