To weaken the environmental…

To weaken the environmental protections provided by the Endangered Species Act, as proposed under Bill 5, would be ominously short-sighted. To bypass the environmental review process with Special Economic Zones in order to fast-track development, especially in largely intact ecosystems, is tantamount to saying “we don’t care about the future of humanity or any other species, we only care about making money”.

The Government of Ontario should not be creating conditions that will make survival for so many species less likely. Exactly the opposite should be the goal: to protect as many natural spaces as possible, as much biodiversity as possible, and to expand the habitat of as many species as possible. In fact, to encourage companies to keep damage to a minimum and to clean up after their operations, the government should require a substantial up-front deposit to a “clean-up fund”. That money would be returned (maybe even with interest) to any company that leaves their site in an acceptable state, with the bar being set to a high standard.

The concept of our connection to the rest of the natural world is not new or unproven. People in Ontario have fought for decades to protect the wild spaces we have left, large and small, after centuries of abuse by humans. People are working, now, to restore natural ecosystems and the biodiversity they harbor because it is clear that we cannot survive in the long term if these ecosystems collapse. We cannot afford to add to the devastation that we have already caused. We must not ignore the already obvious impacts that climate change is having.

We need the natural world as intact as it can be because, like it or not, we are part of it and we depend on the web of life for our own existence. To ignore this imperative is to imperil all life on our planet, humans included.