North Bay completes extensive consultation on province’s review of Endangered Species Act

Concerned citizens pack city council meeting on endangered species protection

Public comment to be given strong presence in city’s report to province

by Linda Holmes BayToday

It took an amendment to the original motion, and time running out to come up with a compromise where North Bay City Council agreed to add all public presentations, written and video, to its submission to the province commenting on “10th Year Review of Ontario’s Endangered Species Act.”

During weeks of presentations to council and a separate public consultation process, one thing was made abundantly clear, the public wanted its voice to be heard and for their comments to be part of the report prepared by city staff.

A motion to do just that was put forward by City Councillor Johanne Brousseau, with the deadline for submissions to the province just days away (Monday March 4 2019).

“We’ve had three regular council meetings where we’ve had passionate people do presentations on the endangered species. There is a video of those presentations, and one from a citizen from the public consultation meeting February 13. So those, and any written comments that were given to the city at any time are to be attached to our report,” said Brousseau.

“In retrospect, all those citizens that wrote comments could have personally sent them to Toronto on their own. This way they’ll all be attached together and it is all from North Bay.”

Lena Ross was one of a number of presenters Monday night, asking elected officials to append all of the public consultation documents to the report prepared by staff.

“My hope is that this will help more accurately reflect where the people of North Bay stand in terms of the 10th year review of the Endangered Species Act,” said Ross.

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