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The Ontario government is repealing the Endangered Species Act, making it easier to build mines and infrastructure projects like Highway 413. 

On April 17, the eve of the Easter long weekend, the Doug Ford government released Bill 5, the Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act. It proposes to speed up natural resource development, shift energy regulation and designate areas in the province as special economic zones where cabinet could decide other laws no longer apply. 

Among those laws would be the new Species Conservation Act, a watered-down replacement for the 18-year-old Endangered Species Act. The new act redefines and narrows habitat for animals — to the specific area they den in, for example, rather than the broader area they use to travel and find food. And it gives politicians the power to decide which species are protected. 

In Ontario’s environmental registry listing for the new law, which is open for comments until May 17, the government declared the provincial Endangered Species Act too complicated. It also says the existing act has caused delays and additional costs for housing, transit projects and critical infrastructure. In the Endangered Species Act, recovery and stewardship are explicit goals. The new act removes those words entirely, and instead only references “protection and conservation” while “taking into account social and economic considerations including the need for sustainable economic growth in Ontario.” 

Endangered species laws have been in place in Ontario since the 1970s. Those laws were passed because animal and planetary health were slipping through the cracks of existing legislation that focused on things like land use and natural resource development, Justina Ray, president and senior scientist with Wildlife Conservation Society Canada, told The Narwhal.

A woodland caribou crosses a narrow straight of water in the Slate Islands provincial park, on Lake Superior. The act that protects caribou and other at-risk species in Ontario will be repealed under Bill 5, which passed first reading on April 17. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

Social and economic considerations already dominate the other decision-making frameworks, she said, so burdening species conservation laws with project timelines and cost is problematic. 

“It undermines the very rationale for having this law in the first place,” she said, likening it to a fire department weighing the bill for water damage before responding to a blaze. 

“The purpose of the emergency response is to act when lives, and in this case, species, are at risk,” Ray said. “Not to second guess whether intervention is economically convenient.”

In the news release announcing the bill, the province promises to establish a new conservation program to support community-based voluntary initiatives that replace the Species at Risk Stewardship Program, and increase the funding for species conservation work by up to $20 million. 

“The days of making proponents wait years for approvals and permits are over. We can and will build the Ontario of tomorrow in a way that protects the environment and protects jobs,” Ontario Environment Minister Todd McCarthy stated. The release also quoted a number of mining and business representatives who support the new act.

“By fostering a more efficient, business-friendly landscape, we are ensuring projects of strategic and critical importance to our economy can rise to address the unique and pressing needs of our time, while continuing to set the stage for Ontario’s global competitiveness for years to come,” Vic Fideli, Ontario minister of economic development, job creation and trade, said. 

Here’s what you need to know about the Endangered Species Act, and the province’s plans to replace it. 

What we know about Ontario’s proposed Species Conservation Act

The new law redefines habitat for species at risk, and outlines what has to be protected.

The Endangered Species Act defines habitat as, “an area on which the species depends, directly or indirectly, to carry on its life processes, including life processes such as reproduction, rearing, hibernation, migration or feeding.” 

By contrast, the new Species Conservation Act defines animal habitat as “a dwelling place or the area immediately around it, such as a den, nest or other similar place, that is occupied or habitually occupied by one or more members of a species for the purposes of breeding, rearing, staging, wintering or hibernating.” 

That means the areas needed for other processes critical to a species survival — like finding food — are no longer protected. 

“The current legislation requires the protection of habitat,” Tim Gray, executive director of Environmental Defence, told The Narwhal. “All of those requirements to protect habitat are erased in this new bill, and it only focuses on where the animal is actually found. So if it was a bird, that would be the nest; if it’s a tree, it’s the drip line [or the circumference] of the canopy of the tree.”

Altogether, it means project proponents aren’t as likely to mitigate harm or protect and achieve an overall benefit to the habitat. “It’s only very narrowly about the individual species,” Gray said. “All of the requirements for actually recovering species and creating new habitat, the number of individuals, all that is swept away as well.”

Ontario’s Bill 5, the Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act, has been proposed as a means of speeding up mineral development by streamlining permitting. It will create special economic zones in the province where cabinet can decide certain laws don’t apply, as well as repealing the Endangered Species Act. Photo: Chris Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

The government said it needed a new habitat definition because current ones have resulted in “uncertainty” and “confusion” when deciding which activities are permissible. It noted the new definition includes clear terms and parameters, while “preserving core elements of species’ habitat.”

But the Species Conservation Act empowers cabinet to define terms like “adverse effect,” “alternative habitat” and “in the wild” in coming to its conclusions on permissible activities.

Under the new legislation, project proponents with proposals that could harm a species at risk will also be able to start work as soon as they complete an online registration process, rather than waiting for a permit from the Environment Ministry. 

“Registered activities will be required to meet all associated requirements set out in new regulations. The ministry looks forward to developing these regulations in consultation with the public and Indigenous communities over the coming months,” the notice for the bill reads.

Permits are currently required for land development, infrastructure, aggregate pits and quarries and other significant projects. The proposals are reviewed by the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, which delivers guidance around best practices to minimize impacts to the species they’re likely to harm. The permitting process also assesses whether reasonable alternatives to the activity have been considered and, if harm must happen, whether the proponent has taken steps to reduce it. 

The proposal noted a “registration approach is already in place and used by the ministry for 95 per cent of projects” that are subject to the Endangered Species Act. The remaining five per cent of projects are likely more complicated, or deal with more deeply threatened species, like caribou, Ray said. According to the province, under the new law, nearly all of those remaining projects will fall within the registry system.

“There will still be requirements set out in regulation that protect species, and we will also continue to provide information and protection guidance for species through policies and implementation supports,” the notice states.

The major difference between the registry that exists and what’s proposed, Gray said, is that change to the definition of habitat, which means proponents no longer register to protect the broader area species use — just the individual.

Ontario is about to slash environmental protections. It already wasn’t funding them, auditor general says

A ‘trajectory of erosion’ in Ontario’s species at risk law

Ontario’s original protections for at-risk species were once touted as among the best in Canada. Various amendments to the Endangered Species Law have shifted that position and, Ray pointed out, there’s been no provincial review of what all these changes have achieved in terms of the wellbeing of at-risk species. Ontario had 22 per cent more species at risk in 2020 compared to 2009. 

“We’re looking at an ongoing trajectory of erosion,” she said.

For example, the More Homes, More Choices Act, passed by the Ford government in 2019, required the status of a species that also exists outside of Ontario, including outside of Canada, be considered during its listing: a lower threat category outside Ontario meant it would be given a similarly low classification in Ontario. 

The Committee on the Status of Species at Risk in Ontario, an independent committee of experts, currently classifies species using scientific information, then submits a report to the Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks. The ministry is required to amend the list of Species at Risk in Ontario to include those species within 12 months. 

This automatic listing under the Endangered Species Act was the reason Ontario’s species at risk legislation was once considered the best among the provinces and territories that have passed stand-alone endangered species laws. (Four provinces and Yukon have no stand-alone legislation to protect at-risk species.) Under the Species Conservation Act, that listing is at the discretion of the environment minister, who can also choose to delist species, regardless of what the science says, as well as appoint committee members. 

After a species is listed under Ontario’s Endangered Species Act, its habitat is meant to be immediately protected. The province is then supposed to develop a recovery strategy, publish a response statement and develop specific habitat protections for the species. And progress towards protection and recovery is supposed to be reviewed within five years. 

Each species faces its own threats and requires its own recovery plan. Ontario had published recovery strategies for 180 of the more than 200 species at risk as of December 2024. The new Species Conservation Act removes the requirement for the government to develop a recovery strategy, management plan, response statement and review of progress. 

Highway 413 has been a major focus during Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives tenure. The federal government previously clashed with the province over the project’s impact on endangered species. Photo: Chris Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

This means only federally listed species will have a recovery strategy available for use in Ontario, and these are often subject to lengthy delays. But across Canada, provincial and territorial at-risk species laws are supposed to complement federal legislation, such as the federal Migratory Birds Convention Act, Fisheries Act and Species at Risk Act. 

Less than five per cent of the range of most terrestrial at-risk species occur on federal land, and protection for species listed under the Species at Risk Act only extends to individual plants and animals and their dwelling places on federal lands, such as national parks or First Nations reserves. The federal government can extend its protections to provincial lands through emergency orders and other means, but rarely does so. 

The vast majority of Ontario is comprised of provincially managed public lands, and provincial listings are meant to protect the habitat of at-risk species here as they’re not covered under federal law — similar to private lands. But now, migratory birds and aquatic species that are listed as endangered or threatened under the federal Species at Risk Act are excluded from Ontario’s proposed Species Conservation Act — the Ford government has said this will reduce duplication and allow projects to “move forward in a more efficient and cost-effective way.” 

“They’re changing the rules, and they’re saying, ‘Okay, we’re not going to take any responsibility for this set of species,’ ” Ray said. “That means that they will not do anything to help manage them on provincial lands … where [the province has] primary authority for many activities.”

In 2021, Ontario’s auditor general reviewed the province’s efforts to protect species at risk under the Endangered Species Act, releasing a critical and bleak evaluation. It found the province had never denied an application to harm an at-risk species or its habitat, nor inspected these activities it authorized to ensure they were in compliance.

Ford government is harming endangered species, boosting industry through environment ministry: audit

What do the changes to the Endangered Species Act mean for redside dace and Highway 413?

According to the province’s own accounting, biodiversity in southern Ontario is worth an estimated $84.4 billion per year (in 2008 dollars, or $122.5 billion dollars today, accounting for inflation). That’s the value of its provision of fresh water, nutrient cycling, carbon storage, flood control, pollination, culture, tourism and aesthetics. The Credit River watershed alone provides $371 million per year in ecosystem services and the Greenbelt provides $2.7 billion per year (in 2008 dollars, or $538.7 million and $3.9 billion today, respectively).

Highway 413 crosses both.

In January, the federal fisheries and environment ministers issued a critical habitat order for redside dace, a tiny endangered minnow threatened by development in southern Ontario, and Highway 413 in particular. The fish is federally protected, and the order states that the Endangered Species Act affords the minnow and its habitat additional provincial protection. 

Federal government advised Ontario to reroute Highway 413: documents

Redside dace have become a poster child for the fight against Highway 413. The 60-kilometre proposed route rings around the suburbs north and west of Toronto, crossing 85 waterways and the habitats of the butternut tree, the rapids clubtail dragonfly, the Western chorus frog and seven species of birds, in addition to the redside dace. 

Under the Endangered Species Act, the province established specific rules and best practices for protecting redside dace, such as techniques for installing sediment- control fencing. But provincial protections for redside dace disappear under the Species Conservation Act. 

The silver minnow, with a slash of red across its side, is still protected under the federal Fisheries Act, so any project that may harm it or its habitat must still receive a Fisheries Act authorization or a Species at Risk Act permit. But these rules have been in effect for years and failed to protect redside dace; they lost a staggering 81 per cent of their population from 2007 to 2017.

Gray noted much of the discussion in a federal-provincial working group on Highway 413 has been about each party’s jurisdiction and protection plans along the route.

The Ontario government’s own research has confirmed 11 species at risk are living along the planned route of Highway 413. Clockwise, they are: butternut tree, bobolink, chimney swift, bank swallow, rapids clubtail, redside dace, western chorus frog, wood thrush, eastern meadowlark, barn swallow and olive-sided flycatcher. Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

Six of the bird species along the route of the highway are migratory and listed as threatened under the federal Species at Risk Act, meaning they’ll also be excluded from protections under the new provincial act. The butternut would only be protected around its roots on provincial and private lands. The rapids clubtail would likely lose protection on provincial and private lands in the area it forages and travels — activities that are no longer part of the new definition of habitat. 

“It just puts more onus on the federal government to do their job properly,” Gray said. “Now it will be very clear that the provincial government has complete disdain for any of these values along this highway, and the federal government will have to carry all the weight in ensuring that these species are not eradicated.”

The fact that the redside dace and its plight as an endangered species has become so closely tied to the fight against Highway 413 is symbolic, Ray added. It illustrates the lack of environmental laws in Canada that offer levers for regulation rather than enabling development.

“So when you have so few of them, sometimes it’s only the species-at-risk laws that have these kinds of elements, which reduces conversations down to one species, like the redside dace on Highway 413,” she said. “The redside dace is not about the redside dace. It’s about everybody else and the whole environment, but it’s the only lever there is.” 

— With files from Elaine Anselmi

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Get the inside scoop on The Narwhal’s environment and climate reporting by signing up for our free newsletter.

As a photographer who enjoys interacting with fish non-consumptively, I’m thrilled fishing was curtailed in Port Hope, Ont., this year. As a biologist, I hate the justification used for implementing the ban — there was no science involved and Port Hope’s fix likely just pushed the problem to other locations that are less publicly visible and will cause more harm.

The Ganaraska River, which runs directly through the town of Port Hope, has the largest migration of wild salmonids on the Canadian side of Lake Ontario. In the fall of 2023, more than 28,000 Chinook salmon passed the town’s dam, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources, and that doesn’t include an estimated couple thousand spawning before the dam or harvested by anglers along the way. 

A catastrophic 1980 flood resulted in the town blasting parts of the river down to bedrock, leaving shallow pools and steps of rock one-to-two feet high along the river. Each step slows down fish, so they congregate in the shallow pools below, often with their backs exposed, making them easy targets for anglers.

In September, Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources put a seasonal closure in place for fishing along the Ganaraska River in Port Hope, following a rash of public commentary on illegal fishing behaviour in the area.

Easy targets also increase the chances of illegal behaviour. While some Chinook salmon will chase lures and flies, a fish crowded with hundreds of others or waiting in the shallows to ascend a rock step is unlikely to actively bite. Snagging (hooking in parts of the body other than the mouth) and flossing (running your fishing line through a fish’s open mouth until the hook gets caught) dominate angling methods in these conditions, and they are illegal under Ontario’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act. 

Most rivers feeding into Lake Ontario have runs of wild salmon. And come fall, when Chinook salmon dominate these systems during their annual spawning migration, anglers descend on these tributaries in force, resulting in illegal fishing, littering and fish carcasses left on riverbanks (often slit open with their eggs harvested for bait). Ontario has too few conservation officers to effectively monitor and enforce fishing activities across all tributaries.

In 2023, while learning about how wild salmonids are managed, I asked the provincial Ministry of Natural Resources’ Lake Ontario Management Unit why there was so little emphasis on protecting wild fish. I was told healthy populations of wild fish in the lake and tributaries suggest current management practices are working, so additional protections weren’t needed. So you can imagine my confusion when the ministry announced in 2024 it was proposing a new seasonal fish sanctuary, and only in Port Hope, to “help protect vulnerable migrating Chinook salmon.”

According to the ministry, the dam — located three kilometres upstream of the river’s mouth — slows down salmon migration in town. They acknowledge the fish are also slowed because of the human-made shallow pool-and-step formations in town — but it has been this way for 40 years. It takes energy for fish to jump over rock ledges and power through three inches of water, hence why they gather in the pools until it rains or instinct drives them forward. The fish continue moving until they reach the pool below the dam, where they must wait because the fishway physically cannot pass enough fish. But this pool was already a permanent sanctuary, closed to fishing year-round. The new rule extends that sanctuary downstream during peak migration.

The population of Chinook salmon in the Ganaraska River is healthy. Banning fishing here shifts that pressure to other waterways that are less visible and have fewer fish.

But with the Ganaraska River experiencing its largest run ever in 2023, why, in 2024, did the ministry change its tune and decide it needs to protect these fish? Chinook salmon in the Ganaraska River are doing fine. But last year’s bumper run spurred an abundance of social media posts, news coverage and public complaints, including an online petition with more than 13,000 signatures, which brought the illegal fishing and problematic behaviour of anglers to the forefront. These issues happen to be very visible in Port Hope, but they occur on all streams. Clearly, the ban was meant to appease people, not protect fish. 

After public comments on the proposed ban closed, the ministry approved it with no changes just one week later — an exceptionally fast review and assessment of the more than 2,000 pages of comments they received. The ban came into force just two days after it was approved — another shocking timeline considering the speed at which government regulations usually change.

It would be one thing if this change only affected Port Hope. But those anglers are now going to fish in neighbouring streams that have smaller wild runs, which are harder for our few conservation officers to patrol, and which may not be able to sustain the additional fishing pressure. This is not a small problem: Port Hope anglers put in more than 24,000 hours of fishing in 2015. Yet there was no proposal to add additional enforcement or monitor the biological effects of this closure on other streams.

As Chinook salmon congregate in shallow pools along the Ganaraska River in Port Hope, Ont., they become easy targets for anglers, often leading to illegal fishing activities.

Port Hope succeeded in fixing its problem by spreading it everywhere else.

I’m all for science-based changes in regulations when necessary to protect wild fish. But this change is not grounded in science: the biological protection is a false pretense, and this regulation instead implicitly acknowledges that social issues attached to salmon fisheries are more important than the fish themselves. 

During the fall of 2023, I tried to sit streamside in Port Hope to photograph fish. I had fishing lines thrown over me and anglers laugh at me, as though I had no right to be there because I wasn’t fishing. As though the fish belonged to anglers and no one else. 

After the closure on Sept. 1, 2024, I watched families, outdoor clubs, tourists and more all enjoying the river and fish that are, after all, for everyone. I hope the Ministry of Natural Resources will step up and monitor the effects of this ban on other streams to ensure this protection doesn’t come at the expense of wild fish elsewhere.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

It was an early morning in May when I drove past rows of houses and turned into an industrial park in Richmond Hill, Ont., to visit one of the remaining places you can find redside dace — a surprising one given this species of minnow is extremely sensitive to urban development.

This small silver minnow with its namesake red stripe has received outsized attention as one of the endangered species whose limited habitat would be cut through by Highway 413, a signature road project for Ontario’s Doug Ford government. The 60-kilometre route rings around the suburbs north and west of Toronto, crossing 85 waterways and the habitats of 11 species at risk — including redside dace.

Now found only in small, fragmented populations in creeks and rivers from Whitby to Hamilton, redside dace were once abundant across the Greater Golden Horseshoe of southern Ontario.

In June, the federal government released a recovery strategy and action plan for redside dace, with a goal of ensuring “the long-term survival and recovery of redside dace in Canada by addressing key threats to the species and its habitat,” a Fisheries and Oceans Canada spokesperson told The Narwhal. 

It comes as the Ontario government has been trying to weaken protections for the fish and the federal government’s environmental review of the Highway 413 project, which could have prioritized the endangered minnow’s protection, was compromised by challenges to the Impact Assessment Act. But despite the urgent need for action, the federal government’s much-delayed new strategy reiterates what’s already been proposed provincially to help the endangered fish recover, and misses key points. 

The proposed route of Highway 413, as well as the Bradford Bypass, an additional route proposed by the Doug Ford government. Map: Jeannie Phan / The Narwhal

The hope lies in the federal government issuing a protection order for redside dace, and using its power to deny projects that harm this fish or its habitat. But this power is not new, and since the recovery strategy lacks mandatory development limits and fails to emphasize severe population declines, it’s unclear how it will help Fisheries and Oceans Canada make strong arguments to deny projects that harm redside dace. 

In the creek running behind the Richmond Hill industrial park, I watched as redside dace broke into small groups to spawn. Some leapt into the air to feed on flies and other bugs, a unique trait that helps connect terrestrial and aquatic systems. 

The water was slightly murky, with a sediment layer on the creek bottom, and its temperature was already at 21 C, the higher limit preferred by redside dace. With myriad development nearby this creek — a golf course, parking lots, roads, houses and industrial buildings — and more proposed upstream, it’s hard to say if this population will still be here next year or the year after. 

With 80 per cent of the Canadian redside dace population living in the Greater Toronto Area, where there is major development proposed in most watersheds they use, it seems unlikely the species will survive at all in southern Ontario — despite the new recovery strategy.

Redside dace have been protected for more than a decade, but it isn’t exactly working

Redside dace have been officially considered under threat for 15 years. The Committee on the Status of Species At Risk in Ontario listed them as endangered in 2009 and they were added to the species at risk list that same year, gaining full habitat protection under the provincial Endangered Species Act in 2011. That habitat is defined as any part of a stream they have occupied for the last 20 years — a time period the province tried to reduce to 10 years, before backtracking a couple of weeks ago on that particular attempt to water down protections for the fish.

Federally, redside dace were assessed as endangered by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada in 2007, although they weren’t listed as endangered by the federal Species At Risk Act until 2017. 

In Canada, 80 per cent of the redside dace population lives in the Greater Toronto Area, and there is major development proposed in nearly every watershed where they’re found. Photo: Kathryn Peiman

In the decade since the 2007 federal assessment, the range in which redside dace live has shrunk by 4.4 per cent, the area within their range that they actually occupy declined by 47 per cent and their population declined by a staggering 81 per cent. In 2017, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada projected the population could decline even further in the next 10 years by more than 50 per cent — and we are seven years into that period. 

In a 2019 assessment of the population, Fisheries and Oceans Canada stated this rate of loss means “there is no scope for allowable harm to the population.” This was based on the federal agency’s own science, which concluded “any human induced mortality or habitat destruction would jeopardize survival or recovery.”

Their sensitivity to development makes them a measure of the health of an ecosystem — and their disappearance suggests our efforts to maintain that health are failing.

What does Canada’s new recovery strategy for redside dace say about the myriad threats facing this little fish?

Federal recovery strategies for species at risk are meant as planning documents that identify how to stop or reverse the decline of a species — the actions provide the best chance of increasing both the size of a population and the area in which it lives.  

Curiously, the new federal recovery strategy for redside dace, prepared by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, does not state that any harm to the fish jeopardizes its survival — as the department’s own assessment did in 2019 — nor does it reference the severe population decline. Instead, the strategy reiterates much of the same list of proposed measures already identified through the Ontario government’s recovery strategy — measures that are either not being followed or not working. 

Within the federal strategy, the actions for seeing redside dace recover are prioritized as high, medium or low.

It suggests raising fish in hatcheries is a high priority. But with suitable habitat being lost to development, there are fewer and fewer places to release any hatchery-raised redside dace, especially since stocking in the same place as wild populations harms those wild fish.  

Identifying how urban development and agricultural practices contribute to population declines is listed as only a medium priority in the federal strategy. Yet this information is crucial to help populations recover because there is a glaring absence of science on this topic, and development is the main cause of population declines.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s strategy for redside dace protection and recovery states multiple times that there is a lack of understanding of how the endangered fish is impacted by different disturbances, and how effective current mitigation measures are. Photo: Kathryn Peiman

Where there is science, it isn’t necessarily followed by the strategy. Redside dace prefer cool water below 20 C, but the recovery strategy lists the target temperature as a maximum of 24 C. This higher target means warm water from urbanization and storm runoff will be allowed to enter streams, degrading habitat quality for not just redside dace but other fish like brook trout, as well as insects that provide food for animals in the water and on land. 

The lowest priority in the strategy was measuring the health of redside dace habitat and investigating the feasibility of restoring its water quality, streamside vegetation and the movement of water. Strangely, this was ranked as a high priority in the draft version, but downgraded in the final. 

The Fisheries and Oceans Canada spokesperson said the changes between different drafts of the strategy “reflect ongoing consultations with experts and stakeholders, as well as new internal guidance on prioritizing recovery measures.” 

They added “all the measures included in the strategy are considered high priority. However, we needed to rank them to ensure the most critical actions are addressed first.”

Ontario to cut protections for tiny endangered fish found along route of Highway 413

The priorities are laid out to focus on immediate recovery measures that have a high impact in addressing population decline and threats, they said. However, the first priority listed in the strategy is to continue working with local planning authorities to consider the protection of critical redside dace habitat — which they’ve already been doing with little marked success and, as the strategy states multiple times, with limited understanding of the significance of different impacts.

The release of the strategy requires the federal fisheries minister to make an order under the Species At Risk Act prohibiting the destruction of redside dace habitat by Jan. 25, 2025. Having the protected habitat defined federally does provide a backstop, should Ontario again tinker with its own definition of critical redside dace habitat. Fisheries and Oceans called this “an additional tool to ensure the legal protection of redside dace critical habitat,” but also stated, “The 2024 recovery strategy does not grant new authority beyond what already exists.”

The department can still authorize development in redside dace critical habitat, as long as “the activity does not jeopardize the species’ recovery,” the department wrote.

Fisheries and Oceans has authorized 154 permits under the Species At Risk Act since redside dace were listed in 2017, and the species continues to decline. And indirect impacts on critical habitat, like runoff from a highway, still do not require this federal approval.

So how will the new strategy allow Canada to rein in Ontario’s appetite for development, if it’s operating by the same rules?

The Ontario government’s own research has confirmed 11 species at risk are living along the planned route of Highway 413. Clockwise, they are: butternut tree, bobolink, chimney swift, bank swallow, rapids clubtail, redside dace, western chorus frog, wood thrush, eastern meadowlark, barn swallow and olive-sided flycatcher. Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

The province’s track record of protecting redside dace from development is zero, according to Ontario’s auditor general. Provincial permits to harm redside dace or their habitat have never been denied. 

Overall, the province approved about 500 permits from 2007 to 2020 for activities affecting redside dace. Under “overall benefit” permits — which purport to only allow the permit holder to harm a protected species if there will be an added benefit, like from the creation of additional habitat — there was more damage allowed to redside dace habitat than what was restored in all eight cases over two years found by Ontario’s auditor general. 

And it’s not just private companies doing the damage. The auditor general found the Ministry of Transportation obtained “an overall benefit permit in 2021 for a highway crossing over a creek that allowed the damage and destruction of 0.46 hectares of redside dace habitat, but only required 0.08 hectares of habitat to be created or enhanced.”

What can be done to save redside dace?

In 2016, Ontario’s Ministry of Environment published best management practices for development in redside dace habitat. It stated that the greatest threats are physical changes to the streams, including changes to flow, temperature and turbidity, as well as the removal of streambank vegetation where insect prey live. Contaminated runoff from intensive agriculture and stormwater management ponds are also a massive threat to this fish. 

We know the general reasons why we’re losing this little silver fish. We also have laws that have protected their habitat for more than a decade. Clearly, something isn’t working.

The listing of redside dace under the Endangered Species Act almost 15 years ago should have stopped harmful activities. Environment Canada recommends development should be limited to less than 10 per cent of a watershed, but the Ontario government continues to issue development permits well beyond this. And every year, the population of endangered redside dace is estimated to shrink by more than five per cent.

In 2017, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada projected the redside dace population could decline by more than 50 per cent in the next 10 years — and seven years of that period have passed. Photo: Kathryn Peiman

All of the current legal protections for this species have failed, and the new federal recovery strategy and action plan provides no new information on how to protect against what has proven to be the main driver of population declines — urbanization and the resulting effects on stream habitats, water quality and flow and groundwater sources.

Instead of setting clear thresholds for development and guidelines for how to reduce known threats, this strategy ranks monitoring as a higher priority than actually identifying and stopping the drivers of population loss. 

Meanwhile, the provincial government has plans to begin work on bridges and other early infrastructure for Highway 413 next year. And the federal government has already stated “no additional restrictions for industry stakeholders are anticipated” as a result of redside dace’s listing under the Species At Risk Act.

Redside dace need strong legislation that clearly states how much land can be developed and altered, and what must be left in a natural state. They need governments willing to say “no” to permits that harm their habitat. Unless the federal government takes a much stronger stance than it has so far, and than the provincial government has shown, the future of redside dace in southern Ontario is bleak. 

Soon, I fear, I’ll be watching the extirpation — or local extinction — of this tiny unique fish.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

It’s springtime, which means migration and spawning for many Lake Ontario fish — and a good time to share the fascinating story of how many salmon and trout came to live in this Great Lake in the first place. Brook trout and Atlantic salmon are native to the lake, but in 1873, the federal government began stocking it with non-native salmonids — a large family of ray-finned, carnivorous fish — starting with chinook salmon. Coho salmon, steelhead, and brown trout soon followed. 

They didn’t thrive at first, though.  Dams impeded spawning migrations, pollution from lumber mills and tanneries degraded water quality and clearing forests for urbanization and agriculture warmed waters. This limited natural reproduction of stocked non-native species. It was also devastating for native species: combined with overharvesting, environmental harm caused the decline of some, like brook trout, and the wholesale loss of others, like Atlantic salmon.

Stocking resumed in the late 1960s as environmental awareness increased and stream quality improved, culminating in Ontario, Quebec and a number of U.S. states signing the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement in 1972. By the 2000s all introduced species were reproducing naturally. Now, most of these fish are from the wild, not hatchery-raised — over half the lake’s chinook and coho salmon are wild, and some streams have entirely wild runs. Last fall, approximately 20,000 wild chinook and coho salmon, along with some wild brown trout and steelhead, returned to the Ganaraska River in Northumberland County to spawn. While these fish aren’t native to Lake Ontario, they’re now an important part of the ecosystem, bringing lake-derived nutrients upstream.  

The fact that these fish are wild-reproducing and self-sustaining is an incredible success story. But it’s often overlooked by anglers and the public and ignored by government agencies on both sides of the border. Many streams could support even more wild reproduction, but agency policies favour putting money towards stocking non-native fish for anglers instead of habitat restoration that would benefit struggling native fish populations and the whole ecosystem. Ontario and New York state’s shared Fish Community Objectives for Lake Ontario openly acknowledges that prioritizing food for chinook could hurt native fish: chinook salmon’s preferred food is non-native alewife, but eating alewife can reduce fertility in native salmonids. 

This is ultimately short-sighted, as wild populations of both native and non-native fish are more resilient and stable than those augmented by hatcheries. And long-term habitat restoration benefits all species, including humans. This includes keeping streams connected and cool by limiting agricultural runoff, keeping vegetated buffers along streams, removing dams, planting shade trees and restoring wetlands to filter water.

It can be easy for non-anglers to forget that these fish are living nearby, hidden under the water, but they are an amazing story of adaptation and a way for people to connect with nature. If we want a future where fish continue to coexist with the 13.5 million people that live in southern Ontario, we need healthy streams and ecosystems to support all life.

Juvenile fish use deep pools, undercut banks and rocks to shelter in the winter. Since fish are ectotherms, or cold-blooded, their body temperature is linked to the water around them. Their activity slows down in the winter. In the summer, finding cool water is essential — but only possible if habitats are connected.

In the spring, salmonid fry emerge — this is a coho or chinook salmon that still has the yolk sac that fed it as a newly-hatched alevin. Fry absorb their yolk sac over the first few days of life before starting to forage for prey.

For a period of time, juvenile coho salmon are as colourful as pet store fish, with bright orange fins and mouths. They can be found in urban streams if habitat is connected and healthy.

Dams slow the migration of fish. Here, chinook salmon gather below the Bowmanville Creek dam as they wait for the right conditions to ascend the fishway.

Connected habitat is important for fish at all life stages, including this young brown trout in Wilmot Creek, as it allows fish to live at their preferred temperature. Water temperature determines a fish’s body temperature, and there are often trade-offs between growth and survival in different environments.

Native freshwater Atlantic salmon disappeared over a century ago, but Lake Ontario’s streams are regularly stocked with hatchery-raised fish, like these juveniles in the Ganaraska River. Hatchery-raised fish compete with wild fish for food and reduce the ability of self-sustaining wild populations to adapt to changes in season, climate and food.

A spawning male coho salmon with a prominent hooked upper jaw and large teeth in the fall. All chinook and coho salmon die after spawning, and their bodies provide nutrients that will increase the productivity of the stream ecosystem.

Chinook salmon rest under a bridge in downtown Cobourg, Ont. A privately-owned dam just upstream prevents these fish from travelling further. In Ontario, landowners can’t be made to remove existing dams, even if they serve no function, block fish movement, create warm and slow-moving water and reduce nutrient transfer downstream.

In some urban areas, such as this Ganaraska River spot with low flows over bedrock, fish are highly visible, which attracts both onlookers and anglers.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.