Several environmental groups have launched a constitutional challenge seeking to kill an Ontario law that allows cabinet to suspend other laws.
Wildlands League, Environmental Defence Canada, Friends of the Earth Canada and Democracy Watch allege Ontario’s special economic zone law wrongly abdicates power from the legislature and gives it to cabinet, thereby violating the Constitution.
Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government passed Bill 5, which included the special economic zone provision, last year.
The provision allows cabinet and the environment minister to suspend any and all provincial and municipal laws within such zones as they see fit.
It’s a decades-old name. I believe the original idea was that the party would be socially progressive and fiscally conservative. The combination doesn’t seem to work very well, though, because the two often pull in opposite directions, and when they do, it’s always the “socially progressive” part that seems to get thrown under the bus.