Nature is our home
NOT A SACRIFICE ZONE

Nature feeds us, shelters us, waters us—but is increasingly being framed as an obstacle to economic development. Instead of protecting the nature that cares for us, the federal government is bulldozing ahead with a series of environmental rollbacks that risk turning the places we call home into corporate playgrounds through Bill C-39, the Bulldoze Nature Bill.

We must tell the government loud and clear: nature is our home, not a sacrifice zone.

Despite promising to protect nature, the federal government completely reversed course by putting forward a Bill to steamroll ahead with major extractive projects through the weakening of environmental protections. Specifically, Bill C-39, the Bulldoze Nature Bill, includes:

• Gutting the federal environmental impact assessment for major energy projects;

• Diluting the Species at Risk Act for certain extractive projects, putting threatened species (like the Southern Resident Orca) in jeopardy;

• Creating sacrifice zones—officially named “regions of national interest” or “federal economic zones”—where nature will essentially be sacrificed for the construction of certain industrial projects;

• Weakening protections for fish and critical fish habitat based on promises of unreliable and unproven "offsetting" measures; and

• Authorizing ministers to weaken environmental conditions if compliance increases project costs, and allowing construction activities to begin before impact assessments are complete
  

The federal government is framing the removal of nature protections as being in the “public interest”. In reality, destroying the nature that sustains us is counter to the public good. Not only are we in the middle of a biodiversity crisis—with over 2000 species across Canada at some level of risk of extinction—but the overwhelming majority of people across Canada also view nature as central to their national identity and believe that nature protections should be increased.

The Bulldoze Nature Bill is only the latest iteration of the federal government’s ‘Build, Baby, Build’ strategy where development is accelerated at seemingly any cost. This acceleration is also feeding the expansion of energy-hungry AI systems, data centres, and defence-related technologies. But people living through rising costs and growing insecurity are not asking for more destruction: they’re asking for a livable future.

Thanks to public pushback, the federal government did remove the part of their proposal that would have exempted selected major projects from the “jeopardy test”, which assesses whether a proposed activity will jeopardize the survival or recovery of an endangered species. However, they still included an amendment to the Species at Risk Act, and are still bulldozing ahead with plenty of other environmental rollbacks through this proposed legislation, which means we urgently need to oppose this Bill.

Nature is not a site to exploit and profit from, it is our home—a source of health, wellbeing, and a place of belonging for all.

Tell the federal government that you oppose reducing nature to sacrifice zones and urge your MP to oppose Bill C-39, the Bulldoze Nature Bill.