Ontario’s recently passed Bill 5, Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act, 2025 has disturbing implications for the protection of nature and effectively muzzles dissent and community voices.
As we unpack in our legal brief and testimony before the Ontario Legislative Assembly, Bill 5 has immediate impacts on Indigenous rights and environmental justice by:
- Creating a deeply unpredictable path forward with no clarity as to how Indigenous Peoples’ constitutional and Treaty rights will be respected;
- Removing certainty for all people in Ontario about how – if at all – the protections and oversight mandated through Ontario’s many laws and regulations would be of force and effect; and
- Eroding government accountability and the public’s confidence that the government will protect the rights of all in Ontario, including the health of communities and nature.
Now is the time to reverse course and repeal Bill 5.
We know the government of Ontario has a history of repealing other regressive laws when faced with widespread public opposition, including Bill 39, that removed lands from the Greenbelt, Bill 28, that prohibited strikes and lockouts by education workers, and Bill 124, that capped annual compensation increases for public sector employees.
Please SEND a MESSAGE telling Ontario’s elected officials and your MPP to REPEAL BILL 5.
