Millions of these birds, some weighing little more than a loonie, will soon begin flying through Ontario on their way to nesting grounds in the boreal forest. But many won’t survive the journey, victims of preventable crashes with the windows of commercial, institutional and other buildings along the way.

An estimated one million birds die from window collisions in Toronto alone each year. The problem of window strikes is particularly urgent given the significant declines of migratory birds from myriad other hazards, including climate change. Fortunately, there’s a simple solution that the Ford government can implement: integrating an existing building design standard, developed with provincial funding, into the province’s building code.

Birds that crash into windows, often ending up lying dead or injured on the pavement, aren’t only a heartbreaking sight to volunteers of the Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) that collect, tend to the injured and document the dead birds. The loss is a problem for all of us given the valuable ecological services — plant pollination, seed dispersal and pest control — that these birds otherwise provide.

Killing birds with windows is illegal under Ontario’s Environmental Protection Act (EPA), a fact confirmed by an Ontario court in a precedent-setting private prosecution in 2013. The EPA makes it illegal to emit “contaminants,” including reflected light, from windows that cause birds to mistake those windows for otherwise safe places: trees, greenery and the open sky. Unfortunately, the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks has never shown any interest in prosecuting building owners — many of them powerful developers and real estate corporations — for these violations.

The City of Toronto, among a handful of others, is already protecting birds by including avian-friendly design in its building approval process. But birds need protection right across the province.

So, Premier Ford, how about stepping up for this little guy?

Albert Koehl is an environmental lawyer and chairs FLAP Canada’s Advocacy Working Group.