More digging from the CBC has revealed that Canada’s Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change warned Ontario’s Ford government that its proposal to allow a mass slaughter of cormorants under the guise of a hunting season could cause hunters to run afoul of the law. Cormorants routinely congregate with birds protected under migratory convention and law (cormorants aren’t) and if any were killed in the course of shooting cormorants, the hunter would face charges. The federal warning may be one reason the hunt has so far not materialized. If all had gone smoothly, the hunt would have begun for the first time on March 15.
FWIW, I wrote the federal minister of Environment and Climate Change on November 23, raising the issue of the proposed hunt, raising the points I made to the Environmental Registry of Ontario, and asking what the feds planned to do about it. I did not hear back until late January, with the following:
Wild Great Lakes 