We write on behalf of the…

We write on behalf of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation (“SON”), in response to Bill 5, Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act, 2025 (hereinafter referred to as “Bill 5” or “the Bill”).

In Bill 5, Ontario is scaling back protections in Ontario law for the environment, species at risk, and cultural heritage. The changes Ontario proposes in Bill 5 amount to an attack on our rights and way of life. There is a clear pattern to the changes proposed in the Bill: the government seeks to, at its discretion, remove regulations and safeguards in place that protect our Territory, reduce or circumvent the opportunities for First Nations to be consulted, and ultimately steamroll our rights and laws. The Bill cannot be passed in its current form.

SON is an Anishinaabe Nation made up of the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation and the Saugeen First Nation. Our Territory – known to us as Saukiing Anishnaabekiing – consists of the Saugeen (Bruce) Peninsula, the 1.5 million acres of land to the south, and the surrounding waters of Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. As a result of a series of historic treaties, including Treaty 45 ½ and Treaty 72, we are treaty partners with the Crown, though the Crown has not always respected and honoured our treaty relationship.

SON has lived in our Territory since time immemorial. Our Territory sustains us and is central to who we are as a people. Under Anishinaabe law, we have responsibilities to care for the lands and waters of our Territory. We hold the authority and responsibility to protect our Territory and the rights and interests of our people. We continue to hold and exercise our inherent jurisdiction to care for our Territory in accordance with our own laws. This includes protecting and caring for our Ancestors, sacred places, and the animals and plants that share our Territory: we have a relationship with our Territory and the species inhabiting it. We are all essential to the continued health of the Territory, and our ability to continue our way of life as Anishinaabe people.

We also hold and exercise exclusive Aboriginal and treaty rights throughout our Territory. Courts have recognized these rights, including SON’s right to fish commercially in our traditional waters.
Our assessment of legislation and projects affecting our Territory is guided by our Anishinaabe laws, values, teachings, knowledge system, and the wisdom of our Ancestors, ensuring that what our Ancestors safeguarded continues to be protected. We make informed decisions that protect, restore, and fulfill the vision of SON, with deep reverence for sacred sites and Ancestral burial places, the land, waters, way of life, and the well-being of all living relations. In doing so, we honour our Ancestors and uphold our responsibilities to all of Creation.

Embracing seven-generation thinking, SON considers the long-term and cumulative impacts on our Territory, our People and future generations. Any project that is approved by our Nation must lead to an overall benefit in terms of environmental health, cultural integrity, and social well-being. Projects must heal, restore, and achieve our vision for the land, waters, way of life, and the well-being of all our living relations, with costs of mitigations being secondary considerations. We require that all projects recognize and offset their impacts with significant improvements, ensuring a balance that aligns with our understanding of impact. We expect Ontario to adhere to these principles with legislation, decisions and activities that affect our Territory.

We are deeply concerned with Schedule 9 of Bill 5, the Special Economic Zones Act, 2025 (SEZA). The SEZA will allow Ontario to create rule-free zones where it can exempt any business or project from any provincial or municipal law or by-law. Ontario can choose ‘Trusted Proponents’ and ‘Designated Projects’ who will be exempted from regulatory requirements within those zones, based on criteria that has not yet been set: the legislation as proposed includes no limits on the size, location or identity of the areas and businesses who the government could choose to favour with the legislation. This means that where these rule free zones are, and who the Trusted Proponents are, and what projects are ‘designated’ is entirely up to the whims of the government of the day and its political agenda.
Given that Ontario has cited the Ring of Fire, an area more than 5000 square kilometres in size rich in biodiversity, as a potential candidate for a ‘Special Economic Zone’, it is clear that there is no limit to the area that Ontario will consider for this designation.
Ontario has also, tellingly, limited the types of legal claims that can be brought against it as a result of this law, meaning it cannot be held accountable for all the harms the government knows this law will cause.
Our Territory cannot be subject to such a designation, nor should any land be. The SEZA grants Ontario virtually unlimited power to provide any proponent of business with the ability to conduct any activity it wants, in any area of the province the government chooses, without any regulatory oversight. SON would consider such a designation in our Territory a fundamental breach of the Crown commitments set out in the Agreement.
While Ontario has claimed it will live up to its constitutional obligation to consult and accommodate our rights, the SEZA does not reference the Agreement or the Crown commitments it includes, nor is there any mechanism in the SEZA providing for Indigenous oversight or expressly involving First Nations in decision making about our territories. Ontario has to consult with us when they make a decision that could impact our asserted or proven rights. The wholesale removal of regulations means there will be way fewer, if any, decisions the government will make about development in these special economic zones and particularly about ‘preferred proponents’ – given this, it is not at all clear when or how Ontario will fulfill its duty to consult and accommodate. This is not honourable, nor is it consistent with Ontario’s constitutional or negotiated obligations.
Ontario cannot give developers free reign, with this Bill or otherwise. This land is covered by Treaties, and is subject to the laws of the Indigenous nations to which it belongs. If this Bill proceeds to law, we will continue to protect and defend our Territory as we have since time immemorial. But we should not have to battle Ontario’s laws (or lack of laws) in order to do so.
The proposed changes will slow development
The sad truth is that this Bill proposes ‘solutions’ by taking aim at laws, regulations, processes and protections that are not problems, and are not the cause of delays.
In reality, those laws, regulations, processes, protections – and in our case, the Agreement – actually help developments proceed: Ontario currently relies on the very processes it is dismantling as a main avenue by which they satisfy their duties to consult and accommodate. Without those laws, regulations, processes and protections, Ontario’s constitutional obligations to us don’t go away. But, there is no clear path for them to be met: no existing bureaucratic mechanisms in place, no team responsible for seeing it through, and no personnel capable of doing the work.
Given this, it is clear that although the changes Ontario proposes in Bill 5 are aimed at speeding up development, they will inevitably have the opposite effect: if the government continues down this path and ignores First Nations’ constitutionally protected rights, it will likely lead to legal challenges. This is a far slower and more expensive process than the process set up by existing regulations. And, it unnecessarily exposes proponents to potentially costly litigation, and needlessly pits proponents and First Nations against each other. Proponents and Ontario would be far better served working with First Nations, to find a path forward that both safeguards the environment and allows economic development to proceed.