Bill 5 is a complete removal…

Bill 5 is a complete removal of any form of meaningful environmental protection for the sake of land development, and is, at best, completely naive in its assumption that any voluntary efforts will be made to maintain environmental protections in lieu of legal obligation.

I am an environmental engineer that works in the land development industry, and my entire profession consists of ensuring that clients and client subcontractors actually fulfil the minimum requirements related to environmental protection measures. This extends beyond species habitat protection to include drinking water source protection and sufficient remediation of contaminated sites.

It is exceedingly rare that any client willingly goes above and beyond the prescribed legislation; this is a simple question of business incentivization. If a developer, property owner, or contractor does not profit from an action, they will not do it. Similarly, if these individuals face zero consequences for failure to ensure that environmental protections are maintained through voluntary efforts (such as those lifted in exception zones by the proposed by Bill 5), they have no incentive whatsoever to spend a single penny on protective measures.

My clients are not evil people who hate the environment. They are businesses that seek to generate profits off of their work to pay their employees. They are also parents trying to afford their children's hockey equipment, and worry over whether they'll ever get to retire in the face of current economic uncertainty.

If they are not required or compelled under the threat of legal obligation to meet a legislated standard, they will not do it because every 'extra' erodes the potential profits. Private business is not motivated by the proverbial carrot of voluntary efforts to support moral responsibility. The stick of legislated obligation is the only thing that prompts a for-profit private business to spend additional project funds. There are easy direct parallels drawn in workplace safety and labour laws; these are written in blood. They did not exist until an employer was found negligent for failing to forsee probable harm.

If the Bill 5 is not withdrawn, the province will be egregiously negligent in failing to foresee the extremely probable environmental harm that will occur in these special economic exception zones, as any reasonable individual can see that no voluntary efforts will be undertaken in the place of provinvially legislated requirements.