I am writing to strongly…

I am writing to strongly oppose Bill 5: the Protect Ontario by Unleashing Our Economy Act and its dangerous proposals, including the creation of Special Economic Zones, the weakening of Ontario’s endangered species protections, and the exemption of the Eagle’s Nest mine from an environmental review.

Bill 5 would give the government extreme new powers to ignore laws that protect the public health, Indigenous rights, Ontario's long term economic health, and environment without accountability. This is unacceptable, unethical, and short sighted.

Bill 5 would strip away real protections for at-risk species and their habitats. My primary objections related to ERO 025-0380 relate to (1) restricting the definition of habitat, (2) removing harassment, and (3) registration. Briefly:

Restricting habitat to breeding and denning sites ignores the obvious fact that all living creatures must eat and find a mate to persist. Let's use Minister McCarthy as a silly but useful example. Let's say we all felt strongly that Minister McCarthy must be protected because there are so few of him and his existence benefits us in both tangible and intangible ways. Protecting the house he was raised in at infancy would have been necessary (protected). Once he left that house to make his way in the world he would be on his own. Based on the proposed amendment we would be able to turn his yard into a parking lot so long as the house where he is raising his kids was safe (at least until they leave home at ~18). All the grocery stores in the GTA could be converted into aggregate mines and transformer stations. His workplace could suffer the same fate ... any location where he earns a wage or purchases goods and services that he uses to support himself and his family could all be destroyed so long as his home (i.e., "dwelling place") is left intact. This example could just as easily be me or anyone else. The point is that restricting the definition of habitat to where we are born and reared would result in our extinction. Animals are no different.

Removing harassment from the ESA or future SCA suffers the same problem. If someone surrounded the Minister's house with a jet engine testing facility but did not physically destroy the house... would his den still allow him to safely raise a family? Probably not.

Permits are needed to identify options and actions that reduce or mitigate harm, and to increase the chances that mitigations are cost effective. The proposed registration system allows proponents to start work before identifying any risks or mitigations. The claim that "proponents will be able to get projects started as soon as they have completed their online registration, provided they are following the rules in regulation" is demonstrably wrong - under the proposed changes they would be able to start work whether they followed the rules or not. By the time infractions are identified it will usually be too late to protect the species. What more it is disingenuous to state "It’s important to note that a registration approach is already in place and used by the ministry for 95 per cent of projects subject to the current ESA, including early exploration mining and species surveys." Species surveys have to be completed this way because you must know what is likely to be present before you can identify options and mitigations.

In short: the ESA or a future SCA must (1) use the scientific definition of habitat including dwellings, staging grounds, environments used to obtain nutrition or provide safety, and sufficient areas to allow animals to access those environments, (2) include the concept of “harass” in species protections, and (3) include a permit based system.