Special economic zones: the secret weapon in Doug Ford's Bill 5

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.

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.