With all the crisis-level cuts and changes the Ford government has made to everything from public health to daycare to education in communities across Ontario, it’s understandable that its plans for the environmental assessment system have received little attention. So far, anyway.

The process that determines the potential environmental impact of a proposed highway extension or a new garbage dump is pretty dry stuff — especially when compared to the problems of larger classes for high school students or the loss of daycare subsidies for struggling families. But down the line, if you happen to be deeply for or against a particular project, it will become a lively topic indeed.

So it’s troubling that the Ford government seems to be headed down its now awfully well-trodden path of dismantling environmental protections while claiming it’s making things better.

The government says its latest reforms are about “modernizing,” “cutting red tape” and, laughably given all that has come before on environmental issues, “improving” Ontario’s outdated system.

To be sure, there are a number of problems that should be fixed.

As Ontario’s Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk put it in her 2016 report: as “the oldest environmental assessment legislation in Canada — it falls short of achieving its intended purpose.”

Dianne Saxe, who was Ontario’s environmental commissioner until Premier Doug Ford axed that independent legislative position along with other watchdogs, agrees that change is urgently needed.

Unfortunately, the main problems outlined by Lysyk and Saxe are not at all what the government is talking about fixing.

The government’s discussion paper is full of references to reducing the number of projects that require assessments, not about the need to expand the legislation’s scope to cover private-sector projects, which are generally exempt in Ontario. It talks about reducing delays, not by increasing ministry resources to do the necessary work faster, but by stripping away requirements.

So even when the problems are clearly identified, the Ford government still lands on the wrong solutions.

And while it’s tempting to say this is just a discussion paper that’s still open for public consultation until May 25, we’ve seen this play before.

The government released a similarly vague paper about the need to “streamline” the Endangered Species Act and “increase efficiencies.” Wildlife experts warned it was a disaster in the making.

Environment Minister Rod Phillips ignored them and came back with proposed changes last month calling it a “modern approach” to enforcement and compliance. The experts say the changes gut the act and will let developers “pay to slay” endangered species. To top it all off, the government quietly slid the 20 pages of legislative changes needed to make it happen into last week’s omnibus housing bill.

The Ford government has developed a nasty habit of ramming its changes and cuts through in ways that maximize confusion and minimize transparency.

The latest example to come to light is Tourism Toronto, quite suddenly, losing $9.5 million in provincial funding, about a quarter of its annual budget.

That cut was certainly not highlighted a month ago in the provincial budget, which referred to “strengthening” tourism by “working with agencies.” Nor was it publicly discussed or debated.

So that’s the same as the destructive provincial cuts to public health and child care that were foisted on Toronto and other cities with no warning, no consultation and after municipal budgets had already been set for the year.

This pattern of behaviour makes it increasingly hard to believe the government is even interested in what the public has to say, let alone that it’s now looking to improve protections in the environmental assessment system.

It’s far more likely that the Ford government wants to make it easier to push ahead with development projects it likes by weakening the institutions and processes that opponents can use to delay or stop them, no matter how much cause they might have.

That is, after all, what it just did by reviving the old developer-friendly Ontario Municipal Board rules for deciding development disputes.

The Ford government’s multitude of cuts and changes aren’t just dumping a provincial budget problem onto municipalities, they’re also undermining municipal government. And, on the environment, the province seems keen to do the same thing to itself.

From ending cap-and-trade to budget cuts to the impending changes to the environmental assessment system, the government is stripping away the province’s ability to guide growth in a sustainable manner and protect the long-term interests of its citizens.

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As Saxe says, it takes a lot of time to build good government processes and very little time to break them down. The Ford government is restructuring Ontario in ways that will last well beyond its four-year mandate.

It’s creating a province that will be less able to protect the environment, and ultimately us, now and into the future.

That makes this “made-in-Ontario environment plan” nothing to be proud of.

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