The Special Economic Zones…

The Special Economic Zones Act (Schedule 9) would grant unprecedented powers to the Provincial Cabinet and could allow corporations or individuals to avoid any laws and by-laws in entire areas of Ontario. There are no limits, no rules, and no public input. This is not how democracy works.

Schedule 9 would grant Ontario’s Premier and his cabinet powers to arbitrarily exempt favoured friends, their land and their projects from any law or regulation democratically enacted by the provincial parliament or by city and town councils. Far from helping to protect Ontario from U.S. attacks, Bill 5 would, if passed in anything like its current form, subject Ontarians to the same, concentrated “presidential” powers that are multiplying and being abused south of the border.

While your government has been presenting these powers as a special tool to fast-track projects that help protect Ontario, there is nothing in the law that has any plausible connection with adaptation to the loss of U.S. export markets. For example, the Act does nothing to specify that “trusted proponent” status is for “flagship” proponents that need help adapting to U.S. tariffs. There are no criteria focusing “designated project” or “special economic zones” status on activities or projects necessary to replace U.S. imports with domestic production, connect Ontario producers with new markets or replace U.S. demand for raw materials. There is no language that would restrict the Premier and Cabinet Ministers’ power to hand immunity to people, projects, lands and circumstances of economic importance at all. It would be an unfettered power to pick and choose who our provincial and municipal laws apply to.

There’s nothing in the Act even to limit its application to the kinds of laws actually relevant to industrial development, land use or infrastructure approvals. The broad power to “exempt” anyone the Premier and Cabinet choose “from requirements under provisions of an Act or of a regulation or other instrument under an Act” would extend to everything from the Trespass to Property Act (the law which prevents people strangers from walking into our backyard and refusing to leave) to labour and health and safety laws, to the Highway Traffic Act and municipal bylaws against public urination.

Schedule 9 of Bill 5 would exploit the very real dangers from the U.S. as a pretext for empowering the government to arbitrarily grant its “friends” (or anyone else it chooses) impunity from any (or every) Ontario law – including health and safety laws – and laws enacted by municipal governments. Perversely, the law would allow for this immunity to be granted to the very same foreign business interests that have aligned themselves with the Trump administration.