On the eve of B.C.’s 44th general election, FortisBC’s bid to significantly expand its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production was given a key green light by the B.C. government.

Less than 24 hours before David Eby’s snap election call sent cabinet ministers out onto the campaign trail, Environment and Parks Minister Tamara Davidson and Energy and Climate Solutions Minister Adrian Dix announced the project received its environmental assessment certificate. The approval was issued roughly two months after the final public comment period on the project ended.

Environmental groups condemned the government’s speedy approval as a rubber stamp.

“Approving more new fossil fuel infrastructure in a climate crisis is reckless and irresponsible, and yet more evidence that Premier David Eby is happy to break his past promises on fighting climate change,” Isabel Siu-Zmuidzinas, climate campaigner with the Wilderness Committee, said.

The final press release from this version of the Eby government published on Sept. 21 touted the major expansion at Tilbury — a tenfold increase in the facility’s liquefied natural gas production capacity — as “a major economic, clean-energy opportunity for B.C.” But even if the expansion is powered by electricity, as planned, experts worry chemical emissions from the facility could affect the health of people living and working in nearby communities, including Delta, Richmond and New Westminster.

The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment has called for the B.C. government to fully assess the potential health impacts of the LNG industry, from the fracking fields in northern B.C. to LNG production and shipping facilities, like LNG Canada in Kitimat.

“If this industry is safe, the province should be willing to prove it before our families and our healthcare system pay the price,” Dr. Kai Irani, B.C. representative for the doctors’ association, said in the wake of the Tilbury Phase 2 approval.

FortisBC’s Tilbury LNG plant currently produces about 250,000 tonnes of LNG per year, which is used as fuel by some marine vessels and to heat homes and businesses. The Phase 2 expansion could allow the facility to produce up to 3.4 million tonnes each year, with roughly 2.5 million set aside for export. That’s slightly more than the 2.1 million tonnes Woodfibre LNG in Squamish expects to export once it begins operations.

The project’s environmental assessment certificate includes 18 conditions aimed at mitigating its impacts, including air quality monitoring and emission reduction. B.C.’s environmental assessment will inform the federal government’s own assessment of the project and pending decision on whether to approve Tilbury’s expansion.

FortisBC has been working on beefing up its operations at the Tilbury site for about a decade. In July, Minister of Energy and Climate Solutions Adrian Dix announced the government’s support of an earlier expansion proposal, known as Phase 1B, which will add a marine jetty to the site and increase production capacity to 650,000 tonnes of LNG per year. Once Phase 1B is completed, Tilbury LNG will be able to fuel more marine vessels with LNG, which is a lower-emission fuel than the diesel many ships use for power. 

A July cabinet order signed by Dix exempted Phase 1B from review by the B.C. Utilities Commission. That means the expansion will not undergo an independent assessment to examine whether it is necessary and serves the public interest. Last year, the B.C. government also exempted the North Coast transmission line from such a review.

Dix’s order prompted one of his fellow cabinet ministers to take the unusual step of speaking out against a government decision. Kelly Greene, who served as Minister of Emergency Preparedness and Climate Readiness, said she was disappointed with the decision to advance the Tilbury expansion. She has since decided not to seek re-election in the Richmond—Steveston riding she won in 2020.

The order also created the option for First Nations co-ownership of the project, which the Musqueam Indian Band has expressed interest in. 

Tilbury LNG Phase 2 is a separate proposal for the same site in Delta that would see the construction of a new LNG storage tank with a capacity of up to 142,400 cubic metres, about 57 Olympic swimming pools. There would also be new gas liquefaction facilities capable of producing up to 7,700 tonnes of LNG per day, along with other infrastructure needed to support the expanded operations.

B.C. is betting on major projects as Canada looks to open new markets and reduce its reliance on the U.S. Tilbury Phase 2 is among the 41 energy and mining projects the province has identified as a priority. 

Here’s what you need to know.

Why this project?

Tilbury’s Phase 2 expansion will boost the gas system in the Lower Mainland and help meet peak demand for heat during cold weather, according to the provincial government. Building the project will support 1,210 jobs, the province’s major projects site states — though how many people will be employed after the expansion is built is not yet known.

The project description does not mention the LNG export aspect of the expansion.

FortisBC’s website describes the Phase 2 expansion as a way to “continue reliably serving our customers in a lower-carbon energy future while providing economic growth and benefits to local and Indigenous communities.”

Increasing Tilbury’s LNG production capacity will allow the company to “respond to the growing demand for LNG as a lower-carbon fuel,” according to the site.

In an emailed statement, a FortisBC spokesperson highlighted that the Tilbury facility runs on electricity and therefore has “a lower carbon footprint compared to fossil fuel-based power sources commonly used in LNG production elsewhere.”

“The proposed Phase 2 expansion will be required to meet all applicable regulatory, environmental and permitting requirements, including those established by Metro Vancouver.”

What’s different about Tilbury LNG?

While the other LNG facilities operating or under construction in B.C. are located at some distance from nearby communities, Tilbury LNG is an urban facility.

It sits on the banks of the Fraser River, just across the water from Richmond and downstream from New Westminster, making it the only urban LNG facility in the province. Highway 17, one of the Lower Mainland’s major transportation corridors, runs right alongside it.

“It is a 10-minute walk … to the nearest brewery,” Anna Barford, oceans campaigner for Stand.earth, said in an interview. 

Loaded LNG tankers leaving the Tilbury facility will have to transit the south arm of the Fraser River mouth to make their way out into the Salish Sea, a busy shipping corridor that could become much more crowded over the next few years if and when a number of other projects come to fruition.

How does this fit into a bigger conversation about shipping traffic?

At Roberts Bank, just south of where LNG tankers from Tilbury would enter the Salish Sea, the Port of Vancouver is planning to expand its existing container port by 50 per cent. If that $3.5-billion proposed expansion goes ahead, the port location could handle an additional 2.4 million 20-foot (six-metre) shipping containers each year, adding hundreds of container ship transits to the Salish Sea’s waters.

Meanwhile, the completed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is expected to increase tanker traffic in the area by nearly 350 tankers per year.

And then there’s Alberta’s proposed pipeline to the Pacific coast, which would also terminate at Roberts Bank. The tanker terminal would be built to accommodate very large crude oil carriers, massive ships capable of carrying 2.2 million barrels of oil that are longer than three World Cup soccer pitches laid end to end.

“These are enormous vessels that the Tilbury tankers are going to navigate around — they will each need to sort of make way for each other,” Barford said. “This is also critical habitat for southern resident killer whales, who we know vessel traffic is a problem for.”

The Environmental Assessment Office will consider potential impacts on southern resident killer whales and other local species and their habitats as part of its evaluation of the Tilbury LNG Phase 2 proposal. Measures by FortisBC to mitigate those impacts will also be assessed.

What exactly will the expansion look like?

To enable the facility to process more gas, the Phase 2 expansion includes a ground flare — basically, an outlet to burn off excess gas when needed. Instead of a flare stack like the one high above the LNG Canada facility in Kitimat, B.C., Tilbury LNG will burn off excess gas at ground level. 

The ground flare option was chosen because it “limits the opportunity for wildlife interactions with flames and greatly reduces noise and flame-related visual effects,” a FortisBC spokesperson said in an email.

The expansion would increase Tilbury LNG’s emissions to one million tonnes per year, according to a report from the Pembina Institute. Most of those emissions — 0.7 million tonnes — would come from so-called upstream emissions, related to the fracked gas and its transportation to Tilbury LNG via pipelines. The other 0.3 million tonnes of emissions would come from the facility’s operations. 

However, the assessment excludes emissions during the start-up phase, a time when LNG facilities often flare more gas than they would once they are established. Flaring involves burning off gas as waste rather than shipping it or using it. LNG Canada, which has been operational for two years now, has been flaring up to 15 times more gas than it was expected to, due at least in part to an issue with the facility’s flare tip. LNG Canada reported flaring 350 million cubic metres of gas in 2025, according to figures reported to the BC Energy Regulator — 10 per cent of all the gas transported to the plant that year. 

What are the possible health impacts for people living near the project?

Experts say significantly expanding an LNG facility in an urban area raises a range of concerns, including possible impacts on human health.

Emissions from an expanded Tilbury LNG will be entering an airshed already permeated with pollution, Tim Takaro, a physician-scientist in environmental medicine, said. Exhaust from vehicles, including heavy trucks travelling to and from port facilities, mingle with emissions from industrial operations along the Fraser River. 

“There’s just no reason to build a new fossil energy facility in a populated area,” he said.

New Westminster and Richmond had some of the highest levels of nitrogen dioxide of any community in B.C. in 2024, according to a report from the BC Lung Foundation. Nitrogen dioxide is a product of high-temperature fossil fuel combustion and is pushed into the air from vehicle tailpipes and industrial smokestacks. Long-term exposure is linked to impaired lung growth in children and more frequent asthma attacks.

For Takaro, also a member of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, Tilbury LNG’s impact needs to be considered in the context of existing air quality conditions. 

“What does this facility add to the existing air quality?” he said. “Because that’s what people breathe — they don’t just breathe the new part.”

The Tilbury expansion’s ground flare is also a point of concern for Takaro.

“Their flare is going to be at ground level, which is, of course, where people live,” he said.

B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Office is in the final stages of evaluating the Phase 2 expansion. The last public comment period ended in July and the office received 631 completed surveys about the project.One of the survey’s 18 questions asked respondents to select any issues they believed had not been appropriately assessed or that lacked information. A majority of respondents flagged greenhouse gas emissions as an area of concern. Impacts on wildlife, fish and habitat were also selected on a majority of surveys.

Ground flares are often about the height of a single-story building, said Tim Doty, a former employee of Texas’s environmental agency who spent years inspecting oil and gas facilities across the state.

“In theory, that’s going to bring the emissions closer to the community,” he said. 

“I would expect this facility, as it expands, to further impact the community and air quality around Delta and the Vancouver [area].”

Tilbury Phase 2’s environmental assessment takes into account current air quality and modelling of the expansion’s effects, according to an emailed statement from the assessment office.

The federal government’s pending decision can now be informed by B.C.’s environmental assessment. This provincial environmental green light allows the federal process to continue moving, saving Tilbury LNG Phase 2 from lingering in limbo as the snap election unfolds.

Updated, Sept. 24, 2026 at 11:00 a.m. PT: This story incorrectly stated Isabel Siu-Zmuidzinas is a climate campaigner with Stand.earth, in fact she works for the Wilderness Committee. The story has been corrected.

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British Columbians are heading back to the provincial polls on Oct. 24, just two years after the 2024 election where the BC NDP barely held on to power.

David Eby justified his decision to call a snap election on Tuesday, pointing to threats posed by trade issues with U.S. President Donald Trump and chaos on B.C.’s political right.

Eby said British Columbians can choose between “the chaos, the cuts [and] the cozying up to Trump of the Conservative caucus” or his party’s pledge to “stand shoulder to shoulder across the country with Canadians.”

During his speech, Eby repeatedly used fire imagery, comparing the situation in the United States to a spreading wildfire. “We need to build a firebreak around the things that make British Columbia special, things that matter most to British Columbians,” he said. “A firebreak, yes, against Trump’s economic attack, but a firebreak against our dependence on the United States, and a firebreak against the Trump-style politics that threatens to infect our province.”

Eby’s decision will also cost the province tens of millions of dollars and disrupt the work of government, leaving legislation in limbo and throwing wrenches into all kinds of timelines. Calls for B.C.’s auditor general to investigate the billion-dollar error in the province’s gas royalty calculations will remain unanswered. Legislation to enact a treaty between B.C. and the Kitselas First Nation could be delayed by months. And the future of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act will be uncertain at least a little longer. 

The premier’s choice to call a snap election now has angered many local government representatives. Municipal elections will take place across B.C. on Oct. 17, and the final weeks of those campaigns will now be overshadowed by the looming provincial election.

“It’s two conversations at one dinner table — it’s noisy, it’s hard to understand and only the loudest voices will be heard,” Cori Ramsay, a city councillor from Prince George who served as the president at the Union of B.C. Municipalities, said at the organization’s annual conference last week. “Overlapping elections will lead to less scrutiny, less accountability, and it’s not in the public interest.”

At the conference, delegates endorsed an emergency resolution calling on the B.C. government to keep a provincial election campaign separate from the scheduled municipal elections. 

Kathryn Harrison, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia, said Eby is taking a calculated risk calling an election so soon after the last one.

“Will the NDP be able to make a credible case for voters that this economic moment justifies an election compared to the case that their opponents will make that this is premature?” she asked.

This isn’t the first time in recent memory a BC NDP premier has called a snap election during a fraught historical moment. In fall 2020, former Premier John Horgan decided to go to the polls, arguing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic required a majority government to effectively serve British Columbians.

Horgan’s gamble paid off, with the NDP winning 57 of the B.C. legislature’s 87 seats.

“I assume that experience is top of mind for Premier Eby and the NDP this time round,” Harrison said. “Can they make the wartime mandate argument, given that Donald Trump’s threats to Canada — threats to the B.C. economy, especially — were not something that was foreseen?”

Despite the risk, Eby has decided to proceed with a snap election call. Here’s why and what it means for some of the significant policies affecting B.C.’s environment.

Why call a B.C. election now?

If the justifications seem flimsy, it may be because all signs point to a major factor in Eby’s decision being the state of the BC Conservative Party, B.C.’s official opposition.

To briefly recap: John Rustad resigned as the party’s leader in December 2025 after weeks of caucus infighting. The race to replace Rustad resulted in Kerry-Lynne Findlay, a former Conservative Party of Canada MP and cabinet minister, becoming leader of the BC Conservative Party on May 30. Findlay’s victory was narrow; she won 51 per cent of party members’ votes, barely beating out second-place finisher Caroline Elliott.

Findlay’s tenure as party leader was spectacularly brief and chaotic. Multiple members of the BC Conservative caucus publicly criticized her leadership style and staffing choices. Over a six-week span this summer, 10 MLAs left the BC Conservative caucus, citing a lack of confidence in Findlay’s leadership. Three others were removed from the caucus, including Rustad (though he has since been invited to rejoin the BC Conservative caucus).

Findlay resigned as party leader on September 20, leaving the BC Conservatives to appoint Cariboo-Chilcotin MLA Lorne Doerkson as interim leader. Following the snap election call, many of the ousted MLAs rejoined the BC Conservatives and joined Doerkson for an afternoon press conference in Vancouver.

“I think David Eby is going to regret this,” Doerkson said. “Because this election actually offers an opportunity for hope and for real change.”

He rejected Eby’s claim the BC Conservatives support Trump, calling the U.S. president a bully.

B.C. politics is infamous for dramatic developments and unprecedented situations, but the unravelling of the BC Conservatives — a party that came within a handful of votes of driving the NDP out of government in 2024 — over the past two years is truly remarkable. For Eby, leader of an aging government with a tenuous grip on power, the chaos enveloping the BC Conservatives presents an irresistible opportunity to potentially trounce his political opponents.

After a week of mounting speculation about a snap election call at the Union of B.C. Municipalities conference, the B.C. government issued a flurry of announcements in the days before Eby confirmed his decision.

Over the weekend, the BC NDP announced a pair of significant investments into healthcare, and on Monday, published 16 press releases, twice the number of any other day this month. They highlighted millions in government spending, including $27 million from the Clean Industry Fund for 17 emission-reduction and efficiency projects.

Tilbury LNG Phase 2 was promoted twice. First, Environment and Parks Minister Tamara Davidson and Energy and Climate Solutions Minister Adrian Dix announced the project received its environmental assessment certificate, less than two months after the final public comment period ended.

The final government press release of the day touted the major expansion — a 10-fold increase in the facility’s liquefied natural gas production capacity — at Tilbury as “a major economic, clean-energy opportunity for B.C.”

The flood of press releases made it seem the B.C. government was working to clear the decks of government business before an election call prompted a shift into campaign mode. 

B.C. election comes amid criticism of gas royalty framework

The election call also comes amid criticism and controversies facing the BC NDP. Including that fossil fuel companies will pay B.C. hundreds of millions of dollars less than anticipated over the next few years due to an error in the province’s natural gas royalty calculations, as reported by Business in Vancouver last month. The miscalculation means the province will collect $306 million less than projected this fiscal year, according to the Ministry of Finance, though experts told Business in Vancouver B.C. could end up losing out on $500 million per year.

The B.C. government explained the error as a simple calculation mistake which has been rectified, but West Moberly First Nations Chief Roland Willson wants a more detailed explanation.

“I don’t think they know what they’re doing,” Willson said in an interview.

Treaty 8 First Nations, including West Moberly First Nations, flagged the error to the province in the midst of consultations on a new pricing structure for natural gas extracted in B.C. The incoming royalty framework is meant to collect a fair share of profits from companies extracting natural gas from land owned by the province. The new framework is scheduled to take effect in January 2027 and will replace a temporary system that has been in place since 2022, after an independent assessment found the existing system needed a complete overhaul.

In 2022, the B.C. government said the new royalty framework would collect half of company profits from natural gas, but Treaty 8 First Nations have since concluded the new framework may capture just 11 per cent.

Willson wants the new framework paused until a thorough and independent review can be done.

“The auditor general should do a complete review and it should be transparent,” he told The Narwhal. “I think they should make it public because this would affect B.C.’s revenues — the fiscal health of the province — for decades.”

On Sept. 14, Finance Minister Josie Osborne said the Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions was communicating with the Office of the Auditor General about the budget error and possibility of a review. The Office of the Auditor General told The Narwhal it does not comment on potential reviews. The Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions did not respond to an email sent Sept. 17, requesting confirmation that an auditor general’s review had been requested.

The legislature was scheduled to convene on Oct. 5 for a five-week sitting. Eby’s snap election call either significantly shortens the amount of time MLAs will spend in the house this fall or eliminates it altogether.

The future of DRIPA

It may seem like a long time ago now but B.C.’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, known as DRIPA, was at the centre of major political drama this spring.

Following a December 2025 court ruling, Eby kicked off the spring session vowing to amend the law to shield the provincial government from legal liability over the pace and scope of its reconciliation work. At first, he claimed changing the law was non-negotiable, and something that had to be done before the legislature’s summer break.

Eby went so far as to vow to make his DRIPA amendments a confidence vote, thereby staking the future of his government on its outcome

But First Nations leaders rejected Eby’s plan and told him his “approach was totally unacceptable.” That prompted the then premier to propose suspending DRIPA for up to three years, an approach he soon abandoned in the face of steady opposition from First Nations leaders.

By the time the legislature’s summer break arrived, Eby had settled on continuing discussions about DRIPA’s future with First Nations and tabling unspecified amendments during the fall session.

“We’re still at the table with First Nations leadership and it’s important work and we’re going to continue that work,” Eby said of the DRIPA discussion during a Sept. 8 press conference.

Without a fall session, any changes to DRIPA will wait until the spring, leaving lingering uncertainty about the future of the law.

In the meantime, the BC Conservatives have continued to call for DRIPA’s repeal. In August, Elections BC approved an initiative petition backed by BC Conservative MLA Harman Bhangu that aims to repeal DRIPA. If Bhangu collects signatures from 10 per cent of registered voters in each of B.C.’s 93 ridings by Jan. 25, the petition will be submitted to the legislature for a vote.

Kitselas treaty bill

If the fall session doesn’t happen, the legislature may not reconvene until February, shortly before the B.C. government traditionally presents its throne speech and introduces its budget.

Before the throne speech, a process called prorogation wipes the legislative slate clean, giving legislators a fresh start. Any legislation left lingering on the order paper is erased and must be reintroduced before starting the process to become law all over again.

If that happens following this election, three pieces of legislation will be sent back to the drawing board. One is Bill 21, the Kitselas Treaty Act, which received first reading on April 15. If passed, the bill would be the provincial government’s first step to implement the treaty with Kitselas First Nation. 

If the treaty is ratified by both the B.C. and Canadian governments, Kitselas First Nation would no longer be controlled by the federal Indian Act and instead governed by its own constitution. Work on the Kitselas Treaty began in 1993 and Kitselas members voted in favour of the draft treaty in April 2025. 

David Try, senior negotiator with the Kitselas treaty team, expects the election will delay the passage of the bill by up to six months, depending on when the legislature reconvenes.

While the delay is disappointing, Try is hopeful B.C.’s next government would make the Kitselas treaty bill a priority in its first legislative session.

“When you negotiate something for 30 years, there’s a certain implicit commitment to bring it home,” Try said. “We think that the treaty would be back on the legislative agenda, but how do we know? We don’t.”

The Lax Kw’alaams and Nine Allied Tribes dispute the scope of the Kitselas Treaty’s territorial claim and the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs called for both treaty bills to be paused until the territorial boundary disputes with neighbouring First Nations were addressed.

Eby’s choice to call an election is predicated on his confidence that they will win back seats lost to the BC Conservatives in 2024. However, this victory is far from guaranteed. After Oct. 24, B.C. might have a new party in power — or it might be the same one, its power weakened or consolidated. None of the possible outcomes guarantees the provincial priorities will stay the same.

Updated Sept. 22, 2026, at 4:53 p.m. PT: This story was updated following a press conference with interim BC Conservative leader Lorne Doerkson

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How can you tell when a Crown corporation is fulfilling its obligations and goals?

For BC Hydro, one place to start is the provincial utility’s annual service plan report. Released every year, usually in late summer, the document outlines the utility’s finances and progress toward specific goals and objectives. Within its pages, phrases like “meet growing customer demand” are examined through performance metrics, such as whether it has achieved the goal of freeing up 350 gigawatt hours through energy efficiency and conservation programs (for 2025-26, the answer was yes, plus an extra 111 gigawatt hours).

Did BC Hydro cut greenhouse gas emissions from its operations by 44 per cent? Page 12 of the most recent report confirms the Crown corporation did even better, reducing its emissions by 56 per cent (mostly because the natural gas-powered Fort Nelson generating station ran less often than expected).

Among all these straightforward answers, one important piece of information is harder to find. Was all of the power generated or bought by BC Hydro in the past year clean electricity?

BC Hydro has been publicly reporting its achievements related to the province’s climate targets in its annual service plan report for fifteen years. Currently, the clean electricity standard requires all electricity BC Hydro sells in the province or exports to other markets come from low-emissions sources. By 2030, the provincial government has directed the Crown corporation to completely phase out fossil-fuel generated electricity.

But BC Hydro’s 2025-26 annual report does not mention the clean electricity standard at all. 

In 2024-25, BC Hydro met that objective, according to that year’s annual report. But its most recent report lacks that declaration, as former BC Utilities Commissioner Richard Mason recently noticed.

“The loss of transparency is a problem; we should be told whether the provincially-owned utility is meeting these objectives,” Mason wrote in a post on his website, Just and Reasonable. BC Hydro has also removed the clean electricity standard from the list of corporate objectives in its most recent service plan, he noted.

In a statement, BC Hydro told The Narwhal it whittled the performance measures in its service plan from 28 to 12, “focusing on key strategic priorities and aligning with benchmarking practices used by comparable North American utilities.”

Going forward, the statement said information about BC Hydro’s achievement of the clean electricity standard will be published in its annual sustainability report published in August. In 2026, BC Hydro fell just short of the standard at 99 per cent, according to the report.

Clean electricity metrics should be ‘front and centre’ in BC Hydro’s plan: experts

Mason argues the clean electricity standard performance metric should be part of BC Hydro’s main annual report. 

“I believe it has the most value in an annual report because you can put the climate reporting in context with everything else that BC Hydro is doing,” he told The Narwhal in an interview.

BC Hydro publicly communicates about its activities, achievements and finances across several reports, some of which are updated yearly, including the sustainability and annual reports. Others, like the service plan and integrated resource plan, publish less frequently. In addition, the utility releases unscheduled updates and quarterly financials. 

Anyone interested in deeply understanding what BC Hydro is up to and how it is fulfilling its obligations has to wade through a lot of information, noted Mark Zacharias, an adjunct professor in the public administration school at the University of Victoria.

“BC Hydro has a legal requirement to supply 100 per cent clean electricity by 2030,” Zacharias, a former executive director of Clean Energy Canada, told The Narwhal. “With growing industrial loads, an electrifying economy and a changing climate, how BC Hydro will meet this requirement is an important conversation that should be front and centre in the annual service plan.”

There are other reasons to wonder about the ongoing importance of BC Hydro’s clean electricity commitments. Earlier this year, the Crown corporation submitted an argument to the BC Utilities commission that its obligations under the Clean Energy Act, which requires it to generate and purchase enough energy to meet demand, trumps the direction to phase out fossil fuels by 2030. 

Weeks after BC Hydro’s submission, Minister of Energy and Climate Solutions Adrian Dix announced BC Hydro’s intent to purchase Island Generation, a natural gas-powered plant in Campbell River. Natural gas is largely made up of methane, a fossil fuel that traps heat in the atmosphere and drives climate change. 

To Green MLA Jeremy Valeriote, BC Hydro appears to be “making up for lost time in terms of not having anticipated demand,” which is projected to rise 20 per cent by 2030 and 50 per cent by 2050.

That surge in demand is driven largely by mining and liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects, as well as increasing numbers of electric vehicles and heat pumps in B.C. homes.

“Suddenly, that’s used to justify any number of non-clean electrical sources,” Valeriote said.

He described the removal of the clean electricity standard reporting from BC Hydro’s annual report as disheartening.

“It’s the slow whittling away of some of the principles that were being applied,” he added.

Sourcing more electricity does seem to have become a top priority for BC Hydro, Mason said, partly as a way to secure economic growth.

“Growing electricity production in the province is a good thing,” he said. “I suspect, however, they’ve realized they can’t do it all with clean electricity.”

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FortisBC is a familiar name to many British Columbians. The company’s yellow and blue logo appears on utility bills across the province, but people might not know the company operates one of B.C.’s longest-running liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities. And now it’s hoping to be able to produce 10 times more LNG at its plant in Delta, B.C., under a proposal dubbed Tilbury LNG Phase 2.

FortisBC’s Tilbury LNG plant has been operating for 55 years. It currently produces about 250,000 tonnes of LNG per year, which is used as fuel by some marine vessels and to heat homes and businesses. The Phase 2 expansion could allow the facility to produce up to 3.4 million tonnes each year, with roughly 2.5 million set aside for export. That’s slightly more than the 2.1 million tonnes Woodfibre LNG in Squamish expects to export once it begins operations.

FortisBC has been working on beefing up its operations at the Tilbury site for about a decade. In July, Minister of Energy and Climate Solutions Adrian Dix announced the government’s support of an earlier expansion proposal, known as Phase 1B, which will add a marine jetty to the site and increase production capacity to 650,000 tonnes of LNG per year. Once Phase 1B is completed, Tilbury LNG will be able to fuel more marine vessels with LNG, which is a lower-emission fuel than the diesel many ships use for power. 

A July cabinet order signed by Dix exempted Phase 1B from review by the B.C. Utilities Commission. That means the expansion will not undergo an independent assessment to examine whether it is necessary and serves the public interest. Last year, the B.C. government also exempted the North Coast transmission line from such a review.

The order also created the option for First Nations co-ownership of the project, which the Musqueam Indian Band has expressed interest in. 

Meanwhile, Tilbury LNG Phase 2, a separate proposal for the same site in Delta, is currently being evaluated by the Environmental Assessment Office. If approved, it would see the construction of a new LNG storage tank with a capacity of up to 142,400 cubic metres, about 57 Olympic swimming pools. There would also be new gas liquefaction facilities capable of producing up to 7,700 tonnes of LNG per day, along with other infrastructure needed to support the expanded operations.

B.C. is betting on major projects as Canada looks to open new markets and reduce its reliance on the U.S. Tilbury Phase 2 is among the 35 energy and mining projects the province has identified as a priority. 

Here’s what you need to know.

Table of Contents

• Why this project?
• What’s different about Tilbury LNG?
• How does this fit into a bigger conversation about shipping traffic?
• What exactly will the expansion look like?
• What are the possible health impacts for people living near the project?
• What are the next steps for the proposed expansion?

Why this project?

Tilbury’s Phase 2 expansion will boost the gas system in the Lower Mainland and help meet peak demand for heat during cold weather, according to the provincial government. Building the project will support 1,210 jobs, the province’s major projects site states — though how many people will be employed after the expansion is built is not yet known.

The project description does not mention the LNG export aspect of the expansion.

FortisBC’s website describes the Phase 2 expansion as a way to “continue reliably serving our customers in a lower-carbon energy future while providing economic growth and benefits to local and Indigenous communities.”

Increasing Tilbury’s LNG production capacity will allow the company to “respond to the growing demand for LNG as a lower-carbon fuel,” according to the site.

In an emailed statement, a FortisBC spokesperson highlighted that the Tilbury facility runs on electricity and therefore has “a lower carbon footprint compared to fossil fuel-based power sources commonly used in LNG production elsewhere.”

“The proposed Phase 2 expansion will be required to meet all applicable regulatory, environmental and permitting requirements, including those established by Metro Vancouver.”

What’s different about Tilbury LNG?

While the other LNG facilities operating or under construction in B.C. are located at some distance from nearby communities, Tilbury LNG is an urban facility.

It sits on the banks of the Fraser River, just across the water from Richmond and downstream from New Westminster, making it the only urban LNG facility in the province. Highway 17, one of the Lower Mainland’s major transportation corridors, runs right alongside it.

“It is a 10-minute walk … to the nearest brewery,” Anna Barford, oceans campaigner for Stand.earth, says in an interview. 

Loaded LNG tankers leaving the Tilbury facility will have to transit the south arm of the Fraser River mouth to make their way out into the Salish Sea, a busy shipping corridor that could become much more crowded over the next few years if and when a number of other projects come to fruition.

How does this fit into a bigger conversation about shipping traffic?

At Roberts Bank, just south of where LNG tankers from Tilbury would enter the Salish Sea, the Port of Vancouver is planning to expand its existing container port by 50 per cent. If that $3.5-billion proposed expansion goes ahead, the port location could handle an additional 2.4 million 20-foot (six-metre) shipping containers each year, adding hundreds of container ship transits to the Salish Sea’s waters.

Meanwhile, the completed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is expected to increase tanker traffic in the area by nearly 350 tankers per year.

And then there’s Alberta’s proposed pipeline to the Pacific coast, which would also terminate at Roberts Bank. The tanker terminal would be built to accommodate very large crude oil carriers, massive ships capable of carrying 2.2 million barrels of oil that are longer than three World Cup soccer pitches laid end to end.

“These are enormous vessels that the Tilbury tankers are going to navigate around — they will each need to sort of make way for each other,” Barford said. “This is also critical habitat for southern resident killer whales, who we know vessel traffic is a problem for.”

The Environmental Assessment Office will consider potential impacts on southern resident killer whales and other local species and their habitats as part of its evaluation of the Tilbury LNG Phase 2 proposal. Measures by FortisBC to mitigate those impacts will also be assessed.

What exactly will the expansion look like?

To enable the facility to process more gas, the Phase 2 expansion includes a ground flare — basically, an outlet to burn off excess gas when needed. Instead of a flare stack like the one high above the LNG Canada facility in Kitimat, B.C., Tilbury LNG will burn off excess gas at ground level. 

The ground flare option was chosen because it “limits the opportunity for wildlife interactions with flames and greatly reduces noise and flame-related visual effects,” a FortisBC spokesperson said in an email.

The expansion would increase Tilbury LNG’s emissions to one million tonnes per year, according to a report from the Pembina Institute. Most of those emissions — 0.7 million tonnes — would come from so-called upstream emissions, related to the fracked gas and its transportation to Tilbury LNG via pipelines. The other 0.3 million tonnes of emissions would come from the facility’s operations. 

However, the assessment excludes emissions during the start-up phase, a time when LNG facilities often flare more gas than they would once they are established. Flaring involves burning off gas as waste rather than shipping it or using it. LNG Canada, which has been operational for two years now, has been flaring up to 15 times more gas than it was expected to, due at least in part to an issue with the facility’s flare tip. LNG Canada reported flaring 350 million cubic metres of gas in 2025, according to figures reported to the BC Energy Regulator — 10 per cent of all the gas transported to the plant that year. 

What are the possible health impacts for people living near the project?

Experts say significantly expanding an LNG facility in an urban area raises a range of concerns, including possible impacts on human health.

Emissions from an expanded Tilbury LNG will be entering an airshed already permeated with pollution, Tim Takaro, a physician-scientist in environmental medicine, says. Exhaust from vehicles, including heavy trucks travelling to and from port facilities, mingle with emissions from industrial operations along the Fraser River. 

“There’s just no reason to build a new fossil energy facility in a populated area,” he says.

New Westminster and Richmond had some of the highest levels of nitrogen dioxide of any community in B.C. in 2024, according to a report from the BC Lung Foundation. Nitrogen dioxide is a product of high-temperature fossil fuel combustion and is pushed into the air from vehicle tailpipes and industrial smokestacks. Long-term exposure is linked to impaired lung growth in children and more frequent asthma attacks.

For Takaro, who is a member of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, Tilbury LNG’s impact needs to be considered in the context of existing air quality conditions. 

“What does this facility add to the existing air quality?” he says. “Because that’s what people breathe — they don’t just breathe the new part.”

The Tilbury expansion’s ground flare is also a point of concern for Takaro.

“Their flare is going to be at ground level, which is, of course, where people live,” he says.

Ground flares are often about the height of a single-story building, says Tim Doty, a former employee of Texas’s environmental agency who spent years inspecting oil and gas facilities across the state.

“In theory, that’s going to bring the emissions closer to the community,” he says. 

“I would expect this facility, as it expands, to further impact the community and air quality around Delta and the Vancouver [area].”

Tilbury Phase 2’s environmental assessment takes into account current air quality and modelling of the expansion’s effects, according to an emailed statement from the assessment office. 

What are the next steps for the proposed expansion?

B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Office is in the final stages of evaluating the Phase 2 expansion. The last public comment period ended in July and the office received 631 completed surveys about the project.One of the survey’s 18 questions asked respondents to select any issues they believed had not been appropriately assessed or that lacked information. A majority of respondents flagged greenhouse gas emissions as an area of concern. Impacts on wildlife, fish and habitat were also selected on a majority of surveys.

The assessment office received more than 4,400 written comments, many of which detail concerns about how the project could impact salmon and orca populations, as well as the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the face of global warming. Of the hundreds of comments reviewed by The Narwhal, the handful in support of the expansion focused on the global market for LNG and the importance of reducing market reliance on the United States.

Once the assessment office completes its evaluation, the ministers of energy and environment will receive a recommendation on whether to issue an environmental assessment certificate to the project. The ministers expect to make a decision by the end of the year, according to a July press release.

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On Aug. 6, with much of southern B.C. blanketed in wildfire smoke, Minister of Energy and Climate Solutions Adrian Dix kicked off a Campbell River press conference by thanking wildfire fighters and the BC Hydro employees working to address infrastructure damaged by the flames.

“The impact of climate change and the impact of wildfires presents challenges to BC Hydro,” Dix acknowledged, adding wildfires had knocked out power for about 24,000 B.C. homes over the previous week.

A few days prior to the minister’s announcement, wildfires near the central B.C. communities of Clinton and Vernon had destroyed hundreds of homes and prompted evacuation orders affecting about 8,000 people.

But Dix wasn’t on Vancouver Island to talk about the wildfires. He was there to announce the purchase of Island Generation, a 275-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant, by BC Hydro. Despite a mandate that all electricity generated in B.C. come from renewable sources by 2030, BC Hydro now says it needs to continue getting electricity from gas to meet an anticipated surge in power demand over the next few years: a 20 per cent increase by 2030 and a 50 per cent increase by 2050.

That surge in demand is driven largely by mining and liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects, as well as increasing numbers of electric vehicles and heat pumps in B.C. homes.

Keeping gas in BC Hydro’s generation mix will allow the provincial power utility to focus on developing more renewable energy sources, Dix argued.

“It’s better to continue to build out clean electricity and to ensure that resources like Island Generation stay in B.C. and support the system,” he said, calling climate action “essential” to B.C.’s environmental, economic, social and cultural well-being.“Surely things like our own wildfires, and then witnessing what’s happened, for example, in France, in Spain, in other parts of the world, demonstrate this,” he said.

The day after the Campbell River announcement, the Bald Ridge fire ignited near Summerland in southern B.C., leading to the evacuation of more than 20,000 people. On Aug. 8, Premier David Eby declared a provincial state of emergency due to the wildfires. B.C. is now in its third state of emergency in five years, including those prompted by the November 2021 atmospheric river and the extreme wildfires of 2023.

“Climate scientists have connected the dots to all three of those emergencies and been able to identify that climate change made them both more likely and more extreme,” Dan Woynillowicz, a climate policy expert and principal with Polaris Strategy + Insight, said after watching Eby declare a state of emergency. “And neither the premier nor either of his ministers made even passing reference to climate change in that whole press conference.”

Some might say that connecting the “explosive and extremely dangerous” conditions driving this year’s wildfires to climate change is in poor taste while people are being displaced and losing their homes, but Woynillowicz takes a different view. 

“I think British Columbians are sophisticated enough to be able to hear those different messages,” he said. “What we need to continue to do to better prepare and adapt to a world in which we are going to be experiencing this with greater frequency and greater extremity, but also what we need to do to prevent even worse impacts in the future by reducing our combustion of fossil fuels that are that are creating the problem and making it worse.”

Failure to plan for future electricity demand makes Island Generation purchase an ‘unfortunate necessity’

Gas isn’t a big part of BC Hydro’s electricity generation, about 2.5 per cent. The emissions reduction from BC Hydro ditching gas would not be huge, and there are arguments for keeping facilities like Island Generation online as energy demands grow across B.C.Island Generation is what’s known as a peaker plant, mostly called on to generate power at times of peak demand like hot summer days and cold winter nights. Over the past five years, it’s been running for about five days per year and BC Hydro expects that will continue. 

The plant can create enough electricity to power about 125,000 homes — about one-quarter of all the electricity that can be produced on Vancouver Island, making it an important local asset.Evan Pivnick, associate director of public affairs for Clean Energy Canada, called the Island Generation purchase an unfortunate necessity — one that shows BC Hydro’s planning has not kept pace with the growing electricity demand it faces.

“This needs to be an opportunity to learn from those mistakes, so that we truly look at natural gas as an option of last resort, not as something that plays a growing role in our electricity systems,” he said. 

B.C. is set to achieve just half of its legislated target of reducing emissions by 40 per cent below 2007 levels by 2030, according to the most recent climate accountability report. 

“Rather than closing the gap to the 2030 target year after year, we’ve been getting further away from it,” Kathryn Harrison, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia who studies climate and energy policy, told The Narwhal.

“Since that report was published [in 2025], the B.C. government has weakened some climate policies and, as far as I can tell, abandoned others,” she added, citing B.C.’s discarded pledges to develop an oil and gas emissions cap and reduce medium- and heavy- truck emissions, as well as the elimination of the consumer carbon tax.

Electrification — replacing fossil fuel power sources with electricity — is central to almost all of B.C.’s emissions reduction goals. But as B.C. fast-tracks energy-intensive resource projects, BC Hydro has yet to figure out how and when it would have those resources ready to supply them with power. 

“There was no accompanying electricity strategy,” Pivnick said. “There was a disconnect where the ambitions around electrifying industry, electrifying households, never translated into what does this mean for our electricity system and how do we think about the buildout of the supply that’s required?”

Even the 50 per cent increase in electricity demand by 2030 that BC Hydro is currently working to meet is likely a conservative estimate. Woynillowicz noted the federal government’s electricity strategy projects a doubling in electricity demand across Canada by 2030.

“BC Hydro has continued planning for, relatively speaking, a lower-growth future, and I think that is now coming back to bite,” Woynillowicz said.He wondered whether a more proactive planning approach could have allowed BC Hydro to develop renewable resources and avoid continuing to rely on Island Generation. Despite launching the CleanBC program in 2018 and investing $3.5 billion in its efforts to cut greenhouse gases, B.C. has not been successful at reducing emissions in the province and has admitted the program’s goals are no longer “accurate or workable.”   

“Hindsight is 20/20, but I think it raises questions,” he said. “Between BC Hydro and the government, was planning happening in the way that it needed to be? I would say that no, it wasn’t. That there was fundamentally a disconnect between CleanBC and the future that BC Hydro was planning for.”

LNG ambitions could lead to electricity crunch and higher gas prices

The pressing need for power that B.C. faces is relatively new. Before the NDP government committed to completing the Site C dam, some experts estimated the province would not need the 1,100 megawatts the dam can produce for a decade or more after it began operating. There were also those who argued renewable power sources would be a better bang for the B.C. government’s buck.

But just electrifying all proposed LNG terminals in B.C. — something the government has made a condition for those projects to proceed — and some of the gas infrastructure to supply them would take 40,000 gigawatts per year. That’s 7.5 times the capacity of Site C, as noted in the CleanBC review co-authored by Woynillowicz and fellow climate expert Merran Smith.

Electrification is key to the main marketing slogan for B.C.’s LNG, as Premier Eby emphasized during a recent press conference.

“Our LNG is the lowest carbon in the world because it is electrified as much as possible throughout the chain [and] because we have high standards around methane leakage and emissions,” he said. 

“We take climate change very seriously, but we also recognize that B.C. can play a role in driving down carbon pollution around the world.”

But the massive electricity demand for LNG could put B.C.’s electrification and emission reduction goals in peril.

“If we don’t have enough electricity to power LNG and potentially also electric vehicles and home electrification and other industries, we will end up either not pursuing those projects or increasing our emissions,” Harrison said. 

She also pointed out that B.C.’s most recent emission projections don’t include some of the LNG projects the provincial government has been pushing hard to see built: LNG Canada Phase 2 and Ksi Lisims. If those facilities fire up, it will add “many millions of tonnes difference” to how realistic the province’s emissions reduction goals are.

The economic opportunities offered by becoming a global LNG supplier are real, Pivnick said, but they may not outweigh the downsides.

“The world would be very happy to see Canada and B.C. invest in more and more fossil fuel projects that ensure there’s a secure supplier available to purchase from as they go through their own transitions, but that’s Canada and B.C. choosing to invest as essentially a shock absorber for a world that’s trying to move away from our goods,” he said.

A robust LNG industry will also mean much higher demand for natural gas in B.C. The province’s 2026 budget banks on a doubling of natural gas prices. That could be bad news for affordability in B.C. down the road, given natural gas accounts for about 31 per cent of all energy used in the province, while electricity accounts for about 18 per cent.

“Whether we’re talking about burning natural gas in our homes or burning natural gas for electricity, continuing to have that reliance at the same time that we’re actively trying to secure higher prices, [that is] good for the oil and gas sector, good for the province in terms of royalties, but it’s actually pretty lousy for British Columbians from an affordability perspective,” Woynillowicz said.

Back in April, Dix told the legislature Island Generation had been having trouble with its gas supply, an issue he attributed to demand from the Woodfibre LNG project in Squamish. In July, The Narwhal’s questions to the Energy Ministry, Island Generation and Woodfibre LNG about the supposed supply issue mostly went unanswered.

At the Aug. 6 announcement, Dix said he is confident Island Generation will be able to get the gas it needs, but offered no further information.

Concern for climate change has spiked as wildfire smoke spreads, creating an opportunity for conversation

A very dim silver lining to the summer’s wildfires is that they seem to have put climate change back on many Canadians’ radar. A recent Angus Reid poll found 21 per cent of Canadians put climate change as their top concern, up from 14 per cent in March. In B.C., 25 per cent of respondents said climate change was their top concern, putting the issue in third place behind cost of living and healthcare.

That’s a notable shift from the past few years, when climate change has consistently polled low as a priority for many Canadians. But just because people aren’t telling pollsters climate change is a top concern doesn’t mean they aren’t worried about the impacts of a warming world, Harrison argued.

“I don’t think it is the case that that means people are willing to sacrifice their safety from wildfires, their children’s health from breathing smoke, their elderly parents’ safety in extreme heat in exchange for a lower cost of living today,” she said. “They’re just not connecting those dots.”

That lack of connection isn’t helped, she said, by politicians who claim they take climate change seriously while continuing to support fossil fuel development and failing to address emissions effectively.

“Politicians are reassuring people, ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got the whole climate change thing in hand,’ and people at the same time are worried about the economy,” she said.

Instead of offering reassurances that things will be okay, Woynillowicz wishes politicians would communicate what they are doing to directly and effectively address climate change.

“One of the messages we’re hearing from government is that they’ve got our backs,” he said. 

“I would feel more comfortable that they’ve got my back and my kids’ backs if I knew that … they are actually being proactive, both in terms of helping make us more resilient to future impacts that we know are coming — but also what they’re doing to prevent even worse impacts in the future by doing more to reduce the pollution that’s causing the problem.”

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When temperatures drop, people who rent their homes in B.C. have a right to stay warm. Heating is considered an essential service under the province’s Residential Tenancy Act, something landlords must supply.

But when extreme heat hits, it’s a different story. As temperatures soared last month, smashing record highs across B.C., landlords in most parts of the province held on to the power to prohibit their tenants from installing and using air conditioners.

“It’s in my lease agreement,” Nadine Nakagawa, a city councillor in New Westminster, says. 

Summary

• B.C. doesn’t have a provincial law addressing maximum temperatures in rental units.
• In recent years, a number of B.C. municipalities have voted to change their bylaws to protect tenants from extreme heat.
• Local politicians and advocates say better rebates and other support for renters’ ‘right to cool’ must come from the provincial government.

Safety concerns are often used to justify air conditioning bans in rental units, especially in older buildings where electrical systems might struggle in high-demand situations. But that’s not always the case; the building Nakagawa lives in was built in 2019.

Nakagawa knows some of her neighbours flout the air conditioner prohibition, running the risk of eviction when temperatures rise. It’s a risk she argues they shouldn’t have to take.

“Individual tenants being brave really can’t be the answer in a housing market that does make people extremely precarious.”

Cooling devices — air conditioners or, increasingly, heat pumps — aren’t just a matter of comfort. As climate change increases the likelihood of heat waves and hotter summers, access to cool spaces is becoming a matter of life and death. Only 45 per cent of B.C. households report having an air conditioner — well below the national rate of 68 per cent, according to Statistics Canada. And while more than three-quarters of homeowners have access to an air conditioner, just over half of tenants said the same. 

In late June 2021, the Pacific Northwest heat dome made the lack of cooling devices a deadly reality for many British Columbians for the first time. Over one sweltering week, temperatures in many parts of the province approached 40 C. The heat caused the deaths of 619 people, 98 per cent of whom died indoors. Many of them were seniors without access to adequate cooling in their homes, according to B.C.’s chief coroner. 

Many also lived in low-income neighbourhoods where apartment buildings tend to be older. This often means rent is more affordable, but comes with leaky windows, poor ventilation, dated electrical systems and an absence of cooling devices — characteristics that leave their residents vulnerable to extreme weather.

In the years since the heat dome, the B.C. government has taken some steps to protect people from extreme heat, including funding for air conditioning and ventilation in seniors’ homes and long-term care facilities and access to free air conditioners for a small number of vulnerable people. A 2024 update to the BC Building Code requires every unit in new residential buildings to have one room where the temperature does not exceed 26 C, even during summer heat. 

But most B.C. tenants don’t live in new buildings and the province has yet to address their “right to cool,” as policies focused on protecting people from extreme heat are sometimes called. The lack of provincial action has pushed some councillors, including Nakagawa, to tackle the issue at the municipal level. 

“We have known for a number of years that we are going to be having hotter and hotter summers,” she says. “In the next heat dome, we cannot say that we did not know and didn’t expect it. That’s why we have to take action right now.”

Who pays to keep B.C. renters cool?

So far, six B.C. municipalities, including New Westminster, have voted to change their bylaws to bar landlords from banning the use of cooling devices in rented homes. As of this month, that list includes Victoria. Emily Rogers, director of operations with the Together Against Poverty Society, calls the decision “a move in the right direction.”

“It is long overdue and necessary to prevent heat-related injury and death,” she says. “I’ve had this public conversation every year since 2021.”

The society helps renters living in poverty navigate B.C.’s Residential Tenancy Act. When it comes to making the right to cool official, Rogers argues that even though the act currently lacks specific temperature requirements around extreme heat, it already implies rental homes should not get dangerously hot.

“It’s already the landlord’s responsibility to provide safe housing conditions and in this new era of climate change, that includes the right to cooling,” Rogers says.

Many landlords in B.C. are well aware “that cooling is a huge issue,” David Hutniak, CEO of LandlordBC, says.

Our concern is that some of the solutions suggested in these bylaws are ignoring the complexity of the problem,” he told The Narwhal. The organization is working with its members to ensure they understand the new bylaws popping up in municipalities.

“Right now, there’s a fair bit of confusion and uncertainty on the part of owners,” he says.

Hutniak points out that some buildings will require significant electrical upgrades to handle the power demand. Those may be difficult to do quickly and require large investments by building owners, he adds. That’s where planning becomes key. LandlordBC runs the Rental Apartment Retrofit Accelerator, a program that helps landlords plan for energy-efficiency upgrades and access rebates and other financial support from governments.

“We’re chipping away at it here as best we can,” Hutniak says. “It’s a complex issue, but I think over time here we can have some reasonable solutions that will make sense for everybody.”

Provincial support is limited. Free portable air conditioners are only available to people enrolled in home care or mental health and substance use programs, and even then require a recommendation letter from the local health authority. 

In 2025, B.C. broadened its heat pump rebates to include renters and people living in strata buildings. But installing a heat pump as a tenant is complicated and costly, which can be a deterrent. 

Interested renters have to get permission from their landlord. Even landlords that agree might not be willing to pay costs not covered by the rebate — and B.C. allows landlords to pass along the costs of significant upgrades and repairs to their tenants via rent increases. Yet, according to B.C.’s energy ministry, “Since the heat pump is a permanent fixture installed in the building, it becomes part of the property and stays with the unit even if the tenant moves out.” 

Victoria city councillor Susan Kim lives in a rental apartment that will have to lift its ban on cooling devices after the city amended its bylaws. But after reviewing the heat pump rebate program, she decided it wasn’t worth approaching her landlord about it. “You’re subsidizing the landlord by building their equity as well as putting your own sweat equity and labour into it,” Kim says.

Landlords who opt to invest in heat pumps or air conditioners can apply to the Residential Tenancy Branch to raise rents beyond the annual allowable increase. In recent decisions, the branch has allowed the full costs to be recouped. For one multi-unit building, the $145,000 cost of heat pumps led to an additional $41 in monthly rent per unit. In that case, the landlord said the “heat-related death of an elderly resident during a heat wave” spurred the installation.

In another case, the $5,775 cost of an air conditioner for a single unit led to an extra $62 per month.

Rogers points out that income assistance in B.C. is just $1,060 per month to cover all living costs. Even purchasing a $200 air conditioner isn’t feasible for these tenants, she says. 

“Most folks that I speak with are telling their kids that they had enough to eat through the day because they don’t want their kid to feel bad about them not eating dinner with the family, so that the kids can have enough to eat that night.”

Not every method of addressing extreme heat in rental buildings is expensive 

New Westminster adopted a bylaw prohibiting bans on cooling devices in 2025. This spring, the city pushed its right to cool practices further. Now all landlords — not just those with new buildings — must meet the BC Building Code standard that one room in every unit stay below 26 C overnight.

The bylaw sprang from a motion Nakagawa co-sponsored with the aim of putting the onus for maintaining safe temperatures “on the building owner, on the landlord … rather than the tenant.”

The new rule doesn’t dictate how landlords address the issue. Shades and awnings, window glazing, ventilation improvements or even painting the roof white could help bring a building into compliance. So-called passive cooling measures can help reduce or slow indoor temperature gains and have the added benefit of requiring little to no electricity, cutting costs for tenants and working even during power outages.

Those kinds of upgrades, Nakagawa says, could yield benefits year-round. 

“If you have better insulation, it might help it be warmer in the winter as well.”

So far, the new bylaw hasn’t resulted in much conflict with landlords, New Westminster Mayor Patrick Johnstone says. 

“I actually expected there would be more pushback; I’ve been quite surprised.”

It’s up to tenants to alert the city about non-compliance, Johnstone says, and the city’s focus is on working with landlords to make sure their rental units meet the new temperature standard, rather than handing out fines.

“I think by being proactive and being a partner with landlords, we can actually bring people into compliance,” he says.

Nagakawa worries the new bylaw won’t address the problem of pricey appliances or retrofit costs being passed on to tenants. She thinks the province should get rid of that option, at least for upgrades aimed at preventing dangerous indoor temperatures.

“At the end of the day, I also have to live with the idea that I don’t want more tenants in my municipality to die in the next heat dome.”

The right to cool needs to be addressed at the provincial level in B.C. 

Everyone The Narwhal spoke with agreed the issue needs to be dealt with by the B.C. government. Provincial legislation could protect tenants from rent increases related to costs landlords incur to keep buildings cool, while providing support for landlords that need it. 

“If the province is using its own powers to put this in place, they can also use their own powers to intervene and make it doable,” Kim says. 

One approach could be to alter the Residential Tenancy Act to make adequate cooling an essential service, just like heating. The Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs did not answer when asked whether it is considering altering the act to protect tenants from extreme heat. A question about whether the ministry is considering preventing landlords from passing along the installation costs also went unanswered.

In lieu of answering The Narwhal’s specific questions, the ministry sent a statement, saying it is in the process of developing additional building code requirements “to address climate change adaptation and mitigation in existing buildings and result in new standards by 2030.”

Hutniak is hopeful that the issue is getting needed attention, but sees downsides to the “piecemeal approach” currently happening. “Because of the scale and scope of the challenge, it will require senior levels of government to be more involved, strategically and in terms of some financial support,” he says. “This is just not something that can get solved through municipalities passing bylaws.”

Until other levels of government are ready to take action, Nakagawa says municipalities can be proactive about understanding tenant needs and local vulnerabilities. “There’s a whole bunch of steps they could take, if they’re not feeling quite ready to bring in the same bylaw that we’ve brought,” she says. For example, the Victoria capital regional district has created a map to help residents understand where heat risks are highest. 

New Westminster has been collecting data on heat vulnerability among renters, part of a move to beef up its tenant protections in recent years, including creating an anti-eviction bylaw. It’s been using annual fire inspections as a chance to gather data about which buildings have “heat challenges,” Johnstone says, after which emergency services and community organizations then helped “identify vulnerable people who were in those buildings.”

But the mayor agrees that the issue is bigger than New Westminster. “We can’t have, across the province, 160 municipalities all with different rules making it up as they go along,” Johnstone says. 

“Ultimately, this is a healthcare concern. Ultimately, this is a housing concern and ultimately, this should be regulated at the provincial level.”

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Summary

• As wildfire smoke worsens across Canada, volunteers are teaching people to build low-cost DIY air purifiers.
• The fan-and-filter devices can perform as well as commercial HEPA air purifiers while costing around $60 to make.
• Organizers say the workshops provide practical protection from smoke while building community in the face of climate change.

On a sunny Saturday in July, a few dozen people file into a United Church on a quiet, tree-lined street near Victoria. Outside, the sky is clear and cloudless — a far cry from the wildfire smoke blanketing other parts of Canada. Inside, people are taking steps to protect themselves from the toxic smoke that has become a regular feature of Canadian summers.

As climate change makes summers hotter and drier, wildfire season becomes, on average, longer and more severe. More Canadians are experiencing the impacts with every breath they take and three-quarters say they’re concerned about wildfire smoke impacting their air quality. Once smoke rolls in, air purifiers — filtration machines capable of removing toxic chemicals and tiny particulates from the air — can be difficult to find in stores, even for those who can afford them.

But at the church, participants are learning to build simple, effective air purifiers at a workshop organized by Bill Darnell, a local resident who helped found Greenpeace in 1970.

“I’ve been involved in social justice and climate action pretty much all my adult life and it’s kind of discouraging that I’m still having to do it at this point,” Darnell tells The Narwhal.

Darnell was inspired to organize the event after learning about a similar workshop that took place in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. He and other volunteers use information compiled by the BC Lung Foundation and Simon Fraser University to help people build DIY air purifiers, using simple and accessible components like box fans, furnace filters and duct tape.

A 2023 study conducted at the National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health found these air purifiers can perform as well as commercial air purifiers equipped with high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters. While HEPA-equipped air purifiers often cost hundreds of dollars, the materials for these DIY versions cost less than $60. Since 2023, the BC Lung Association has logged more than 160 community workshops where participants have built more than 3,200 air purifiers.

B.C. has recorded 634 wildfires since April 2026 and 98 are currently burning across the province. The fires have put thousands of British Columbians on evacuation alert, while others have been evacuated — like the community of Boston Bar in the Fraser Valley, where a rapidly spreading wildfire nearby also closed the Trans-Canada Highway for four days in early July. Even so, wildfire smoke has — so far this year — had less of an impact on air quality than in previous years. Most of the province is experiencing low-to-moderate-risk air quality. Meanwhile, intense wildfire activity in Ontario made Toronto’s air quality the worst in the world on July 15.

Darnell describes the DIY air purifier workshop as an opportunity to build community and educate people while also empowering them to take action in the face of a direct threat like climate change.

“It really is important to come together when you’re facing a catastrophe,” he says. “There’s the fast-moving ones like floods and fires, and there’s the slower-moving ones like climate change and smoke. The most important resource is the people around you.”

A fan, a filter, a roll of duct tape: a simple solution for cleaner air

Wildfire smoke is more toxic than everyday air pollution. It can travel thousands of kilometres and linger in the air for weeks. 

The smoke contains gases, such as carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide, and volatile organic compounds, like benzene, toluene and butene. There is also particulate matter, which can include soot, dust, pollen and spores, as well as chemical particles. The particles are classified according to size and fine particulates — the really tiny ones, less than 2.5 microns in diameter and typically referred to as PM2.5 — pose the greatest threats to human health because they can travel deeper into the lungs than larger ones. 

Fine particulates found in smoke and other types of air pollution have been linked to damage in several organ systems, including the heart, brain and reproductive system. 

Certain air filters are capable of removing particulates from the air. The DIY air purifiers use a single MERV 13, commonly used in furnaces and available in Canada for less than $20 per filter, which need to be changed out regularly to maintain performance.

The 20” filters fit perfectly on the back of a 20” box fan, which costs about $35. Duct tape seals the filter to the fan, allowing air to be drawn through the filter and pushed out through the fan. To increase the air purifier’s efficiency, a “shroud” can be placed on the side of the fan opposite the filter. Made of duct tape or cardboard, the shroud blocks off the corners of the fan face, preventing air backflow.

It takes about 25 minutes to assemble one air purifier, which can be used immediately to clean the air in a space of up to 400 square feet. At the Victoria workshop, each table soon sports at least one, some of them decorated with colourful duct tape designs, others sleek and white. 

Community in the face of climate crisis

Among the workshop attendees is Victoria city councillor Dave Thompson, who is considering putting on a workshop in the neighbouring municipality.

“I wanted to see how it got organized,” Thompson says. “We’ve been very active on climate change and this is a piece we haven’t done yet.”

Many participants express a desire to do what they can in the face of the climate emergency.

“I feel like whatever we can do on an individual basis for ourselves and our families is always helpful,” Mary Jean, a nurse, tells fellow participants at her table.

Around the room, several signs feature prompts for conversations about climate change and climate action.

“According to polls, 80 per cent of Canadians are worried about climate, but we often think we’re the only ones,” Darnell says. “So what we’re providing is a place where we can come, do something positive, have fun and know that we’re among people and we can talk about it.”

Climate change is making wildfires more likely and more intense. Between 1948 and 2024, annual average temperatures in Canada increased by an average of 2.8 C, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada.

In B.C., wildfires have burned about 10 million hectares of land, more than in the previous six decades combined, according to the BC Wildfire Service. 

While Darnell feels discouraged about the state of climate action at the provincial and federal level, he sees the importance of people gathering. 

“A lot of the province, particularly to the east of us, is on fire at the moment and certainly in the rest of Canada as well. We are trying to provide practical help for people in the community,” he says. 

“People really need a place to come together and just say, ‘Am I crazy?’ No, you’re not. The behaviors of our economy, of our corporations and our government are crazy at the moment.”

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Summary

• On Wednesday, Toronto’s air quality was the worst in the world, as wildfire smoke from northern Ontario blanketed the city. 
• Research suggests even moderate levels of wildfire smoke can pose significant health risks.
• The federal government uses the Air Quality Health Index to communicate the severity of air pollution. The higher the index score, the more precautions people — especially those with health conditions — should take to stay safe and comfortable.

On Tuesday, Sol Mamakwa was driving to Thunder Bay, Ont., sunshine behind him, darkness ahead. 

The Ontario NDP MPP represents the large, remote northwestern Ontario region that is currently burning at extreme rates. More than 100 active wildfires in his riding have displaced six communities so far, and put dozens more under threat as temperatures reached close to 40 C on July 15.”

Meanwhile, choking smoke from these fires has spread more than 1,000 kilometres away, making Toronto’s air quality one of the worst in the world. (On Wednesday, it was even the worst in the world and hospital visits are on the rise.) 

Ontario is not the only province burning. Per the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System, 858 active forest fires across the country have impacted 2.4 million hectares to date; 111 of these fires are considered out of control. Such wildfires are fuelled by warmer-than-average temperatures and drier conditions which make forests more prone to burning and lead to fires spreading faster and further. 

This year, there have already been 483 wildfires recorded inside Ontario’s fire region, compared to 351 last year and the 10-year average of 320. The number of fires has been climbing sharply, with 31 new fires discovered in a single day earlier this week.

“It’s eerie to be in my part of Ontario right now,” Mamakwa told The Narwhal. “The situation is unprecedented, and it’s getting worse.”

As the number of wildfires grows, so do the health risks of smoke, which is more toxic than normal pollution as it can linger in the air for weeks and travel thousands of kilometres. 

“Wildfires in my region have gotten worse and are getting worse,” Mamakwa said. “It needs to be treated like the emergency it is. Every possible measure needs to be taken to keep our communities safe.” 

Here are some things you need to know.

Wildfire smoke may increase health risks

Wildfire smoke continues to cloud much of Ontario, forcing people to stay inside as much as possible. 

This kind of smoke has three main ingredients. There are gases, such as carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide, and volatile organic compounds, like benzene, toluene and butene. There is also particulate matter, which can include soot, dust, pollen and spores, as well as chemical particles. The particles are classified according to size and fine particulates — the really tiny ones, less than 2.5 microns in diameter and typically referred to as PM2.5 — pose the greatest threats to human health because they can travel deeper into the lungs than larger ones.

The more particulates in the air, the hazier it becomes. Extremely poor air quality due to wildfire smoke is hard to ignore, often resulting in new reports and public health warnings to stay indoors and take precautions.

Research suggests even moderate levels of wildfire smoke can pose significant health risks, especially for people with chronic lung diseases like asthma or emphysema that make them more vulnerable to negative health impacts. Fine particulates found in smoke and other types of air pollution have been linked to damage in several organ systems, including the heart, brain and reproductive system.According to a study by the Canadian Climate Institute, long-term exposure to increased toxic wildfire smoke is associated with an estimated 2,500 premature deaths annually in Canada. The study found wildfire smoke caused an estimated total of $5.3 billion in acute health damages between 2014 and 2025.

Most air quality advisories in Canada are now the result of wildfires, not other pollution

Wildfires are now the most common reason for air quality advisories, which are issued when concentrations of particulate matter and hazardous gases rise to levels that can negatively impact human health.

To help Canadians understand the health risks stemming from current air conditions, authorities use the Air Quality Health Index (AQHI), a colour-coded scale of one to 10 (with a plus sign if it’s off the charts), based on concentrations of ozone, particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide — the pollutants found to have the greatest health impacts. 

The higher the health index score, the greater the risk and the more precautions people — especially those with health conditions that make them vulnerable to poor air quality — may need to take to stay safe and comfortable. Avoiding polluted air by staying inside and using air purifiers is the most effective protection but avoiding strenuous outdoor activity and wearing a respirator can also help.

Small amounts of wildfire smoke also come with long-term health risks

At the University of British Columbia, physician Chris Carlsten is leading an effort to shed light on how wildfire smoke affects human health over the short and long term. His team was recently awarded a federal grant to support its work.

Carlsten said the team is focusing on chronic exposure to any amount of wildfire smoke versus acute exposure to high levels, even though the short-term peaks are “problematic.” 

“There may be more health effects, ultimately, from the more common but lower-concentration exposures,” Carlsten said in an interview. The team will also explore how wildfire smoke affects people differently based on age, sex, genetics, exercise habits and socio-economic status.

Better data will help improve public health policy and planning when wildfires flare, allowing people to make more informed choices about how to reduce their risk.

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Summary

• Alberta’s plan to build a pipeline to B.C.’s south coast includes a new terminal capable of servicing supertankers sailing into the Salish Sea.
• If the project goes ahead, very large crude carriers (VLCCs) capable of carrying up to 2.2 million barrels of oil could be loading up at Roberts Bank in the Fraser River estuary.
• A major expansion of the Roberts Bank superport is already in the works with potentially catastrophic impacts on local endangered species.

At the mouth of B.C.’s largest river, industrial development has encroached on important ecosystems for decades. Now, Canada’s plans to boost shipping infrastructure and create a new terminal for oil tankers could increase stress on endangered species and critical habitat.

The Fraser River is truly vast. Its tributaries carry water from nearly one-quarter of B.C., and its delta — the area where the river’s waters mingle with the Salish Sea — stretches from the Vancouver neighbourhood of Point Grey to the American settlement of Point Roberts.

In between, there are mudflats, sandy beaches, eelgrass beds and salt marshes that provide critical habitat for young salmon, migrating birds and countless other species.

“These are really productive environments for fish, for shellfish, for mammals, for birds,” Misty MacDuffee, a salmon biologist and director of Raincoast Conservation Foundation’s wild salmon program, says. 

Freshwater from the Fraser pushes all the way out to the Gulf Islands and the tidal flow from the Salish Sea can make its way all the way to Mission, MacDuffee told The Narwhal. That mingling of freshwater and saltwater creates crucial habitat for young salmon as they make the transition from river living to ocean swimming.“We’ve got all five species of salmon going into the Fraser. It’s Canada’s most productive salmon system — our largest Chinook producer — and it’s really important for the rearing and the migrations of adult and juvenile salmon.”This region has long been subject to development, from canneries and agriculture, to airports and port infrastructure. But now the pressure is ramping up. 

The pipeline pivot to Roberts Bank

On July 2, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced federal support for $10 billion in infrastructure upgrades at the Roberts Bank superport as part of a memorandum of understanding with B.C. 

In the agreement, the federal government also pledged to preserve the ban on oil tankers transiting the waters near B.C.’s North Coast. Keeping the tanker ban in place “without alteration, suspension or narrowing of scope,” as the agreement states, removed the port at Prince Rupert as an option for the terminus of Alberta’s proposed pipeline. Prince Rupert is Canada’s deepest natural harbour, capable of accommodating very large crude carriers (VLCCs), huge tanker ships capable of carrying up to 2.2 million barrels of oil — three times as much as the largest oil tankers currently servicing the Trans Mountain pipeline.

Later the same day, Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced plans for a new West Coast pipeline (funded primarily by state-owned pipeline company Trans Mountain), which would follow the same route as the current Trans Mountain pipeline with one key difference: it would detour further south to end at Roberts Bank, instead of in Burnaby. 

Alberta’s submission to the federal Major Projects Office includes a two-berth terminal able to serve very large crude carriers. These ships are 330 metres long — that’s more than three World Cup soccer pitches laid end to end — and have a fully loaded draft of 20 metres. To reach water deep enough for these massive vessels to float in, the terminal’s causeway and jetty would extend about five kilometres out into the Strait of Georgia.

If the project goes ahead, it would be the first time that oil tankers of this size have ever docked in B.C. The largest tankers that can fit beneath the Second Narrows bridge to service Westridge Marine Terminal — the current terminus of the Trans Mountain pipeline — are Aframax tankers, which have a maximum capacity of 800,000 barrels of oil. Currently, even those tankers can only be filled to about 80 per cent, so the port authority has applied to dredge Burrard Inlet to make room for larger loads (a plan the Tsleil–Waututh Nation is fighting). 

On land, the proposed oil terminal would take up 260 hectares — nearly two-thirds the size of Stanley Park. About half of that space would be covered with 15 storage tanks capable of holding 6.5 million barrels.Roberts Bank’s location — hemmed by wetlands, Tsawwassen First Nation treaty lands, parcels in the Agricultural Land Reserve and residential neighbourhoods — raises questions about whether there is enough room for Alberta’s proposal. The Major Projects Office did not respond when asked whether any assessments about fitting the proposed tanker terminal in that location have been completed.A question about whether the oil tanker terminal could be built in conjunction with the proposed port expansion or would have to wait until Roberts Bank Terminal 2 is complete also went unanswered.

The Fraser River estuary has lost 85 per cent of its salmon habitat to the effects of development and there are already plans to double the size of the terminal.

MacDuffee described the estuary as an “incredible natural asset” that has economic and environmental value.

“It supports these vibrant ecosystems that people are travelling from all over the world to visit, to see the Salish Sea, to see whales, to see birds, to see these migrations, to see these special places and here we are moving to take this incredible asset and turn it into an industrial sacrifice zone.”

Tanker terminal piles risk on top of risk

Roberts Bank Terminal 2, as the $3.5-billion planned port expansion is known, would increase the port’s container capacity by 50 per cent. The 2020 federal assessment of Roberts Bank Terminal 2 concluded the expansion’s impact on wetland function, Chinook and chum salmon and southern resident killer whales “is high in magnitude, permanent and irreversible.” In 2023, the federal cabinet concluded the public interest in the port expansion superseded those impacts and approved the project, subject to nearly 400 conditions.

In 2025, the Vancouver Port Authority submitted Roberts Bank Terminal 2 to the Major Projects Office, hoping to see it designated a “nation-building project” and fast-tracked for final approvals. That designation would mean streamlined regulatory processes and assessments.

Alberta’s proposal will also be evaluated by the Major Projects Office. The office did not respond to a question about whether the tanker terminal will be assessed to determine the potential cumulative effects of the project on the Fraser River estuary and Salish Sea.

The proposal to add another terminal and introduce oil supertankers to the Fraser estuary is raising concerns amongst B.C. environmentalists.

“This is supercharging the impact in case of an accident,” Anna Barford, Stand.earth’s oceans campaigner, said. “If we have a spill, if there is a critical problem, if one of these ships loses power and runs aground, we’re looking at incredible devastation in an area that is wildly biodiverse … at the mouth of a very important salmon-bearing river.”

The logistics of bringing such large vessels into the crowded waters of the Salish Sea is also a concern, Barford added.For MacDuffee, the tanker terminal proposal flies in the face of the federal government’s acknowledgement of the Fraser estuary’s importance. With more than $2 million in federal funds, Raincoast has been working to restore salmon habitat degraded by marine infrastructure.

“We’re allowing the flow of water — of nutrients, of sediment, of fish, of everything — back onto Sturgeon Bank, trying to restore the function of this estuary and the opportunity for rearing salmon,” MacDuffee told The Narwhal.

Port expansion poses significant risk to endangered species and critical habitat

Even without adding an oil tanker terminal to the mix, Roberts Bank Terminal 2’s impact on endangered species could be catastrophic, Barford said. 

“We’re looking at increased underwater noise, which we know is very difficult for fish and for creatures like southern resident killer whales that use echolocation to find their food.” 

More than 100 species in the Fraser River estuary are at risk of local extinction by 2045, a 2022 study found. At-risk species include the southern resident orca, whose population was just 74 individuals as of last year’s census. 

Many migrating bird species, including the western sandpiper, could also be negatively impacted by the terminal expansion. During their annual migration from Peru to Alaska, western sandpipers stop in the Fraser estuary, where they fuel up on biofilm, communities of microorganisms that flourish on the estuary’s mudflats. Losing access to this crucial food source would be a significant blow to western sandpipers and the many other migratory bird species.

“Roberts Bank is critical habitat,” Barford said. “Just because it looks muddy … doesn’t mean that it isn’t a paradise for endangered and migratory species.”

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Summary

• B.C. is a world-leading mushroom producer with much of the provincial crop being exported to the United States.
• Recently, the United States Department of Commerce added tariffs to Canadian-grown mushrooms on the grounds they receive unfair government subsidies.
• One B.C.-based mushroom farm is fighting the tariffs, but more could be coming by the end of the year.

Mushrooms may not be the first crop that comes to mind when you think of high-tech agriculture. But in B.C., Agaricus bisporus — the fungal species sold in grocery stores as button mushrooms, creminis and portobellos — are grown using cutting-edge techniques.

“If you go back 10 or 15 years, you would travel to Holland to find the most productive, leading-edge mushroom facilities in the world,” Lewis Macleod, CEO of South Mill Champs Mushrooms, said in an interview with The Narwhal. “Today, you travel to Holland and British Columbia.”

In 2017, Pennsylvania-based South Mill merged with Aldergrove-based Champ’s Mushrooms to form South Mill Champs. The company now supplies more B.C-grown mushrooms to the U.S. market than any other, around 22,675 tonnes per year. 

Before B.C.’s mushroom tech boom, farms often mimicked more natural growing conditions. Modern B.C. farms use what’s called the Dutch method: metal shelves heaped with a mixture of manure and straw to cultivate their crops. The mushrooms are grown in air-tight facilities that are closely controlled for temperature and humidity. Unlike other indoor crops, mushrooms don’t need much light to grow. The buildings are dim, the opposite of brightly lit commercial greenhouses. This method results in faster growing, better quality mushrooms and fewer pests, according to Macleod. But it’s not as common in the U.S.

Nearly all Canadian mushroom exports — 98 per cent in 2024 — are sold in the U.S. As B.C.’s technologically advanced mushroom industry has grown into a global leader, some American producers have accused Canadian growers of benefiting from unfair government subsidies. It’s set off a trade dispute that could reshape the cross-border market.

B.C. mushroom trade sparks U.S. concerns

If you ask B.C. Agriculture Minister Lana Popham, mushrooms are among the most unique of the province’s commercial crops.

“They have to be harvested 24 hours a day and they grow in the dark,” Popham said in an interview. “There’s been a lot of technology that’s been coming around, a lot of innovation that is allowing for different types of harvesting [and] different types of lighting conditions.”

This innovation may be part of what sparked a trade complaint from a group of U.S. mushroom producers last year.

A September 2025 petition to the U.S. Department of Commerce from the Fresh Mushrooms Fair Trade Coalition argued fresh Canadian mushrooms are being “unfairly” subsidized by government programs.

“Canadian producers are exporting fresh mushrooms to the United States at prices below fair value and are benefiting from countervailable subsidies provided by the government of Canada,” the petition says. “These practices have resulted in significant negative impacts on U.S. mushroom growers and packers, including lost sales, depressed prices and declining profitability.” 

In fact, none of the subsidies provided by Canadian governments specifically target the mushroom industry and are instead directed at farmers generally.

But in May, the Commerce Department agreed with the U.S. petitioners and applied duties on some Canadian mushroom producers. The preliminary decision concluded Canadian governments do unfairly subsidize mushroom production. 

For now, about two dozen Canadian mushroom producers are facing a 2.84 per cent tariff on the mushrooms they sell in the U.S.

South Mill Champs is contesting the Commerce Department’s decision, which Mushrooms Canada, the national trade association representing Canadian mushroom growers, called “deeply flawed.”

“It’s using regulatory tactics to stifle healthy competition,” Macleod said.

Champ’s Mushrooms was handed a 1.62 per cent tariff by the Commerce Department. 

The Commerce Department has yet to decide on whether to hit Canadian mushrooms with anti-dumping duties, a type of tariff applied to imported goods that are being sold at lower prices, as a way to protect domestic producers.

Government subsidies aren’t specific to mushrooms — and U.S. growers get them too

There’s no denying Canadian mushroom growers receive support from the government. B.C. producers do not have to pay provincial sales tax on equipment for their businesses and can also access grant programs that support agricultural operations.

The province also offers funding to help farms cover the cost of adopting new technologies, but Popham pointed out none of the province’s programs are targeted specifically at bolstering B.C. mushrooms.

“It’s not specific at all to the mushroom industry,” Popham said. “It’s just the way we support farmers in B.C.”

And that means the Fresh Mushrooms Fair Trade Coalition’s complaint lacks merit under U.S. trade law, according to Mushrooms Canada CEO Ryan Koeslag.

“It is difficult to reconcile Commerce’s preliminary approach with the fact that comparable agricultural tax treatment exists in the United States,” Koeslag said in a statement after the Commerce Department’s preliminary duties were announced. “Canadian mushroom growers are not receiving special treatment. They are operating under ordinary rules that apply to farmers.”

The Commerce Department did not respond to questions about these criticisms of its decision and whether it will assess tax exemptions available to U.S. mushroom farmers before reaching its final decision on the tariffs. The Narwhal also contacted Giorgio Fresh Co., one of the U.S. companies that formed the Fresh Mushrooms Fair Trade Coalition, for comment but did not receive a response.

Macleod doesn’t believe the trade complaint is really about subsidy programs at all.

“This case is not about the U.S. versus Canada — it’s about companies who have invested in new infrastructure and those who haven’t invested in new infrastructure,” he said.

Most Canadian-grown mushrooms are grown using the Dutch method, Macleod explained. This technique gives growers large, reliable yields quickly, he added, while also reducing pest pressures and creating mushrooms that consumers prefer.

In the U.S., the majority of mushrooms are grown on wood shelves, an older technique that isn’t as efficient as the Dutch method.

Growing mushrooms on wood makes it “very hard to consistently produce a fine-looking mushroom and ensure disease doesn’t at times of the year really damage the crop,” Macleod said.

South Mill Champs’ U.S. operations have learned a lot about the benefits of modern mushroom growing from their Canadian counterparts, he added.

Switching from wood-based cultivation to the Dutch method isn’t cheap, though government grant programs and tax exemptions can help take the edge off the costs. Macleod said it takes years for a mushroom farm to see a return on investment into a whole new cultivation set-up. But the new technology can reduce ongoing costs, increase revenue and open the door to further technological innovation, he added. 

With new cultivation systems in place, Popham said some B.C. farms are introducing robots to harvest their mushrooms.

“Technology is taking over what I would call mundane tasks,” she said, adding human workers are still needed to oversee the machines.

“They don’t expect, as they bring in technology, to see displacement of labour. It’s adding to a better quality of workplace, which is really cool.”

Robots can’t harvest mushrooms grown using wood-based shelving, Macleod said, potentially putting old-style producers at even more of a disadvantage.

“If you don’t have new infrastructure, you have to build from scratch,” he said.

Final decision on additional cross-border costs for B.C. mushroom growers could take months

While additional duties on Canadian mushrooms could be announced within weeks, a final determination by the U.S. Department of Commerce may not come for months. Macleod is hopeful the final determination will be that Canadian-grown mushrooms do not harm U.S. producers.

“I really do not think less mushrooms will be exported from Canada into the U.S.,” he said. “Duties paid will mean ultimately the consumer pays more for mushrooms, which is bad for the consumer and the industry.”

Popham believes that B.C.-grown mushrooms are popular because of the industry’s embrace of innovation and its proximity to the U.S. market.

“I hope that what results from this most recent challenge is that there’s an acknowledgement that we’re just doing it really, really well,” she said.

At a time when many British Columbians want to support locally grown food, mushrooms are a perfect choice, she added.

“When we talk about being more resilient and growing more at home, mushrooms have been there the whole time,”Popham said. “I think that when consumers understand how big of an industry it is here and I think that this is another feather in our cap.”

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Summary

• With demand for electricity rising fast, BC Hydro says it needs natural gas power plants to keep operating to ensure the province has enough power.
• Island Generation, a natural gas plant in Campbell River, B.C., was supposed to be decommissioned but BC Hydro is now seeking to renew its contract as the province needs the power. 
• Energy Minister Adrian Dix said Island Generation is facing supply issues due to the Squamish-based Woodfibre LNG project. As the project is not yet operational, Dix’s comments have confused and surprised some politicians and experts.

When a heat wave hits Vancouver Island, residents turn up their air conditioning, flick on fans or adjust their heat pumps. Demand for electricity spikes. That’s also true during cold snaps and long, dark winter nights when more electricity is needed to keep homes lit and warm.

It’s on those days of extreme electricity demand that a Campbell River power plant fuelled by natural gas is most likely to fire up. Island Generation, owned by Capital Power, is one of a handful of facilities in B.C. that use natural gas to produce electricity. It’s what is known as a peaker plant, mostly called on to generate power at times of peak demand.

With a capacity of 275 megawatts, Island Generation can create enough electricity to power about 125,000 homes. It accounts for about one-quarter of all the electricity that can be produced on Vancouver Island. Only about 40 per cent of the electricity used on the island is generated locally. The rest comes from the mainland, transmitted via cables laid across the bed of the Salish Sea.

Over the past five years, Island Generation has operated an average of 15 days per year, according to Adrian Dix, B.C.’s minister of energy and climate solutions.

But, the facility has been having trouble getting the gas it needs to generate electricity at critical times, Dix told members of the B.C. Conservative caucus on April 23. He said the supposed natural gas supply issue is connected to liquefied natural gas (LNG) production. 

“The reason why the supply of gas is affected is that gas is going to a project called Woodfibre LNG in Squamish. That has been the issue between ourselves and Capital Power,” he said. 

Dix’s statement surprised and puzzled the politicians and experts The Narwhal spoke to. Woodfibre LNG is still under construction until at least next year. Until then, there’s no obvious reason the Squamish facility would be using gas that would otherwise go to Island Generation. 

But questions to the Energy Ministry, Island Generation and Woodfibre LNG mostly went unanswered. None provided information needed to clarify the situation with Island Generation’s gas supply.

“Woodfibre LNG will be purchasing gas in the future once the facility is operational,” a spokesperson for the facility said in response to multiple emails and questions, an answer that does not directly address whether the facility is currently buying natural gas, as the minister implied.

The Energy Ministry did not respond to The Narwhal’s request for an interview with Dix or to specific questions about the ministry’s knowledge about Island Generation’s gas supply or its efforts to ensure the facility will be able to get the gas it needs to operate.

Green Party MLA Jeremy Valeriote, who represents the Vancouver-Sea to Sky riding where Woodfibre LNG is located, told The Narwhal he has not been able to clarify Dix’s comments.

“I’m just flagging for the public that it’s been hard for either of us to get any public information on this,” Valeriote said.

‘Where would that extra energy come from?’

BC Hydro’s contract with Capital Power was set to end in October 2026, but it recently applied to the BC Utilities Commission for a new agreement. The application mentions both Island Generation and the McMahon Cogeneration facility in Taylor, B.C., near the heart of the province’s oil and gas industry. The two gas-fired plants could help BC Hydro meet about 80 per cent of a 500-megawatt electricity shortfall it forecasts will materialize by 2030.

Demand for electricity has been rising rapidly in B.C., driven partly by large industrial customers such as LNG terminals and mining operations. BC Hydro has been under pressure to find efficiencies in its system and bring on new generating capacity with an emphasis on renewable sources such as wind and solar.

Meanwhile, the provincial government has been working to usher in an LNG boom, which could put pressure on the electrical grid and increase competition for natural gas.

Valeriote noted BC Hydro is supposed to be phasing out fossil fuel electricity generation, not seeking new contracts with gas-fired plants.

“It’s pretty concerning when we talk about firing up what should have been a decommissioned gas plant on the island that may not even have gas … in those critical, peak times,” he said.

BC Hydro’s submission to the utilities commission argues the Clean Energy Act, which requires it to generate and purchase enough energy to meet demand, trumps the regulations regarding phasing out fossil fuels. 

B.C. Conservative MLA Larry Neufeld wants to know what would happen if Island Generation were unable to operate during a demand peak.

“Where would that extra energy come from?” Neufeld, who serves as his party’s critic for oil, gas and LNG, said. 

“Would that be siphoned off of the Lower Mainland? Would it be imported? Those are excellent questions that the minister would be responsible to answer.”

B.C.’s LNG push and electricity demand

By 2030, there could be three LNG facilities operating in B.C. and a huge increase in demand for natural gas. In May, the Canadian government celebrated an agreement that could see one of them, Ksi Lisims LNG, sell one million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) per year to Germany, starting sometime in the 2030s.

Another is LNG Canada, located on B.C.’s coast, the first large-scale LNG export facility in the country. 

It is already using up a huge amount of gas to operate: last year, LNG Canada received more than 3.6 billion cubic metres of natural gas. Nearly 10 per cent of what it burned off was because of an issue with one of the flare stacks, as The Narwhal previously reported.

And, it might eventually use much more. Earlier this month, B.C. Premier David Eby, federal Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson and LNG Canada CEO Chris Cooper held a press conference about a potential second phase of the project.

The newsiness of this announcement — trumpeting another small step toward a final commitment to proceed — was so thin one reporter asked why a press conference had been called at all. But Phase 2 could make a big difference to the province’s energy supply, as LNG Canada’s demand for natural gas could double as its production capacity rises to 28 million tonnes of LNG per year.

Woodfibre LNG will have a much smaller production capacity. It is expected to produce 2.1 million tonnes of LNG per year and will need about 7.7 million cubic metres of natural gas to do so. That gas will be supplied via a new pipeline branch off the Eagle Mountain pipeline, which currently supplies Vancouver Island, including the Island Generation station.

FortisBC is in the process of building that new section of Eagle Mountain as well as upgrading the section of the pipeline that leads into Squamish. A spokesperson for the company said in a statement that Fortis “regularly assesses system capacity and plans for growth and changing regional needs.”

“FortisBC can meet the needs of existing customers on Vancouver Island and we are continuing to deliver natural gas service in line with our contractual agreements,” the spokesperson said.

The Narwhal also asked Capital Power for an interview to discuss the minister’s comments. In response, a company spokesperson sent a two-sentence statement.

“Capital Power and BC Hydro are engaged in discussions around the future of the Island Generation facility in Campbell River,” the statement said. “Our focus is always to ensure we support the reliable, safe delivery of the power needs of British Columbians.”

A follow-up email with the same questions The Narwhal sent to the Energy Ministry went unanswered.

Conservative MLA Neufeld said British Columbians should not have to worry about a shortage of natural gas, even with a large increase in demand.

“Having spent over 30 years in the industry in northeast British Columbia, I will state that it is my opinion that that is a non-issue,” Neufeld told The Narwhal.

“There is far more than enough natural gas in the ground … we don’t have to be concerned about a supply crunch. Whether that is taken advantage of properly by government and by regulation is another question for the minister.”

But as British Columbians brace for a summer of heat waves and rising electricity demands, the province’s ability to keep power flowing becomes an increasingly important question.

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