If a caribou is killed for a pipeline, does Ontario care?
Not since the province quietly gutted its Endangered Species Act, say the environmental groups that took the province to court last week.
Ontario was lauded for introducing what was described as the “gold standard” in species protection back in 2007. The Endangered Species Act outlawed killing, harming or destroying endangered species habitat. Six years later, the government snuck in a loophole you can drive a dump truck through: Regulation 176/13 exempts large segments of industry, including mining, forestry, oil, gas – even residential developers.
The groups want the courts to throw out the regulation, arguing that the province failed to assess the impact of the new reg on each individual species at risk. Presently, companies can escape possible prosecution by simply going online and agreeing to “minimize” habitat destruction.
Eco-justice lawyer Charles Hatt tells NOW that “the idea of the act was presumption of protection. Now there’s a presumption of permission.”
Companies can’t kill species wantonly, but according to Hatt, the regulations are written in such a way that “not a single species has the full benefit of the Act’s protections.” Environmental groups say 155 at-risk species in Ontario are threatened, including the woodland caribou, American eel, Blanding’s turtle and Acadian flycatcher.
It wasn’t the first time the province tried to weaken the act through the back door. It tried to sneak amendments into the budget bill in 2012. A year later, regulation 176/13 was slipped in, a move that only required the approval of Cabinet, thereby avoiding public scrutiny. A verdict on the court challenge isn’t expected for several weeks.
AL GORE, PHARRELL, CALL FOR CLIMATE ACTION
At the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last week, everyone from International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde and World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim to Al Gore and music maven Pharrell ramped up the drumbeat for climate action.
Amid jam sessions on carbon pricing and building for extreme storms, Gore and Pharrell made the biggest concrete announcement of the week: a new round of Live Earth concerts for seven cities on June 18.
“The purpose,” explained Gore, “is to have a billion voices with one message to demand climate change action now.” Gore says it’s “absolutely crucial we build public will” for a global climate accord in Paris later this year.
Kim called the move to cleaner, greener more livable cities a “no-brainer.” The IMF’s Lagarde used stronger terms to describe the climate change imperative. “We are at risk of being grilled, fried and toasted,” she said.
ecoholic@nowtoronto.com | @ecoholicnation
