Premier Doug Ford’s justification for his controversial Bill 5 is to protect Ontario’s economy against the threats posed by U.S. President Donald Trump by reducing red tape and speeding up approvals of major projects.
Ford campaigned vociferously on that theme this winter and it carried his Progressive Conservative Party to its third straight majority.
However, Ford never said a word during the 29-day election campaign about the single most powerful thing in Bill 5: granting cabinet the authority to create “special economic zones.”
The bill would enable cabinet to designate any location in Ontario as a special economic zone, and then to exempt any company or project in the zone from having to comply with whichever provincial laws, provincial regulations or municipal bylaws the government chooses.
It opens the door for cabinet to declare that such things as Ontario’s minimum wage rules, its environmental regulations, its tax laws or a city’s noise restrictions don’t apply in the designated zone.
No other Canadian province has anything like this. Asked to name jurisdictions that do, Ford government officials offered a list that includes Singapore, South Korea, Poland and Panama.
“Essentially, the cabinet could give corporations a free pass to circumvent all sorts of important protections,” Anaïs Bussières McNicoll, a director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said in an interview.
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Bussières McNicoll says the powers government would get to create special economic zones are akin to emergency powers to override laws, and should therefore be time-limited with checks and balances.
Ford and his ministers haven’t been quite as specific in explaining the purpose of special economic zones as they’ve been with other parts of Bill 5, such as shortening the timelines for mining approvals or replacing Ontario’s endangered species legislation.
“We need to get rid of unnecessary red tape, make it easier for companies to invest, to hire and to grow, and that’s exactly what Bill 5 is going to do,” said Vic Fedeli, Minister of Economic Development, Jobs and Trade, in question period Wednesday.
Under the bill, Fedeli is the minister who gets the power to hand out the legal exemptions to companies of his choosing in the special economic zones.
There’s some indication the zones are meant to attract foreign investment. There’s a line in the text of Bill 5 that talks of making Ontario “the best place in the G7 to invest, create jobs and do business.”
What’s not in the bill are any criteria for deciding which locations, companies or projects would be eligible to be a special economic zone, nor any limits on which laws could be taken off the books in such zones.
The only caveat in the Special Economic Zones Act section of Bill 5 was added by the government as an afterthought, more than a month after tabling it: a clause saying that its provisions will be consistent with existing Indigenous and treaty rights under the Constitution.
The government added that clause on Wednesday, six weeks after Ford first signalled that his top priority for a special economic zone is the Ring of Fire mineral deposit in the treaty lands of northern Ontario.
The government now says it won’t actually designate such a zone in the Ring of Fire without consulting with First Nations, but that hasn’t satisfied First Nations leaders who feel the government shouldn’t have plowed ahead with the bill without consulting first.
The other project Ford has floated as a candidate for a special economic zone is his idea of building a tunnel under Highway 401 through Toronto.
But there’s nothing in the legislation stopping the government from giving any project or business in Ontario the special status.
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For instance, it could declare the massive Volkswagen electric vehicle battery plant to be built in St. Thomas, Ont. — described as the largest auto industry deal in Canadian history — a special economic zone, and exempt the company from whichever laws cabinet chooses.
“You can call them special economic zones, but what we know you are doing is opening up the floodgates for an abuse of power by government,” NDP Leader Marit Stiles said.
“The government is giving themselves the power to override every law,” Stiles said in question period on Wednesday.
Ford has expressed disbelief at the opposition to Bill 5, insisting that his entire campaign focused on its measures and that the voters gave him a mandate to take action.
“I was crystal clear about getting rid of the red tape, getting rid of the regulations, making sure that we attract investments,” Ford said in question period Tuesday.
It’s true that Ford promised during the campaign to speed up mining approvals and to shrink bureaucracy, both central parts of Bill 5. However, the phrase “special economic zones” never publicly crossed his lips, nor does it appear in the PC platform.
The closest the platform comes is a paragraph that promises to designate areas with multiple deposits of critical minerals as “regions of strategic importance” where select projects would get “automatic” approvals to proceed with early phases of work — nowhere near as sweeping as the blank cheque of special economic zones as laid out in Bill 5.
Labour unions say Ford is using the Trump threat as a pretext to create the zones.
“Under the cloak of an impending economic crisis and the guise of fighting tariffs, Doug Ford plans on delivering workers to the wild west of working conditions, all to the benefit of big business,” said CUPE Ontario president Fred Hahn in a statement.
It’s not a stretch to see parallels between Ford’s move to create special economic zones (as a response to the tariff threat) and his move a few months after the 2022 election to allow development on certain properties in the Greenbelt (as a response to the housing crisis.)
Both measures involve giving select companies special exemptions from existing rules, neither measure was promised during the preceding campaign and it’s unclear how effective either measure would be in achieving its stated economic goal.
Ford ultimately reversed course on the Greenbelt.
While he’s showing no signs of backing away from passing Bill 5, it remains to be seen whether his government will follow through once the legislation is on the books by actually creating any special economic zones, given the opposition they’re almost certain to face.
