This is going to be a significant step backwards, although it's going to play out in implementation. Ironically, a lot of the changes will actually probably cause more red tape and more difficulty to sort out than the government realizes.

Bill 108 that you were referring to is a giant omnibus bill that had 20 pages of amendments to the hallmark Endangered Species Act. It will serve to decrease the number of species at risk through various means and will also provide lots and lots of leniency and discretion as to how habitat protection would occur through very many different routes.

For developers there will still be a proponent-driven process whereby developers will have options, including being able to pay into a particular conservation fund that, with many steps forward, would perhaps be applied in some fashion to benefit species at risk but will not have anything to do with the activity itself or the impacts.

There are lots of other problems as well, including the way they're organizing themselves with respect to this biodiversity issue. Mostly, they're now going to be splitting this between two ministries. The Ministry of Natural Resources will really focus on the subset of wildlife species that we use—so hunt, trap, fish and so on—and really put a great deal of effort towards that. Then the subset of species at risk that are still left to protect will be on the other side in another ministry, along with a diminished parks program as well.

This will play out as well in terms of investment. There will be lots of budget cuts and lots of shuffling of different staff into different ministries. It will be pretty chaotic and unclear, but really it's about being “open for business”. It's about being open for business, making things more easy to develop, and requiring proponents to jump through fewer requirements to be able to....

And then there will be very few actual—

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