How to Befuddle the Public

Let’s suppose that you had an agenda to eliminate protection for endangered species in Ontario. Now I would consider that objective nefarious if not downright evil, but let us assume such people and such goals exist. Now if you just came out and stated to the public that as your purpose, I would suggest you might get some strong pushback socially and politically. Perhaps that resistance would be adequate to quash your plans entirely, so you don’t want todo that.

Perhaps you would start by trying to limit the types of endangered species requiring protection by saying that the federal government should share the responsibility and they should be the ones protecting migratory birds and the aquatic species. You could change the list of protected species and the corresponding laws reflecting that. You could create a new law regarding endangered species which instead of outright saying they must be protected, states that you might be able to do things that might threaten them as long as you registered for a permit to do such things. That will certainly obfuscate things.

Then you might realize that it is tough to remove protections from species at risk in southern lands near the large populations, but you might have success at limiting protection in the vast Crown Land forests that encompass 85% of the province. The government issues forestry licences for the extraction of forest products on these lands. It would be a simple task to change the species at risk laws to say that they do not apply to forestry licences onCrown Land and presto! the protection of endangered species is gone.

But it would be silly to think that any responsible group of lawyers and

legislators would come up with such a ridiculously complex system to befuddle a trusting public, wouldn’t it?

But wait, isn’t that just what they have done?

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Gord Miller, Chair of Earthroots

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