I am writing to express my…

I am writing to express my opposition to the proposed changes to the ESA/shift to the Species Conservation Act and provide some brief feedback/suggestions. As it is proposed right now this is a completely unserious and obviously ideological piece of proposed legislation, that flies in the face of reality and is completely against the public interest of everyone in Ontario. My key comments are:

1. The new definition of “habitat” is not actually what habitat is – habitat encompasses the entirety of the resources AND physical space a species needs to survive and perpetuate itself. In this definition, it is basically just scoped to the individuals themselves. It is meaningless, since species cannot survive without their habitat, and they need more than just a few breeding or hibernating spots. Imagine if aliens invaded earth for its resources, annihilated all our infrastructure and croplands, and took all our water, but left our houses alone and concluded that they had adequately protected us from their activity. We would obviously recognize this as absurd and unfair, but this is in fact an exact analogy to what is being proposed here. You can destroy everything a species needs to survive, but as long as you don’t actually kill the individuals and/or some specific components of habitat (which are not enough to ensure its survival), that’s allowed apparently. We need protections for actual habitat, which is needed to sustain species and encompasses all of their needs. Not the Ford NationTM Newspeak version of habitat. This is the most absurd part of this entire proposal, which is why I have covered it first.

2. The registration first approach is a poor substitute for permitting. Often impacts to SAR are specific to the project and site, and require consideration and permitting before they are allowed to proceed. It also means that contact can occur between proponents and the ministry, and they are better able to understand their impacts of their project, and an understanding of what needs to happen to mitigate impacts to SAR can be developed between the parties. Because of this, it is also more readily enforceable. Additionally, this system enables proponents acting in bad faith, since they can just register and begin work immediately, without any kind of accountability for their impacts that would be facilitated by the permitting process. The proposal suggests stronger enforcement would be prioritized, but there’s hardly anything left to enforce anyway.

3. Species listing is now discretionary, rather than based on the scientific and expert listing of COSSARO, further demonstrating that this proposal does not intend to actually act in the interest of protecting SAR, instead politicizing the process. If we want actual progress on species conservation and recovery, they need to be listed and protected properly based on their scientifically determined status, not listed discretely only when it is politically or economically convenient. It is literally the job of the government and the fine public service we have in this province, to find innovative solutions to any challenges arising from the listing, not to ignore science because of convenience, and especially not because of whining from industry about “red tape” (aka having to follow what are usually very reasonable rules).

There are a few things here that are somewhat better
1. The additional funding for species at risk stewardship projects which quadruples the funding to $20 million is welcome. This money will go a long way to support SAR and biodiversity in this province more generally. I am supportive of this item.

2. Reducing overlap with some aspects of federal laws is fine, but it should be restricted to things that are a very clear duplication, and offer equivalent protections from the federal level.

3. Increased and stronger enforcement is welcome, but as mentioned, there is basically nothing left to enforce. This would be better with the current act.

If the province wishes to speed up development permitting and processing, there certainly may be administrative efficiencies that could be found, but the best way to do it would be to better resource the public service to improve application processing speed.

Additionally, creating to a provincial program to survey lands of high immediate and near future development interest for species at risk and assess environmental impacts more broadly would help. This could involve surveying and collecting environmental and SAR data, ahead of time in the field or with existing datasets to understand where SAR are in area of high development interest. Once a proponent comes forward, the question of which SAR are present and the impacts to them will be able to be assessed quickly. The data collected by NHIC is used in this way to an extent, but what I am proposing is something much more thorough, active, and specifically used to pre-assess developments. The findings from this could ultimately be used to create a “traffic light” land classification system for development, where certain land areas are “green” (minimal permitting), “yellow” (restrictions, or project specific assessment required) or “red” (high impact to SAR, strict restrictions, prohibitions on development). This framework has been used in some jurisdictions for renewable energy project permitting.

In conclusion, in am broadly opposed to this proposal, aside from some small items. I offer this criticism and a suggestion. I urge the government to drop this proposal and strengthen the Endangered Species Act.

Thank you