Jobs for the Weekend

Sorry for missing last week, I was away at a traditional crafting workshop called Fulcrum Skills Share Workshop. If you’re into working with your hands, check them out!

In the meantime while I was away, the Ford Government continued on its breakneck pace to destroy natural spaces and pave over endangered habitat with the utterly destructive Bill 5.

This bill would reduce the definition of ‘habitat’ to an animal’s den or nest, eliminate environmental protections for huge swathes of Ontario and run roughshod over indigenous rights to the safety of their water, soil, and land. All for the benefit of a handful of wealthy property developers. Developers it should be said, who dug deep in the last election to donate to the provincial conservatives.

So with that in mind, here are your Bill 5 Jobs for the weekend:

1. First, take some time to learn a bit about the bill and the havoc it will wreak on natural spaces in Ontario. Environmental Defence has a wonderful summary of what the bill proposes and what you can do about it on their website.

2. Write your MPP to tell them you oppose the bill. Copy Doug Ford and Todd McCarthy, the Minister of the Environment. Feel free to call their offices if that’s your thing. It generally is more effective than an email, but also harder for a lot of people to do. Do what works for you, but raise your voice.

3. Write a letter to the editor of your local paper to express your concerns with the bill. Be concise, be clever, be angry, but just write something. If the papers are flooded with angry letters, the province is more likely to take notice.

4. Bonus Job - tell your friends and family about this. Send them this newsletter, or one like it. Post to social media. Be annoying. Make good trouble. Act up.

Don’t let this go by. The bill is a proposed gutting of environmental protections that in some cases have taken decades to establish. If we lose these, it’s possibly we may never see them restored in our lifetime. It’s that dire.

Please make some trouble about this this weekend.

Until next time.