Reviewing Ontario’s…

Reviewing Ontario’s Endangered Species Act in light of new and developing issues relating to Ontario’s environment is wise for any government. However the currently proposed amendments seem, on the whole, not to be concerned with providing better care for species, but rather to consolidate power in the person of the Minister of Natural Resources and reduce the accountability of said person to individuals and the scientific work of conservation experts in the field, including those working under their own authority. These amendments would allow for collusion between businesspeople, scientists and the Minister of Natural Resources for monetary or individual gain to occur undocumented at the expense of endangered species where current legislation would clearly reveal such corruption.
Please stand firm to keep our species at risk in Ontario safe and do not forward the amendments as proposed.

What follows are comments based on specific components of the proposed amendments.

Amendment 1.A. Why expand the required period from 3 to 12 months? – Given that 1E is also introduced why not expand to 4 or 6 months? A fourfold increase in time is not necessary and could be extremely harmful for a species in need needing decisive action.
1.D. Specificity is completely lacking in the statement of this amendment. What is “Scientific information?” Government reports, externally published works, and multiple expert opinions should all be taken account in the situations described here, and legislation should require as much; not leaving a loophole for a single biased opinion of one individual with a science background to sway government decisions.
1.E. Putting the position of species within Ontario into the broader context of the species global distribution and status is a good idea – but requiring a species to be downlisting based solely upon external populations is short-sighted. The importance of a species in Ontario ecosystems is as important for our legislation to consider as its external abundance.

Amendment 2.C. If species are newly-listed as at risk, the best way to downgrade them is immediate action and the currently proposed amendment eliminates any timeframe within which a protection plan must be made. Removing the necessity of a plan inevitably means some species will be eventually missed by protocol and suffer because of it. If new habitat regulation plans need to be made later, then allow for the plans to be updates and altered after an original strategy has been put into place – but please do not remove the mandate to develop a habitat regulation proposal within a clear and short timeline – it will only leave species increasingly vulnerable to human error.

Amendment 3.A. Sometimes timeframes for scientifically sound plans may need to be extended, but this amendment again, leaves the timeframe open-ended. Do not remove accountability from the Minister by leaving this law open-ended! It is only setting the law up for abuse! To make the option of extending the deadline to a year or 18 months is justifiable, not removing the cap completely at the Minister’s discretion.
3.C. Why would a progress review need such extension unless the government was failing to do its work? The frequency of reviews and subsequent policy alterations should be scheduled according to the existing species-specific Government Response Statements. To allow the Minister to alter this seems illogical unless this amendment simply seeks to empower the Minister to justify altering the established conservation science regime based on their discretion. Instead of “based on individual species’ needs” this could read “based on a repeated advice and data provided by experts performing species-specific surveys in the field.”

Amendment 4. The 4th amendment from A through F actually gives the Minister and businesses obvious loopholes and opportunities for abuse within the ESA that promote business expansion while minimizing accountability by removal of external scientific and expert accountability, and allowing the opportunity to harm a species at risk in favour of any other “species”, not necessarily even another at risk species, with soft language and arbitrary judgement calls giving all of the decision-making power to the Minister and high-ranking officials. Within this new fundraising entity there is described no accountability for a dollar-to-dollar transmission of funds paid to allow the harming of one species and /or their habitat to be put to use elsewhere in the province for the specific benefit of that species; this would inevitably lead to species that are more difficult to protect being disproportionately harmed by business action.

Amendment 5.B. While increasing enforcement is wise, relying on people who are not trained and educated in conservation issues to perform meaningful inspections allows for a great degree of error and bias to occur from ideologues on either side of the issue who lack a strong conservation background and education occupy these positions to abuse their role in this process. Both those who are intent on stopping all development, and those intent on promoting it regardless, would be given undue authority to misunderstand and misapply to law to their own preferences.

Finally, the Minister should not be allowed to order any pause in the protection of a species on his or her own authority. Again, as above, using expert data in significant amounts may be justify such an action, but to allow the Minister this authority without scientific accountability enables corruption within the system.

Also concerning is in the proposed changes to the Environmental Assessment Act – new section 15.3, making “Certain undertakings” exempt from environmental assessments. Why should this occur and why are these undertakings devoid of specificity in the law? Such soft language leaves enormous gaps in legislation, opening many avenues for abuse.

Please do not forward these amendments to the ESA as is. Please keep clear guidelines, timeframes and accountability to experts and scientific data a consistent part of our ESA in Ontario.