I am vehemently opposed to…

I am vehemently opposed to the interim changes to the Endangered Species Act and the proposal for the Species Conservation Act.

Endangered Species and Habitat: Schedules 2 and 10

Bill 5 would repeal Ontario's Endangered Species Act, 2007 (see Part IX of Schedule 10) marking the end of most meaningful provincial protections for endangered, threatened and special concern species in Ontario.

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.

Even the tiny fraction of habitat recognized as such under the new law would not be off-limits for destruction. Unlike the Endangered Species Act, 2007, which prohibits any activities that would damage or destroy habitat, the Species Conservation Act, 2025 would require only that those destroying habitat register that the destruction is happening. Outright prohibitions would be limited to situations where the proposed project by itself would likely wipe out a species in Ontario. Even if “registration” under the Species Conservation Act, 2025 comes with conditions with regard to impact mitigation or direction to construct artificial “replacement” habitat, allowing landowners to destroy habitat outright would mean extinction or extirpation for many species. The idea that typical (even species-specific) mitigation measures (e.g. stormwater ponds, snow fencing) mitigate the effects of destructive activities enough to preserve habitat values is usually speculative, and quite often entirely implausible. For example, stormwater retention ponds worsen the warming of adjacent rivers and streams associated with residential, commercial or industrial sprawl. The idea that existing habitats can just be replaced elsewhere, let alone using any standardized approach, is wishful thinking generally not based on scientific evidence. The only way to reliably protect habitat—and the endangered and threatened species that rely on it—is to prohibit outright the activities that would destroy them.

Unlike the Endangered Species Act, 2007, which puts the legal determination of which species are endangered, threatened, extirpated or of special concern in the hands of the arms-length Committee on the Status of Species at Risk in Ontario, the Species Conservation Act, 2025, would make that recognition arbitrary political decision. The government could arbitrarily refuse to recognize in the regulations that a species is at-risk at all.

Bill 5 also expressly proposes to abandon any attempt to achieve the recovery of endangered, threatened or extirpated species. But Schedules 2 and 10 of Bill 5 would cause much more harm than that by stripping recognition from most critical habitat and eliminating most meaningful prohibitions on destruction of the tiny slivers that are recognized. These two schedules would drive many of Ontario’s endangered and threatened species, over time, to extinction or extirpation. There is simply no case to be made that such a broad and indiscriminate sacrifice of habitat and wildlife is somehow a targeted measure to resist U.S. attacks. Endangered species aren’t standing in the way of higher housing output or the creation of new industrial workplaces. In fact, it has been well established in Ontario and throughout the world that protecting biodiversity and advancing economic development can occur together. For example, Ontario built a massive new Georgian Bay section of Highway 400 highway through endangered species habitat. That project used innovative underpasses and overpasses, coupled with fencing that was able to protect rare species and human lives from car-wildlife impacts. That project was win-win and underscores the effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act, 2007.

Special Economic Zones, Trusted Proponents and Designated Projects: Schedule 9

Schedule 9 would grant Ontario’s Premier and his cabinet powers to arbitrarily exempt favoured friends, their land and their projects from any law or regulation democratically enacted by the provincial parliament or by city and town councils. Far from helping to protect Ontario from U.S. attacks, Bill 5 would, if passed in anything like its current form, subject Ontarians to the same, concentrated “presidential” powers that are multiplying and being abused south of the border.

While your government has been presenting these powers as a special tool to fast-track projects that help protect Ontario, there is nothing in the law that has any plausible connection with adaptation to the loss of U.S. export markets. For example, the Act does nothing to specify that “trusted proponent” status is for “flagship” proponents that need help adapting to U.S. tariffs. 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.

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.

Schedule 9 of Bill 5 would exploit the very real dangers from the U.S. as a pretext for empowering the government to arbitrarily grant its “friends” (or anyone else it chooses) impunity from any (or every) Ontario law – including health and safety laws – and laws enacted by municipal governments. Perversely, the law would allow for this immunity to be granted to the very same foreign business interests that have aligned themselves with the Trump administration.

Other Parts of Bill 5

While this letter is about Schedules 2 and 9 of Bill 5, I also have serious concerns about the other parts of the bill:

I am concerned that the proposed changes to the Electricity Act, 1998, and the Ontario Energy Board Act, 1998 might empower the Minister to kneecap renewable energy projects and make it harder and more expensive for Ontario to wean itself off fossil gas plants whose viability depends on U.S. fracked gas
Proposed changes to the Environmental Assessment Act would break your government’s clear promise to require a full environmental assessment of York1’s proposed dump site in Dresden, Ontario.
I believe that the threat of the U.S. using economic force to try and coerce Ontario and the rest of Canada into giving up our distinct laws and institutions, and even our sovereignty, is very real and very serious. I believe that our response must include aggressive provincial government action to break Ontario reliance on U.S. imports and markets. But it is irrational to use these radically different – and uncertain – economic circumstances as a pretext for doubling down on the very same agenda of environmental deregulation (and some of the same projects) that were previously justified as a way to promote greater integration with the U.S. They cannot plausibly justify emulating the concentrated, authoritarian Trump-style powers we are fighting to protect ourselves against.