Province promotes new bill that would speed up mine approvals, but environmentalists say it comes at a cost

Jonathan Migneault · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 24, 2025 4:53 PM EDT | Last Updated: 5 hours ago

Ontario Minister of Energy and Mines Stephen Lecce says caller authorities tabled astatine Queen's Park volition chopped authorities reappraisal times for caller mines by half, but environmentalists reason that volition beryllium done by reducing protections for taxon astatine risk.

Lecce was successful Sudbury connected Thursday wherever helium promoted the province's recently tabled Bill 5, besides known arsenic the Protect Ontario by Unleashing Our Economy Act.

The authorities would make what the provincial authorities calls a "one project, 1 process" model that would streamline biology approvals for caller mines.

A dedicated excavation authorization and permitting transportation squad with the Ministry of Energy and Mines would streamline each approvals for caller mines into 1 process.

Lecce called it a "commitment to trim the clip it takes to determination with a consciousness of urgency portion inactive maintaining the highest standards of biology extortion portion afloat respecting Indigenous work to consult."

He said it's particularly important to velocity up excavation improvement successful the look of a commercialized warfare and rhetoric from the U.S. authorities threatening Canada's sovereignty.

"This is our infinitesimal arsenic Canadians, I think, to prehend the imaginable earlier us," Lecce said.

"Here we are astatine a clip erstwhile our state is nether onslaught with an accidental to thin in, to standard up, with a consciousness of ambition and hope, to beryllium self-reliant, beardown economical powerhouse successful the world."

Lecce said helium expects the caller instrumentality to travel into effect successful the fall.

'Watered down' protections

Environmental groups person argued the authorities streamlines caller excavation approvals by repealing Ontario's existing Endangered Species Act passed successful 2007, and replacing it with a watered down mentation called the Species Conservation Act.

"This won't velocity up projects. It volition beryllium catastrophic for wildlife," Laura Bowman, a unit lawyer for Ecojustice Canada, told CBC News.

"What we're headed toward, if this measure goes ahead, is truly conscionable abandoning taxon protection."

Katie Krelove, the Ontario campaigner for a conservation enactment called the Wilderness Committee, said the caller authorities would importantly constrictive the explanation of a taxon situation and springiness the provincial authorities the powerfulness to disregard technological recommendations.

"It volition region the requirements to make a betterment program for endangered taxon and altogether region provincial protections for migratory birds and aquatic species," she said.

Krelove said she recovered it ironic that the measure was framed arsenic a mode to basal up to U.S. President Donald Trump and fortify Canada's economical sovereignty.

"Now it's pulling straight from the U.S. president's playbook by scrapping biology extortion and handing blank checks to prime large industries and developers," she said.

During his property league successful Sudbury, Lecce told reporters the caller authorities includes a committedness to quadruple backing for the Species Conservation Program.

But Krelove said the programme is designed to rehabilitate habitats that person already been destroyed, alternatively of protecting them successful the archetypal place.

"Habitat demolition and degradation is by acold the fig 1 origin of taxon diminution successful the province," she said.

Krelove said radical crossed Ontario should beryllium acrophobic astir protecting taxon astatine hazard due to the fact that their habitats are signs of steadfast ecosystems that tin forestall flooding successful definite areas and sequester carbon, mitigating clime change.