What to know
- Ontario has replaced its Endangered Species Act with a new Species Conservation Act, shifting from a permit-based system to a registration model that reduces government oversight of development projects.
- Environmental advocates, including Wilderness Committee campaigner Katie Krelove, warn the changes could harm habitats and allow projects that may negatively impact vulnerable species.
- More than 50 species, including the endangered piping plover, will no longer be protected under provincial law, raising concerns about enforcement gaps and biodiversity loss.
An environmental advocacy group is raising concerns after Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government replaced its Endangered Species Act with a new legislation that an expert says offers less protection for several species.
The provincial government has officially discontinued its Endangered Species Act and replaced it with a new Species Conservation Act starting March 30.
The move comes after the province passed its Bill 5, Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act last year. According to the province, the new act aims to accelerate development and infrastructure building by facilitating permits and approvals as the government responds to the U.S. tariffs.
However, Wilderness Committee’s Ontario Campaigner Katie Krelove revealed to Now Toronto that the organization has concerns regarding the replacement.
The advocate says she had been working on a report about certain deficiencies of the Endangered Species Act and what could be done to increase protections when she first learned the legislation was being repealed and substituted.
“It was a bit of shock, honestly, and [my initial reaction was] sadness…To have that being published right as then they were actually decreasing protection, and really gutting any real efforts at actually protecting species at risk and recovering species at risk was kind of a sad day,” she said.
According to her, the new act includes concerning changes.
Under the former Endangered Species Act, before carrying out construction, developers were required to submit an application for a permit including an assessment of any potential impacts on local habitats and species, and outline measures to mitigate these impacts.
Based on this application, the Environment minister could request more information, amend the permit, revoke it, suspend it, or even refuse it altogether.
But under the new Species Conservation Act, the province has switched to a new registration-based system, in which developers no longer have to get approved by the government to carry out the work, and instead must only register activities that may impact endangered species.
Krelove tells Now Toronto that the new process lessens government oversight of projects, and could allow for activities that might harm species at risk.
“There’s that lessening of government oversight, which just opened the door to projects not taking those mitigation seriously or also just to projects that maybe shouldn’t be done at all, or shouldn’t be in that location. So, that’s going to increase the impact to species in their habitat,” she explained.
Several species no longer protected
According to Krelove, the new act also stripped over 50 species from its protection.
Protections under the new act will no longer apply to certain endangered migratory bird or fish species, which are protected under federal government regulations, including the Migratory Birds Convention Act, 1994 and the Species at Risk Act.
Although activity involving these species technically still need to follow federal regulations, Krelove explains that historically the federal government has very rarely enforced these protections, leaving many of these species at risk.
According to the activist, one of the species that will no longer be protected is the piping plover, an endangered migratory bird, which usually settles in Wasaga Beach, Ont. every spring. The area is one of the most successful in terms of habitat for the bird’s breeding, with staff at local parks working to enforce protections for the species and the area itself.
But now with the Species Conservation Act, the bird is no longer protected under provincial law.
“The plovers really have no legal protection and so and all of those resources that went into hiring, paying staff and to monitor and to set up the protections, find out where they’re nesting, protect the nest. All of that is gone,” Krelove said.
In response to the stripped protection, the group is urging Minister of Environment and Climate Change Julie Dabrusin asking the federal government to step up and order an emergency protection of the plover birds.
“If the minister decides that there is an imminent threat to the species in a certain location, then they can step in and immediately sort of enforce federal protections. That is what we are asking the minister to do in the case of the piping plovers at Wasaga Beach,” she said.
Although the government suggests the new rules might help expedite infrastructure and development, Krelove says the discontinued Endangered Species Act was effective in balancing construction and protection for species at risk.
For here, the new rules signal that the Ford government “does not see the value in protecting biodiversity.”
“We are in a biodiversity crisis where we’re losing more and more biodiversity all the time. Every year, more wildlife populations are declining. And this wildlife biodiversity has immense value for keeping our ecosystems healthy, but also for keeping humans healthy,” she said.
“There were already many options for projects to do what they wanted to do and protect species at risk, and so this is sort of just the changes are more are we’re not are just an abandonment altogether.”
