This consultation began after the province granted protection to large-scale industrial livestock facilities with the Farming and Food Production Protection Act, in May 1998. The act gives these facilities the right to appeal municipal by-laws aimed at controlling environmental and health effects of their operations. The province was, therefore, prepared to pass a new statute to protect factory farms from municipal by-laws, but reluctant to even consider a regulation to protect the environment and human health from the farm emissions. The new provisions propose more or less to eliminate governmental oversight of closure plans, and to radically reduce financial assurance requirements. The corporate financial test does not adequately protect against the eventuality that, further along in the mine's operations, the company may not be as financially able either through falling mineral markets or a corporate restructuring.
Mining is a risky business, subject to the fluctuations of the global commodities market.
The only other animals included in regulatory activity over the past year were two birds listed on the Endangered Species Act. Late in 1999, the province considered the conundrum of maintaining the commercial fisheries in the Great Lakes but at the cost of restoring the lakes' native fish populations. The commercial fishery prevailed. In its overall tone and message, Beyond 2000 places too great an emphasis on management and consumption of natural resources, and insufficient emphasis on the protection and conservation of natural systems. The policy pays little attention to the issues of maintaining biological diversity and maintaining and restoring the diversity and function of natural habitat.