Has it occurred to…

Has it occurred to absolutely nobody in this government that protections for species at risk perhaps exist for a reason, and that their presence impeding construction is the system working precisely as intended? Here's a thought: don't do construction in species at risk habitat! Just don't! It's that easy! The regulations are INTENDED to make it prohibitively difficult to do so, as an encouragement to modify activities and undertake them elsewhere.

Instead, this government has submitted a proposal to amend the act that's wrong on so many levels that I question why the act isn't simply being rescinded in full. It would certainly be more transparent than this malarkey.

The new definitions for habitat are utterly insulting, under which a literal potted plant is in perfect habitat, among other absurdities. This definition of habitat would result in a failing grade on a fourth-grade science test! When a nine-year-old is expected to write a more comprehensive definition of habitat than the provincial government, something is very wrong.

The lack of permitting required for disturbance to aquatic habitats or migratory birds is extremely troubling for a wide variety of reasons - again, permits are required for a reason in this case, and it's that both are sensitive to disturbance, in ways that can be difficult to predict. Permits allow for knowledgeable subject matter experts to review proposed activities, visit the sites themselves, and suggest precautions, remediation or alternative activities - removing this permit process leaves acting responsibly entirely in the hands of people who are experts on heavy equipment operation. I don't mean to discount the skills required to operate said equipment, but there tends to be little overlap between heavy equipment expertise and expertise in aquatic ecology. It also allows for deliberately destructive or malicious actions under the guise of ignorance - after all, if they "didn't know" the stream was brook trout spawning habitat, there's nothing to stop them from driving through it repeatedly and filling it in, something a permitting process would have identified and prevented.

What's perhaps most insulting, more so than the embarrassingly barebones habitat definitions, is the proposed removal of "harass" from species protections. This implies that under the new act, I could, for instance, find a baby spiny softshell turtle (an endangered species, for the record), hand-capture it, handle it for an extended period, pose for photos with it, put tiny hats on it, all until it died from stress, and not have done anything wrong in the eyes of the ESA. I could shine a spotlight on a Whip-poor-will (a threatened species), dazzling it and causing it to freeze, until it died of starvation and not have done anything wrong. I could think of more examples, but it's just serving to anger me. Suffice to say, that is beyond ridiculous. I shouldn't have to explain why harassing wildlife is bad. The fact that a proposed change is forcing me to do so speaks volumes by itself.

And the rationale for this is painfully obvious. This is intended, as was bill 212, to accomplish nothing more than to expedite the stalled progress of Doug Ford's $28 billion white elephant of a pet project, a highway to nowhere that the majority of the province doesn't want and won't use, which crosses several Provincially Significant Wetlands and impacts or outright destroys the habitat of somewhere north of 20 species at risk. No wonder it's been stalled for so long - it should never have been proposed to begin with, and preventing it from proceeding in a reasonable timeframe is again, the system working exactly as intended. I have an alternative proposal: if a project is so disruptive that it requires sweeping legislative changes to make feasible before even breaking ground, MAYBE IT'S A BAD PROJECT.