In July 2008, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty announced a world-leading commitment to conservation-focused land-use planning for Ontario's Great Boreal Forest, including protection for more than 50% of the area. To make this bold commitment a reality, we need a strong Boreal legislation that:

1. Creates a well-resourced joint Planning Board to allow First Nations and the Province to work together and share implementation of planning.

2. Details how Ontario will work in partnership with First Nations to determine the location, use and management of the 50% or more of the region that the Premier has committed to protect as conservation lands.

3. Sets out how community plans will be developed and integrated with regional objectives.

4. Describes how communities will realize long-term benefits from development and their role in management.

5. Provides a clear role for a Science Advisory Committee, including objectives for how it will inform land-use planning.

6. Sets clear rules for the development of roads, corridors and industrial activity outside of protected areas.

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Ontario's window on the arctic

To most Ontarians, the idea that their province is a place to see polar bears, beluga whales, seals and narwhals probably comes as a surprise.  But the shoreline along Hudson Bay forming the province’s northern boundary is a sparsely visited but important part of the province’s vast northern region.  

In this subarctic realm, polar bears hunt for seals on the ice of the bay.  Just inland, tens of thousands of snow geese congregate each spring for nesting while thousands of caribou may gather for calving.  The low-lying Hudson Plain is one of the world’s greatest wetland areas and Polar Bear Provincial Park – the province’s largest protected area at 23,000 square km. – is an important refuge for bears, waterbirds, arctic foxes and caribou.

Polar bears have become worldwide icons for the threat posed by climate change to wild species  In certain parts of their range, population declines have been directly linked to an earlier ice break-up on Hudson Bay that has made it more difficult for the bears to hunt seals. . Ontario polar bears belong to the most southerly population in the species range, and have observers have noticed significant declines in body weight and condition, suggesting the bears are under stress.

The Hudson Bay coastline is well protected in Ontario due to the establishment of the massive Polar Bear Provincial Park in the 1970s.  But some threats – like climate change – simply don’t stop at park boundaries, which points to the need for landscape-wide efforts to protect vulnerable species and to secure the massive reservoirs of carbon trapped in peat bogs and other soils and wetlands across the boreal region.

Polar Bear facts:

• A thick layer of blubber (up to 4.5 inches thick) provides polar bears with such excellent insulation that their body temperature remains the same even at -36°C.
• Polar bears have two layers of fur for further protection from the cold.
• Polar bears are more prone to overheating than to freezing
• Climate change is threatening polar bear survival and the bears are now listed as "of special concern" under Endangered Species legislation