I strongly oppose this…

I strongly oppose this regressive and harmful bill that will speed up the destruction of critical habitat for endangered species and removes basic environmental rights, including our rights to be informed and have a say, as well as our rights to a clean environment, as recognized by the Canadian EPA (https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/canadian-e…). It also fails to respect Indigenous peoples' rights, including those recognized in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

Why parts of this bill are so harmful:
Removal of permitting process, proponents should NOT be able to start work as soon as they are registered. This essentially removes the approval process entirely and incentivizes submission of projects with known impacts on wildlife, because investigation into the impacts will not happen, or the impacts of the proposed projects only known after the work has already been completed.

This bill is framed as a special tool to fast-track projects that help protect Ontario, the language used is intentionally vague and provides nothing to identify or promote interests for Ontarians. There are no criteria focusing “designated project” or “special economic zones” status on activities or projects necessary to replace U.S. imports with domestic production, connect Ontario producers with new markets or replace U.S. demand for raw materials. There is no language that would restrict the Premier and Cabinet Ministers’ power to hand immunity to people, projects, lands and circumstances of economic importance at all. It would be an unfettered power to pick and choose who our provincial and municipal laws apply to under the guise of ‘economic benefits’. There’s nothing in the Act even to limit its application to the kinds of laws actually relevant to industrial development, land use or infrastructure approvals. The broad power to “exempt” anyone the Premier and Cabinet choose “from requirements under provisions of an Act or of a regulation or other instrument under an Act” would extend to everything from the Trespass to Property Act (the law which prevents people strangers from walking into our backyard and refusing to leave) to labour and health and safety laws, to the Highway Traffic Act and municipal bylaws against public urination.

Impacts on Biodiversity and species conservation:
Far from helping to protect Ontario, the new law offered to replace the Endangered Species Act of Ontario, the so-called “Species Conservation Act, 2025” would, if enacted in anything like its current form, do the exact opposite of it’s stated intent. The new proposed law is clearly 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.

Impacts on Economics – Affecting all Ontarians:
The health and sustainability of Ontario’s economy is dependent on the functioning and sustainability of Ontario’s ecosystems – This bill says it will unleash the economy, however, in reality the wanton and short-sighted destruction of Ontario’s ecosystems will have long-term consequences on the sustainability and longevity of ALL economic activities that depend on natural resources. The short-term economic benefits will not end up in the hands of hard-working Ontarians, but instead be funneled into few private interests, namely mining proponents and development projects, at the cost of any legal requirement to consider the interests of the public, communities, nature and health. The current Ontario government has already shown that it cannot be trusted to prevent corruption from eroding our public goods (See Greenbelt scandal). If passed, Bill 5 will undoubtedly erode public confidence in transparent and accountable government decision-making and cause irreparable harm to environmental and human rights. The reality is that our economy is embedded in nature – a fact recognized at local and global levels (GLOBAL BIODIVERSITY FRAMEWORK).
- McCune: 80% of Canadians (40% of surveys in Ontario) are strongly committed to species conservation in principle (89% agree), including the need to limit industrial development (80% agree).
- McCune JL, Carlsson AM, Colla S, Davy C, Favaro B, Ford AT, Fraser KC, and Martins EG. 2017. Assessing public commitment to endangered species protection: A Canadian case study. FACETS 2:178-194.