Minister Fideli, Minister…

Minister Fideli,

Minister Fedeli,

Please accept attached a second backup submission of the comment which Environmental Defence has filed regarding the proposed “Criteria for Designations” Regulation to be made under the Special Economic Zones Act, 2025, which was posted for comment on the Environment Registry as ERO 025-1077. This submission is supplemental to the joint submission of Ontario Nature and several other non-governmental organizations, which we generally endorse and adopt in its broad terms. While we maintain our request that you introduce legislation to repeal the Special Economic Zones Act, 2025, or failing that make our recommended designation criteria and restrictions on application part of the statute itself, we have nonetheless included in the body of our submission several recommended amendments to the draft regulation, which would mitigate some of the most serious defects in the current proposed regulations.