I am writing to inform you…

I am writing to inform you that I, a person of the people the "Government of the people" is supposed to represent, whole-heartedly opposes opening up the endangered species act for the purpose of streamlining development. You list slowing down development as the problem but that is one of the main positives of the act in question. Slowing down development for no reason is, of course, a negative but the reason many of these species are endangered in the first place are habitat loss caused by rampant unregulated or minimally regulated development. Once these species are gone they will not be coming back. Many species support ecosystems as a whole and losing one can have unforetold consequences as many other species often are interdependent and we as humans know so little about how the interdependencies work. This review is trying to label a feature as a bug.

If the government would like to speed up regulatory processes I would recommend allocating more funding to the resources involved in environmental assessments and regulatory paperwork. A larger workforce and/or more streamlined back office processes would speed up the process. Perhaps look at implementing an office to guide companies through the process to help make it easier for developers to fill out the necessary applications if they are finding it to difficult.

Developments will last a few generations but the environments they change are lost forever. There is no reason to be rash and possibly lose what cannot ever be recovered for companies to make a few extra dollars which the majority of Ontarians will never see.