This legislation a thinly…

This legislation a thinly veiled move to completely decimate conservation action and protection for development, many of those developers with close ties and direct lobbying payments to our current government.

The new definitions of habitat are guaranteed to ruins species survival and paint a veneer of legitimacy and "clarity". You have protected a rest site for animals. You haven't protected any of their home range or even territory, the things they need to survive. How about you try living only in your house and you can't get anything delivered to you. You weren't harmed by our definition , but you won't be able to survive. This is what you've done. The vascular plant definition is hilariously flawed and doesn't take I to account what these plants need to survive. You haven't even defined what the root zone actually is. And what about juvenile plants, will their considered root zone be for their full grown size? Or will it only be for the juvenile root zone and kill the plant as it matures?

You've removed any obligation for private industry to actually engage in any conservation or preservation action. There isn't even the monetary obligation to pay to a public restoration fund. Any action these companies take is voluntary and you've removed any obligation upon them to engage in such actions. You're removing any social net benefits that the company would be obligated to compensate, so they can increase their private net benefit. What incentive do these companies have to provide natural benefit to Ontarians?

Regarding your removing of "duplication". You completely ignore that SARA and COSSARO do not have complete overlap and that Ontario has numerous species with a different classification levels to SARA because SARA takes a nation-wide perspective of species' population, COSSARO looks at provincial level. This is an obvious attempt to let species fall through the cracks and again, further benefit private industry development at the cost of social net benefits.

Regarding Provincial government final authority to list or delist a species. You've made it very clear, as much as you attempted to not say the words, that while COSSARO is allowed to continue their work, it will be completely disregarded. You even blatantly stated that the province won't list a species unless it is of the same level as COSSARO's classification. Which clearly reads that your government will simply block species from being added to the list because you disagree with the COSSARO assessment. Gives you free license to not protect the species.

Your registry first approach is about the laziest and most duty abdicating action of this whole legislation. A company can start engaging in work with absolutely no oversight or regulatory interaction. The only way any illegal or damaging action will be addressed and corrected is if a member of the regulatory and oversight body is present to witness it. Given how wildly understaffed this regulatory group is, we know it will be impossible for all projects to actually receive any oversight. You've made it comedically easy to abuse your own system to the detriment of nature.

You also completely fail to consider ecosystem services, and non-tangible values such as cultural, spiritual, and even public health, when making these assessments. You're choosing to ignore a major source of valuation for the protection of nature. While it is difficult to quantify, to eschew it entirely is lazy and harmful to all Ontarians.

This is a pathetic attempt at this government once again ingratiating themselves to private industry, and more specifically party donors. And harming the constituents that you have a obligation and a duty to work for the betterment of.

Your party should be ashamed of this disregard for the well-being of not only current citizens, but future citizens as well. You are so incapable of seeing beyond the reach of your greed obsessed grasp, that you are willing to harm all future Ontarians, just to benefit yourselves.