The proposed changes to…

The proposed changes to legislation protecting species at risk are being made, not to maintain or to enlarge species protection, but to enable the development of projects that the government considers are important for economic development. As the title of the legislation makes clear, the priority is economic development not the protection of species.
The government is seeking to free itself from any ethical or scientific requirements to protect species by limiting the role of the scientific Committee on the Status of Species at Risk to an advisory role, whilst giving itself the final power of deciding what may thrive and what may not.
The government's concern for speeding up economic development, even in the case where the vitality of endangered varieties of life exists, will allow development of projects that impact these endangered varieties once the project has been registered, but before any review of its impact or requirement for a special permit to limit its impact, has been carried out, hence making any prevention of irreparable destruction of the endangered species impossible.
To limit the area of the environment that can be withheld from the development of a project, so as to protect and endangered species, the government intends to limit the term 'habitat' such that a relationship of a creature to the environment does not include exercise, feeding or breeding, all of which are necessary for an organism to survive.
All in all, these changes to the Endangered Species Act continue to give evidence of the present government's low valuation of a vital and varied, environmental, life supporting system. The government's world view seems considerably depleted of a respect for the wonder and the necessity of the mutually sustainability of all life, including our own.