I am writing to express my…

I am writing to express my strong opposition to Bill 5 proposed by the Ontario government. This bill is a dangerous and reckless move to prioritize business over biodiversity and threatens to trample Indigenous rights and community consultation. To be clear, I am not opposed to natural resource development, but I strongly believe we need to do so with the necessary checks and balances in place to carry out these activities in a sustainable and environmentally responsible way to ensure long-term benefits to both humans and nature. As proposed, Bill 5 would stand to only benefit a handful of developers in the short-term and leave Ontarians, First Nations, and ecosystems to bear the brunt of the repercussions.
I am appalled by the proposed amendments to the current Endangered Species Act (which has already been significantly weakened by the current government) and subsequent replacement by the proposed Species Conservation Act. The proposed changes would:

• Allow Ontario to disregard independent, scientific assessments and delist species from the Ontario Species at Risk list and thus allow species protections to be ignored when it is not economically favourable.
• Remove requirements for Ontario to develop the management plans and recovery strategies that species at risk in the province so desperately depend on to ensure their protection and recovery.
• Strip away ecological context from the definition of ‘habitat’ in current legislation, thereby reducing it to individual nesting, roosting, or denning sites occupied by individuals. This significantly simplifies the definition and removes protections for many other habitats necessary for species at risk, which is likely to lead to serious reductions in survival of these species.
• Remove the word ‘harass’ from the current ESA, which would expose species at risk to increased harm.
• Remove the need to apply for a permit for proposed developments and simply register projects online. This “register first, ask questions later” model would allow developers to proceed without consideration of environmental impacts.
• Scrap any provincial responsibility for migratory birds and aquatic species to “reduce redundancy” with federal legislation. This would result in significant loss of protections for these species on provincial lands and waters and ignores the essential need for coordinated actions by both jurisdictions.

Overall, the proposed Species Conservation Act offers little protection for species at risk and appears to prioritize profits over people and ecosystems. Moreover, the Special Economic Zones Act appears to increase power into the hands of Cabinet, allowing actions to be carried out without transparency, accountability, or environmental stewardship. Habitat loss and degradation are one of the leading threats to species at risk in Ontario and globally and the proposed changes outlined in Bill 5 will only further exacerbate these threats to biodiversity in Ontario. An attack on Ontario species at risk is an attack on the people of Ontario who depend on the immense ecosystem services provided by the very habitats relied upon by the species at risk threatened by these changes. I implore the Ontario government to cancel the proposed Bill 5 and instead strongly urge the government to take bolder actions to strengthen the existing Endangered Species Act. We are in a global biodiversity crisis and now more than ever, the government should be focussed on safeguarding biodiversity, respecting Indigenous rights and ensuring local communities benefit from the ecosystem services that nature freely provides.