Birds need protection from window strikes

Premier Doug Ford prides himself on fighting for the little guy, and if ever there was a little guy in need of a helping hand, it’s the migratory bird.

Millions of these birds, some weighing little more than a loonie, will soon begin flying through Ontario on their way to nesting grounds in the boreal forest.

But many won’t survive the journey, victims of preventable crashes with the windows of commercial, institutional and other buildings along the way.

An estimated one million birds die from window collisions in Toronto alone each year. The problem of window strikes is particularly urgent given the significant declines of migratory birds from myriad other hazards, including climate change.

Fortunately, there’s a simple solution that the Ford government can implement: integrating an existing building design standard, developed with provincial funding, into the province’s building code.

Birds that crash into windows, often ending up lying dead or injured on the pavement, aren’t only a heartbreaking sight to volunteers of the Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) that collect, tend to the injured and document the dead birds. The loss is a problem for all of us given the valuable ecological services — plant pollination, seed dispersal and pest control — that these birds otherwise provide.

Killing birds with windows is illegal under Ontario’s Environmental Protection Act (EPA), a fact confirmed by an Ontario court in a precedent-setting private prosecution in 2013. The EPA makes it illegal to emit “contaminants,” including reflected light, from windows that cause birds to mistake those windows for otherwise safe places: trees, greenery and the open sky.

Unfortunately, the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks has never shown any interest in prosecuting building owners — many of them powerful developers and real estate corporations — for these violations.

Instead of taking action, the ministry did hire the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) to develop a bird-friendly design standard for new and existing buildings.

However, building owners are free to ignore the standard, since it is not legally binding, and most do just that. The provincial government should incorporate the standard (CSA A460) into its Building Code, precisely what civil society groups and a private member’s bill before the legislature have been urging.

The City of Toronto, among a handful of others, is already protecting birds by including avian-friendly design in its building approval process. But birds need protection right across the province.

Amending the Building Code to require building owners to do what the EPA already requires — but the ministry does not enforce — is good for almost everyone. Indeed, those building owners who invest money to voluntarily comply with the law (often as a result of pressure from community groups) are at a competitive disadvantage relative to lawbreakers, who save money on remedial measures and allow birds to suffer crashes with their windows.

So, Premier Ford, how about stepping up for this little guy?