Dear Hon. Minister Phillips:…

Dear Hon. Minister Phillips:

Please accept these comments as part of the public consultation on the proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act.

Instead of strengthening the ESA, your proposals would weaken it and make it easier for individuals and industries to degrade and even destroy critical wildlife habitat. The objective of the Act is to protect and recover species at risk, not to merely lessen our impact on them. There are already numerous exemptions and mechanisms for a wide variety of industries to proceed with harmful activities. The underlying framework for the ESA must be based on sound scientific evidence and expert analysis. This means that a number of the proposed changes are not consistent with that premise. Here are my comments on specific items from the proposals:

1. Assessing species at risk and listing them on the Species at Risk in Ontario List

D. Allow the Minister to require COSSARO to reconsider the classification of a species where the Minister forms the opinion based on scientific information that the classification may not no longer be appropriate.

My Comment: The authority of COSSARO must be maintained together with science-based listings and automatic protections. There is already a provision in the Act for ministerial-initiated review should a listing not be warranted, but ‘reconsider’ in this context means ‘change’ and will lead to politicization and undermine the Act.

E. Require COSSARO to consider a species’ condition around its broader biologically relevant geographic area, inside and outside Ontario, before classifying a species as endangered or threatened.

My Comment: This will allow endangered species to be neglected in parts of Ontario which places stress on their resilience and impacts overall biodiversity in those areas. Climate change makes this especially hard on species that have southern Ontario as the northern limit of their range.

F. Broaden COSSARO member qualifications to include members who have relevant expertise in ecology, wildlife management, as well as those with community knowledge.

My Comment: What does community knowledge mean? This is vague and without clear guidelines can open the process to unqualified individuals with agendas other than the protection of species in mind.

2. Defining and implementing species and habitat protections

A. De-couple the listing process from automatic protections and provide greater Minister’s discretion on protections… provide the Minister with authority to temporarily suspend species and habitat protections for up to three years…

My Comment: As in 1.D., the authority of COSSARO must be maintained. Furthermore, by the time the protections are granted after such a long delay, it may be too late. This delay also opens the door to influence by those with agendas that do not have species protection foremost in mind.

4. Issuing Endangered Species Act permits and agreements and developing regulatory exemptions

Ontario is also proposing to create Canada’s first independent Crown agency proposed to be called the Species at Risk Conservation Trust… The price for the payment-in-lieu (i.e. regulatory charge) will be within the range of costs that a client would have otherwise incurred through meeting the species-based conditions of an authorization…Clients would still need to fulfill some on-the-ground requirements…

My Comment: If the price and some of the requirements for payment-in-lieu are essentially the same as those that were required in any case under the current legislation, then what is the net benefit of the change, other than to provide interested parties an easy way out and reduce accountability? Instead of specific, targeted action to protect species ‘on the front line’, these funds may end up being allocated in ways that don’t address those immediate needs and place species in even greater peril.

Finally, I join many other Ontarians in mutual concern for all endangered and threatened species in this province and respectfully ask that you take these comments into consideration and not weaken the Act.