Last summer the Ontario government tried to sneak through changes to several environmental laws in its omnibus budget bill. One of the changes it attempted to make was an overhaul of the Endangered Species Act. The proposed changes would have removed the requirement for corporations to protect species-at-risk and their habitat. Luckily, there was outcry from across the province in response to the proposed changes, and citizens and environmental groups managed to convince the government to abandon them. We thought the Endangered Species Act was safe.
But now the Ontario government is proposing a series of regulations under the Endangered Species Act that will have a similar effect to gutting the Act. The new regulations will grant broad exemptions to industrial players so that they can circumvent the requirement to protect species at risk. Logging companies, mining companies, and mega-quarries will be able to destroy species-at-risk and their habitat with impunity.
We told the Ontario government once that it isn’t acceptable to gut our Endangered Species Act, but they clearly haven’t listened. We need to remind them! Please tell the Ontario Government to abandon these harmful regulations.
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