Bill Five: Risky Business in Ontario

Thursday, May 8, 2025  |  Part 1

On April 17, 2025, the Government of Ontario introduced Bill 5, the Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act, 2025¹, which proposes major amendments to ten different environmental and cultural protection laws in Ontario.² The Ford government argues that these will reduce red tape and streamline approval processes for new developments. The practical effect will be a scaling back of protections in Ontario law for the environment, species at risk, and archaeology.

The Bill 5s of the world – laws aimed at ‘reducing red tape’ – rarely meet their goals. The fact is, regulatory ‘delays’ are mostly a sideshow. They aren’t the problem in the first place. Especially when it comes to mining development, the timelines are long because mines are fiendishly difficult to build well, and because global commodities prices are volatile. But Ontario’s Ministries can’t pull those levers: they don’t control the global economy, and they don’t actually build mining projects. So they pull the ones they can.

Ontario is focused on economic development, not the Treaty relationships. This is a mistake, because the Treaties are fundamental to any jurisdiction Ontario might claim over these lands, and Bill 5 will not change that. Constitutional responsibilities to First Nations will always take precedence over any particular law or regulation. Ontario will always need to consult and accommodate, and to respect the spirit and intent of the Treaties. If they fail in that, the courts will intervene. By setting up economic development as adversarial to Treaty relationships, rather than finding common interests and including First Nations in Ontario’s prosperity, Ontario has set itself up to fail.

Which brings us back to Bill 5. It won’t get projects built any faster, because it proposes solutions for things that aren’t problems and that aren’t causing the delays. Even worse, it greatly increases risks of delays for proponents, because it makes them vulnerable to litigation brought by First Nations. This is because Ontario currently relies on the very processes it is dismantling as a main avenue by which they satisfy their duties to consult and accommodate. Take away those processes, and the duty to consult doesn’t go away, but it has no home in the Ontario bureaucracy, no team charged with seeing it through, no personnel capable of meaningful work. The result is sadly predictable: consultation and accommodation will be done badly, or not at all. First Nations will challenge those failures in court. And regardless of who wins those court cases, the net result will be delays and expense for the very proponents that the Ford government says it is trying to support.  

There may be a silver lining in all this. First Nations are perfectly capable of protecting the lands and waters. They’ve always done so, according to their own indigenous laws and protocols, drawn from indigenous legal orders that predate the existence of Ontario, survived the establishment of what is now Canada, and continue to operate today. In the absence of meaningful land governance from Ontario, these Indigenous laws and legal orders will be even more salient. There’s much to learn, here, for those of us that aren’t familiar, but one thing to know is that these laws do not simply prohibit use of the lands. What they do is address how lands and waters may be used and shared in ways that benefit everyone, protect relationships, strengthen connections between people and lands, and show attention to the needs of the future. They require balance and discussion. They lead to wise decisions.

But these blogs are not about that. More the opposite, really: they’re about Ontario’s (we think unwise) decision to push forward with the current draft of Bill 5. In this blog series, we will be sharing our insights on some key aspects of what Bill 5 may mean for First Nations in Ontario. We have included links for each post in this series below, and will update this list as additional blog posts become available.

Part 2, focusing on changes to protection for species at risk, is up now. Click here to continue reading.

1. Part 1: Bill 5: Risky Business in Ontario
2. Part 2: Five Things to Know About the Repeal of the Endangered Species Act and the Introduction of the Species Conservation Act
3. Part 3: Changes to Other Environmental and Regulatory Permitting Processes in Ontario
4. Part 4: How to Protect Aboriginal and Treaty Rights During Regulatory Uncertainty

[1] Bill 5, Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act, 1st Sess, 44th Leg, Ontario, 2025.

[2] See: Government of Ontario, “Technical Briefing, Protecting Ontario by Unleashing Our Economy”, 2025.