The proposed legislation is…

The proposed legislation is completely unacceptable as written, and is unjustifable as a policy that even attempts to represent the interests of all of the citizens of Ontario. Instead it obviously is written for the narrow benefit of special interests such as developers. The Premier was caught promising these benefits to special interests before the election, while he was misleading Ontarians about his intentions to do so. The natural resources that the Endangered Species Act helps regulate are critical to many different industries, private and public stakeholders, both now and in the future.

The legislation is designed to eliminate barriers created by inconvenient scientific and objective facts and reality when they conflict with economic special interests to whom the legislation panders. There are a number of unacceptable aspects to the proposal:

1) Requiring experts to consider the status of a given species outside of Ontario before classifying it as at risk. This is utterly ridiculous - the government by definition has the public responsibility of setting policies that apply to Ontario, not anywhere else. The only thing that is relevant is the status of the species in Ontario, if it's native to Ontario. By this flawed logic, is the government going to tell Ontarians who are now being affected by severe flooding issues, that since the Sahara desert is dry, the government doesn't have to do anything to deal with the problem? It's a clear way of eliminating scientific facts from the process, since in many cases it will be possible to find somewhere that a given species has a different status.

2) Allowing the Environment Minister to interfere in species protection and permit processes. For example, removing the requirement for the Minister to consult with independent scientific experts. This describes allowing political and special interests lobbying to dominate the decisions that affect all Ontarians, which appears to be what the government and the Premier want.

3) Allowing a payment fee to give developers the opportunity to bypass critical protection activities. "allow municipalities or other infrastructure developers the option to pay a charge in lieu of completing certain on-the-ground activities required by the act". This is outrageous, it basically sells off natural resources that belong to everyone in Ontario to the government's lobbying friends. Is the government going to also then offset whatever costs do accrue to developers with heavy tax cuts that will be paid for by everyone else through cuts in health care, education, and public services?

4) Creating a deliberately crafted delay of years from when a species is classified to when it is protected by the act (by increasing the default time to 12 months and giving the Environment Minister the ability to arbitrarily extend that period through "reconsiderations" that don't have to be scientifically or factually based.