The Ontario government proudly announced its new biodiversity action plan on Dec. 3, entitled Biodiversity: It’s in our nature. The plan outlines how we can slow — if not stop altogether — the ongoing loss of our plants, animals and important ecosystems. It is, therefore, hard to fathom how, only two days later, the same government could propose sweeping new exemptions for industrial activity under its gold-standard Endangered Species Act (ESA). You would think that protecting endangered species would be integral to any legitimate biodiversity action plan.

The cynic in me says that the biodiversity action plan is just a smokescreen deployed by the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR). But perhaps a more accurate explanation lies in the Jekyll and Hyde nature of MNR, always deeply ambivalent about its mandate to both protect and exploit the rich diversity of life in Ontario.

The ministry says it wants to “balance” the protection and recovery of endangered wildlife with its desire to provide “certainty” for industry and “preserve socio-economic vitality.” Its proposal, in essence, is to allow harmful activities to proceed without the currently required ESA permits, which industry players have deemed time-consuming and inconvenient.

So what does balance mean when it comes to protecting and recovering plants and animals that are in danger of disappearing from the province (if not the country or even the planet) altogether? Where does balance lie for a species like the woodland caribou, which has already lost half of its historic range in Ontario, or for the American eel, whose population in Ontario has declined by about 90 per cent? Achieving a balance should require some pretty stringent conservation measures. For example, requirements to stop habitat loss, which is the key threat for both species. But MNR doesn’t seem to be ready for that. It has yet to protect the habitat of either species, even though both have been listed as “at risk” for years.

Instead, the ministry submitted a proposal for sweeping exemptions — though it doesn’t like to use that dirty word, “exemption,” preferring the less alarming euphemism “regulation.”

But no matter what you call it, MNR is recommending that planned or approved industrial activities be exempt from ESA protections. When you consider that the planning cycle for activities like forestry or urban development stretch many, many years into the future, or that licences for pits and quarries have no fixed end-date, the prospect is quite disturbing.

According to MNR, the exemptions — or rather, the regulation — will be subject to conditions. But exactly what MNR has in mind is anyone’s guess. What we do know is that the proposal currently on the table leaves the door wide open. Those who benefit from exemptions may not even have to inform MNR of their activities, in which case the ministry won’t have any record of the activities occurring. Monitoring of compliance and enforcement of the conditions will be next to impossible.

Despair, however, is not an option. Working with other conservation organizations, Ontario Nature will fight to shut the door as tightly as we can against the proposed ESA exemptions so that our most vulnerable species and habitats are around to benefit from Ontario’s biodiversity plan.

Anne Bell is director of conservation and education for Ontario Nature.