ONTARIO’S BILL 5 – ONE MORE HUGE GIVEAWAY TO CORPORATE CANADA

Thousands protest mining exploration on Indigenous land in Ontario, September 2023

(June 15, 2025)

Ontario's new Bill 5 – passed in early June, 2025 – allows the Ford government to create “Special Economic Zones” where trusted proponents (i.e. whomever the Premier chooses) can be exempted from all provincial and municipal laws. Not just environmental laws – this could also include labour law, traffic or health and safety laws, and municipal laws.

Bill 5 gives the Premier and his cabinet unfettered power to exempt any person or business they like from any provincial or municipal law they choose, in as much of the province as they like, for any purpose, and based on whatever criteria they themselves decide.

This new law also means that days are numbered for many of Ontario’s species at risk. Schedule 2 of Bill 5, which comes into force immediately, strips protection from almost all of the habitat that endangered species require to survive.

We had to do it because of the tariffs: Bill 5 was presented to the public as an emergency law that could speed up approvals for northern mines, and for infrastructure and critical industries required to decouple Ontario’s economy from the United States. However, experts have made it clear that Bill 5 powers can be used for any purpose, and applied to laws with no direct connection to mining or nation-building infrastructure – from minimum wages and collective bargaining to protections against trespass and the contamination of water. (The above comes from a report from the Ontario environmental group Environmental Defence.)

Bill 5 is "The Protecting Ontario by Unleashing Our Economy Act". But perhaps it should be called the Protecting Corporate Profits by Destroying Our Democracy Act. According to CBC, the bill "empowers the government ... to create SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONES where cabinet can exempt companies or projects from having to comply with any provincial law, any provincial regulation or any municipal bylaw."

Like Bill 15 here in BC, passed by our NDP government, Ontario's Bill 5 was rapidly passed because "we have to do something about the tariffs imposed by President Trump"… And of course, what we have to do is give everything to big business so they can make more money while destroying our environment and poisoning us all even faster.

The Ontario government says that the government won't exempt any company in a special economic zone from Ontario's minimum wage rules or other labour laws. But the way the legislation is written would allow cabinet to hand out exemptions from any law, whether labour, environmental, or operational.

Ford wants Ontario's first Special Economic Zone to be the Ring of Fire mineral deposit, some 500 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay, in the heart of Treaty 9 territory. The area is said to be full of so-called critical minerals, such as cobalt, lithium and nickel, in high demand for the tech and electric vehicle industry. Mining is, of course, essential to the corporate industrial state we live in, but it is unfortunately one of the most toxic industries on earth. The media seldom talk about the environmental dangers of mining, but the pollution from mining spreads everywhere and there is no escape from it.

Bill 5 – and similar bills in other provinces like BC – are an attack on our country and an attack on all Canadians. The corporations are out of control; they have taken over our governments and seem determined to make as much money as they possibly can by destroying our environment and our planet faster than ever. Unfortunately, undemocratic politicians like Doug Ford in Ontario and David Eby here in B.C. have all the power, while “the people” have less and less. And we are disorganized, uninformed, powerless, and largely leaderless. We have a long way to go, but hopefully Bill 5 will create more of an impetus to fight the corporate power that has grown far too powerful in our country. We need more democracy, and we need to remove the power that the corporations have over our corrupt politicians and governments.

IT'S TIME TO FIGHT BACK.