Summary

• A proposal by developer Cliff Bay Muskoka Corp. includes new condominium and hotel units, restaurants, a spa, an event centre and a marina in the small town of Gravenhurst, Ont., along with particularly controversial water villas over Lake Muskoka.
• The proposal relies on obtaining a Minister’s Zoning Order, or MZO, to bypass local municipal planning rules. 
• The MZO was a condition of the purchase when the developers bought it from the province, which one legal expert told The Narwhal could pose a conflict of interest.

Ontario cottage country — famous for its hundreds of clear lakes nestled in the Canadian Shield — is experiencing a first. 

The Cliff Bay resort project, proposed for the south end of Lake Muskoka, is planning for a Minister’s Zoning Order, a provincial decree that limits local government oversight in order to move development ahead. It’s known across the province as an MZO although, until now, Muskoka doesn’t appear to have experienced one. 

Now that it is, locals and cottagers have a lot to say. Throughout the town of Gravenhurst, Ont., lawn signs urge passersby to “Protect Muskoka Bay.” An attempt at an online public meeting initiated by the developers failed in May 2025, after its capacity of 100 attendees was quickly reached, with many more stuck in the waiting room eager to voice their concerns. 

The proposal by developer Cliff Bay Muskoka Corp., part of the KS Group of Companies, shows new condominium and hotel units, two restaurants, a spa, an event centre for weddings and a marina with space for 80 boats. While the developers originally proposed 1,400 units split between hotel and residential space, they told The Narwhal in an email that number has been “significantly reduced,” but didn’t say by how much.

All of this will spread across 33 hectares, or about the size of just under 50 soccer pitches.

A particularly controversial aspect of the Cliff Bay resort plan are additional water villas proposed to be built directly over the lake. Their construction would impact Crown lake-bed, which supports invertebrates and insects that are the backbone of the lake ecosystem.

“The building over water is what gets me the most,” Bruce Parlette, who spends half his time at his cottage on Lake Muskoka, told The Narwhal. Parlette began an online petition opposing the project that has accumulated more than 5,300 signatures over the last year.

By current municipal rules, buildings on the bay typically have to be at least 20 metres, in some cases 30, from the shoreline. “But they’re looking to build all these villas on the water … so the whole shoreline protection, that buffer zone, would be gone,” Parlette said.

So far, Gravenhurst’s leadership has been quiet on the project within its borders. A spokesperson told The Narwhal in an email that the town has not taken a position or issued any news releases or statements as “there hasn’t really been anything to share,” adding that they are awaiting the final proposal for “some form of statement or release.” 

When asked about public concerns over the impact of the project, the spokesperson said “the town does not own the property, process or decision here,” adding that council “certainly heard the concerns” at the developer’s public information session and might be able to take an eventual position when the process is further along.

The spokesperson did express council’s desire to see the property, a mix of undeveloped Crown land and a former sanatorium, put to productive use for the community. 

Meanwhile, Parlette and advocates at the Muskoka Lakes Association are selling the lawn signs, emailing officials and participating in public meetings about what the association calls the “deeply troubling details of a massive development proposal.”

“Nobody wants to see it done with an MZO, because then it’s going to override any local planning, zoning and decision-making,” Parlette said.

The developer website reads that, “in partnership with the Province of Ontario, we’re redeveloping this iconic site into a vibrant, mixed-use tourist complex,” in a project that reflects their “commitment to thoughtful growth, economic development and preserving the natural beauty of Muskoka for generations to come.”

The Narwhal also sent questions to Infrastructure Ontario, which sold the land to Cliff Bay, and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Neither of the provincial agencies involved responded to detailed questions about the sale of the land, the Minister’s Zoning Order and public concerns about the impact of the project.

Muskoka’s first MZO and the Doug Ford government’s track record using them

A Minister’s Zoning Order is a powerful control tool. It lets the provincial Housing Minister unilaterally decide how land is used and developed by bypassing local municipal planning and public consultation processes that would otherwise be required under the Planning Act. 

After searching publicly available government records, The Narwhal was unable to find evidence of any other MZOs being issued in the Muskoka area, including in the three major towns of Gravenhurst, Bracebridge, Huntsville and smaller hubs like Bala and Port Carling. 

Phil Pothen, legal counsel and program manager of land use and Ontario environment at advocacy organization Environmental Defence, told The Narwhal the Muskoka proposal raises concerns because the developers stated publicly that obtaining a Minister’s Zoning Order was a condition of the purchase and sale agreement between Infrastructure Ontario and the developers.

“It would actually place the province in something of a conflict of interest,” Pothen said, “in the sense that [the province] is both the landowner who stands to gain more if the land is more highly valued and the regulator who’s actually making the decision.”

Discussion of the MZO came at a public information meeting held over Zoom in July 2025, a redo after the over-capacity attempt that May. There, Kirill Soloviev, head of strategic planning for Cliff Bay, told hundreds of attendees that, as part of the deal for the developer to buy the property from the province, a “Ministerial Zoning Order was included, and now it’s a formal part of the transaction.” Bob List, a land use and environmental planner acting as a consultant for the project, echoed the statement.

The Cliff Bay project’s developer wrote in an email to The Narwhal that a Minister’s Zoning Order was a “necessity” because mixed land use — mostly recreational and commercial — is currently not recognized in existing zoning for the property. Ensuring a Minister’s Zoning Order would come through was essential to the decision to purchase the land, as without it, the decision to rezone the property for the purposes of the resort would have been left with the township, and not guaranteed.

In 2024, the Office of the Auditor General of Ontario conducted an audit of Minister’s Zoning Orders in the province and found that between 2017 and 2023, 114 were issued. With the Doug Ford government first elected in 2018, that average of 23 per year represents a 17-fold increase from the prior two decades. The audit concluded that these orders “have been used to override municipal planning.”

The audit also found that most information packages prepared for the office of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing as it evaluated each order “did not contain the kind of detailed risk information normally factored into municipal zoning decisions.” That included key information about the capacity of local roads, sewers and other infrastructure; the risks posed by natural hazards and the environment; and likely financial burdens to regions, municipalities and taxpayers.

These orders cannot be appealed at the Ontario Land Tribunal. Of the 25 Minister’s Zoning Orders the auditor general scrutinized for the report, they found that half showed “no evidence the ministry engaged with any affected Indigenous communities” prior to issuing the order. 

“This is a threat, frankly, to the rule of law in Ontario,” Pothen said. “It’s a process that is much more susceptible to impropriety than a conventional planning process where multiple individuals all need to be lined up in support of a proposal.”

What’s next for Cliff Bay resort in Ontario cottage country?

Right now, the area surrounding the site boasts a tree-lined shore spotted with cottages, ranging from quaint to luxurious. Docks surround the large, clear blue bay, with Muskoka chairs set up with views across the lake. Not far from the water on the site, the eerie, now-closed hospital building sits abandoned and overgrown.

Maintaining shorelines is critical to ecosystems and the wildlife they support; it’s where fish spawn, turtles lay eggs and birds nest. Healthy shoreline vegetation also filters rainwater and can even limit flooding, a risk that is increasing in the face of climate change.

In a response to questions from The Narwhal, the Cliff Bay developers said that upcoming changes to their plans will add more features for public use, like the beaches and public trails Soloviev mentioned during the public meetings, and address public comments they’ve received from people reaching out to them. 

In an email, they said no “significant or unusual environmental impacts are anticipated,” as sewage will be processed at an existing local treatment facility and because “there are no significant natural heritage features on the site.” The developers said they anticipate an updated draft of the Minister’s Zoning Order will be “available for further public review, Indigenous consultation and government processing in several months.”

Despite these efforts, Minister’s Zoning Orders do not come with any legally binding requirement to consult the public — a point project planner List repeated several times at the July 2025 Zoom meeting.

Pothen said the zoning orders provide a direct route for the minister to “leapfrog and circumvent the established planning laws of a municipality” and to approve a development even if it doesn’t conform with the official plan or with the government’s own provincial planning statement.

The Minister’s Zoning Order process does involve collecting comment from municipal governments. But, according to the auditor general’s report, there is no legislated requirement for the ministry to satisfy any municipal requests for specific conditions prior to the orders being issued. 

The Cliff Bay development will have to go through several environmental checks before being built — including a posting on the environmental registry of Ontario for public comment if the proposal goes through. 

There are cases where Minister’s Zoning Orders have been useful, Pothen told The Narwhal, such as during COVID-19 lockdowns, when they allowed for quick creation of emergency shelters.

“They are meant to be used, in our view, for very extreme and emergency circumstances,” Pothen said. “What’s being posed here, it’s really just a way to circumvent the rule, which raises the problem.”

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Summary

• The North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit officially stopped testing water at public beaches.
• In place of testing, the health unit is updating public signage to warn swimmers of risks of heavy rainfall, murky water and large numbers of birds congregating — things that deteriorate water quality.
• Researchers and advocates argue beach water monitoring is important, especially as climate change makes cooling off in the water more necessary — and more hazardous, thanks to algal blooms and pathogens.

Kevin Marois wasn’t aware that the health unit spanning North Bay and Parry Sound, Ont., had stopped testing the water at local swimming spots.“I don’t think it’s a good decision,” Marois told The Narwhal after learning about it on a hot June day at Shabogesic Beach in North Bay. “Not having the information on water quality is the main [concern],” he said as he came out of the water, “And we know that there are problems with water quality during the summer.”

There were six harmful algal bloom events in the health unit’s area in 2025, and more than a dozen in 2024.

After announcing its plans earlier this year, the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit has officially stopped testing water at public beaches as of this summer. 

In its place, they’re offering public signage, which the health unit says will warn beachgoers to assess risks from recent heavy rainfall, visibly murky water or large numbers of birds in the water — all things that alter water quality and can make swimming unsafe due to high levels of E. coli or harmful algae.

Despite the updated signage, those who study beach water safety in Canada say ceasing testing could impact people’s ability to make informed decisions about safe swimming this summer. 

Meanwhile, researchers have argued a warming climate in Canada, including more severe summer heat waves, means swimmable water for people to cool off in is more important than ever. 

“We see changing climate patterns, we see urban heat island effects, we see heat domes, we see that there’s a tremendous need for community cooling spaces,” said Gregary Ford, vice-president and Lake Ontario Waterkeeper at Swim Drink Fish, an environmental non-profit that advocates for safe, usable water bodies. Its name comes from signs often posted on shorelines in Canada: no swimming, no fishing and no drinking. 

Ford explained that warmer temperatures and extreme weather events — a part of climate change, which is primarily driven by the burning of fossil fuels — also contribute to more harmful algal blooms and other pathogens that affect the health of the water and people who use it.

Health unit says water testing is resource-intensive and too slow

In March 2026, the North Bay health unit, which also covers Kearney, Nipissing and South River, sent a letter to member municipalities saying sampling the area’s 60 public beaches was too resource-intensive, and lab results took three or four days, limiting their usefulness when water conditions change quickly. The health unit also argued that the risk of illness from water recreation in the region is low. The water was only tested about three times each summer, it said.

Last year, Public Health Sudbury and Districts, a region which includes Manitoulin Island and French River, ended routine water sampling as well — one of many cuts made after the medical officer of health said their funding has not kept pace with inflation.

“Obviously, there are growing pressures on municipalities and public health units … and so we understand that compromises have to be made, but not in something that affects public health,” Ford said. “This is a trend that we see during periods of economic stress and strain … Unfortunately, as these scalebacks start happening, the public is left with less information about their water and, honestly, that becomes the most important part.”

Swim Drink Fish aggregates data from across swimming spots in North America into an app called Swim Guide. But these helpful third-party tools rely on local data collected by public health departments.

“It’s really important that municipalities also provide historical data, even if they’re not sampling today. They should at least publicly make available the data and information that has been collected over the last five years, the last 10 years, so people can still make a somewhat informed decision about where they spend their time,” Ford said. That’s not something made available by the North Bay Parry Sound Health Unit, either.

There are options for protecting beachgoers, but they can’t replace testing: experts

A recent study from Toronto Metropolitan University, which surveyed 4,085 beachgoers at seven beaches in Canada between 2023 and 2025, found that about 2.6 per cent of swimmers reported becoming sick, with children and elderly people facing higher risk of “recreational water illness,” such as stomach issues, ear and eye infections or rashes.

Ian Young, principal investigator on the Canadian Beach Cohort Study, tracking recreational water illness across Canada, said despite that low risk, “having a solid monitoring plan is important to give people confidence in the beach.”

He pointed to other methods being used across the country to help combat the slow, unreliable nature of current testing. For example, at Bluffer’s Park Beach in Scarborough, Ont., the City of Toronto implemented a bird management program, involving removing sources of food and training dogs to spur geese into flight, once they realized a substantial amount of the E. coli in the water at the beach was caused by birds.

Ford, from Swim Drink Fish, has seen other solutions; municipalities like Kingston and Hamilton are trying out new technology that alerts citizens in real-time when sewers and sewer bypasses are overflowing and contaminating beach water. But, he said, this does not replace the need for monitoring.

“It is a far second in terms of a solution. The best solution is to be continuing and continuously monitoring these beaches,” Ford said. “Resources can be stretched thin at times. This is a public health interest, it is a tourism interest and it is an individual health and wellness interest as well. So, this should be a priority for public health units, and it’s disappointing to see some of these decisions that are being made.”

To help mitigate risk, North Bay’s health unit recommends swimmers wash or sanitize hands before eating after swimming, towel off well to help prevent swimmer’s itch, check for hazards before entering the water and avoid getting water in their mouths.

But North Bay resident Ashley Brooker, standing at the shore of Lake Nipissing, said she still doesn’t feel good about the testing changes. “I am a risk-taker, but that doesn’t mean that I want to risk getting sick or catching something,” she said. “Safety is a big thing, and if we’re putting our tax money into something then we should be getting the resources back.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Summary

• In March 2026, the Doug Ford government formally replaced Ontario’s Endangered Species Act with weaker legislation that removes protections for some species and narrows protections for others.
• Documents obtained by The Narwhal reveal the dissent and concern raised by provincial staff, municipalities and Indigenous groups during consultations on the change.
• A major concern raised about the legislation is that many project proposals will no longer be posted for public comment, limiting public participation.

As the Doug Ford government prepared to replace the Endangered Species Act with new legislation, the province’s natural resources staff warned of weakened habitat protections, reduced oversight and new gaps in enforcement, according to documents obtained by The Narwhal.  

In March 2026, the Endangered Species Act was officially replaced with the Species Conservation Act, which removes or limits provincial protection from many threatened plants and animals.

Now, 275 pages of records, some publicly available and others only accessed through freedom of information legislation, show provincial bureaucrats worrying about the implications of the changes, as well as municipalities and Indigenous groups voicing dissent — before the government passed the law anyway.

The new act allows most projects, whether related to housing, mining or other industries, to begin as soon as proponents register online, in place of an expert review of permit applications. This approach “may weaken oversight and accountability, as self-regulation can be variable and potentially unreliable,” reads November 2025 feedback from the fish and wildlife policy branch of Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources to the provincial Ministry of the Environment, which is primarily responsible for species at risk. “Proponents may also misinterpret or manipulate rules and regulations.”

The natural resources ministry also raised concerns that the Species Conservation Act exempted a number of development actions from the second section of the Environmental Bill of Rights, which requires applications to do work that could potentially harm wildlife to be publicly posted on the provincial environmental registry. Without this, the chance for public review and comment is eliminated.

“The [Environmental Bill of Rights] was created to ensure that the people of Ontario have the ability to participate in decision-making processes,” reads the same feedback sent via email from the Ministry of Natural Resources. “Suggest being cautious if exempting [Species Conservation Act] permits and orders … as this may be seen as a way to avoid transparency, accountability and undermine public trust.”

Neither the Ministry of Natural Resources nor the Ministry of the Environment responded to The Narwhal’s detailed questions about this feedback by publication time.

In April, in response to questions from The Narwhal at a press conference, Premier Doug Ford said such changes are needed to clear the way for industry and development in the province. 

“As I’ve said, we aren’t going to hold up Highway 413, the Bradford Bypass, over a grasshopper — not happening,” Ford said of two highway projects set to cut through the protected Greenbelt and farmland. “We have a mandate to build. We’re going to build, and we’re going to respect the environment at all costs.”

Thousands of public comments about endangered species protections were also ignored: lawyer

Kerrie Blaise, a lawyer with the northern Ontario environmental non-profit Legal Advocates for Nature’s Defence, said these issues remained as the final legislation was passed, despite concerns being raised ahead of time.

That includes dropping the requirement for some permits for projects that could harm species being publicly posted.

“It’s a very sweeping exemption,” Blaise said. “It means we won’t know the name of the companies. We won’t know where it’s happening … the basic details: when, where, how much, what’s the harm? All of those details will be lacking.”

Blaise also registered her dissent before the new act passed. She told The Narwhal that Legal Advocates for Nature’s Defence sent more than 6,500 signed form letters asking the province to reconsider — even repeal — Bill 5, which proposed killing the old act and passing the new one. The organization is now representing two Indigenous interveners challenging the constitutionality of the bill in court. 

Blaise said it was “really great to hear” that natural resources staff spoke up. “I truly believe you have very dedicated individuals with expertise in this field … but their expertise and their knowledge is not being respected,” she said. 

“There are those with knowledge who can actually guide the government in a good way, and it’s really chilling when those individuals and departments within [the government] are themselves not being listened to.”

Blaise added she sees nothing in the final legislation showing that the province addressed the concerns raised by staff or those contained in thousands of public comments.

“If the province was actually looking to respect … what the public was actually saying, we would have a very differently worded Species Conservation Act,” Blaise said.

In the documents, Ministry of Natural Resources staff also warned that excluding federally protected species from provincial protections “could create regulatory gaps and inconsistencies.” This, too, echoes concerns from environmental groups. 

The province has argued a number of species —  including the redside dace, a minnow that became central to concerns over Ontario’s Highway 413 development — are already protected under federal laws. 

The federal government can extend emergency protections to provincial lands, but rarely does so. And in many cases, federal protection only extends to individual species under the federal Species At Risk Act and their dwelling places on federal lands, such as national parks or First Nations reserves. These spaces make up less than five per cent of the range of most terrestrial at-risk species, whose wider habitat in Ontario is now vulnerable. 

The documents show this concern was voiced by Steve Ganesh, commissioner of planning, building and growth management for the City of Brampton. He wrote to the province that, “By limiting ‘habitat’ to a species’ dwelling place and its immediate surrounding area, important areas may no longer be protected that are crucial for foraging, dispersal, migration and climate resilience.”

“This change could leave locally significant and rare populations unprotected and reduce the scientific basis for municipal planning, restoration and mitigation efforts.”

One species of particular concern is caribou, according to Allie Mayberry, a wildlife co-ordinator working with the sustainable development department of Biigtigong Nishnaabeg, a First Nation on the north shore of Lake Superior. Whittling protected species habitat down so severely provides little protection for an already threatened species that relies on large swaths of interconnected habitat to survive, she told The Narwhal.

“There’s a lack of clarity around how caribou habitat is going to be protected moving forward,” Mayberry said. “We’re already working with a baseline of a very disturbed habitat, and now through the new [Species Conservation Act] there’s much less of an imperative to protect what habitat there is left.”

Docs show Treaty Rights and loss of protection for threatened species were a concern

Other municipalities and First Nations had concerns about the legislation change, the documents show. 

A letter from the City of London, sent before the new act’s passage, argued the now-official Protected Species in Ontario List would remove protections for 106 species. “These changes undermine the municipality’s capacity to protect species that are rare, threatened or endangered within the city,” the letter reads, naming 20 species in London’s boundaries that have been removed from protection, along with their habitats. They include the chimney swift, eastern musk turtle and wood thrush. 

The documents show Indigenous groups also argued the new legislation disrespects not just the environment, but their Treaty Rights.

The Species Conservation Act was set to “fundamentally alter how the Haudenosaunee exercise rights guaranteed under the 1701 Nanfan Treaty,” reads a comment from Aaron Detlor, a delegate from the Haudenosaunee Development Institute, which represents the interests of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council in the development of lands within Haudenosaunee jurisdiction. “These regulations restrict the free and undisturbed use of our territories that are foundational to Haudenosaunee sovereignty and self-determination.”

“Our review of these proposed regulations reveals no credible or equivalent process that could substitute for meaningful engagement on measures that directly affect our Treaty Rights. We see no mechanism by which the Haudenosaunee will have a meaningful opportunity to participate in decisions affecting species protection and our inherent right to exercise hunting and harvesting rights on our territory,” Detlor wrote.

At the April press conference, The Narwhal asked Ford how he would respond to government experts saying the changes could create serious gaps in protection for species at risk. “That’s a priority to make sure we protect all species at risk,” Ford replied. “There’ll always be consultation.”

Chief Duncan Michano of Biigtigong Nishnaabeg noted in a comment about Bill 5 on the Environmental Registry of Ontario that the new act failed to respect First Nations’ constitutional rights, arguing the legislation “fundamentally weakens environmental and cultural protections and reduces consultation requirements,” calling it a “direct violation of the Government of Ontario’s obligations to uphold the honour of the Crown.”

“The consultation process [on Bill 5 and the Species Conservation Act] has been extremely flawed all along,” Mayberry, Biigtigong Nishnaabeg’s wildlife co-ordinator, said. “We’ve participated in a number of different ways and what we’ve been met with is not a two way dialogue in an attempt to hear and meaningfully address any concerns.” 

Mayberry said consultation has “all just been a box-ticking exercise wherein Ontario continues to double down on their preferred approach, and they get the benefit of saying, ‘Well, we spoke to First Nations about this.’ ”

“We’ve taken a piece of legislation that was once considered the gold standard for species at risk protection and recovery in Canada, and now we have just whittled it down to a point that it’s barely even a species protection act anymore,” Mayberry said. “I’m not at all surprised to hear that there’s even concerns internally about this.”

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Summary

• The Ontario government intended to move radioactive waste from the shore of Lake Nipissing to a former mine site outside Sudbury, Ont.
• A lack of consultation around the new location led to strong local opposition, and delayed the remediation project conducted by Nipissing First Nation.
• The waste has now been moved to a disposal site outside Sarnia, Ont., and Aamjiwnaang First Nation, where emissions from the industrial area known as Chemical Valley have affected local air quality.

For decades, radioactive waste sat near the shore of Lake Nipissing. It looked like an innocuous pile of gravel in what was otherwise a stretch of forest. People began using it to backfill lots, fill spaces under decks and build fire pits. In the 1970s and ’80s, Nipissing First Nation began using it to build roads. 

It wasn’t normal gravel, though. It was mine tailings, containing the metal niobium, left there when the Nova Beaucage mine shuttered in 1956 after just seven months of operation. 

“The company just walked away and left it with no remediation at all,” Geneviève Couchie, business operations manager at Nipissing First Nation, said. Couchie led a project to clean up the tailings, which first started in 2019. After being interrupted by COVID-19 shutdowns, the remediation resumed in spring 2024 and lasted almost two years.

In the meantime, Couchie told The Narwhal, she fielded concerns about groundwater and lake contamination from residents living close to the site or to a nearby property owned by Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation that also stored the low-level radioactive tailings. Couchie said she struggled to get satisfactory answers from government agencies.

“The workers wore hazmat suits, and I remember saying from the beginning, ‘How can I tell people they have nothing to worry about when these guys are in full on suits?’ They’re literally 20 feet from someone’s window,” Couchie said. The majority of the workers remediating the site were from the nation, and dressed in protective gear so as not to carry radioactive dust home on their clothes. 

The plan was to load the waste into trucks to be transported to a tailings management area at Agnew Lake, in Sudbury District. It is the decommissioned site of a former mine, near the Township of Nairn and Hyman, and about 150 kilometres from Nipissing First Nation. The nation first had to excavate nearly 50,000 metric tonnes of the radioactive material — enough to build the Statue of Liberty, twice.

But the project faced another unexpected delay. The province had attempted to relocate the waste without consulting the Nairn community, sparking public outcry. Locals organized public meetings to raise awareness and ultimately stop the transfer. 

Eventually, in July 2025 — after nearly a year of advocacy in Nairn, and delay for Nipissing First Nation — the province capitulated, finding another place for the waste to go. This was welcome news for Nipissing First Nation, which is now hoping to transform the scarred land into a lakeside green space for the community to enjoy after years of worry.

“We just wanted to see this material moved off [Nipissing First Nation] lands, and so it was an unexpected disappointment that things were delayed like they were,” Couchie said. “We were pleased that they did end up finding another disposal site.”

“But,” Couchie said, it was “eye opening as well, that there was only one other facility in Ontario that was prepared to accept this.”

That facility is close to another Indigenous community — Aamjiwnaang First Nation, in the Sarnia region, where emissions from refineries and petrochemical plants have earned the area the moniker “Chemical Valley.” 

Sarnia facility accepting radioactive waste from Nipissing

The new destination for the radioactive tailings is Clean Harbors, a hazardous waste facility in Corunna, Ont. — 645 kilometres from its original dumping ground. It’s close to both Aamjiwnaang and Sarnia, which have experienced persistent air quality issues related to nearby industry.

Clean Harbors is the only government-licensed hazardous waste management complex in Ontario, and is “uniquely positioned,” its website reads, to offer safe disposal of naturally occurring radioactive material like the niobium tailings. 

But the facility’s history is dotted with dust-ups over environmental safety. In 2013, neighbours of the Clean Harbors site won a civil lawsuit over the impact of the waste facility’s emissions on their health and daily lives.

In 2019 the company was fined $100,000 for discharging contaminated smoke after a filter cloth soaked with coolant, oils and metal particles caught fire.

When the province conducted a study on environmental stressors in the Sarnia area in 2023, it found that while the majority of the 870 reports from residents about industrial pollution were related to petrochemical industries and refineries, a significant minority — 219 — were “related to the waste incineration facility in the area (Clean Harbors).”

And in 2025, the Ministry of Environment fined Clean Harbors $100,000 for failing to comply with an equipment requirement for monitoring the excavation of a waste-holding basin. 

Clean Harbors did not respond to The Narwhal’s questions about these claims and findings.

In a section of their 2025 annual report on legal, environmental and regulatory compliance risks, Clean Harbors asserted: “We are now, and may in the future be, a defendant in lawsuits brought by parties alleging environmental damage, personal injury and/or property damage, which may result in our payment of significant amounts.”

Aamjiwnaang First Nation Chief Janelle Nahmabin told The Narwhal she had not received any information about the niobium waste that was trucked to Clean Harbors nearly a year ago. Other environmental groups The Narwhal reached out to, including Climate Action Sarnia-Lambton, had not heard of this waste transfer, either.

“The plan now has been executed in a very different way,” said Brennain Lloyd, project coordinator at Northwatch, a northeastern Ontario environmental advocacy group. “It’s moving the waste into the territory of another First Nation that is already heavily impacted by all of the industrial activities.”

‘Under a real nuclear shadow’: radioactive waste in northern Ontario

The company behind the Nova Beaucage mine was looking for much-desired uranium in the early days of the Cold War. 

It found trace amounts of it on a small island in Lake Nipissing, along with niobium, a naturally occurring mineral used to strengthen and lighten steel, which is useful when building electronics, cars, bridges and pipelines. After excavating, the company barged the ore across the lake to a mill they established on shore, on Nipissing First Nation territory.

“In northeastern Ontario, we live under a real nuclear shadow,” Lloyd said.

In a letter to the federal Impact Assessment Agency in February 2026, the Anishinabek Nation cited the Nova Beaucage tailings as an example of the legacy of contamination that First Nations have been disproportionately impacted by due to poor government diligence. The letter puts the “toxic cocktail from Sarnia chemical valley” near Aamjiwnaang First Nation in the same category.

It was written in response to the proposal by the federally mandated Nuclear Waste Management Organization to store radioactive waste from nuclear power plants outside Ignace, Ont., a northern township between Thunder Bay and the Manitoba border. This waste has been temporarily stored in safe, but impermanent, containers for decades and finding a permanent solution has become an increasingly pressing issue — one that has only grown as Ontario ramps up nuclear power generation with small modular reactors in Bowmanville and a proposed full-scale nuclear facility in Port Hope. 

From First Nations in the Ignace area to those along the Ottawa River, concerned by leaks from a nuclear laboratory in 2024, communities have been pressing for better consultation when big radioactive waste decisions are made. The case of the Township of Nairn and Hyman illustrates why.

In June 2024, a Nairn and Hyman town councillor happened upon the planned dumping site for the niobium waste while out riding an all-terrain vehicle, or ATV, said Belinda Ketchabaw, the chief administrative officer of the township of less than 500 people. According to the township’s website, the councillor saw roadwork being done to facilitate the transportation of material the Ministry of Mines later told residents was naturally occurring radioactive material. Before that, residents say they had no idea about the relocation plan.

“We were aware that [the Agnew Lake] site was within our township. It’s been there for many, many years,” Ketchabaw told The Narwhal. “What we weren’t aware of is that the cover over the existing tailing site had depleted, through either people going across it on ATVs, or just rainwater eroding the cover.”

The Agnew Lake site already needed remediation, after uranium mining and milling operations ceased there in 1983. Tests from 2023 by the Ministry of Mines found uranium, radium, arsenic and more at the site. In a letter sent to the federal nuclear safety commission in the months after the councillor’s discovery, the township argued the arrival of niobium waste introduced “additional risks to an already precarious situation.” 

The province’s idea, according to an undated letter from the Ministry of Transportation, was for the niobium gravel to help provide an additional, less radioactive groundcover for the existing materials.

“I guess what they were trying to do is, for lack of a better word, kill two birds with one stone,” Ketchabaw said. She made it her personal mission to get answers about the waste disposal that she said were not provided by the province — although the Transportation Ministry letter, uploaded to the Nipissing First Nation website, says the site was identified by the Ministry of Mines as a potential disposal location in 2016. This same letter explained that studies done by the ministry in 2012 determined the potential “risks of the tailings to human health were low.”

Ontario’s Ministry of Energy and Mines did not respond to The Narwhal’s questions, including around its protocol for informing communities about plans to store radioactive waste nearby.

“Ministries that are doing this type of work have to have advanced and meaningful consultation with municipalities, First Nations and residents,” Ketchabaw said. Agnew Lake is a source of drinking water for the Nairn and Hyman communities. She said they were given no assurances the environment and health of the community would be protected with this disposal.

“We weren’t consulted at all in this project. We came upon it by mistake,” Ketchabaw said. “It really felt like they were hiding this, like they were just kind of trying to sneak it in the back door.”

Updated on May 6, 2026, at 12:10 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to correct a photo caption that stated nearly 50,000 metric tonnes of material were removed from the picture site, when in fact that collective amount was removed from multiple sites across the nation.

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After years of punishing drought that shrunk their herds, Canadian cattle farmers finally saw them growing at the start of 2026. It was a modest 2.5 per cent increase in the number of cows and calves, but after eight years of contraction — which also meant increased beef prices at the till — those in the industry are taking it as a win. 

Brenna Grant, executive director of CanFax, the research division of the Canadian Cattle Association, called this a “really modest” increase, urging patience for those hoping affordability will return soon. 

Canada’s beef prices are 23 per cent higher today than the national five-year average, and, in general, meat prices rose by the highest rate of any food category in 2025, according to research from Dalhousie University. 

The biggest concern driving beef prices high is weather, Grant said. Climate pressures on pasture conditions means less hay to feed animals and, consequently, smaller herds.

“All of the research would indicate that we are expected to see greater frequency and severity of extreme weather events, whether that be drought or flooding or even just greater volatility within the growing season,” Grant said. 

Ranchers are heading into summer with mounting uncertainty, given spotty and unpredictable rain and snow patterns in recent years. “That just means that this rebuild, in terms of increasing supplies, is going to take longer.”

Droughts in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, where the country’s cattle farming is concentrated, have become regular and severe. Drought insurance payouts to Alberta farmers reached a record $326.5 million in 2023, more than tripling the payouts from the 2021 drought. 

Droughts also hit southern Ontario last summer, impacting Trenton, Belleville and Prince Edward Country farmers. Dry conditions present a host of challenges, from reducing the availability of local, affordable feed to farmers not having enough water available for their herds. 

At the same time, more northern areas of Canada that haven’t historically been seen as cattle country are starting to grow their local bovine populations, as more moderate temperatures become a welcome refuge for farmers. Warmer weather has been a boon in typically colder zones, making it easier to grow feed crops instead of importing them. 

Northern Ontario is one of those areas, including Sudbury, Nipissing and Cochrane, which had built up a herd 100,000 strong as of 2018. 

Grant said the Peace Region that straddles the Alberta-B.C. border is also seeing longer growing seasons, allowing for more crop varieties, including of animal feed. The same is true for northeast Saskatchewan, once considered too cold and wet, where warmer, drier conditions have improved growing.

“It’s the right use of that land for the right product,” said Jason Leblond, president of Beef Farmers of Ontario, and a cattle farmer himself in Chisholm, Ont. “Beef cattle do very well in the north.”

But, he says, while the shift may benefit local producers, it is unlikely to ease rising beef prices anytime soon.

“When we see the first signs of the herd rebuild, which is what we’re seeing currently, it normally takes two years for it to hit the store shelves — that price reduction,” Leblond said.

Building up northern herds, he said, is a big part of “how we can get the prices more in check.” He’s increasingly seeing farmers step up in these long-dormant farming regions.

Northern Ontario’s growing herd of cattle

In the early 2000s and 2010s, cattle farmer Mike Tulloch recalls driving roads in Algoma, Ont., and seeing derelict farms, growing back up to brush and weeds — signs of a dying industry. Tulloch grew up in the area with a lifelong ambition to take over his father’s farm and watched the landscape closely.

In the last decade, he’s seen a growing number of farmers revitalizing the area’s farms, many coming from southern Ontario or farther. His own land, he said, doubled in value since he bought it in 2018. Now, he owns a farm with about 1,300 head of cattle. 

“The face of agriculture in Algoma and Manitoulin has changed dramatically,” Tulloch said. “It’s driven out of the relatively inexpensive value of the land and is being bought up hand over fist and turned back into productive farmland.”

Tulloch has found himself in one of the most hospitable remaining areas for raising cows.

“No question that the climate change has been more conducive to farming in the near-north: Algoma, Manitou and Sudbury, Nipissing,” Tulloch said. “This is a case where climate change in our area has been good for the farmers.”

The Algoma area, at the cusp of lakes Huron and Superior, has the longest growing period across all of northern Ontario, from Nipissing up. By 2050, temperatures are predicted to increase between 1 C and 4 C, making that growing season even longer. 

“We have warmer winters. We get on the land sooner, and the ground in the north here warms up sooner,” Tulloch said, compared to previous years. “For our cattle operations, we grow about 750 acres of corn. And, ten years ago, there wasn’t 750 acres of corn in the whole district.”

While many Canadian cattle farmers are battling extreme weather events like drought, floods and wildfires, northern Ontario is emerging as somewhat of a sanctuary. 

Moving north won’t fix the challenges climate change presents farmers

Experts and polls have demonstrated the biggest challenge for cattle farming in Canada is the increased frequency of adverse weather events. While the northerly migration has eased the challenges for some cattle farmers, it’s not a silver bullet — and prices will continue to reflect that, especially as consumer demand for protein remains extremely high.

“In the last five years, we’ve actually seen beef demand jump twice, once in 2020 and we maintained those levels, and then again in 2025,” Grant said. “What that means is that consumers were willing to pay a higher price for the same amount of beef.”

The high demand and weather uncertainties are being experienced across the world, including in Canada and the U.S., leading to a global shortage of beef as production falls in traditional centres.

There are also no guarantees conditions will remain hospitable for cattle farming in northern climates. 

“In some regions of the country, certainly, there will be some increased opportunity,” Kim Ominski, University of Manitoba research scientist, said. “But the challenge about these extreme weather events is it just introduces increased risk.”

Unpredictable growing conditions might bring a year where farmers are unable to source enough feed locally. Since feed is one of the largest costs of raising cattle, Ominski said, having to import it — especially if that requires swapping the usual meal with a more expensive crop — can really impact a farmer’s bottom line. 

Across Canada, research links extreme climate-driven weather events to rising mental-health strain on farmers, causing guilt, hopelessness and panic. Many are leaving the industry.

Even Tulloch acknowledges the gamble.

“The weather is more erratic,” Tulloch said. “You see that when the storms come, there are heavier storms and you have more risk of flooding.”

“It’s a risky venture.”

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Summary

• The Ontario government has officially repealed its Endangered Species Act and replaced it with weaker legislation, almost a year after first proposing to do so.
• The province’s new Species Conservation Act removes provincial protections for many species and applies protections to a more narrow range of habitat for others.
• Conservation experts say the new law puts threatened species at further risk, but the Doug Ford government says the change will speed up road, mining and housing developments.

Ontario’s Endangered Species Act is now officially repealed. The province says the move will allow quicker approvals for road, mining and housing developments, while experts say it could streamline destruction of critical habitats, further threatening wildlife such as woodland caribou, barn owls and the golden eagle.

The Endangered Species Act, passed in 2007, set explicit provincial goals for species recovery and stewardship. It was once considered the gold standard for species protection in Canada, prohibiting anyone from killing or harming endangered or threatened plants and animals, or engaging in activities that would cause harm.

In 2025, the Doug Ford government passed Bill 5, the Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act, ultimately repealing the Endangered Species Act. It has been replaced with the Species Conservation Act, which removes provincial protection from many species, leaving some threatened fish and birds only protected by federal laws that are limited to federal land and waters. 

The new law limits how habitat is considered and protected. It replaces expert review of permit applications for activities that could harm at-risk species with an online registration that doesn’t require government review, and “allows most projects to begin as soon as they register,” according to the province.

Experts say the new law will put threatened species at further risk.

Introducing the Species Conservation Act

“The original goal of the Endangered Species Act was to allow the species to recover,” Laura Bowman, an Indigenous Rights and environmental lawyer at Macpherson Law, said. “We’ve effectively abandoned those objectives, and that means that species will continue to decline. Probably their decline will accelerate very rapidly.”

Some of the major interim changes, passed in June under Bill 5, include narrowing what counts as a “habitat” — redefining habitats to the specific area an animal dens in, for example, rather than the larger area it uses to travel or find food. This could pose problems for wide-ranging species-at-risk such as woodland caribou, which rely on large, connected habitats to survive.

The province also no longer requires recovery strategies that guide efforts to bring an endangered species population back to health, laying out the required habitat and other critical factors. The province has argued former legislation was too rigid, preventing the government from focusing its resources to best benefit species.

The new act also removes provincial protections for migratory birds and fish, including redside dace, the minnows that became central to concerns over Ontario’s Highway 413 development, and the red-headed woodpecker. The province has argued they are already protected under federal laws. But in many cases that protection only extends to individual species under the federal Species at Risk Act and their dwelling places on federal lands, such as national parks or First Nations reserves, which make up less than five per cent of the range of most terrestrial at-risk species. The federal government can extend its protections to provincial lands through emergency orders and other means, but rarely does so.

The new act, the province says, is proposed to reduce duplication with federal regulations and allow projects to progress in a “more efficient and cost-effective way.” Bowman, however, said “federal protections for species at risk are extremely limited,” adding that there will be “many, many species and their habitats that are not protected under federal law.”

“There’s going to be a lot of really tragic stories coming out of the rollout of this change,”  Bowman said.

Ontario’s at-risk species protections ‘relying on a voluntary mechanism’

Under the Endangered Species Act, companies proposing industrial or development projects had to demonstrate that a number of criteria were met before moving ahead with development that could affect at-risk species. It was meant to prevent impacts so severe a species couldn’t survive or recover, Bowman said.

“Now that’s not part of the equation. It’s an automatic registration system. So we’re going to see a lot more habitat destruction in particular happening, but also potentially direct harm to species,” Bowman said.

This has been a big sticking point for Kerrie Blaise, a lawyer with the northern Ontario environmental non-profit Legal Advocates for Nature’s Defence. The organization is currently representing two Indigenous interveners challenging the constitutionality of Bill 5 in court.

“When you look at the new act we’re dealing with, it’s effectively relying on a voluntary mechanism,” Blaise said, whereby companies can share key project information, including — in some cases — a conservation plan.

Another matter of concern, Blaise said, is actions under the Species Conservation Act are exempted from the Environmental Bill of Rights, which requires a public posting on the provincial environmental registry. That means applications for work that could potentially harm wildlife no longer have to be posted for public review and comment.

“How are people supposed to weigh in?” Blaise said. “These are decisions that impact communities.”

The new act also sets out activities that do not require any registration or permits to proceed. These include cutting down endangered black ash or butternut trees or hunting threatened eastern wolves or northern bobwhite, a quail found in southern Ontario.

Tens of thousands respond to Species Conservation Act. One northern Ontario city supports it

Much of what was originally proposed for the Species Conservation Act last April under Bill 5 is being carried forward, despite more than 61,000 public comments fielded during the 30-day mandatory public comment period last spring. 

At the time, the full regulations hadn’t yet been set for the Species Conservation Act. Those were released on March 30, nearly a year after the act was first proposed.

Another 1,800 comments were submitted in fall 2025 around the regulations themselves, which now allow the act to practically come into force. Many of the comments call for greater First Nations consultation and a return to the Endangered Species Act’s original principles — including from the cities of Toronto and Markham, Anishinabek Nation and environmental groups.

Some municipalities, including the City of North Bay, are happy with the changes.

“We welcome the proposed changes, which appear to strike a more effective balance between responsible development and the protection of vulnerable species,” the city wrote in its public comment. “The proposed registration-first model aligns with the city’s long-standing advocacy for a more predictable, proponent-driven approach.”

North Bay’s member of Parliament, Vic Fedeli —– who is also Ontario’s minister of economic development, job creation and trade —– is a supporter of the Ring of Fire mining development in Ontario’s Far North, leading the region with a development-first mindset. Fedeli told BayToday in June 2025 that Ontario will lose billions of dollars of new investment “if projects are going to take ten years to get shovels in the ground,” and that Bill 5 is about unlocking Ontario’s “true economic potential.”

Blaise said the lands and waters of northern Ontario are critical for many endangered species, including cougars and several species of bat, adding that, “It’s not surprising that [the Ontario government is] looking for that agenda, which is disregard for species, disregard for habitat — their recovery, their protection.”

“It’s a very disappointing response,” Blaise said. “It shows that now, more than ever, citizens, community members, individuals, really need to practice their environmental rights. That means being informed, having a say, and communicating that — whether that’s to your municipal level of government, your provincial MPP or the federal MP.”

Updated on April 7, 2026, at 5:23 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to remove reference to golden eagles as having federal protections, and therefore being de-listed under the Species Conservation Act. Golden eagles are still listed under the new act, so receive provincial protection for their nesting area only.

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Mycologist Aishwarya Veerabahu regularly walks the forests near her home in Wisconsin, marvelling at the myriad shapes and colours of mushrooms, sometimes foraging for something to bring home and sauté in garlic and butter. It’s a landscape she knows well, but in the last few years, she’s been noticing a worrying and unfamiliar presence: a vibrant yellow, tightly clustered invasive making itself at home. 

Known as golden oyster, it’s a ’shroom completely altering native fungi communities in North America.

“Golden oysters will grow in an order of magnitude more than any other mushroom that you’d see. If you come up on a log with golden oysters on it, there’s always a ton of them, multiple clusters,” Veerabahu said.

The popular mushrooms, often found on menus and supermarket shelves, are native to forests in Russia and Asia. They were first brought to North America in the early 2000s for cultivation, and took to the forests by 2010, expanding their numbers and range rapidly.

“There are some times where I’ve gone through a forest and teared up because I know that there are other mushrooms that were in that wood that aren’t there anymore,” Veerabahu said. “It can be a very sad thing when now it’s just dominated by this one species.”

A researcher at the University of Madison-Wisconsin, Veerabahu published a study last August that used data from citizen scientists to confirm the trend she’s been seeing locally. Golden oyster mushrooms — scientific name Pleurotus citrinopileatus— are quickly invading North America, including Ontario. 

And, scientists say, a booming home-growing trend may be accelerating their spread into forests and impacting biodiversity.

Golden oysters have been found in 25 states, “after escaping cultivation” of commercial growers and hobbyists. They’ve made their way to Ontario, where there have been more than 80 sightings logged on the iNaturalist app of the clusters growing out of dead hardwood in forests, provincial parks and even residential neighbourhoods. 

While most golden oysters in Canada are still concentrated closer to the border with the United States, the species has already travelled as far north as Magnetawan, Ont., near Parry Sound, and is increasingly established around Georgian Bay, on Lake Huron. The speed and distance of its spread has been surprising, Veerabahu said.

“It has thoroughly been unleashed and rapidly spread over the course of a short decade,” she said, adding that the mushrooms have more recently appeared in Quebec. “The best thing that we can do now is to try and prevent it from getting to new regions.” 

Provincial invasive species regulations don’t capture golden oyster mushrooms

Cassidy Mailloux is a guide at the Ojibway Prairie Complex in Windsor, Ont., who takes guests through the nature reserves year-round. She’s also working on a biodiversity study of the region’s native mushrooms as part of her master’s degree at the University of Windsor and has posted golden oyster sightings on iNaturalist, observations that helped inform Veerabahu’s study.

“We’ve only seen it in one of our parks out of the entire complex … and that’s one of our heavily foot-trafficked and most travelled parks,” she said, adding that this is a good sign that the invasion “hasn’t fully taken off yet.”

Still, she worries about the effect of invasive golden oysters on rarer species of fungi, such as the coral pink marulius, which is uncommonly reported but in large abundance in the Ojibway Prairie Complex. 

“I’m worried the golden oyster mushroom might take precedence,” Mailloux said, given golden oysters are an aggressive species that can grow quickly and prolifically in many kinds of wood and even sawdust — unlike some native species that require specific conditions to thrive. Both the city and her organization are still trying to figure out the best way to manage the invasive — and say visitors documenting sightings can inform this work. 

“Encouraging citizens to upload these observations can really help management and our ecosystem,” Mailloux said, “and just keeping a track on how bad it might be getting in the area.”

Despite the threat, the Government of Ontario has not added live oyster mushrooms to its prohibited or restricted invasive species lists, which would make it illegal to import, buy, sell — or sometimes even possess — an ecologically harmful strain.

Without this regulation, Veerabahu said, live cultures continue to be transported across borders. And, she said once golden oysters colonize an area, fewer other unique fungal species will be found there. The communities that do exist are also entirely changed. 

“Let’s say in an uncolonized dead tree, you had a nice, rich community of fungi A, B, C, D, E. Once golden oyster colonizes, now it’s golden oyster and fungi X, Y, Z,” Veerabahu said. 

This makes her concerned about a domino effect because fungal communities are primary wood decomposers of forests, playing an important role in cycling nutrients and storing carbon. “The identity of which species are able to coexist in that space is changing.” 

Monica Liedtke, terrestrial invasive plant coordinator for the Invasive Species Centre, in Sault St. Marie, Ont., agreed. She told The Narwhal via email that non-native invasive fungi can significantly disrupt Ontario’s ecosystems and environmental processes that have developed over thousands of years.

“When non-native invasive fungi establish, they can interfere with important symbiotic relationships between native fungi, trees and plants,” Liedtke told The Narwhal. Golden oysters can quicken the rate of wood decay, which then impacts the birds and bugs that use dead and dying trees for homes and food. “Over time, these disruptions can affect biodiversity across the entire ecosystem.”

Meanwhile, climate change is creating warmer conditions that will make Ontario even more hospitable to these mushrooms, allowing them to expand their range. Veerabahu and her team used a climate prediction model developed by NASA to predict what might happen in the next 15 years. The model predicted that the North American region climatically suitable for golden oyster mushrooms to grow would almost double. 

Grow-your-own mushroom kits threaten Ontario forests

Kyle McLoughlin, an arborist and supervisor of forest planning and health for the City of Burlington, said the reason he fears golden mushrooms is exactly why they’re popular among amateur growers.

“From an ecological perspective, they don’t have a niche. They can go anywhere. They’re very wide-ranging. They’re very comfortable in a lot of different types of wood and a lot of different environments,” McLoughlin said of golden oysters. “This is also why you can grow them so well.”

Kits with detailed growing instructions are readily available on the internet, with prices between $20 and $40. These are a “major source of their invasion,” McLoughlin said. 

“It’s literally being introduced into people’s homes and their properties through grow kits,” McLoughlin said. “We shouldn’t be selling people potential invasive species to bring into their homes.”

Still, grow kits remain widely sold with little public awareness of the risks. Consumers are often not warned when they buy a grow kit that tossing spent soil onto the compost pile, or leaving a kit outdoors, could unintentionally help an invasive spread.

There are some ways people can help slow the spread if they spot oyster mushrooms. If someone sees a log on their own property pop with golden oysters for the first time, it could be helpful to burn it, Veerabahu explained. People can also forage the mushrooms from forested areas, collecting them in closed containers to prevent spores from spreading.

The challenge is to muster enough public awareness and political will before things get out of control.

“It’s kind of like cockroaches. Once you start to see them, you know there’s a heck of a lot more in your walls,” McLoughlin said. “They are putting billions of spores into the air when they’re fruiting. And this is happening constantly.”

Some companies that have sold these kits around the world, like Far West Fungi, North Spore and MycoPunks have since discontinued some products due to concern. In a blog post titled “Yellow Oyster Disaster Zone,” MycoPunks wrote: “No shade intended on any other vendors who choose to keep selling golden oyster kits … we’ve all got our own different moral codes, but it’s not something we feel able to do in good conscience any more.”

But, given a lack of regulation in the province, it’s still easy to import kits from within Canada or around the world to grow in Ontario.

“Gardeners [and] hobby farmers should carefully consider the species they are cultivating. Choosing native species helps to reduce ecological risk,” Liedtke, from the Invasive Species Centre, said. Some kits sell species such as lion’s mane or chestnut mushrooms, which are both edible and native to Ontario. 

For those who are growing golden oysters, the Invasive Species Centre advises that used grow kits should be sealed in a garbage bag and left in the sun for several days to a week; this process, called solarization, helps kill remaining spores and fungal material. Then, the bag should be disposed of in municipal waste — not compost. 

“Neither the producer nor the consumer wants to be part of that spread,” Veerabahu said. “The mushroom grow kits are a huge point of concern. They’re essentially a live culture that can be transported anywhere, but they’re not being regulated and I’ll never blame hobby mushroom growers for that.”

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Summary

• Natural burial can reduce death’s environmental impact and honour humanity’s relationship with the Earth.
• But a range of policy restrictions make it nearly impossible to hold a natural burial in some jurisdictions.
• As interest in green death practices increases, advocates in Ontario are removing the barriers and opening some of the country’s first fully natural cemeteries.

We’re trying out staff-written summaries. Did you find this useful? YesNo

Kyle Moore was “the quintessential tree-hugger,” his father says. He was dedicated to shoreline conservation; he held a belief that people are part of the natural world, not apart from it — even after death. 

When he was diagnosed with a recurrence of brain cancer in 2015, his family was too dedicated to finding the right treatment to save his life to think about where it might end.

“We were really focused on trying to keep his spirits up, and focused on trying to beat it a second time,” Terry Moore, Kyle’s father, says from his home outside Minden, Ont., overlooking a frozen lake. “That delayed any conversation with respect to end-of-life planning.”

When Kyle passed away in 2019, after a four-year battle, his family wanted a way to honour the way he had lived his life.

“We owed it to Kyle to try to create a legacy for him that embodied his view,” Moore, a retired union negotiator and organizer, says. “That’s the origin … of how we came to understand greener natural burial. Up to that point, I hadn’t given two thoughts to that in my entire life.”

Moore has spent years organizing climate action in his community. He hosts the podcast Planet Haliburton, where he investigates environmental justice issues with experts, and is a vocal member of the group Seniors for Climate Action Now.

He thinks a lot about environmental issues, but the ways they connect to end-of-life choices are seldom discussed by the funeral industry, nor the jurisdictions that govern cemeteries. In many cases, that puts the burden of researching environmental burial options on grieving loved ones and places restrictions on their choices. 

The Moores — Terry, his wife Shirley and their two daughters — discovered they could lay Kyle to rest in biodegradable materials without embalming chemicals. They could restore his grave-site with native grasses, flowers and trees. Such a method uses less energy and water, avoids toxic preservatives and returns a body to the earth more gently than conventional burial, while providing habitat for plants and wildlife.

But as they got up to speed on end-of-life options, the family quickly ran into a barrier shaping burial choices across Ontario: it was February, and all four townships in Haliburton County prohibited winter burials.

“It was just a complete embargo,” Moore says. Burials without cremation require storage over the winter, until the ground thaws. But in order to use the cemetery storage in the county, bodies have to be embalmed with chemicals to delay decomposition, Moore explained.

“Green burial was an impossible option locally and we then basically decided that, well, that needed to change,” Moore says.

Terry and Shirley Moore launched into years of advocacy, forming the Haliburton Highlands Green Burial Society with other community members, to create a space for green burials to take place year-round. After seven years of speaking with like-minded advocates, giving presentations to local leaders and holding public meetings to help educate their neighbours, they found a path for green burials close to home, and without resorting to cremation as the only alternative.

While cremation conserves land, the process of using heat to turn remains to ash emits carbon and mercury (especially from burning older fillings), as well as other pollutants into the air. One study found that each cremation produces carbon emissions equivalent to driving 1,124 kilometres in a car. That’s still significantly below the emissions of a standard burial, which are equivalent to 4,000 kilometres driven.

Other communities in Ontario are beginning to venture down the path of green burials as more people seek out options that reflect their values, though access remains uneven and strictly regulated, leaving many families without local burial options for loved ones.

“There’s an inertia that’s built up within municipalities who run cemeteries … the barriers that they themselves put in place, [are] in fact, catering to the trend toward cremation,” Moore says. 

“What we’re asking them to do is embrace a more environmentally sustainable practice, which they’ve never had to advocate for, or they’ve never had to think in those terms before. They just follow demand. They don’t lead it.”

The environmental cost of funerals, and the opportunity to go natural

A major sticking point, Moore says, for green winter burials in Haliburton County, was the local government’s concern over the additional equipment and staff training required to remove snow, manage extreme weather and penetrate frozen ground. To help develop capacity for year-round burials, Moore’s society hosted a winter burials best practice workshop to help introduce county administration and staff to the available options, and brought in private companies for instruction on proper tools and techniques for winter burials. 

The Green Burial Society of Canada, founded in 2013, outlines five principles: no embalming; bodies are buried in biodegradable materials; grave-sites must be naturalized, allowing the area to integrate with surrounding ecosystems; memorialization must be simple, instead of using elaborate tombstones; and land use must be maximized so green burial sites remain as sustainable as possible into the future.

But, the most popular option for Canadians, comprising nearly 77 per cent of deaths as of 2024, is cremation. 

The other typical option in Canada is burial using embalming chemicals and sturdy, often elaborate caskets containing non-biodegradable materials. ​​The maintenance for these burials is also intensive, requiring upkeep with pesticides, synthetic fertilizers and heavy machinery.

Much like Moore, when Susan Greer first heard about natural burials — while listening to the radio in 2018 — she says it was a “lightbulb moment.” Now the executive director of the volunteer-run, province-wide non-profit Natural Burial Association in Ontario, she appreciated that loved ones are involved in natural ceremonies, decorating graves with cedar boughs or flowers and helping lower a loved one into the ground before filling the grave themselves. 

“What might not sound intuitive is that the more that one puts thought into the goodbye, [the more] it actually helps with the grieving process,” Greer says.

But when families and loved ones are in the throes of grief, any barriers to the ceremony can seem insurmountable. It’s why advocates like Moore and Greer want to make natural burials accessible rather than prohibitive.

Greer imagined one call to the planning department in Toronto, where she lives, would get a natural burial ground underway. In reality, it was an eight-year-long process that is still ongoing.

Finally, in 2025, she found an off-market dairy farm to transform into a 38-hectare natural burial ground in Simcoe County, near Oro-Medonte, Ont. She has undertaken myriad municipal approval processes, including hydrogeological and archeological studies and zoning amendments. She has also faced public concern from neighbours that the burial ground would contaminate well water.

“It was just extraordinarily complicated to start a cemetery,” Greer says.

After years of work, if all goes as planned, more than 24,000 people, Greer says, will be able to be buried at the natural burial ground in Simcoe County among forest and fields, which will become wildflower meadows. Now, she helps advocates around the province, like Moore, by providing the documentation and guidance on the many logistics that come with creating opportunities for natural burials. 

This follows the model of Canada’s first standalone natural burial ground on Salt Spring Island, B.C., surrounded by old-growth forest. More common, though, is a hybrid model, where one section of a traditional cemetery is carved out for natural burials — like the cemetery the Moores established in their town.

The green burial movement is seeing growth worldwide. Data from the U.S.-based National Funeral Directors Association shows 61 per cent of respondents to a 2025 survey were interested in exploring “green” funeral options, up from 55 per cent in 2021, and the U.S. industry is expected to reach $2 billion by the end of 2025.

“There’s also those that would consider it undignified or … aren’t interested in entertaining natural burial,” Greer says, explaining that part of her work is proving demand exists to the funeral industry. “The demand is huge. It’s really, really huge.”

Along with the environmental benefits, natural burials can be more affordable, advocates say, which may resonate with the 46 per cent of Ontarians worried about affording funeral costs for family members. A 2024 report shows the average cost of a funeral in Canada was more than $7,700, reaching up to $17,000 for burial and $14,000 for cremation. 

Natural burial costs also vary and are changing as the practice develops, but some sources say prices currently range from $3,000 to $8,000, depending on the region and cemetery, due to lower costs for more simplistic caskets and markers. Although green burial plots require less upkeep in terms of fertilizers, pesticides and landscaping, they’re still subject to a maintenance fee of 40 per cent of the price of an in-ground grave, per the Bereavement Authority of Ontario’s regulations, which Greer is hoping will change. 

It’s a fee that the Natural Burial Association calls a “tax on grieving,” when compared to the national average, which the association says is 13 per cent to maintain and preserve the cemetery in perpetuity, including cutting grass and repairing roads and markers.

“The affordability and the cost of end of life is a huge, huge worry for Ontarians, and we have some fees in Ontario that are just insane compared to the rest of Canada and North America,” Greer says. “We’re trying to combat that.”

As cities in Ontario and around the world warn that land for cemetery space near urban centres is a resource that will soon run out, Greer is also advocating for land ‘renewal.’ This is the idea that a plot of land used to naturally bury someone can be used again for a burial years later. 

That isn’t legal in Ontario yet, but is practised in parts of Europe and Asia.“This is all about reconnecting with nature, so that we can see that we’re all part of the web of life, the greater cycle of life, and giving ourselves back to the earth that sustained us in life,” Greer says.

“You can’t have life without death,” Greer says. “This is a demonstration of that.”

The long history of natural burials

Since Canada’s first urban green-burial site opened in 2008 in Victoria, more than a dozen have followed. In Ontario, spaces for natural burials have opened in Kingston, Guelph and Niagara Falls. But the notion of burials with a low impact on the environment has a long history.

While practices vary, First Nations burial rituals often recognize the connection between the person and the land, using natural, biodegradable materials such as sweetgrass, cedar, sage or tobacco to pay respects. Likewise, some religious traditions provide guidance for today’s secular green burial advocates. 

“Traditionally Jews and Muslims use a very simple plywood casket,” Sabi Ahsan, chair of the Toronto Muslim Cemetery Corporation, says. “People have now also come up with cardboard caskets … so that I think will be even more environmentally friendly.”

In Judaism, the plain pine casket is seen as an equalizer — a reminder that status and wealth don’t come with us to the grave. In Islam, the premise is similar, prioritizing humility and modesty while allowing the body to return to the earth quickly.

“Man was made from earth, according to the Quranic stories, and so he’s returned to it,” Ahsan says.

In both Islam and Judaism, people must be buried very quickly — ideally within 24 hours of death. As a result, Muslim community advocacy groups in Ontario, including the Northern Muslim Association, have raised concerns about limited access to natural burials, especially in the winter. A representative of the group told the CBC in 2024 that families across Ontario have to ship deceased loved ones to cemeteries in Toronto and Ottawa for a natural burial, costing thousands of dollars and requiring family members to travel hundreds of kilometres to visit the grave-sites. 

Ahsan has seen it at his cemetery in Toronto, with people arriving from northern Ontario for a proper Muslim burial. This has lessened, he added, since the Barrie Mosque purchased plots for Muslim burials at the Innisvale Cemetery in Barrie, Ont., in 2020.

A green resting place, close to home

In late 2024, Shirley was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. As with Kyle, the Moores hoped when the time came to be able to give her a natural burial, close to home. But winter burials were still not permitted at the local cemetery.

When she passed away in March 2025, Moore says, the local council quickly moved on its bylaw to allow winter burials to create the county’s first dedicated green burial site, usable year-round. It passed just a few days after her death, finally bringing the option of a green burial, simple and beautiful, to the community, with Shirley the first person buried there.

“It’s a bit sobering, a bit ironic,” Moore says, “but we managed to pull it off.”

Operating already, the opening ceremony for the green burial section in St. Stephen’s Cemetery is scheduled to take place in May 2026, Moore says. Neighbouring Highlands East plans to also open a natural burial area later this spring and, in Oro-Medonte in early February 2026 the council approved the zoning amendment to allow Greer’s natural burial ground.

Moore still attends countless meetings to show cemetery and municipal leadership that green burials are something people want and need. He continues to advocate, he says, because individual environmental choices feel increasingly critical.

“Our bodies are important nutrients, not waste to be pumped into [the] atmosphere to help make the climate emergency worse,” Moore says. “We’re hopeful now that this is going to help spur it on in other places.”

Shirley is buried in a corner of St. Stephen’s Cemetery, next to a timber-framed gazebo and two large stones that will soon be engraved with the names of those buried here. Kyle is buried about ten metres away. 

The cemetery is just off a quiet rural road. In the spring, local volunteer gardeners will continue to plant small native trees and shrubs. Trees line the fence and the cemetery’s edge. Terry Moore is a few minutes away.

“People want to be close when they pass,” he says. “They want to be close to what they love.”

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Summary

• Salt applied to roads and parking lots in winter is washing into the Lake Simcoe watershed and others throughout Ontario.
• Increasing salinity in the Lake Simcoe watershed is a threat to biodiversity and drinking water.
• One possible solution to the problem is introducing limited liability for owners of commercial parking lots, so they aren’t tempted to oversalt their properties to protect against “slip and fall” lawsuits.

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In February 2025, a small freshwater stream in Newmarket, Ont., was saltier than the ocean. The source? Winter road salt, washing off local parking lots and highways into the Lake Simcoe watershed.

As a result, concentrations of chloride — one of two minerals that make up table salt — in Western Creek exceeded 26,000 milligrams per litre of water. Meanwhile seawater typically sits at 19,400 milligrams of chloride per litre of water, according to the local conservation authority. 

For Christopher Wellen, an environmental scientist focused on hydrology and associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, this finding was not surprising: the Simcoe region, and many others across southern Ontario, have big salt problems. 

“It washes away from the roads, but it doesn’t just disappear,” Wellen said. “It goes where the water goes — that’s our groundwater, it’s our lakes, it’s our rivers — and has effects there.” 

For decades, the concentration of road salt in Lake Simcoe has been on the rise: 120,000 tonnes of it are used by communities in the watershed annually, Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority has reported. That amounts to roughly 227 kilograms of salt per person in the region every year.

Heavy salting in winter is not unusual, but Lake Simcoe has been monitored for decades, so it can act as a case study of exactly what happens when this much road salt is being applied. And it illuminates the environmental impact across the province where high-traffic areas, surrounded by cities, towns and a dense network of roadways, are inundated with salt.

Road salt and fresh water

Road salt is primarily made up of sodium chloride and is used to remove ice from roadways in the winter. But oversalting has widespread impacts on ecosystems, harming aquatic life and depleting biodiversity year-round.

“Every organism that lives in streams and rivers and lakes … has tolerances for all sorts of things like temperature fluctuations and salt fluctuations,” Wellen said. “If the water becomes too salty, they can find it really difficult to reproduce and thrive and continue to exist, basically.”

All this chloride does not break down, or simply wash away. It accumulates over time. 

“It’s quite possible that, if things don’t change, the food web could be quite affected,” Wellen added. The problem starts at the bottom of the food chain, he said, and makes its way up.

Since fish are mobile, they can generally avoid areas with high salt concentrations. The pronounced impacts are on the more stationary species, like critters that live in riverbeds. They also make up the base of the food chain, so when they are unable to survive the salty water, organisms higher up lose their food supply.

The Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority says on its website that winter salt has become a topic of “great concern” in the watershed, particularly because there isn’t an effective way to remove it. And Lake Simcoe, the largest lake wholly in southern Ontario, supplies drinking water for hundreds of thousands of residents — with hundreds of thousands more relying on groundwater aquifers in the watershed.

How salty is Lake Simcoe?

In Canada, the federal government provides long- and short-term guidelines for exposure to chloride before aquatic life is affected. At a concentration of 640 milligrams of chloride per litre of water for as little as 24 hours, aquatic life could be severely affected. For longer-term exposure, concentrations beyond 120 milligrams of chloride​ per litre of water would see harm to aquatic life such as a fish species declining over time.

David Lembcke, director of watershed science and monitoring at Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority, jokingly equates the latter threshold to a pack-a-day cigarette habit: “You’re going to have long-term impacts from that. There are some sensitive biota in the lake that will probably have reproductive, developmental, long-term impacts at those levels.” 

The authority produced a report more than a decade ago that already showed chloride concentrations were impacting these aquatic species in 64 per cent of the Lake Simcoe watershed.

In the lake itself, the concentration in February was around 61 milligrams of chloride​ per litre of water, Lembcke said, which is about half of the long-term exposure guideline set by the province. But that level has been steadily increasing by 0.7 milligrams of chloride per litre of water annually, according to the conservation authority. Elsewhere in the watershed, especially in tributaries in urban areas like Hotchkiss Creek and West Holland River, concentrations regularly exceed both guidelines, Lembcke said, and long after winter ends.

“We have this incredibly persistent, relentless increasing trend in lake [salt] concentrations,” Lembcke said. “Certainly the potential is there: if we don’t curb the amount of salt that we’re using, drinking water could be impacted.”

For drinking water, the Ontario objective is 250 milligrams of chloride​ per litre of water, but this is based on taste, not health considerations. For people who need to limit their sodium intake for things like high blood pressure, or kidney or liver diseases, Health Canada recommends that salt in water shouldn’t exceed 20 milligrams per litre.

In Waterloo, Ont., groundwater and consequently drinking water has already been impacted; given high concentrations in some areas, the city has to mix groundwater from different wells to average out chloride levels across the region. They’ve campaigned hard for curbing road salt use, since current water and wastewater treatment doesn’t remove salt, and the municipality explains on their website that removing it requires expensive, energy-intensive treatment. And that would mean higher water costs for the community.

How do you solve a problem like road salt?

While some communities look to solutions such as replacements for road salt, they also carry their own challenges: alternatives like beet juice or sodium acetate can be prohibitively expensive, and their long-term effects on ecosystems aren’t entirely known. 

Some experts and activists are looking to stop the problem at its source. Commercial parking lots are among the biggest culprits for oversalting, likely since they are liable for any injury that occurs on snow or ice on their properties.

“The problem that we keep seeing is that small businesses or big parking lots are oversalting, and it’s a perverse incentive structure where they feel like they have to do it to protect themselves against the slip and fall [lawsuits],” Jonathan Scott, executive director of the Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition, said. Scott is chair of the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority and a Bradford West Gwillimbury councillor.

“It’s not any safer. It’s worse for the environment. It’s worse for small businesses in terms of increased costs,” he said.

Proponents including Scott and Lembcke are arguing to modernize the law by offering limited liability, or a stronger defence against being sued, to those businesses who get an accepted certification such as Smart About Salt, and learn how to implement best salting practices for public safety and the environment alike. 

“If you’re following best practices and if you’re doing the right thing as a winter maintenance operator, that should be a defence for the operator and the property owner against slip and fall claims,” Scott said. “It seems like such a simple pro-business, pro-environment legal reform that wouldn’t cost us anything.” 

Scott points to New Hampshire, a state with comparable winter conditions to Ontario, as an example. The state reduced its salt pollution by 25 to 45 per cent by granting limited liability protection to certified commercial salt applicators. 

Wellen and his team have done modelling studies to see what would happen if a legal reform like this was adopted in the Lake Simcoe area; he said the results are promising, finding it could decrease the concentrations in the lake significantly by the end of the century.

But the province, who would have to make that regulatory change, has yet to sign on.

“It seems to be one of those problems that’s entirely of our own making, in which case it should be something that we can fix,” Lembcke said. “I’m optimistic that it’s something that we can address.”

— With files from Fatima Syed

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Matt Thomson spends his free time pushing toward his yearly goal of biking 10,000 kilometres around Orillia, Ont. A furniture-maker by trade, he also builds bat boxes and installs pollinator gardens to support the forests, lakes and wetlands he’s loved his entire life. Lately, he’s been getting worried.

A few kilometres from his home in Severn Township, the pinch of land between lakes Couchiching and Simcoe and Georgian Bay, developer LIV Communities and its partner Bosseini Living, cut a trail through a wetland, clearing trees and catching the community off-guard. The trail connects a private beachside park with the approximately 180-home subdivision the developers are building. Thomson began raising the issue to neighbours, the municipality and then local news in early 2024 to see what could be done.

“People were concerned,” Thomson said. “A lot of people were thinking … ‘If this developer can get away with building a road through a wetland, who else is going to do it?’ ” Residents worry the disruption could worsen flooding in the area this spring but municipal officials say they have no authority to intervene. And, ultimately, the approximately 250-metre long path has already been laid and opened to residents of the Serenity Bay subdivision — with cameras making sure no one else trespasses.

In June, Severn Township Mayor Mike Burkett told Orillia Matters that to him, the path is “not a walkway. It’s a road,” calling it “upsetting.” But in late November, Severn Township told The Narwhal in a statement that “The trail is not a road.” The township said the subdivision application, “which encompasses the multi-use trail within its limits, underwent a thorough review during the approval process by the Township of Severn and the County of Simcoe, the ultimate authority for subdivision approvals.” That review included an environmental impact study, archaeological assessment and stormwater management report, according to the statement.

 “The actions undertaken by the developer to establish a pathway are within their rights,” it continued.

However, the statement explained, once the Serenity Bay pathway was built, “the work was more extensive than what was proposed, and we learned about it through local media.” At the time, Burkett told Orillia Matters he was surprised by the development, adding he wished “residents had said something” before the path was built, but “It was all done before we even were aware.” At this point, according to the statement, the township notified the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry.

The province can hand down fines for degrading a wetland, among other measures. The primary regulation is the Conservation Authorities Act, under which the ministry can fine $50,000 or more, mandate the developer to remediate the land or even order jail time. But the wetland crossed by the path lies just beyond the border of two different conservation authorities, putting it outside their jurisdiction. And LIV Communities does not appear to have broken any rules.

For Thomson, the options are few. He could attempt to challenge the development at the Ontario Land Tribunal — a process he feels is too expensive and uncertain, or hope the ministry steps in. Neither seems likely.

“The damage is already done,” he said. “Once a wetland is destroyed, you can’t really undo that.”

LIV Communities, Bosseini Living and the Ministry of Natural Resources did not respond to The Narwhal’s detailed questions about building in provincially significant wetlands. Rama First Nation, whose traditional territory includes the wetland, said it was not consulted by the developer or province. “Chief and Council of Chippewas of Rama First Nation are deeply concerned by reports of unauthorized road construction through a protected wetland in our traditional territory,” it told The Narwhal in an emailed statement.

The chief and council continued that wetlands are sacred to Anishinaabe people, and “carry spirit and memory, and their protection is a shared responsibility.”

The nation said developments that may adversely affect Treaty Rights must be preceded by consultation with First Nations. “Meaningful consultation is a legal responsibility and requirement — not an optional step of the planning process. We call on all levels of government to ensure accountability, require immediate remediation and work in partnership with Rama First Nation to prevent further harm,” the statement said.

What happened in Severn reflects a much larger shift across Ontario, one that experts warn is reshaping the province’s wetlands far beyond a single disputed path.

Ontario contains about six per cent of the world’s wetlands, but has lost nearly three-quarters of what it once had. Those losses have continued under recent provincial policies encouraging rapid development and easing restrictions for environmentally sensitive areas. “We’re getting a taste of how things are going across the province, because we’re forcing a lot of these housing projects,” Thomson said. “Environmental stuff comes last.”

Ontario wetlands are now ‘pretty easy’ to ‘take a bite out of,’ experts say

Swamps, fens, marshes and bogs, like the sprawling peatlands of northern Ontario, are critical in the face of mounting climate change. They’ve been called “nature’s kidneys,” for their ability to purify environmental pollutants. They support 20 per cent of species at risk, significantly reduce floods and the consequent damage costs by up to 38 per cent and store 29 billion tonnes of carbon in the province. 

And the Orillia area is a powerhouse. In a 2023 study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Florin Pendea and others from Lakehead University found the type of wetlands in the Lake Simcoe watershed were 50 per cent more effective in storing carbon than other wetland ecosystems they studied, second only to salt marshes along seashores. This is because the areas are nutrient-rich, highly productive and frequently flooded — all conditions that boost organic matter build-up while slowing decomposition.

The wetland where the new path appeared is listed as provincially significant on government maps, meaning it’s identified by the province as being valuable for its ability to store groundwater and manage flooding, provide wildlife habitat and support biodiversity, among other measures. Provincially significant wetlands, like this one, are granted stricter protections than others, but under environmental protection zoning for the area in Severn, “passive outdoor recreational activities, such as trails,” are allowed, according to the township. While the Severn wetland falls just outside the jurisdiction of any conservation authority, the watershed monitoring agencies generally regulate areas like this across southern Ontario and some of the north.

But it’s getting harder and harder to protect any wetland under the current Ontario government.

Under changes introduced by Premier Doug Ford in the last few years, including Bill 23, the Build Homes Faster Act, the Ontario Wetland Evaluation System was rewritten in ways that make it easier for developers to downgrade or remove protections. 

Species at risk no longer factor into evaluations. Wetlands that function as interdependent ecosystems can no longer be “complexed” together, which means portions of larger interconnected wetland systems can be carved off and lose protection. And consultants hired by developers can re-evaluate wetlands and upload revised maps directly to the provincial database with no oversight from the ministry.

“Many wetlands that were formerly protected — under these new, more loosey-goosey rules [they] don’t meet that bar anymore, and so developers can go and re-evaluate them and have portions of a provincially significant wetland complex de-listed,” Rebecca Rooney, the founder of the Waterloo Wetland Laboratory at the University of Waterloo, said. “That has occurred in many watersheds across Ontario.” Earlier this year, Mississippi Valley Conservation Authority reported this sort of delisting in their jurisdiction east of Ottawa.

When the changes were proposed in 2022, Rooney and a group of more than 70 aquatic scientists and experts, as part of the group Save Ontario Wetlands, signed a letter saying these changes remove key oversight responsibilities, create a piece-meal and under-resourced evaluation process and disregard the importance of these areas for threatened species.

Further, changes to the Conservation Authorities Act have included the recently proposed consolidation of the number of watershed protection agencies across Ontario from 36 into seven, and weakened these authorities’ ability to protect wetlands.

While the province announced a $9.6-million investment to “restore and enhance wetlands” to protect communities from flooding and other climate-driven events in fall 2025, the question of enforcement and consequences when wetlands are destroyed remains. 

Insurance companies are also recognizing the importance of protecting these ecosystems for their bottom line. Intact Financial Corporation is funding research on maintaining wetlands in their natural state to reduce flood damage. A computer simulation of a pilot site in Waterloo calculated a savings of $51.1 million in damage costs, thanks to a natural wetland.

Yet changes to the evaluation system makes it possible for wetlands to quietly disappear on paper long before anyone recognizes the consequences on the ground. “There’s no watchdog, nobody’s really tracking what’s happening,” Rooney said. “It’s pretty easy now to take a bite out of a provincially significant wetland.”

The trials of citizen wetland monitors in Ontario

In 2023, a Severn resident was reprimanded for dredging and operating a vehicle in a provincially significant wetland, according to local media. The penalties were a $4,000 invoice from the township for the cost of gates to keep him out and a stop-work order from the Ministry of Natural Resources. 

At the time, Mayor Burkett told Orillia Matters the small township relies on complaints from the public to respond to these issues, echoing his stance on the Serenity Bay development. But it has proven difficult to figure out just what development is happening, and if it’s legal, before shovels are in the ground. 

After, there’s little to no recourse.

For residents like Thomson, the Ontario Land Tribunal is often the only remaining avenue to challenge development. 

Rooney served as an expert witness in one such case involving an area of the Greater Cataraqui Marsh in Kingston, Ont., part of which is a provincially significant wetland where homes and commercial buildings were proposed. Kingston’s city council originally denied the developer’s application, defending this decision at the tribunal after the developer filed an appeal. 

During the hearings, it came to light that a portion of the wetland was no longer listed as provincially significant. This is despite prior protection as part of the larger complex, according to Laura Jean Cameron, a professor of geography and planning at Queen’s University, and one of several residents who opposed the project. But it was hard for citizens to determine what was no longer listed.

“It’s endlessly frustrating,” Cameron said.

Even with a background in historical geography, Cameron struggled to find clear records showing how parts of the Kingston marsh had been designated provincially significant in the past, and when those borders changed. Using provincial maps, she learned the borders of the wetland complex had been updated in 2024. 

Then, in the hearing, Cameron said it was confirmed the developer paid for the re-evaluation that resulted in the map being changed.

“It’s not straightforward at all,” she said. “Citizens can have the up-to-date information, but there’s no legacy information to make the comparison, so you don’t know what’s changed.”

To understand all of this, Cameron worked with geospatial librarians and data scientists, assembling information from past wetland maps to see how and when the wetland’s designation changed and which carved out portions could now be built upon more easily. It’s work most residents would never have the time or expertise to do.

“If citizens are supposed to speak up, they need people to help interpret these sources of information,” Cameron said.

Despite the effort, after five weeks of hearings in early 2024, the tribunal sided with the developer and zoning was ultimately approved by the province, allowing the development to move ahead for further approvals. “Because of the expense and all the time, it’s going to make people just feel like there’s no point in fighting these things at that tribunal level,” Cameron said. 

For the area in Severn, where the provincially significant wetland status still stands, Cameron sees troubling parallels. “My worry for the citizens of Orillia is that no action will be taken by the ministry or anyone — that the developer will face no consequences,” she said in an email to The Narwhal. “And ‘fixing’ their mistake would be a matter of permit signing and paperwork, not the removal of the road or an attempt to repair the wetland.” 

Thomson fears the same. He continues biking in the area, watching construction advance. He worries about flooding come next spring. “There’s very little attention paid to what’s being lost,” Thomson said.

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Internal studies about contamination at a Saskatchewan military base found evidence of dust contaminated with PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, often referred to as forever chemicals — and experts who reviewed the data say it could pose a risk to people who work there.

“The sampling results indicate that PFAS [are] present in dust,” the March 2025 study, obtained by The Narwhal, concluded. When The Narwhal asked independent experts to review the findings, one noted the concentrations were in some cases “very high,” while another flagged that several volatile organic compounds associated with increased cancer risk are also present.

The study looked at a building known as Building 143 at CFB Moose Jaw, home of the Snowbirds, where employees have been ringing alarm bells about what they say are concerning numbers of illnesses and deaths among employees and military members on base.

It took place about three months after three employees of the Moose Jaw base went to Ottawa to speak about cancers, infertility, neurological disorders and untimely deaths of colleagues — at a public hearing of the Standing Committee on National Defence in December 2024. At least one of these employees has since had to go on long-term disability insurance, and another submitted an official refusal to work in Building 143 and the base at large for fear of how it is impacting her health.

The concerns of the employees, National Defence told The Narwhal, eventually led the department to initiate the study published in March 2025, in what they called a “a transparent and evidence-based analysis to address the concerns expressed by some employees,” undertaken out “of an abundance of caution.”

The Department of National Defence told The Narwhal it is “committed to the health and safety of personnel and surrounding communities, as well as to responsible environmental management.”

“As part of this commitment, we conduct regular monitoring programs at bases and wings to assess environmental conditions and identify potential concerns,” the department shared, adding the reports are now available for all service members to review.

The department asserts it has “no concerns about the safety of this particular building at this time,” given there is “no evidence to suggest that 15 Wing buildings are unsafe or unfit for occupancy.” (15 Wing refers to the centre of the Royal Canadian Air Force activity at the Moose Jaw base.) But some experts disagree.

PFAS are linked to cancers, infertility and more

Contamination on federal sites is an issue across Canada. There are thousands of contaminated sites listed on the federal contaminated sites inventory. PFAS are found or suspected on more than 100 of them, in large part from firefighting foam National Defence used to train military and civilian firefighters across Canada from the 1970s to the early 2010s.

At CFB Moose Jaw, employees have been concerned for years; they’ve compiled a list of nearly 200 illnesses and dozens of obituaries of colleagues. One building in particular, where at least five women who worked together had emergency hysterectomies, has been at the top of mind — Building 143. It’s a central building housing offices and medical centres for personnel where internal studies confirmed the presence of PFAS.

Here, employees told The Narwhal they were constantly wiping an unusual amount of dust off their coffee mugs and desks daily, and some say they smelled chemical smells wafting past their desks at various times of day.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency lists potential health risks of exposure to PFAS, including reproductive problems like infertility, developmental effects in children, increased risk of prostate, kidney and testicular cancers and weakening of the body’s immune system, including reduced vaccine response. The Canadian government says PFAS can be transferred through the placenta during pregnancy and infants and children can be exposed through ingestion of human milk.  

Other carcinogens present at Building 143 are a risk no matter what the level: expert

The internal documents obtained by The Narwhal also show “airborne concentrations of several [volatile organic compounds]” — also known as VOCs. Some are associated with increased cancer risk, said Christine Oliver, a professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, who reviewed the documents and has studied clusters of illnesses arising from contaminated workplaces for decades.

The carcinogens found in the studies include trichloroethylene (an industrial metal-degreaser), benzene (found in gasoline) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, which are produced by incomplete burning of coal, crude oil and gasoline. The Environmental Protection Agency says people can be exposed to mixtures of PAHs by breathing air contaminated with vehicle exhaust, or fumes from asphalt roads. The agency says several individual PAHs and some specific mixtures of PAHs are considered to be cancer-causing.

“That airborne concentrations of the [Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons] are below the [Occupational Exposure Limit] does not mean that they are harmless,” Oliver said. “For carcinogens, the existence of a threshold — i.e., a dose below which there is no cancer risk — is rare. I can think of none.”

The Department of National Defence told The Narwhal that Building 143 is not a suspected contaminated site, and there is “no subsequent environmental sampling required.”

The department did not respond to The Narwhal’s questions for responses to experts who believe the contracted reports are showing concerning levels of contaminants — enough to warrant exposure and health concerns in employees.

Contamination data at other bases found to be ‘incorrect’ and ‘biased’

Oliver is not the only expert who had concerns about the findings, though. 

Meg Sears is chair of the organization Prevent Cancer Now, whose board is composed of physicians, environmental advocates and at least one veteran. For decades, she has been working to help veterans in Gagetown, N.B., receive accurate data about their exposure to Agent Orange — the infamous herbicide mixture used by the American army during the Vietnam War — which was tested on-base in the 1960s.

Sears calls the findings of the federal government studies done at Gagetown “flimsy” — an opinion backed up last year by a commission in Maine, which looked into the health of National Guard members who had trained at the New Brunswick base and called Canada’s data “incorrect” and “biased.” So, despite the assurances provided to CFB Moose Jaw employees by their superiors, Sears is not convinced. 

“If there is some kind of selective choice of analyses being done or types of sampling being done, it’s not the first time that the Government of Canada has chosen to do these kinds of reports in perhaps not the most informing way,” Sears said, pointing to the fact that testing the building’s water supply, groundwater and soil from below the interior footprint of the building was “excluded from the scope of work” by the Department of National Defence.

The Department of National Defence told The Narwhal that the base’s drinking water, including Building 143’s, is supplied by the City of Moose Jaw, adding: “Drinking water is tested at all [Canadian Armed Forces] locations on a regular schedule,” and that current results don’t indicate any of the 25 polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) substances listed by Health Canada.

“The question for this study is, ‘What is the exposure to the people who are carefully walking around and just going straight to their work at their desk,” Sears said. “And what this is showing is that, even within the building, there is significant exposure to PFAS just from the dust.”

“Certainly there are significant quantities of PFAS there,” Sears said, adding: “The pattern is indicative of contamination from the Air Force.”

Higher PFAS levels than soil beside chemical manufacturers: expert

When asked to review the studies, Sébastien Sauvé, a professor of environmental chemistry at Université de Montréal, who was called to the standing committee meeting late last year, also saw reasons for concern.

“Some of those concentrations are very high,” he explained. He said some of the dust samples’ PFAS values are higher than what he’s seen in contaminated soils right beside a PFAS chemical manufacturer.

Sauvé is no stranger to contaminated National Defence bases; in his home province of Quebec, he discovered that PFAS had spread from a contaminated military base in Bagotville, Que., to drinking water wells up to 10 kilometres away. 

A spokesperson from the Department of National Defence told The Narwhal that an indoor air assessment and hazardous substance assessment of Building 143 “did not identify any health issues,” and that “National Defence has no concerns about any other buildings across the base.”

“A typical case might be something that people would be focusing on, but that’s resulted in underestimation of people who are at the highest risk,” said Sears. “If we’re going to take precautionary approaches, we’re looking after the most vulnerable and the most exposed.”

Meanwhile, concerned employees are hoping the issue will be brought back to Ottawa this year, since the study has since been dropped when Parliament was prorogued for the election back in April 2025, meaning the planned study was not finalized. 

The Department of National Defence told The Narwhal investigation into contamination at 15 Wing Moose Jaw will be ongoing over the coming year, at Hangars 2 and 6 and the former site of Hangar 5, “ to ascertain the extent and impact of potential petroleum hydrocarbon contamination linked to the historical use of storage tanks.” Additionally, the department said it plans to construct four new buildings on 15 Wing Moose Jaw to support future aircrew training, which “will remove contaminated soil as part of the construction process.”

“I have a lot of hope, because I believe that while systematic issues are challenging, they can be addressed through proper government intervention, transparency and accountability,” said Erin Zimmerman, the former employee of Building 143 who had to take disability leave due to her worsening Parkinson’s symptoms.

Updated on Oct. 6, 2025, at 3:25 p.m MT: This story has been updated to remove photos of the armoury in Moose Jaw, which is not the subject of the reports mentioned.

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