Statement by Phil Pothen, Counsel and Program Manager, Ontario Environment
Toronto | Treaty Lands and Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, and the traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat – Bill 140 would deal yet another crushing blow to Ontario’s anti-corruption, democratic and environmental protection infrastructure. If passed, Schedule 8 of the Building Ontario Faster Act, 2026 would gut the Environmental Bill of Rights, letting the government create, change or erase regulations and policies that impact public health, the environment or public safety, effective immediately, with no mandatory advance posting on the Environment Registry of Ontario (ERO). This would create a corruption and public safety risk because it would allow polluters and developers to exploit newly-created loopholes before the public, other levels of government or citizen groups can even find out they exist. By the time the change is known, some of the damage, and some of the profit-taking, would already be done.
Contrary to the government’s claims, the Ontario Regulatory Registry is not a plausible substitute for the Environment Registry of Ontario postings. That is because posting on that registry in advance is optional for the government. While the cabinet currently chooses to direct the civil service to post proposed regulations, statutes, and policies on the regulatory registry more than a month before they come into force, the Modernizing Ontario for People and Businesses Act, 2020, does not require that posting be made even a day in advance, or using a centralized registry at all. The government would therefore be free to exempt the most dangerous and politically contentious laws from the mandate.
Most concerning, it appears Bill 140’s “ambush regulations” could be combined with Ontario’s new Special Economic Zones Act (SEZA) that grants the Premier and his cabinet unfettered power to exempt any person or business they like (“trusted proponents” and “designated projects”) from any provincial or municipal law they choose, in as much of the province as they like (“special economic zones”), for any purpose. Such exemptions or effective rewrites of the law could now be granted—and exploited—without advance notice.
The removal of advance notice for new regulations and policies is only the most extreme part of the serious damage Bill 140 would do to the Environmental Bill of Rights. Among other things, Bill 140 would also prohibit Indigenous nations, civil society organizations or concerned citizens from requesting reviews of decisions or regulations that violate the Environmental Bill of Rights.
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For more information or to request an interview, please contact:
Carolyn Townend, Environmental Defence
media@environmentaldefence.ca
