No matter how you dress this…

No matter how you dress this up, it is gutting environmental protections for the sake of “economic growth”. Far from helping to protect Ontario, the new law offered in its place, the so-called “Species Conservation Act, 2025” would, if enacted in anything like its current form, declare open season on Ontario species that are listed as Endangered, Threatened or of Special Concern.

It clearly is designed to strip protection altogether from almost all of the critical habitat protected by the Endangered Species Act, 2007, reducing the definition of “habitat” to tiny slivers of land—the immediate “dwelling place” of an endangered animal (such as around dens or nests) and the immediate “root zone” of an endangered plant. If adopted, this change would doom endangered and threaten species to extinction. Protecting the den of an endangered animal (e.g. the southern American Badger) won’t keep it alive if the larger grasslands, forests or wetlands it depends on for food are paved for sprawl.