I am alarmed and angered by…

I am alarmed and angered by the government's intention to tear down Ontario’s plan for combatting climate change without offering any alternative plan of action.

If implemented, this would be a most rash decision, one that would leave Ontario without any legally binding emissions targets nor any means to tackle climate change.

Climate change is a real, present and undeniable danger for Ontario and all of Canada.

Across Canada, throughout this summer we have been fighting with increasing desperation against raging wildfires (increasingly numerous, intense, widespread and earlier in the year), scorching heatwaves that continue to break records in length and intensity (including in the Premier Ford’s home city of Toronto), and flash flooding.

These impacts are not limited to Canada. Given the worldwide impacts of a changing climate, Premier Ford’s regressive actions on climate change are a clear sign that his government is not committed to holding pollutors to account. Worse, it is showing that it is openly indifferent to Ontarians' and Canadians' right to a safe environment through climate action.

In its haste to end the province’s climate legislation and gut the cap and trade program, the Ford government chose to ignore its legal responsibilities under the Environmental Bill of Rights (EBR) to consult the public on changes to environmental regulations and laws so that residents, community groups, businesses and other stakeholders have an opportunity to weigh in on decisions that affect them.

Instead, the province made a regulation that ended Ontario’s cap and trade program, and then introduced Bill 4, the Cap and Trade Cancellation Act, 2018, to dismantle Ontario’s climate change mitigation plan and greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, all without giving the public a chance to consult meaningfully and specifically about these decisions — a move that Ontario’s own Environmental Commissioner Dianne Saxe has agreed did not comply with the government’s legal obligation under the EBR to consult the public before making that decision.

Winning an election does not give Ford's government the freedom to ignore Ontarians’ legal rights to participate meaningfully in decisions to change laws that protect us all from climate change.

The current consultation phase, though welcome, is an obvious and hasty effort by the Ford government at damage control, prompted by a lawsuit to hold Premier Ford accountable.

We Ontarians need our government to work TOWARD -- not against -- making climate-smart decisions and implementing credible, ambitious policies that will drastically limit carbon emissions.

Ontario’s Environmental Commissioner has warned that “dismantling a climate change law that was working is bad for our environment, bad for our health, and bad for business… A meaningful climate law needs science-based emissions budgets, a legal obligation to stay within those budgets, and credible, transparent progress reporting. Ontario can still choose sensible solutions that help families make ends meet while bringing climate pollution down. Polluter-pay tools, for example, give people more choice and a fair reward for reducing their emissions, and can help reduce other taxes they pay.”

With the overwhelming weight of evidence pointing to the urgent need for progressive and proactive action locally, nationally and worldwide on the climate file, I demand that Premier Ford and his government reinstate Ontario’s cap and trade program, and retract Bill 4, the Cap and Trade Cancellation Act, 2018.