The word habitat in the…

The word habitat in the Endangered Species Act, 2007 is defined as the “area on which the species depends, directly or indirectly, to carry on its life processes, including life processes such as reproduction, rearing, hibernation, migration or feeding” (2007). In Bill 5, 2025 however, habitat is defined as “a dwelling-place, such as a den, nest or other similar place, that is occupied or habitually occupied by one or more members of a species for the purposes of breeding, rearing, staging, wintering or hibernating, and [...] the area immediately around a dwelling place” (2025). Later in Bill 5, 2025 in regards to non-animal and non-plant species, habitat is defined as “an area on which any member of a species directly depends in order to carry on its life processes” (2025).
It should be obvious that the transition from the “area on which a species depends” to only “a dwelling-place” and “the area immediately around a dwelling place” represents a staggering disregard for the range many species of animals have (Endangered Species Act, 2007; Bill 5, 2025). The Algonquin Wolf is listed as threatened by the Committee on the Status of Species at Risk in Ontario (COSSARO), and it is mainly found in protected parks, the smallest of which is 225 km2 (Heppenheimer et al., 2018). While this is an extreme example, almost all species rely on a larger range than just the area immediately surrounding their dwelling place to survive, and the deliberate change of wording present in Bill 5 to significantly decrease the amount of land required for protection is troubling.
When it comes to the leading causes of extinction, “loss and fragmentation of natural habitat” is usually considered the highest or second highest cause (Noss et al., 2021). With the current act, great care is placed into the assessment of what constitutes habitat and what features of the landscape are required by a given species for survival with the goal of “protection and recovery of species” (Endangered Species Act, 2007). The proposed changes in Bill 5, 2025, however, would only promote the protection of a given individual or family of a species by protecting its dwelling place, but with the destruction, fragmentation, or alteration of the rest of the habitats those species relies on to survive, the likelihood of the protection and recovery of the species at large would decrease.
The Endangered Species Act, 2007 includes a subsection outlining the cases in which a person may engage in otherwise prohibited activities when given express permission, under the conditions that “the person shall take reasonable steps to minimize the adverse effects of the activity that was authorized by the permit, agreement or instrument referred to in subsection (1)” and the actions are “necessarily incidental to the activity that was authorized by the permit, agreement or instrument referred to in subsection (1), or [...] necessary for the purpose of taking the reasonable steps mentioned in paragraph 1” (2007). Bill 5, 2025 includes a much looser system for obtaining exemptions, stating only that “after considering an application for a permit, the Minister may issue a permit to a person that [...] authorizes the person to engage in an activity specified in the permit that would otherwise be prohibited by section 9 or 10” (2025).
By giving the Minister the ability to authorize otherwise prohibited projects without having to consult COSSARO or a similar team of individuals passionate about Conservation Ecology, the fate of many species will lie in the hands of one person, which creates a far larger margin of error than a team of people who must reach a consensus would create. When it comes to endangered species, every decision matters, as small population sizes increase the risk of inbreeding, duplicating dangerous alleles, and decreasing the population further in an extinction vortex (Godwin et al., 2020).
With the proposed changes already greatly decreasing the available resources to a given individual as the entire range it relies on for survival is not protected, the potential for loss of individuals and thereby genetic diversity in endangered species is already increased. With the added ability for a single person to make decisions that might directly lead to the harm of more individuals without the same guardrails that were in place in the previous act, unleashing Ontario’s economy may come at the expense of many species that also call our Province home.