Bill 5 passed the house yesterday, Wednesday June 4th.
Even though we knew the Ford government would use its majority to ram this through, together we fought back and registered our dissent loudly in front of the legislature, online, in the media and in our communities.
We saw through Ford’s arguments and so did many of you. Thank you. You helped us respond in a collective and timely pushback that was rightly fierce.
People from all walks of life spoke up in the single largest pushback I’ve seen since the Greenbelt scandal: scientists, farmers, environmental experts, lawyers, seniors, engineers, civil liberties experts, community leaders, academics, Amnesty, archeologists, labour, nurses, the opposition, Toronto Zoo, municipal leaders, and Indigenous leaders, Elders and Indigenous grassroots members.
And the fight is far from over. It’s just getting started as Indigenous leaders pointed out this week at a rally at Queen’s Park. They called out Ford’s falsehoods and future-wrecking plans and I want to acknowledge and thank them for their courage and clarity.
Ford is irrationally whacking Ontario’s vulnerable wildlife again pushing them to extinction. Their futures are in peril with no recovery in sight because Ford removed even that as an objective. Clean fresh water and carbon-rich ancient peatlands that have cooled the planet are at stake, >2 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent in the area covered by mining claims in the Ring of Fire. These are irrecoverable carbon stores.
Keeping them undisturbed is critical to meeting global climate goals. Once lost, they cannot be recovered by 2050.
Our natural world is being sacrificed. And it won’t help us with Trump’s attacks. The people of Dresden are being railroaded by Ford to aid a waste management service company.
Plans are afoot to hand over Indigenous lands to the mining industry and others to do with as they please in law less zones. And it’s not just mining. Law less zones could be applied in the 401, Algonquin Park, cities, nuclear power plants, the Greenbelt. Anywhere.
As Trump threatens us, Ford’s response is to grab Trump-like powers.
This is madness. Let’s be brave and fight this madness together.
Anna Baggio
Conservation Director
P.S. If you’re interested in learning more about the passing of Bill 5 and what it means for Indigenous communities, check out the latest segment on The Agenda on TVO, here.
