The Ontario government is looking at reducing protections for an endangered minnow found in Greater Toronto Area streams that will be crossed by the controversial Highway 413.
The redside dace, a small silvery fish with a red stripe, hunts insects by jumping through the water. They are an important part of their ecosystem, helping to manage the populations of the insects they eat, such as mosquitoes. Once abundant in the streams around Lake Ontario, the rapidly disappearing redside dace is especially sensitive to changes in its environment, such as those caused by the climate crisis or urban development. For that reason, they are seen as indicators of larger problems in a watershed: if they start to die, it’s a sign that other species may soon be in trouble as well. The Ontario government’s last assessment of the species in 2020 concluded that it is in “imminent” danger of extinction in the province.
The minnow is also at the heart of a federal review of Highway 413, a flagship project of the Doug Ford government. If built, the 60-kilometre highway would ring around Toronto’s northern and western suburbs, carving through conservation land, prime farmland, 220 wetlands, 85 waterways, Ontario’s Greenbelt and the habitats of 11 species of danger, including the redside dace. The federal government decided in 2021 to subject Highway 413 to an impact assessment, which could determine whether Ontario is allowed to proceed with its construction. The project hasn’t progressed much since then — the provincial government has yet to file the preliminary report needed to formally begin the federal review.
The Ontario government is now proposing changes that would reduce protections in some redside dace habitat, a move critics say will accelerate the minnow’s decline. It comes as the province is rewriting the law at a furious pace in what it presents as efforts to boost the construction of housing and infrastructure projects. It’s also the province’s latest move in a series of changes that weaken protections for species at risk.
“I think the government would be happy if the species disappeared,” said Don Jackson, a professor in the University of Toronto’s ecology department, who studies aquatic ecosystems.
“For the government, this is not a convenient species.”
Ontario’s Environment Ministry did not respond to detailed questions from The Narwhal about the evidence supporting the proposal, and how it balances development and the need to protect species at risk. But in an online posting, the ministry said the plan would “focus habitat protections” on areas likely to support the redside dace in the future. The province’s public consultation on the proposed changes is open for feedback until February 20.
In 2021, the auditor general found that the Environment Ministry had never refused permission to harm species at risk and granted it automatically, a practice that began under previous governments and was continued by Ford’s Progressive Conservatives. Nor does it conduct any inspections to verify that companies are complying with the conditions in their permits.
Does Ontario have good evidence of whether or not the redside dace is present?
Right now, Ontario’s Endangered Species Act — the main provincial law protecting endangered plants and animals — prohibits anyone from destroying “occupied” habitat, or areas where the redside dace has lived within the past 20 year. It also offers the same protection to so-called “recovery” habitat, or areas where the minnow may someday re-establish. The goal of the law is not only to slow the decline of endangered species, but to help their numbers recover.
The proposed changes, which the government posted for public feedback in late December, would remove those protections. Only habitat occupied by the redside dace within the past 10 years qualifies, and “recovery” habitat is limited to streams and waterways directly adjacent to areas where the minnow has resided within the last decade.
Jackson said the move amounts to writing the minnow off when it needs help. There has been some success in breeding redside dace in captivity at the University of Windsor, raising researchers’ hopes of reintroducing them to streams and creeks. The province has also earmarked hundreds of thousands of dollars for projects aimed at restoring redside dace habitat. But the species cannot be reintroduced if the areas where it once lived are developed or destroyed.
“It’s not a science-based decision,” Jackson said.
The charity Ontario Nature has raised similar concerns: “The only possible interpretation is that the amendments are focused on facilitating development at all costs,” the group said.
More than a century ago, settlers recorded finding large numbers of redside dace in nearly every stream in southern Ontario. They are also commonly seen in parts of the United States around the Great Lakes basin. As the region’s cities and suburbs have expanded over the past 50 years, causing a decline in water quality and more pollution, many of the minnows have winked or retreated to smaller areas. Some fragmented populations of the species also persist in the US, although it has disappeared from streams in Iowa and Maryland.
As construction boomed in Ontario in the 2010s, local minnow numbers fell by half. Ontario’s population of redside dace now inhabits much of the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area — including the Credit and Humber rivers, which will be crossed by Highway 413. They also live in tributaries of the Holland River, which will be crossed by another Ford government project called Bradford Bypass. These fragile but persistent schools have slowed or stopped more than a few major developments in the past few years.
At the same time, Jackson said, scientists have had trouble getting permits from Ontario’s Environment Ministry to study the species and gather evidence showing where it might be. So streams listed as empty of redside dace for more than a decade may not have been properly investigated, he said.
“We’ve got this situation where the government is actually cutting in half the length of time that an area can be considered occupied,” he said. “But at the same time, sampling is also not allowed in those areas. So we don’t really know what the status is and whether the species is present or not.
The Ministry of the Environment did not answer questions about how many permits it gives to scientists studying the redside dace, or what evidence it relied on to prepare the plan. If the Ontario government decides to give the green light to the changes, it’s unclear how it will affect Highway 413’s federal impact assessment.
The Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, which is responsible for the federal review of Highway 413, did not respond to a request for comment from The Narwhal by deadline. Even the office of federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault.
More changes could exempt mines from endangered species laws, cut protections for butternut trees
The Ontario government is also proposing to adjust protections for the butternut tree, another species at risk along the route of Highway 413. People or companies proposing some type of work that will harm the tree will have to submit report from an expert on the health of butternut trees that will be affected. Right now, the Environment Ministry takes 30 days to review that report and inspect the trees, if necessary — but the proposed change would eliminate the waiting period, meaning builders could begin work that could damage the trees before the ministry has time to review the report of findings and procedures.
Last year, Ontario’s auditor general found that the government had failed to write a plan to protect the butternut tree, among other species.
A third change proposed by the ministry would require mining companies to comply with most endangered species rules when they build roads to access mineral exploration sites – areas where prospectors search to see if there is anything in the ground worth mining. Most of the activities that mining companies do while they are exploring a site are already exempt from the endangered species rules.
Ontario Nature said the proposed changes are “another example of the Ontario Government’s relentless push to prioritize development over environmental protection.”
