Doug Ford’s Bill 5 will lead to environmental 'slaughterfest'

Under the cover of a federal election and tariff threats from U.S. President Donald Trump, two topics that have dominated Canadian headlines for the last month, Premier Doug Ford and his PC government have launched an unprecedented assault on environmental protection law in this province.

Bill 5—dubbed the Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act—was introduced at Queen’s Park on April 17 and easily passed its first reading with Ford claiming the legislative changes were necessary in order to cut “red tape” and “unlock our critical minerals and unleash our economy to create new jobs and opportunities in the north and across the province.” Much of this is a reaction to the economic uncertainty created by Trump and the tariffs he has imposed on a variety of products. 

The sweeping legislative changes are being rammed through by Ford, whose powerful majority government will shortly gain ultimate power to approve massive infrastructure and development projects, and the ability to exempt “designated projects” and “special economic zones” from any provincial or municipal law. The government will soon be able to exempt “trusted proponents” from any law it chooses, including those meant to protect the environment and Indigenous rights.

Former senior Ontario planner and architect of the Greenbelt Plan, Victor Doyle, says the idea that the environment must be sacrificed at the expense of economic growth is outdated thinking that does not align with economic realities. 

“That’s certainly old school thinking and proven to be not only completely wrong, but in conflict because the best economic outcomes are clearly where you manage the environmental externalities and the economics associated with those.”  

The Endangered Species Act, once viewed as the gold standard for species protection in Canada, is being scrapped entirely, replaced with the Species Conservation Act. It is a shell of the former legal mechanism and completely guts any available protection for at-risk wildlife by removing the focus on helping rebuild and recover the populations of species in decline and eliminating the ability of enforcement officers to stop projects that are damaging species habitat. 

The proposed legislation changes the entire ethos of the law. Soon, the protection of species will only be done while taking into account “social and economic considerations, including the need for sustainable economic growth in Ontario.” 

The sudden changes will take effect as species at risk across Ontario face unprecedented danger. The province’s auditor general found in 2021 that permits to harm species at risk habitat had increased over 6,000 percent since 2008. Many of these permits were being approved automatically, the AG found, leading to a damning conclusion that the Ministry of the Environment was facilitating and enabling the harm of at-risk species, the opposite of its mandate. 

“The Ontario government is using the trade war as cover for its war on species,” Ecojustice staff lawyer, Laura Bowman, said. “There is no evidence that sacrificing our biodiversity, and running roughshod over our most precious and vulnerable natural assets will benefit Ontarians. The only thing that has been ‘unleashed’ with this bill is an irrational vendetta against vulnerable ecosystems, plants, and animals… Doug Ford and his government are putting profit over people and ecosystems, plain and simple.” 

The Ontario Headwaters Institute said the looming bill “is another effort to steamroll the environment while pretending to streamline environmental protections.”

“We will pay for it in climate change events that now happen more often and the loss of many species,” award-winning naturalist, Bob Bowles, said.

Katie Krelove, the Ontario Campaigner for Wilderness Committee labelled it as an “anti-democratic attack on environmental protection” while Margaret Prophet, the executive director the Simcoe County Greenbelt Coalition said it is a “fire sale of our freedoms”.

“With a single stroke of the Premier and Cabinet’s pen, any neighbourhood could be branded a “special zone” where clean-water protections, endangered species protections, local bylaws—even Indigenous treaty rights—could simply vanish. That’s not prosperity; that’s steam rolling community rights,” Prophet lamented. 

Doyle notes backlash has not stopped the PC government in the past, and Bill 5 appears to be a significant progression toward a long-standing, anti-democratic agenda of the Ford government to exempt development projects from existing laws to give builders whatever they want. 

“It’s expanding on a similar philosophy they’ve brought to bear previously, whether it was through MZOs or transit-oriented communities, or exempting themselves from existing environmental laws like in the case of Ontario Place and with the recent Removing Gridlock Act…If they don’t like the environmental laws they just exempt themselves from it.”

The PCs expanded on the exemptions for the controversial Ontario Place megaspa project through Bill 5 which, once passed, will exclude it from public consultation requirements under the Environmental Assessment Act. This follows the PCs’ Rebuilding Ontario Place Act, which came into effect in 2023 without any public consultation, despite an internal ministry document acknowledging that the legislation was likely to have “environmentally significant implications.” 

“It’s clear they’re removing the last shreds of accountability. This isn’t about the economy—it’s about silencing opposition and avoiding scrutiny,” Ann Elisabeth Samson, co-chair of Ontario Place for All, said.

Experts and advocates from across Ontario are beginning to mobilize a significant pushback against the legislation, which many see as a repeat of the fight advocates undertook against the Greenbelt scandal. In that case, the PC government used the cover of the ongoing housing crisis to push through legislation that handed 7,500 acres of Greenbelt land to wealthy, PC-connected developers. The entire scheme was scrapped following public backlash and investigations by the province’s auditor general and integrity commissioner that found the process “favoured” certain developers and led to the resignation of several government staffers and Steve Clark as housing minister. The entire embroglio is currently under investigation by the RCMP.

The bill’s implications are far-reaching and come on the heels of a string of controversial Ford government decisions, including pushing through Minister’s Zoning Orders (MZOs) to weakening wetland protection and conservation authorities, and the now-reversed plan to open the Greenbelt to developers.

The proposed legislation, which passed first reading the same day it was introduced, paves the way for the province to fast-track mines, resource extraction and major infrastructure projects, including the widely mocked Highway 401 tunnel project and Highway 413—which the PC government has already exempted from a number of existing environmental laws. 

“These ‘special economic zones’ are vaguely defined and could be used to try and undermine our rights and ignore our sovereignty. You can’t ‘unleash’ our rights or our sacred responsibilities to our lands and waters with the wave of a pen,” Ontario Regional Chief Abram Benedict stated in a press release, noting the Chiefs of Ontario Leadership Council is convening to discuss the legislation. 

“The government and mining proponents will need to work with each individual Nation that could be impacted by any given development to ensure they are adequately consulted and freely consent to any activities within their territories.”

The already limited protections afforded to biodiversity in Ontario would be weakened further, Ontario Nature’s campaigns and advocacy manager Shane Moffatt noted.

“After years of neglect, endangered species in Ontario urgently need more protection, not less...No matter how he spins it, bulldozing endangered species protections is only going to unleash more problems in the long run. We all rely on a healthy environment for the air we breathe and the water we drink.”

Political leaders have been quick to respond as well, with Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner accusing the government of exploiting international trade fears to roll back environmental regulations. “Ford is trying to use the threat of Trump to gut environmental protections. Let me be clear: protecting nature & farmland is not red tape. Gutting environmental protections will make us more vulnerable to the impacts of tariffs and less self-reliant.”

An Ontario New Democratic Party spokesperson shared a statement with The Pointer. “The Bill raises some serious questions about the future of endangered species protection and environmental protections in Ontario.” 

Claire Malcolmson, the executive director of the Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition warns Bill 5, if passed in its current form, will cause unprecedented harm to Ontario's vulnerable ecosystems and species at risk. 

(Joel Wittnebel/The Pointer files)

“At first glance, many aspects of this Bill have nothing to do with fighting tariffs — eliminating endangered species protection, hypocritically exempting the Dresden landfill from environmental assessment, an assessment that the Ford government themselves promised, and exempting projects like Ontario Place from even more guardrails — these are just a few examples.”

Ontario Place was once home to more than 50 species of trees, offering vital shelter, food, and habitat for a wide range of birds and animals. It served as a rare urban refuge and thriving ecosystem — all of which has now been wiped out.

Since 2018, the PC government has attempted to slash, weaken, or replace laws that protect the province’s green spaces, while stripping away the powers of those responsible for safeguarding them.

In 1946, the Conservation Authorities Act was established to create Conservation Authorities in Ontario to manage natural resources, addressing concerns about erosion and drought and emphasizing watershed-based resource management.

In 2020, Bill 229 amended the Conservation Authorities Act, limiting their input on issues beyond mandatory programs unless a municipal agreement existed. In 2022, Bill 23 weakened conservation authority powers and granted the Minister of Natural Resources authority to approve development applications, a move viewed as loosening Greenbelt development restrictions.

In 2005, the Ontario government passed the Greenbelt Act, creating the world’s largest protected greenspace to preserve vital resources, clean air and water, reduce flood risks, support wildlife, and offer recreational areas for communities.

In 2018, while still a candidate, Ford promised to open a "big chunk" of the Greenbelt to “some of the country’s biggest developers.” By November 2022, the Ontario government announced plans to develop thousands of acres of protected land, breaking years of promises to preserve it. A plan that was found to favour certain developers and is now under investigation by the RCMP. 

Similarly, in 1971, Ontario introduced the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to safeguard and support the recovery of at-risk species in the face of growing biodiversity loss, and it was later updated in 2007. “The ESA was once considered the best of its kind in Canada due to automatic protections for critical habitats,” Ontario Nature noted.

It is 2025, and now the PCs are seeking to replace the ESA with the misleadingly named Species Conservation Act, and stripping away powers from enforcement officers responsible for protecting the species at-risk in the province. 

One of the most significant changes is the proposed new definition of "habitat" for animals, birds and plants. 

Under the current Act, habitat protection is broader, covering the full range of areas essential for species' survival and recovery.

This includes the habitats of amphibians like the jefferson salamander, birds like the yellow-breasted chat, fish like the redside dace, insects like the monarch butterfly and rapids clubtail, mammals like the caribou, polar bear, and gray fox, snails like the striped whitelip, and plants like the American chestnut, false hop sedge, green dragon, and black ash.

“These are species in decline. If you even just protect the status quo, they will continue to decline. These are species that need more than what they have right now. And we're giving them less than what they have right now. It's a bill that is designed to make species extinct,” Bowman said.

But under Bill 5, the definition of habitat would be substantially narrowed: for animal species, habitat includes only the dwelling place, such as a den or nest, occupied for purposes like breeding or hibernating, and the area immediately surrounding it that is essential for those activities; for vascular plant species, habitat is defined as the critical root zone surrounding a plant; and for all other species, habitat refers to any area essential for the species to carry out its life processes.

“This travesty is a betrayal to the people, and just one more step towards an authoritarian regime similar to what Mr. Trump is doing in the U.S.,” Jim Richards, a decorated naturalist and founder of the Second Marsh Defence Association (now Friends of the Second Marsh), said. 

Calling it a “biology-denying bill,” Bowman was astonished by the flawed logic behind this change. 

“Imagine an animal with a den that wanders around, gathering food from the surrounding habitat, drinking from a creek, and finding a mate within its territory. “To protect the species and maintain its status quo, the full range of areas it relies on throughout its life cycle must be preserved. This includes places it migrates to or uses seasonally,” she explained. 

“Under the new definition, habitat protection would be limited to just the den and the immediate area around it. The animal would no longer have access to the broader habitat necessary for finding food, mates, or moving freely. Essentially, a shopping mall could be built around the den, as the surrounding area would no longer be protected.”

Environmental Defence’s Ontario environment program manager Phil Pothen warns, “even those tiny slivers of critical habitat that this law would recognize would not be off-limits for destruction. Prohibitions would be replaced by a requirement to register that the destruction is happening.”

The proposed bill not only determines the boundaries of a species' habitat, which doesn't reflect the realities of the natural world, but also eliminates any potential for the species' recovery.

“If Ontario is going to gut endangered species protection entirely, it's just going to be an invisible slaughterfest. Maybe people should think about this when they vote,” Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition’s executive director, Claire Malcolmson, told The Pointer.

The Ford government has pledged to focus its protection efforts where they will “have the most impact” through a Species Conservation Program, with funding of $20 million annually for on-the-ground conservation projects.

“Any species that is classified by COSSARO will be eligible for ministry funding through the Species Conservation Program,” a Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks notice stated.

But if history is any indication, it’s unclear if that money will be effectively used, especially given the lack of clarity about the conservation projects. 

In 2021, the Species Conservation Action Agency was established to manage funds collected from developers, which were intended to support habitat conservation efforts. Despite accumulating $3.4 million in developer contributions since 2022, the agency has yet to allocate any of the funds to actual conservation projects.

What is clear, however, is that the money will not be used for enforcement. “Funding will not be used towards enforcement; it will be used to support on the ground projects,” the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks told The Pointer in a statement.

“The proposed Species Conservation Act would not protect species, full stop…This is a biology-denying bill that, for show, pretends to protect such small areas with discretionary protections that it's incapable of ensuring that species survive and recover, and that's why they took recovery out of the goals of the bill,” Bowman said.

That’s not it, though. The Endangered Species Act, which Doyle describes as “a thorn in the side of developers and every kind of resource, infrastructure project,” will be replaced by a system that gives the government control over species conservation, undermining the scientific independence of the species listing process.

If approved, Cabinet will have the discretion to selectively list or de-list species that the Committee on the Status of Species at Risk in Ontario (COSSARO) has already identified as being at risk. 

“Bill [5] would place even the recognition that species are endangered, threatened, extirpated, or of special concern at the sole discretion of the current government. That decision would be taken out of the hands of the Committee on the Status of Species at Risk in Ontario (the expert committee that designates endangered species under the current law),” Pothen stressed.

When species are removed from the protection list, the legal safety afforded to them under the ESA will also be rescinded, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation and harm.

(Government of Ontario)

The repeal of a key provision, including sections 57, 20 and 30, removes the requirement for the government to consider the impacts of regulations on at-risk species, and reduces public involvement and transparency, limiting opportunities for people to challenge decisions that could harm endangered species.

The amendments also strip crucial powers from enforcement officers, reducing the immediate response capacity to halt harmful activities affecting endangered species. “Amendments are made to remove the ability of enforcement officers to issue stop orders and to authorize provincial officers to issue contravention orders and to authorize the Minister to issue mitigation orders,” the bill states.

This shift aligns with the introduction of the Special Economic Zones Act, which critics have dubbed the "Henry VIII clause" due to its broad and unchecked powers.

A "Henry VIII clause" in law refers to a provision that grants the executive branch (such as a cabinet or government) the authority to amend or repeal primary legislation (laws passed by Parliament) through secondary legislation (regulations or orders). The term is named after King Henry VIII, who used royal proclamations to bypass Parliament and create laws on his own.

(The National Archives/Ontario.ca)

The Special Economic Zones Act grants the Lieutenant Governor in Council broad powers, including the authority to "make regulations designating special economic zones" and to "make regulations exempting a trusted proponent or designated project from requirements under an Act, regulation or other instrument under an Act, including by-laws of a municipality or local board," which are designed to protect public health, safety, and the environment in municipalities like Peel. 

“There is nothing 'protecting Ontario' in this proposed legislation,” Melanie Duckett-Wilson, with Climate Action Newmarket Aurora, said. “With the bill's questionably-timed appearance, complex composition of seven ERO numbers and 10 Schedules, swift passage through the ERO system set at 30 days,  and lack of comprehensive consultation with experts and major stakeholders, it’s clear that the government is prioritizing its own preferences for industry and development at the expense of environmental and species integrity,  Indigenous rights, and public accountability. This Bill in its entirety hugely risks long-term damage to Ontario’s ecosystems, communities, democratic processes and how Ontario could properly respond to the climate emergency.” 
 

The proposed legislation’s provision that "certain causes of action are extinguished" raises concerns by potentially preventing affected individuals or communities from seeking legal recourse, weakening local control, and prioritizing economic interests over community needs and environmental protection.

(Government of Ontario)

The Ring of Fire, a mineral-rich region located 500 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay, could be designated as a special economic zone under the new legislation, ultimately exempting it from essential environmental protections, including the Endangered Species Act and the Environmental Assessment Act.

The Ring of Fire, which not only contains valuable mineral deposits but is also home to fragile, low-lying swamp ecosystems that store vast amounts of carbon in their waterlogged soils and peat layers, plays a critical role in climate regulation.

(Ontario Society of Professional Engineers)

“It promises to allow favourites of cabinet to get special treatment on any number of fronts, including, but not limited to environmental protection,” Bowman said.

That prediction is already playing out, with two projects — the Eagle’s Nest multi-metal mine, located near the Ring of Fire, and a waste disposal site in Chatham-Kent — both being exempted from undergoing a comprehensive environmental assessment.

The Pointer asked the Ministry of Energy and Mines who the government would consider “trusted proponents” under the Act. There was no response. 

“It's unclear what they're going to designate with that, but it's essentially a law where the cabinet can do whatever it wants,” Bowman said. 

For Pothen, the situation is even more troubling in many ways than what we've seen under the Trump administration. He’s particularly concerned because, despite promises from the Ford government to protect Ontarians from the issues unfolding in the U.S., “it seems more like the government is just jumping on the U.S. bandwagon and adopting many of the same policies here.”

Expressing bemusement at the irony of the bill being titled the "Protect Ontario by Unleashing Our Economy Act" when "all it does is unleash an irrational vendetta against vulnerable species and ecosystems," Bowman wished Ontarians a “Happy Earth Day” while speaking to The Pointer on April 22.

A similar sentiment was shared by advocacy group Stopthe413. 

“If Ontario truly valued biodiversity, it wouldn’t be dismantling what little protection remains. If this Bill goes through, it will be on the federal government to stand strong and enforce habitat orders and hold Ontario to its shared responsibility - unless more Ontarians pushback like during the Greenbelt land grab,” a statement from the organization reads. “Just as previous generations recognized their responsibility to future generations; we have a responsibility to future generations to provide for a healthy environment and vibrant communities, to protect farmland, water and green spaces for those who will come after us and this is a turning point for that responsibility.”

Email: [email protected]

Email: [email protected]

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