This proposal is wildly…

This proposal is wildly short-sighted and reductive.
As a professional in the conservation and environmental protections sector, I speak on behalf of my entire organization when I say that these changes to language are NOT benign - they are an insidious attempt at feigning a lazy ethic of care for the natural world for the sole purpose of expediting exploitation.

Anyone with a fractional understanding of environmental biology or ecosystem management knows that the idea of protecting individual plants and animals and their immediate surroundings and classifying this as "protection" of the ecosystem's integrity is so completely ridiculous that to even attempt to present it as a viable alternative to current practice is nothing other than deliberate misinformation.

Everything in nature is connected. Stripping away swaths of land for development takes away critical feeding grounds, nesting grounds, and limits the opportunity for interactions between species (you know, the whole basis of a food web). You simply cannot pick and choose pockets of land to protect while forsaking the rest for development. This proposal actively seeks to dismantle the most meaningful protections we have for endangered species, and I sincerely hope that everyone involved in attempting to pass Bill 5 understands how deeply complicit they are in jeopardizing the future of Ontario's wildlife.