Regarding ERO # 025-0409 As…

Regarding ERO # 025-0409

As a life-long Ontario resident, taxpayer and voter, and a proud and very concerned Canadian citizen, I cannot express strongly enough my dismay and opposition to Ontario Bill 5 - Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act, including proposed amendments to the Mining Act 1990, Electricity Act 1998, and Ontario Energy Board Act 1998.

Environmental regulations aren’t useless roadblocks (“red tape”) put into place by a bunch of tree-hugging hippies to block economic growth. They are science-based rules implemented in a mature democracy to make sure the environment is protected to guarantee a sustainable economy for current and future generations. They exist specifically as a result of the cut-and-run development, industrial and resource extraction policies of the past that have resulted in devastated landscapes and economies. This includes boom-and-bust mining and logging towns (where taxpayers pick up the clean-up bill once industry leaves), agricultural dust bowls and communities where air, soil and water containing cancer-causing pollutants that sicken everyone, even eventually the rich who live in areas that will never be designated “special economic zones”.

The regulations on mining activities in Ontario exist as a result of lessons learned from past environmental and human health degradation from mining in ore-rich areas like Sudbury and Timmons as well as environmental disasters that have occurred in other countries by Canadian mining company operations (e.g., tailings dam failings in South America and Spain in the late 20th century).

This of course, hasn’t meant that environmental devastation still doesn’t occur in Canadian jurisdictions, notably the catastrophic Mt. Polley tailings dam failure in 2014. This wasn’t an outlier, tailings dam failures are still quite common. A recent study (“Why have so many tailings dams failed in recent years?” (Armstrong, Petter and Petter, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resourpol.2019.101412) has shown that in the case of four separate tailings dam failures, there was a direct link between the increase in production and/or cost cutting measures by the company. The authors postulate that “the compensation packages offered to middle management which actively encourage managers to cut costs and increase production so as to increase their annual bonus are a key fact in the rising number of serious accidents”. Given this, the authors recommend that “new Canadian guidelines should reduce risk-taking in future”. It is notable after the Mt. Polley tailings dam failure the British Columbia government updated and enhanced regulations for the mining sector.

A responsible government, that has the interests of the health of the people, environment and economy as a priority, should continually be looking to strengthen and optimize regulation of the mining and metals sector, not diminish it, as is proposed by the Ontario Bill 5 and associated legislative changes. Decreased and/or self-regulation (de facto or otherwise) of industry has not yet, to my knowledge, resulted in increased efficiencies to taxpayers, nor to increased safety, or protection to human health or the environment. Nor has it led to long-term economic prosperity.

Bill 5 and its Special Economic Zones Act, where environmental regulations no longer apply and regular (non-industry) people of Ontario no longer have a say, would degrade or destroy essential (aka: need-to-have, not nice-to-have) habitat like wetlands and peat bogs. Why should anyone care about wetlands? Because wetlands are critical to slow down water to prevent expensive flooding, and they filter water to improve water quality, meaning fewer algae blooms and less pollution in our rivers and lakes, including lakes in cottage country like Muskoka. Poorly or minimally regulated development in the northern Ontario peatlands Ring of Fire will cause irreversible damage to the ecosystem and result in significant carbon emissions as the 10,00-year-old peat becomes exposed to the air and starts to decompose. Carbon emissions need to be curbed; human-induced climate change is happening and is costing everyone, and every sector and jurisdiction needs to play its part in mitigating it.

This Ontario government, if anything, should strengthen environmental protection and stakeholder consultation, rather than green-light uncontrolled and undemocratic degradation, poorly regulated mining and other resource extraction and contamination, all of which will result in a reduced quality of life for the Ontario public, and poorer outcomes for the Ontario economy – something that this government said during the election was their number one priority.

Short-term and short-sighted grabs to develop woodlands, wetlands and prime farmland, and to recklessly extract natural resources at the expense of the environment and the rights of First Nations and of non-First Nations local inhabitants, will enrich a small number of individuals and companies, but in the long-term it will make Ontario poorer and weaker. This has always been the end result of unregulated, unsustainable development.

In a time of the US Trump Administration’s tariffs (which are similarly rolling back environmental protections as well as civil liberties), the more Ontario protects and promotes a healthy environment and a robust democracy (where cabinet is accountable to the electorate, not lobbyists/donors), the more attractive Ontario will be to corporate, financial, industrial and manufacturing investors, and THAT is what will protect and unleash the Ontario economy.

Emulating Trump’s policies as outlined in Bill 5 and associated new and amended legislation will NOT achieve this, instead Ontario will become in more and more in form and function like a 51st US state.

If Premier Ford and the PC majority government wanted the best for all Ontarians they were elected to represent, they should halt Bill 5 and not put Ontario up for sale. Premier Ford and his government need to remember that Ontarians elected them to a third term because Doug Ford promised to BEAT Donald Trump, not to BE Donald Trump.