Why migratory birds, already in disturbing decline, could be a casualty of Doug Ford’s housing bill
Bill 23 would prevent municipalities from requiring that buildings incorporate design elements to protect birds from deadly window strikes.
Who knew that increasing the housing supply would produce a list of victims that even reaches the birds in our sky?
Bill 23, the Ontario government’s More Houses Built Faster Act, is complex by design to avoid public scrutiny, and obscures key changes and predictable consequences — just as an omnibus bill of former premier Mike Harris, intent on reducing “red tape,” cleared the way for the Walkerton contaminated water tragedy.
Among a slew of troubling changes to planning and conservation laws, the Ford government’s bill upends the ability of municipalities to impose, through their site plan approval process, exterior design elements that address matters such as climate resiliency and mitigation. In Toronto, the city’s Toronto Green Standardcovers these areas, and also obliges builders to spare migratory birds from preventable window crashes.
Many species of songbirds are suffering disturbing declines, with fatal window strikes among the variety of causes at play. Along their migratory flyways, birds are drawn into urban areas where they are deluded by building windows that reflect the sky, trees and other safe havens. The decline in birds should concern all of us — and not simply because our lives are calmed and enriched by bird song. Birds provide vital ecological services, including pest control, seed dispersal and pollination.
Torontonians have good reason to be proud of the measures the city has taken to protect migratory birds, beginning in 2007 with the city’s celebrated Bird-Friendly Development Guidelines. Over time, these guidelines have become mandates in the Toronto Green Standard. Since 2010, builders have been required to protect birds with measures that allow birds to perceive and avoid the lethal danger. (Take a look at the ground floors of newer buildings in the city for the “visual markers,” often in the form of uniformly spaced dots on windows.)
Building design features have been good for the birds, and therefore good for humans. In fact, many municipalities across Ontario (and North America) have adopted similar measures — a welcome intervention, given the province’s long-standing refusal to use its own authority to do the job. The benefits go even further. The green standard requirements have spurred the creation of a local industry to supply builders with suitable materials.
Bill 23 would now take away Toronto’s authority (under the City of Toronto Act) and that of other municipalities (under the Planning Act) to impose exterior building design features.
It is disingenuous for the Ford government to suggest that building housing can only be achieved at the expense of birds — or wetlands, farmland, forests, flood protection, the climate.
Yes, the destructive path being taken by the government is good for the development industry, but it’s bad for the rest of us, including the birds — and it’s totally unnecessary, at least if the true objective was to build more housing.
