Co-Principal Investigator Dawn Parker is sounding the alarm on the proposed Bill 5 “Protect Ontario By Unleashing Our Economy Act”.
In an opinion piece published in Waterloo Region Record (June 3, 2025) and The Niagara Falls Review (June 5, 2025), Dawn argues that wiping out habitat protections will cause direct economic harm to Ontario’s critical natural capital, which is central to our productivity and well-being.
Natural capital, or ecosystems and their natural functions, provide life-sustaining services and benefits, such as water filtration, flood control, air purification, oxygen production, and heat island mitigation, to name just a few. They are termed “critical” when these functions can’t be replaced by human technologies. Critical natural capital provides direct economic benefits through these functions.
Wiping out or destroying critical natural capital threatens our ecosystems and the services they provide, and in turn will cause direct economic harm. As Dawn notes in the article, we need to question why this destruction is being proposed and who is benefitting from it. She also suggests options for increasing housing supply while maintaining our critical natural capital.