Ontario launches latest biodiversity strategy amid land-use concerns

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trilliona new Village Media website dedicated solely to coverage of provincial politics in Queen’s Park.

Ontario quietly unveiled its latest biodiversity strategy this week, which will guide provinces in making decisions to protect and conserve nature through 2030.

It hasn’t been updated since 2011 and since then there have been some major developments. Consider the whole climate change thing.

Another major development slowing Ontario’s efforts is the federal government’s goal to protect at least 30 percent of the country’s land and sea areas by 2030. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made that pledge during the 2021 election campaign and it was formalized in an international agreement at the COP 15 conference in Montreal.

The latest strategy, released without much fanfare this week, includes over a dozen new action items aimed at achieving that 2030 goal.

New points include ensuring that land use planning takes into account the important role it plays in protecting nature, further reducing the harmful impacts of invasive species, identifying areas where biodiversity needs to be restored and protecting 30 percent of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.

Steve Hounsell, a former chair of the Ontario Biodiversity Council who still sits on the board, had trouble pinpointing which is most important, given that biodiversity is about entire ecosystems built on interconnected components.

However, properly funding the implementation of the strategy is a major challenge.

“We need to recognize that and find ways to actually fund conservation programs. If we don’t, we will perish. It will be all talk and no action,” he said.

Late last year, the Ford administration restricted the powers of conservation agencies to speed up housing construction. It also froze the fees agencies charge developers for environmental assessments, which fund much of their other work.

But even before the Ford administration came to power, Ontario was failing to live up to the goals of previous strategies.

In the 2011 version of the strategy, at least 17 percent of the terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems should be preserved by some kind of protected area.

According to the 2020 progress report, only 10.7 percent of these areas were protected. The latest strategy aims for 30 percent.

This is an area where government could really make a difference, Hounsell said.

“Crown lands make up by far the largest part of the province. That means the government needs to get stronger,” he said.

However, the strategy is not solely the responsibility of the government to implement it. Established in 2005, the Ontario Biodiversity Council includes the Department of Natural Resources and Forestry and dozens of other stakeholders.

All groups have collectively contributed to what goes into the document and the role each of them should play in making sure it works on the ground.

However, the Ministry of Natural Resources plays an important role by acting as the secretariat of the Council.

Although the Tories’ environmental record has been far from outstanding, Hounsell said the ministry has done a great job of helping the council implement the strategy. His big concern is whether the cabinet will take the same approach.

“The current government has not done much for biodiversity. She has made a number of decisions and bills that are taking us in a very different direction in terms of land use planning, one that I think is actually very detrimental to biodiversity,” he said.

“It will be challenging to work with a government that doesn’t seem to recognize the value of biodiversity in the way I think we want to achieve,” he said.

Despite his criticism, Hounsell said he was excited about the opportunity to work with the government and was cautious about voicing criticism.

“I don’t want to launch a strategy and then attack the government. I hope they actually realize that there is a lot of interest in responding and I hope they will.”

“My challenge right now is not to deter them, but to find a way to encourage them to be a key partner,” he added. “I want to find out if they’re on board.”

The government first announced its intention to overhaul the strategy earlier this year.

At the time, Hounsell said he was concerned about previous government actions that threatened Ontario’s biodiversity.

“We need to protect nature better, and right now nature is losing. And that’s certainly true globally,” he said in an interview with Ontario, and specifically in southern Ontario, in March The Trillium. “If we continue on our path of focusing only on economic gain at the expense of nature, we will be bracing for rather dismal future outcomes.”

“To date, they have actually set us back. They’ve set us back years in terms of some of the policies and programs they’ve cut or changed, so I’m hoping there will be some kind of revelation,” he said.

“It is in our own interest to protect nature much better. And by the way, if you look at some of the recent things — for example, in terms of Bill 23 — it’s painful to jeopardize all of the work we’ve done in the past to protect and restore wetlands,” he said was referring to the government’s latest housing legislation.