At recess, Abby Burtnick watches her Grade 4 and 5 students play in the schoolyard that borders an aspen and spruce forest in the Village of Haines Junction, Yukon. 

Known as Dakwäkäda by the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, meaning “high cache” in Southern Tutchone, the valley is hemmed in by the glacier-capped mountains of neighbouring Kluane National Park and Reserve.

Burtnick’s students “check in,” scanning the bush as they play. From an early age, kids in Haines Junction are taught to confirm there are no grizzly bears or black bears around. Growing up in one of the densest grizzly bear corridors in Yukon — with a range of 14 to 40 grizzly bears per 1,000 square kilometres — kids learn young about the “things you should do in bear country and the things you shouldn’t do,” Burtnick says.

Most kids are unfazed when conservation officers call the school because there’s a bear in the area. When the rules are respected, grizzlies “don’t really cause issues,” Burtnick says. “They just exist.”

In 2024, not one but six grizzly bears were spotted along the five-kilometre trail of the school’s annual cross-country race that loops through a forested ravine. Conservation officers and wildland firefighters fanned out along the race route to ensure that the bears stayed off the trail. Burtnick was at the start-line, holding back 200 students, when she overheard a radio call about a grizzly on the race trail, followed by an update of two grizzlies mating.

The school delayed the race for an hour to give the grizzlies space to breed and move on. It’s the kind of thing that “only happens in the movies,” Burtnick says with a laugh. Or, in Haines Junction.

Communities in B.C. and Alberta are reporting higher rates of human-grizzly interactions and conflict — due, in part, to climate change, shifting food availability and habitat loss, along with more people living and recreating on the landscape. There are reactions ranging from fear to outright intolerance from communities who aren’t accustomed to sharing space with one of Canada’s largest apex predator species. Recently, authorities confirmed that two male subadult grizzly bears had been illegally shot along a highway near Sundre, Alta. 

Meanwhile, the Village of Haines Junction has quietly coexisted with grizzly bears for decades. For First Nations people, millennia. 

Here, people are proud — and even protective, Burtnick says — of the grizzly bears who den in the mountains and wander down to gorge on plants and berries in the valley below.

Grizzly bears in Haines Junction aren’t sold as a tourist commodity in the same way they are in other Canadian towns that overlap with bears — like Banff, Alta., or Churchill, Man. — and residents say they prefer it this way. They don’t want the “bear jams” that crowd highways down south and can lead to grizzlies being killed by vehicle traffic, Burtnick says.

So how does this small mountain community in southwest Yukon make it work? 

‘This is their land’

When John Fingland meets a grizzly bear on a trail, he heeds advice from Elders. He speaks calmly to the bear, addressing him as “Ä́’sía,” the Southern Tutchone word for “grandfather.”

“Bears are very spiritual to us. We treat them like human beings,” Fingland, a member of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, says.

Fingland works as a guide and storyteller at the Da Kų Cultural Centre, which showcases his First Nation’s history and culture in Haines Junction. The village was established in 1942 with the construction of the Alaska Highway, which carves east and west through the valley. But the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, along with the Kluane First Nation and White River First Nation, hunted, fished and travelled through the region for millennia before that.

There’s a kind of code of conduct that develops when you’ve lived so closely with grizzlies for 10,000 years. Fingland doesn’t speak badly or make jokes about bears. He even steps around piles of scat. Stepping over would be considered disrespectful — a show of dominance, he explains.

“We have a very strong belief that this is their land,” Fingland says. But not everyone has the same relationship with bears — or even a relationship at all. Especially tourists. Every summer, upwards of 40,000 people flow through Haines Junction on their way to Kluane National Park — home to the majority of Canada’s tallest mountains — to camp, paddle on Kluane Lake or hike to the Kaskawulsh Glacier.

At the village welcome centre, visitors are directed to the local bakery to buy or rent cans of bear spray. Bear spray contains capsaicin, the chemical compound that gives chili peppers their burning heat, and is considered highly effective at deterring aggressive bear behaviour. A study of 83 incidents of bear spray use from 1985 to 2006 showed 98 per cent of people who carried bear spray in close-range incidents were uninjured. Outside the bakery, there’s a sign with a QR code that links to online instructions for using bear spray. Inside, baristas whip up lattes, and offer essential tips to tourists: Do not spray into the wind.

Some residents carry it, too, even if they’re just out for a stroll. Marguerite Richard, who’s lived in Haines Junction since 1988, says she doesn’t need to see bears to know that they’re around. That’s not to say she’s “bearanoid,” she adds, but rather “situationally aware.” 

While walking, or trail running, Richard doesn’t wear ear buds. She stays alert. In town, Richard sometimes finds grizzly tracks or piles of scat. She’ll even take a closer look to get a read on how recently the bear was around, and what it was feeding on. 

“Coexistence is like a recipe, but it isn’t a teaspoon of this or that,” Richard says. It’s about risk assessment and modifying her own behaviours based on the season, or the bears she encounters.

Richard relies on reports from neighbours and a community-run Facebook page, where a typical photo post might include the caption, “Grizzly out between the airport road and Pine Lake, don’t use the trail!” 

The valley is a smorgasbord for bears. In early spring, grizzlies feed on green grass, dandelions and alpine sweetvetch, known aptly as “bear root,” along the highway. If they get the chance, they’ll prey on moose, sheep or caribou calves, along with smaller mammals like ground squirrels. Berries ripen through the summer into early fall as grizzlies undergo a metabolic state called hyperphagia, an extreme desire to pack on the calories.

It’s when bears are given a chance to habituate to anthropogenic food sources — including garbage, livestock, meat caches or domestic fruit bushes, that trouble comes knocking on people’s doors in Haines Junction. “That’s a really dangerous situation for everybody and that bear is going to die,” Richard says, point-blank.

That’s one law of living with grizzlies that everyone in Haines Junction seems to understand is non-negotiable: a fed bear is a dead bear.

Prevention better than the alternatives

Perhaps no one knows grizzly bears better in Haines Junction than the conservation officers tasked with managing them. Fortunately, according to Russel Oborne, a conservation officer with the Yukon government, responding to a case of food-conditioned grizzlies is a rare occurrence in Haines Junction.

For 26 years, Oborne has lived and worked in various Yukon communities. Nineteen of those years he’s spent in Haines Junction. While every local community is unique in their cultural approach to living with wildlife, he says Haines Junction is one of the most tolerant of coexisting with grizzly bears.

“People are very aware that they can’t have standing garbage on their properties,” Oborne says. “They really understand what you need to do to keep the community safe and keep the bears safe.”

He points to cooperation between the Village of Haines Junction, Yukon government, First Nations governments and Parks Canada to prevent food habituation. They’ve identified areas for potential risk, including a new bike park for youth, where they plan to uproot female soapberry plants — only the female plants produce fruit — this summer.

While agriculture and ranch lands can be “ecological traps” for carnivores, Oborne says the number of farm-related conflicts in Haines Junction are very low. Nataschaa Chatterton lives adjacent to a grizzly bear hot spot along the Alaska Highway, and raises goats, horses and dairy cows, along with free-range chickens. “We’ve never felt any threat,” she says.

Occasionally, she’ll find bear scat along the perimeter of the property. But she’s never had a negative interaction with a grizzly bear. She credits her two land guardian dogs, Pyrenees mixes, for keeping the bears at bay. “I know when there’s a bear around because their bark has a different tone,” she says. “It goes to a deeper tone — it’s a bigger sound.”

Licensed hunters can legally harvest one grizzly bear every three years in the Yukon, however females with cubs are off limits and roadside hunting is prohibited in some areas. In a recent government survey of 700 resident hunters, nearly half indicated that they’d only harvest a grizzly bear in a conflict situation. The majority of hunters reported efforts to mitigate such a scenario with a grizzly, including that after a successful hunt, they’d take the meat only and leave behind the gut-pile — the latter which is strong-smelling and a major bear attractant.

Yukon Conservation, along with Champagne and Aishihik First Nations and Kluane First Nation, have mobile electric fencing units that hunters can temporarily use while they process the meat, Oborne says. 

“People will hang a moose for about a week before they cut it up,” he says. “Of course, it’s just this delicious-smelling dead moose to a grizzly bear.”

There have been incidents in the past with grizzlies hanging around unfenced meat caches. Oborne advises people to process and get the meat into freezers, as quickly as possible, and remove bones and other attractants. “Usually, that solves the problem,” he says.

If it doesn’t, Oborne adds, there are protocols in place to capture and relocate bears — if they haven’t shown aggression towards people. Worst-case scenario, and an outcome that nobody wants, Oborne says, they euthanize. “It’s a really hard cycle to break with the bears once they’re into attractants.”

While relocation is often perceived by the public as a “good news story,” Oborne says, most conservation officers know that there’s a high probability of the grizzly wandering back, especially if it’s a male. Even if it’s been moved 300 kilometres or more from the original location. Sometimes bears return in worse body condition, even more motivated to find food.

Relocation and euthanization are a last resort, Oborne says. He encourages residents to prevent food conditioning from occurring in the first place by keeping a clean property, or camp. “The proactive is way better than the reactive course of action,” he says.

Practical steps Haines Junction has taken to support grizzly bear coexistence

A gang of glossy black ravens perch on a small mountain of garbage at the Haines Junction landfill. 

Beyond the heaps of trash, you can make out a five-foot-tall fence — consisting of seven steel wires — running around the entire perimeter of the dump. A current of 10,000 volts runs through those wires: one touch to a curious bear’s snout, and ZAP! It’s an effective way to teach a bear you’re not welcome here without harming it.

In 1992, Haines Junction became the first Yukon community to electrify its garbage dump, Dan Drummond says. Drummond, a retired conservation officer who worked here from 1986 to 2007, says previously “all the dumps were open to all wildlife.” Black bears frequented the dump during the summer, while grizzly bears — most often big males who wandered over from Kluane — tended to dominate in early to late fall. Locals and tourists also used to flock there to take photographs. The combination of attractants and attention led bears to become dangerously habituated to people. 

“Human waste was available to bears at the bear’s discretion,” Drummond says. “Bears died at an unreasonable rate because of their proximity to people and people’s garbage.”

Drummond was a part of the village’s effort to secure funding and install a trial 300-metre electric fence around the pit. It was part of a broader North America-wide movement from the late 1970s to early 1990s to improve bear management practices around garbage dumps in high-density wildlife areas. 

The fence was immediately effective, Drummond says. One zap and the bears got the point. 

The community of Faro followed suit, then Whitehorse, he says. Today, all communities in the Yukon have electric fences installed around their landfills, or waste facilities. 

Following the dump enclosure, however, many bears had to be put down. Mature bears who’d spent their entire life gorging on garbage were conditioned to source it elsewhere. Some diverted to the neighbouring community of Champagne to raid meat caches and outdoor freezers, Drummond says. Dozens were shot.

Some residents remember the story of a grizzly, dubbed the “burglar bear,” smashing through a residential door at night, tempted by a Thanksgiving turkey carcass left in a garbage bag. The only barrier between the bear and the owner and her two young children was a plastic baby gate. Quietly, she and her children escaped through the bedroom window. Later, it was determined the same bear had broken into cabins along Dezadeash Lake, more than 40 kilometres away.

Drummond shot the burglar bear from a helicopter, he says.

Once you “break the cycle” with those food-conditioned bears, “you’re dealing with wild bears, and it’s not so hard to keep them out of the dump.”

Two years ago, the Haines Junction dump expanded into a regional waste facility. There’s a recycling depot, which will soon be joined by a composter, all enclosed by an electric fence. The only wildlife spotted inside, an attendant says, are eagles and ravens. 

They haven’t had an issue with a bear in nearly a decade.

The laws of living with grizzlies

Ellen Bielawski has stopped counting how many grizzlies she’s seen near her off-grid cabin, situated in a dense spruce forest west of Haines Junction toward the Alsek Valley. 

But some encounters stand out, including the night she stepped outside to brush her teeth and looked up to see a mother grizzly and her two yearling cubs, less than 20 metres away. Shocked, everything Bielawski knew about bear encounters went flying out the window. “Did I remember to face the bear? I ran into the cabin with my electric toothbrush,” she laughs.

The retired archeologist and professor has lived here for the past 20 years. She previously worked in the Arctic in polar bear country, where she slept in a tent with a loaded rifle by her side.

But here, grizzly bears tend to keep to themselves, Bielawski says. 

“People have always said to me, ‘Aren’t you afraid of bears?’ And I say, ‘I’m way less afraid of bears than I am being a woman alone in a parkade in the city.’ ”

Recently, she and her husband cut down and cleared trees and bushes within 30 metres around the cabin to make it less susceptible to wildfires. The catch-22 is an increase in grizzly susceptibility, as disturbed forest promotes the fresh growth of bear foods like grass and berries. But the upside is that it’s now easier to see if a grizzly bear is around, Bielawski says, and they can avoid surprise encounters.

She’s extra cautious in the spring when bears come out of the den, motivated to find food and mate, and fall, when bears are preparing to hibernate. “I worry far more about November bears than I do the rest of the year,” she says. In late November 2018, a woman and her baby were fatally attacked at their remote trapping cabin in east-central Yukon by an emaciated grizzly bear that hadn’t yet denned. Authorities determined that the bear didn’t have enough body fat to hibernate. 

Bielawski avoids recreating at dawn or dusk, when grizzlies tend to be more active. Even walking out to the clothesline, less than ten metres away from her cabin, she carries an air-horn on one hip and bear spray on the other.

But the Alsek Valley is notoriously windy, with katabatic winds barreling through the valley at 100 kilometres an hour. It’s not an ideal place to detonate a can of pepper spray.

She’d like to see more workshops that allow participants the chance to fire an inert can of bear spray, and to understand how many seconds the contents of a can lasts for (roughly eight seconds). Adrenaline, Bielawski says, has the potential to take over in human-bear encounters. “It’s flight or fight,” she says. 

Although bear attacks are rare in Haines Junction, they have occurred in the past. On June 30, 2024, a resident was jogging with her dog along the Pine Lake trail which runs along the highway, east of town, when she came upon multiple grizzlies. There had been many sightings of family groups and courting pairs, grazing on grasses in the ditch, that spring, Oborne tells me. The dog broke free from its leash and triggered a defensive attack by one of the bears, who then turned on the jogger, according to a statement made by Yukon Conservation.

The jogger was critically mauled and required hospitalization, but survived — along with the dog. A recent study of human-bear conflicts found “the presence of a dog more than doubled the odds of a bear conflict.”

Conservation officers put down three bears. Weeks later, the willows along the trail were cleared and mulched to improve visibility along the trail. Yukon Conservation, along with the village council, also put up a cautionary sign that reads: “This path is a high-use area for grizzly bears. Encounters are likely.” It encourages people to carry bear spray and keep dogs leashed. 

One source described the 2024 attack as a “lightning rod” for conversation in the community, questioning why a recreational trail would be built through a well-known grizzly bear corridor — and why the jogger, a resident, chose to run late in the evening, without bear spray. Others expressed frustration that the bears were euthanized when it had been a defensive attack. Another indicated support for the conservation officers’ call. Ultimately, everyone was relieved that the individual survived. 

But no one raised the question of whether or not grizzlies belong.

Bear 141

As Burtnick drives to school, she scans the ditches for a small female grizzly bear that has been showing up in the community every spring since 2023. She’s easy to identify due to a visible scar around her neck where a wire had been wrapped. The grizzly has become colloquially known to people as “Snare Bear,” Burtnick says. 

To conservation officers, she’s known as Bear 141, Oborne says. In 2023, he and his colleagues attempted to capture the small grizzly and remove the wire from her neck, but after a few days, she disappeared. He didn’t think she’d survive the winter. 

Much to his surprise, Bear 141 returned in the spring of 2024, grazing comfortably beside the highway. Fortunately, the wire had fallen off. Although she hadn’t displayed any aggression, or caused any issues, they decided to relocate her 200 kilometres northwest of town near the Donjek River — for her own safety, Oborne says.

“Of course, she came right back to Haines Junction.” 

But the small female kept to herself and didn’t cause any trouble, so they let her stay. Last year, Burtnick and fellow teachers traded stories of their Bear 141 sightings, routinely spotted grazing in her habitual location along the same recreational trail where the attack occurred. 

“I actually think they’ve got this attachment to her,” Burtnick says, adding that residents feel protective of her when tourists idle in their vehicles, along the shoulder of the highway, taking photographs of the grizzly. “They want her to stay wild,” Burtnick says.

 By late June, no one had reported seeing Bear 141 yet this year. But if the small grizzly does amble back to her favourite spot along the recreational trail again, says Oborne, they’ll leave her be.

“She’s doing what a bear should do.”

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“I’m often mind-blown when I see the photo show up on my camera,” Sonny Parker tells me. He lives in the small town of Haines Junction, Yukon, alongside one of the largest populations of grizzly bears in the territory. 

In recent years, Parker has become a bit obsessed with camera traps — remote cameras that allow him to capture images of wildlife when he’s not there. The thing about these kinds of cameras is a lot of the photos are “just garbage,” he tells me.

“Inevitably … you put all this effort and time into setting them up and in certain ways, and then often come back and check them two weeks later, only to find out there was a twig in front of them being blown by the wind and triggering the camera.”

The Narwhal hired Parker to photograph grizzly bears and the people who call Haines Junction home for an in-depth feature about what it’s like to share space with these massive mammals. People in the small community are proud of their positive relationship with bears, Parker tells me. 

And while he’s still working out the kinks of remote photography, the more than 80 photos he submitted for us were absolutely stunning.

“Every once in a while you get those one per cents … and then it also motivates me to keep going,” Parker says.I sat down with Parker to get into the weeds with him about how exactly he photographs grizzly bears and what he hopes people learn from seeing these photos. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

These photos blew me away. Can you walk me through your process? 

So when most people think of camera traps, they might think of like your typical kind of game camera that you can strap to a tree really quickly. They run on a bunch of AA batteries, and those can provide really great photos and videos these days, but they’re not really the same quality that you’d get out of a proper DSLR or mirrorless camera.

The idea is [a DSLR camera] can all be self-contained in this protective housing, and then the lens pokes out the front end here. So this would basically be wirelessly hooked up to this infrared sensor, which is the same idea as the game cameras that most people have, but this way I can customize where I put the sensor, which is actually going to trigger the camera to fire. There’s a bunch of components, and I can customize the frame rate, how many photos and then obviously where the flashes are positioned to get the lighting that I’m hoping for. 

So that photo of the bear climbing the tree, that had a flash associated with it?

That’s right. That was on a rub tree, which they use a lot to communicate to other bears what they’re doing in the area and that type of thing. Those nighttime photos definitely need flashes. I do try to avoid, as much as I can, using flash with certain species because they can be a little bit disturbing, and I try to do my best to eliminate any factors that can disturb the animals. Obviously, you can’t eliminate all of that, but I really try to put the effort in to do my best.

How long does it take? 

Some of the locations are easier to get to, and if I’m really experimenting with some new equipment, I might try in a more easily accessible area where I can go every few days on foot to check it. But usually, once I have my system pretty dialled, I’ll try to avoid checking the camera too often just to eliminate that extra piece of the disturbance puzzle by just me being in the area. So I try to leave them in an area where I only need to go back every two or three weeks.

But most of the time is just putting in the research and exploring before I even carry a camera around and figuring out where grizzly bears have been using areas, talking to lots of local people that have been here a lot longer than I have. Lots of people are willing to share — a big shout-out to my friend and also professional photographer Peter Mather, who’s from the Yukon as well. He’s done tons of camera trapping over the years and has actually been a huge mentor to me in everything photography-wise. So he’s been really generous with his time and sharing advice and how to best go about using camera traps and in wildlife situations.

Tell me a little bit about access to grizzly bears and living in Haines Junction.

Haines Junction is a beautiful little town. I think the population is just a bit under 1,000 these days. It’s just on the edge of Kluane National Park and Reserve in southwestern Yukon, which is a hot spot for grizzly bears. People have been coexisting with grizzly bears in the Haines Junction area for thousands of years.

There’s been histories of conflicts that happen everywhere, but in my mind it’s a really special place because people tend to have a higher tolerance of bears just in and around the communities than a lot of places, especially in regards to grizzly bears. It’s pretty special that way. I think people just inherently acknowledge that grizzly bears have been living here for longer than people have, and most people really try to do what they can to continue that relationship. 

Why are you specifically interested in trying to photograph bears, given how challenging it can be?

They’re just such special creatures. They’re super smart. Each bear has such a unique personality, and I think it really makes them quite relatable from a human perspective. Because of how charismatic they are as individuals, it makes them fun to photograph. 

And then also just because they are these huge, powerful animals that can cause a lot of damage if there’s conflict situations, and there’s this inherent fear of them built into people naturally as these large animals that can kill you. But they’re so conflict-avoidant naturally, and I’d like to think most people are that way as well. In that regard, it just really makes it super interesting to bridge that gap, and hopefully having some intimate images can help people see bears in a different way. Often the media really promotes these kinds of negative conflict-based stories and I’m hoping that some visuals can help tell the other side of the story.

I was particularly blown away by the photo where there are mountains in the background, and it’s sort of a flat area, and there’s a pretty big bear just staring directly at the camera. Can you talk a little bit about how you created that photo?

So that was definitely one where I used a camera trap. That bear had probably come out of hibernation a couple weeks before. Usually grizzly bears den up in the alpine and then they move down to valley bottoms as the snow melts to access those first plants that are greening up. In some areas in the mountains around here, there’s mountain goats and Dall sheep that are having their babies. They’re not excellent predators in general, but if they can get a chance at coming across a young lamb or a young mountain goat kid that hasn’t quite got its legs under it yet, they’ll definitely try to take those. So I thought it would be pretty neat to find some of these alpine areas where bears might be looking for baby sheep or baby goats.

It probably was about a two-hour hike from the highway. Not super tough, but lugging all that heavy camera trap gear, it adds up, especially when you have to go back a few times to check the camera. So this one, I think, I had out for about two weeks, give or take. As soon as I was walking up to where I knew the camera was, I noticed the camera wasn’t there. So I was like, ‘Oh, am I going crazy, or did something happen?’ And then I look, and the camera’s 15 or 20 feet down a little rocky cliff, and it’s all bashed up. The lens was kind of bent sideways.

I didn’t have these nice housings that I do now. So the camera not only had it tumbled down, but it had been exposed to rain and stuff. So I couldn’t even turn it on when I checked it. I packed up everything, hiked back down and hiked back home. Luckily, the memory card was still fine. I got back home and put it in the computer and sure enough, the first photo I saw was just this blur of rock and sky, I think triggering as it was tumbling down the cliff. And then I flicked through a few of those, and then the next photo I saw was that amazing big round bear face. 

We’re in this new age where there are a lot of fake images on the internet. Has anybody ever asked you before if this is AI?

No one, no one has asked me, but I think the world of AI and image generation is progressing so fast. It’s mind-blowing. So I wouldn’t be surprised if in the future I start getting more and more questioning of certain types of photos, especially those photos that are really unique. It’s a little bit troubling for sure to guess where this world of AI and image generation is going. But part of me wants to believe that there’s always going to be ways to create really special images that AI will never quite be able to replicate.

What do you hope people take away from seeing these bears up close?

Just being able to get an intimate view into a bear’s world. And hopefully instilling that respect, but maybe dissolving a bit of the fear factor. That would really be my main goal. It’s hard because everyone has different reactions to these things. But if people can somehow find ways to view these animals through a lens of maybe curiosity versus fear as their first reaction, that would be my main hope. Because ultimately curiosity leads to more caring and more questions and ultimately, hopefully, more willingness to facilitate coexistence.

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

Wildfires are raging in every province and territory across Canada, leaving entire First Nations communities burnt, upending the lives of thousands of evacuees and creating plumes of toxic smoke dirtying the air in major cities like Toronto and New York. 

While some politicians claim the out-of-control wildfires are being primarily caused by improper forest management, scientists agree that climate change, driven by greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, is the main culprit.

To stop contributing to the problem, the Canadian government could be implementing strict limits on the oil and gas industry for their carbon dioxide emissions. But Prime Minister Mark Carney has rejected that idea, opting instead for an unproven technological fix. 

In doing so, The Narwhal reported this week, the prime minister has become the latest in a long line of politicians to make big promises about carbon capture and storage to cut industrial emissions, despite the technology’s meager track record in Canada.

Read on to learn more.

1. Climate change from fossil fuels is making wildfires more severe and more frequent

Climate change is altering rainfall and storm patterns, creating hotter and drier conditions and more lighting strikes, causing fire seasons to start earlier and last longer and making those fires burn hotter, grow bigger and spread quicker. The result: Canada’s most recent fire seasons have been among the worst on record.

There’s only one real way to slow this escalating problem, scientists say: stop using so much coal, oil and natural gas, the fossil fuels that generate the emissions that are trapping heat in the atmosphere, changing the climate and leading to more extreme weather.

In Canada, the oil and gas industry is the country’s largest source of emissions. That’s partly because the type of petroleum in Alberta’s oilsands, the world’s fourth-largest proven oil reserve, requires extra electricity, steam, fuel and machines to turn it into usable products like gasoline compared to some other oil deposits. Oilsands emissions have grown from 41 million tonnes in 2007 to 92 million tonnes in 2024.

2. Carney expects Canada will soon generate more, not less, emissions

As Ontario faces what’s now estimated to be its worst wildfire season on record and other provinces and territories have been similarly devastated in recent years, Carney is focused on coordinating an emergency response with those jurisdictions, including managing the thousands of firefighting personnel and hundreds of aircraft involved. The prime minister says he’s committed to deploying “every resource needed to keep Canadians safe.” 

He also signed a deal with Alberta meant to increase oil production. The deal, which includes a commitment to build a new oil pipeline, is expected to result in more carbon pollution. Carney has admitted his government’s actions will raise emissions. More Canadian emissions means Canada is contributing more to the global problem of climate change that’s making wildfires worse.

Environmental advocate Catherine Abreu, a former member of Canada’s Net-Zero Advisory Body, told MPs in June that Carney’s government has “repealed or weakened virtually every climate policy and regulation that Canada had developed in the last decade.”

3. Instead of capping emissions, Carney is betting on carbon capture technology

Carney’s deal with Alberta promises not to follow through with a proposal, first made during the government of former prime minister Justin Trudeau, to implement an emissions cap on the oil and gas sector. 

A cap is a government mandate to prevent emissions from rising beyond a certain point. It’s something the industry itself previously said was achievable: in 2022 a group of oilsands producers came out with a plan they said could cut 22 million tonnes of annual emissions by 2030. That plan involved carbon capture, a technology that filters out carbon dioxide from industrial exhaust streams and stores it so it doesn’t get released into the air. 

But even though the Trudeau government proposed the emissions cap as a way to ensure the industry followed through with that plan, oil companies fought the cap proposal and Carney eventually agreed not to implement it.

Now, Carney’s deal with Alberta includes an agreement to build a carbon capture and storage network in the province, but the ambition has been dialed back considerably. Five oilsands companies agreed in July to use carbon capture technology to remove just six million tonnes of emissions per year by 2035, and a “range of technologies” to eventually capture 16 million tonnes per year by 2045. 

Compare that with an average of 20 million tonnes a year in new emissions from the oilsands that the Canadian Climate Institute has estimated will result from higher production levels to feed the new oil pipeline in the deal.

4. The track record for carbon capture of industrial emissions in Canada is bleak

Carbon capture and storage is real, and in use at nine commercial operations in Canada. But the technology is expensive and requires lots of new construction to scale up, while globally it has underperformed, according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

The results speak for themselves. Over a 24-year period, 68.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide was captured across Canada, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada. That means the oilsands added more to the atmosphere in one year than carbon capture technology has ever stopped from industrial sources over more than two decades.

While oilsands emissions more than doubled from 2007 to 2024, the cumulative amount of carbon being captured from industrial sources is still “on the order of several [million] tonnes per year,” a Natural Resources Canada spokesperson told The Narwhal.

But that’s relatively tiny, compared to the eye-popping figure of 600 million tonnes a year that a government report had once claimed Canada could theoretically capture.

5. Carney’s support for carbon capture makes him the latest in a long line of politicians to tout its benefits

Despite this underperformance, both Liberal and Conservative federal governments in Canada keep projecting optimism about carbon capture’s prospects, dating back to former prime minister Stephen Harper, who gave a speech in Edmonton in 2007 that sounds strangely familiar now. This week, The Narwhal peered into the historical public record — and the national archives — to show just how real the enthusiasm has been.

In Edmonton, Harper talked about “the exciting new technology called carbon capture and storage.” He told Canadians that, “instead of pumping tonnes of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, we may be able to collect it from our oilsands … and pump it deep underground where it will remain for eternity.” He projected confidence, saying he felt “the era of empty rhetoric on the environment is over” and “we’re taking real action that will produce real, tangible results.”

In 2011, his then-natural resources minister Joe Oliver called Canada “a world leader in carbon capture and storage” and “in an excellent position to use this technology on a wide scale.” (Oliver recently wrote an op-ed opposing the latest carbon capture proposal in the oilsands, in part because of the technology’s spotty track record.)

After Trudeau won power in 2015, his first natural resources minister, Jim Carr, told a ballroom full of people in New York in 2016 that carbon capture is one of “the most pressing issues of the day.” One of Carr’s successors, Seamus O’Regan, would go on to describe carbon capture as “an integral part of lowering emissions” that was part of “how we get to net zero.” In 2021, he said Canada was “on the cusp of doing a lot of these things.”

Last year, Carney’s minister of energy and natural resources, Tim Hodgson, a former oilsands company board member, told a Calgary business crowd that the government, as much as private industry, should be pulling for the carbon capture project in the oilsands. In a faint echo of Harper, he said this government “will not be a government of talk, but a government of action.”

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

Summary

• Wildfires in northern Ontario are putting many First Nations at risk, and two communities have already burned entirely.
• First Nations leaders are criticizing the provincial government’s response to the emergency. They say the government was too slow to identify the risks facing remote First Nations, and that jurisdictional issues prevent First Nations from accessing resources in an emergency. 
• Several First Nations chiefs are calling for the resignation of senior government officials, as well as a public inquiry into the provincial government’s emergency response.

In the summer of 2021, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler of Nishnawbe Aski Nation personally presented Ontario Premier Doug Ford with an 82-page plan to support northern Ontario during emergencies, like wildfires. 

The organization that represents 51 northern Ontario First Nations had developed the plan in response to a series of disasters between 2009 and 2019, both from flooding and wildfires, which are laid out across 27 pages. But those past disasters are nowhere near the scale seen this summer alone, with northern Ontario dealing with what’s now estimated to be the worst wildfire season on record.

The framework identified a series of “deficiencies and gaps” in emergency management for First Nation communities. They include a lack of clear roles for the federal and provincial governments in the event of a disaster; a lack of recognition of the unique challenges facing remote Indigenous communities, many of which are not incorporated like a municipality and are hard to access; a lack of pre-disaster resources and funding for both impacted communities and host communities for evacuees; and no legal framework giving First Nations emergency powers to persuade the province to take action. 

The plan includes 20 recommendations, without which “the need for robust and comprehensive First Nation emergency management will continually increase.”

“That was five years ago,” Fiddler told The Narwhal. “There’s been no response.”

Everything that was highlighted in the report, Fiddler said, is coming to a head today in northern Ontario.

In the span of 11 days, two communities — Collins and Whitewater Lake First Nations — have entirely burned down. By last government count, around 1,800 people have been evacuated, though local emergency officials believe this number may be low as they say there is no coherent government-led system to support or track evacuations in remote Indigenous communities. At least 13 other communities are under evacuation orders, eight of which are First Nations, according to Chiefs of Ontario. As of publication time, there remain more than 170 active wildfires, per Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources, in northern Ontario. 

This season’s 562 fires (versus 371 last year and a 358 10-year average) have already burned down an area almost as large as the entire Greater Toronto Area, which, last week, had some of the worst air quality in the world because of wildfire smoke.

The fires are “behaving differently than what we’re used to,” Sharon Bak, an emergency responder based in Thunder Bay with 30 years of experience, including at the provincial level, told The Narwhal. “There have been more ‘hold my breath’ moments than I’m used to.” 

Weather projections started looking deadly on July 12, with Thunder Bay heading into a week of record heat, hitting — and in some places surpassing — 40 C. Low humidity, combined with bone-dry conditions across northern Ontario’s boreal forest, plus a major lightning event and windy conditions the week before, made for a dangerous combination. 

“The signs were all there,” Bak said. 

“This wasn’t the norm,” she added. “With northern Ontario fires, we’re prepared. We expect them. But this isn’t the norm. We’ve had fires that are close to critical infrastructure and areas where people live. We’ve had fires going one way that changed direction overnight to get closer to communities, and fires joining together.”

“That’s some pretty huge red flags that a lot is going on that needs to be monitored,” she said. “The question is, ‘Who is watching the clock?’ ”

While the ignition points of the 2026 wildfire season are outside government control, the consequences — how fast warnings went out, whether crews were adequately resourced, whether First Nations were supported in evacuation decisions — are the parts local officials and Indigenous leaders say were within the province’s control and completely failed this wildfire season. And while it’s been one for the record books, that may not be the case for long as wildfires get more severe and intense every year due to global warming caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.

Impacted First Nations communities have reported needing to vacate themselves, not receiving timely and accurate information from government officials and finding spaces to flee to by themselves. 

In the face of this systemic failure, several chiefs are now asking for the resignations of senior government officials — including the Ministry of Natural Resources director of aviation, forest fire and emergency services and the assistant deputy minister overseeing fire operations — and an independent public inquiry into the province’s response writ large.

No one from the office of the premier, the minister of natural resources or the minister of emergency preparedness responded to detailed questions from The Narwhal. In a July 17 press conference, Ford said of First Nations communities, “We’re supplying anything that they need, and they’ll be safe.” 

“The emergency response from both Ontario and Canada have been completely inadequate,” Chief Fiddler said. “I’ve been on Zoom calls with senior government officials asking them basic questions like ‘What is your capacity? How many beds are available? Where are the host sites?’ ”“So far they haven’t given us a response,” he said. “Numbers keep moving, I get it, but you should have a baseline. ‘We don’t have that information’ is not a good baseline when people’s homes and lands are burning down.”

‘It took too long to recognize the danger’: First Nations in northern Ontario describe failed government communication and self-evacuations

At 2:30 p.m. on July 13, Whitesand First Nation’s band manager was informed of a large fire close to their community. A Ministry of Natural Resources official said it would send a helicopter to investigate, and later reported there was no fire despite visible smoke, Chief Lawrence Wanakamik told reporters this week. 

By 4:00 p.m., the nation’s leadership began arranging transportation to Thunder Bay and booking hotels anyway. Some of their members started leaving soon after. 

An hour later, a council member went to a Ministry of Natural Resources meeting, in which they said they were assured their community was safe and there was nothing to worry about. The member “requested the assurances in writing” but never received it, according to Chief Wanakamik. 

At 6:30 p.m., he added, Elders advised the community be evacuated, despite the ministry maintaining that a full evacuation wasn’t needed and that only “vulnerable” people should be moved. (The ministry did not respond to questions about this sequence of events.)

The ministry issued a mandatory evacuation order three hours later. By then, the entire community was already moving away from their homelands. 

“It took too long to recognize the danger, too long to issue a clear direction and too long to order the evacuation,” Chief Wanakamik told reporters on July 21. “Whitesand’s own preparation and decision-making helped prevent an already dangerous situation from becoming worse.” One person, Elder Stella Watson, died in this harrowing experience, he said, adding she was “having a hard time with her breathing from all the smoke.”

Whitesand First Nation wasn’t the only community to experience this provincial emergency response breakdown. Collins, or Namaygoosisagagun, First Nation Chief Helen Paavola said her community, the first to be evacuated, did so without any notice or support. “My community was devastated by a forest fire that overtook the homes with great speed and heat,” she said in the same press conference. “My members barely escaped with the clothes on their backs.”

“This community burned to ash,” she said. “It burnt to the ground because of a failure of the province in their monitoring. And further to that, the emergency management arm of the province also ought to be held accountable for this disaster.”

Her community isn’t formally recognized by the Canadian government, despite predating Canada, which means community members are locked out of disaster-recovery programs now when they need it most, she said. 

Whitewater Lake First Nation Chief Pauline Drake, whose community has also entirely burned down, said they vacated by themselves, with her mother being the last to leave their land. 

“I really wish things were different,” she said. “I wish we could turn back time and go back and be notified. ‘Okay, there’s a fire in your area. Please be ready.’ ”

The three chiefs, along with six others representing communities impacted by wildfires across northern Ontario, all said that no provincial leaders had reached out to them, neither Ford, nor his Indigenous Affairs Minister Greg Rickford or Minister of Natural Resources Mike Harris. And they dispute Ford’s narrative that Ontario is doing a great job fighting these fires. 

“The premier may not yet have a full understanding of the extent of the operational dysfunction and systemic issues within the current wildfire management structure,” Chief Wilfred King of Gull Bay First Nation, which has been given an evacuation order, said in the press conference. “What he is saying is not true. … He’s creating the narrative so that he can basically lie to Canadians and lie to the people of Ontario.”

“What’s required is a complete overhaul of the system,” he said.

‘There’s been limited capacity in the system for a long time’: Ford government hasn’t fully implemented auditor general recommendations

This pattern of failed communications, lacklustre response and poor planning has been a feature of Ontario’s emergency response system for over two decades — and “all the gaps show this time,” Bak said. 

A 2005 internal government review showed the emergency processes and funding were “not currently sufficient to ensure that Ontarians and the resources of the province are adequately protected against emergencies and disasters.” That review itself was cited in a 2017 auditor general report that noted the cabinet committee on emergency management had not met once in five years. In 2022, the auditor general made 30 recommendations to improve the process, noting that it took longer than four hours to dispatch fire crews to 15 per cent of fires from 2017 to 2021.

“Establishing effective emergency management programs can save lives and better protect property and the environment,” the 2022 report said. “More needs to be done to assess the risks of natural hazards so that the province is ready to respond quickly to future environmental events and to make sure we don’t repeat past mistakes.”

As of two years ago, the auditor general found the government has “made little or no progress” on implementing most of their recommendations over the years. 

“There’s been limited capacity in the system for a long time,” Bak said.

Chiefs say that’s left northern Ontario particularly vulnerable as there has been no full-time emergency management coordinator. There are no resources available and ready to mobilize over a much larger geography if needed, they say, adding there is no regional response centre or controlled coordination system. And there is no ready list of resources, including hotels and donated goods and services, for those who have to respond in real-time. 

“The fires this year overwhelmed communities faster,” Bak said. “And there was a delay in acknowledging the problem and delivering the resources we needed.”

Yet, there were recent signs that this trend was shifting. 

Emergency response has generally been undertaken by a stand-alone government agency under the solicitor general, one of the structural issues identified by the auditor general. That changed in March 2025 when the Ford government elevated it into its own ministry, with resources, employees, modernized legislation and a new volunteer organization called Ontario Corps. This new Ministry of Emergency Preparedness and Response works with other ministries depending on the type of emergency; in northern Ontario, that particularly includes the Ministry of Natural Resources, which manages and monitors forests and fires. 

Emergency Preparedness Minister Jill Dunlop told CBC As It Happens that the government’s response is focused on safety. She said the ministry regularly conducts “after-action reviews” following emergencies and that any communication or coordination concerns “will be considered as part of that process.”

But when pressed about why First Nations were left in the dark during the worst of the wildfires, one of her staff pulled her off the air.

Emergency response in First Nations continues to be broken

Ontario’s emergency response also depends on federal funding, an agreement which assumes provinces have a robust system they can use to respond to disaster scenarios. In other words, Ottawa funds emergency response to First Nations, but Ontario controls the decisions about how that response gets executed. 

Fiddler believes part of why the system is broken is because the First Nations are not at the table in making those decisions. As outlined in the Nishnawbe Aski Nation’s report, Ontario’s entire emergency management system is built for municipalities, and First Nations don’t fit that model — legally, financially or structurally.

To start, a First Nation’s declaration of emergency has no impact on the political system; it doesn’t unlock funding or resources, or force higher levels of government into action. 

Financially, there’s not enough money being spent in the right places, the plan notes. Using federal data from 2012 to 2016, it shows Ontario received 31 per cent of all national emergency management funding for First Nations, with the vast majority going to response and recovery, not prevention or mitigation. Meanwhile, the government has consistently underbudgeted for fire response: in the 2025 budget, the Ford government allotted $135 million for its emergency forest firefighting fund, but ended up spending double that: $271 million.

And then there’s the matter of human resources. Citing the 2020 auditor general report, Nishnawbe Aski Nation’s plan notes that in 2021 Ontario had one field officer per 1.8 million residents, versus one for 137,000 residents in B.C. and one for 273,000 in Alberta. These field officers only show up during emergencies, allowing for little trust-building or preparedness before communities. 

And per Ontario’s emergency response rules, municipalities are expected to self-fund emergency management partly through property taxes and can apply for provincial disaster assistance after the fact. But almost no First Nations in Ontario have a property tax regime, so this financing model doesn’t support them.

Compounding all this is the fact that wildfires in northern Ontario often shut down access to remote communities. That means wildfires cut off an entire essential supply chain of food and medicine. For that reason, Neskantaga First Nation declared a state of emergency this week and has begun evacuating its members. 

These issues are all playing out in northern Ontario right now, with local responders and Indigenous members left asking questions about one central theme: “Why have we been left all alone?” 

“Doug Ford talks a lot about our critical minerals and other resources in our territories,” Fiddler said. “He comes this way when it’s for photo opportunities and cutting ribbons and shaking hands with people in these communities. But when it comes to climate change and its impacts, I haven’t heard him make any commitment.” 

Ford has said he will propose a national fire strategy at a meeting of First Ministers and Prime Minister Mark Carney in Charlottetown this week. But for many people The Narwhal spoke with, that’s not the solution; it’s merely passing the buck. Especially as northern Ontario’s calls to declare a provincial state of emergency, which would theoretically unlock resources, go unheeded. 

“Everything starts at the local level, especially responses to emergencies like wildfires,” Bak said. “You think of what happened at Fort McMurray and Jasper, and you thank God it hasn’t happened here. Well, now it’s happened here and it’s clear we didn’t learn anything.”

Updated on July 23, 2026, at 4:47 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to clarify that the current wildfire season in Ontario is estimated to be the worst in terms of the amount of land burnt, but not lives lost.

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Growing up in Brampton, Ont., Rajpreet Sahota remembers the sounds of the evening news filling her home. By the time she was in high school, she had decided her goal was to one day become a television news anchor.

Only in her 20s, Rajpreet has already achieved that goal — her first job after graduate school included anchoring the 6 o’clock news in Fort St. John, B.C. But she has already moved beyond her high school dream. These days, she says her preferred journalistic practice is “less about sitting behind the anchor desk and more about being out in the community.”

That approach will serve her well at The Narwhal, where she recently became our first-ever community and policy reporting fellow. During her ten-month fellowship, Rajpreet will report on how environmental policy affects racialized communities in Ontario.

Over a month into her fellowship, Rajpreet has written about a youth-led push to improve recycling in Constance Lake First Nation and a lawsuit from Attawapiskat First Nation over historical diesel contamination. She also produced a comprehensive account of the environmental policy changes the Doug Ford government has made since winning the 2025 election.

The Narwhal’s community and policy reporting fellowship gives early- to mid-career journalists an opportunity to produce impactful work while learning alongside more seasoned reporters, and Rajpreet says she’s already learning a lot at The Narwhal — including how to file her first freedom of information request.

Read on to learn a bit more about Rajpreet.

What inspired you to go into journalism?

Every morning before school and every afternoon when I got home, my parents would have the news on. It became such a normal part of my daily routine that I didn’t really think much of it at first. But after years of watching reporters tell stories from across the Greater Toronto Area, something clicked.

I remember being in Grade 10 when I turned to my sister, pointed at the TV, and said: “That’s what I want to do. I want to anchor the news.”

And you recently achieved that dream in Fort St. John, B.C. What was that like?

Yes, I did! It was an incredible experience. It was my first job after finishing my master’s, and working in a small market meant wearing many different hats. I was the only reporter based in Fort St. John. 

After a day in the field, I’d head back to the newsroom to write my script and get everything ready for the evening newscast. I anchored the 6 o’clock news once or twice a week. That meant introducing the top stories, reading the weather, talking about sports and helping guide viewers through the entire broadcast.

Being dropped into one of the smallest towns I’ve ever lived in, far from home and on my own, was definitely a challenge, but it pushed me to become more confident in every aspect of reporting. It was an amazing opportunity so early in my career.

Your journalism career has also taken you to Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Hamilton and Ottawa. What have you learned about reporting from so many different communities?

I’ve grown a lot as both a journalist and a person. I’ve learned how to report from wildfire zones, cover court proceedings and break down government policies in different provinces and communities. Every place I’ve worked has taught me something new and helped me become a more versatile reporter.

But the biggest lesson has been realizing just how many stories are out there waiting to be told. Some of the best story ideas come from striking up a conversation with someone at a coffee shop, chatting with someone on the street or simply being curious enough to explore what’s happening in a community. Those everyday conversations often uncover the issues that aren’t making headlines, and to me, that’s what journalism is all about.

What kind of journalism do you engage with in your free time?

Outside of work, I’m a big fan of crime documentaries and investigative journalism. I like learning how the police investigate major cases, how they put all the pieces together and uncover what happened. 

I also like learning about history, like the history of cities, how certain landmarks came to be or major events that shaped a community. If I’m being honest, I sometimes wish I could have experienced those moments firsthand.

At the same time, I consume news the same way a lot of people in their 20s do. I get information from Instagram and TikTok accounts that break down complex ideas into engaging explainers, like The Narwhal!

I hear you’ve joined the controversial group of Narwhal employees who dislike camping. So … what other ways do you spend time outside?

Yes, I hate camping! The first camping experience I ever had was when I was in elementary school. I still remember, there were so many bugs everywhere. I was like, “I’m never doing this again.”

But I like to go outside. When I lived in northern B.C. and northern Ontario, there were a lot of hiking trails that I enjoyed. Now, I live right next to Sugar Beach Park in downtown Toronto, and I walk there several times a week after work.

What do you do for fun?

I like staying active, especially by taking pilates and yoga classes on the weekends. I also like baking and trying out new recipes. It’s a great way to recharge after a busy week of chasing stories.

And I love event decor! I love putting together tablescapes, planning different party themes and hosting parties. I even tried to launch my own side business a couple of years ago focusing on decor. I’d help people decorate and set up for their events. But I think journalism is a better plan.

Decor isn’t your only side hustle. Tell us about Blind Date With a Book TO.

Blind Date With a Book TO started during the COVID-19 pandemic to keep myself busy. How it works is simple: someone would answer a few questions about the kinds of books they enjoyed, and I’d choose a title that I thought they’d love without telling them what it was.

Each order was wrapped like a true blind date with a book. I hand-made a custom bookmark and included a cozy drink like hot chocolate or tea.

I received orders from across Canada and even parts of Europe, which was incredible for something that started as a passion project.

You’re spending eight more months at The Narwhal. What’s one story you hope to tell before you leave?

There’s a series of stories I’m really excited to work on before I leave. It looks at cooling injustice, which is the idea that access to relief from extreme heat — through air conditioning, shade and green spaces — is inequitably distributed. It’s a topic that touches on climate, equity and public health. I’m looking forward to exploring the different ways it affects people’s everyday lives. I can’t say much more than that just yet, but it’s definitely a story to watch for.

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

Summary

• 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.”

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

Summary

• Two decades of records show Canadian politicians making big promises about carbon capture technology.
• In 2008, one government report claimed Canada could capture as much as 600 million tonnes of carbon a year — and carbon capture technology could be “implemented quickly.”
• From 2000 to 2024, a total of just 68.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide was captured across Canada and experts say the technology has yet to be proven at scale.

It was March 2007. Apple had just debuted the iPhone. The Iraq War was raging. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth had won two Oscars. And the prime minister of Canada was talking about “the exciting new technology called carbon capture and storage.”

“Instead of pumping tonnes of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, we may be able to collect it from our oilsands, our coal-fired electrical plants and other industrial emitters, and pump it deep underground where it will remain for eternity,” Stephen Harper told a crowd of journalists at an event in Edmonton that year.

“If we can perfect this technology, we can use it not only to curb Canada’s contribution to greenhouse gas production, but we could also export it around the world.”

It was the beginning of a long line of claims from political leaders in Canada about how carbon capture could slash planet-warming industrial emissions, including in the oilsands, the world’s fourth-largest proven oil reserve, where 159 billion barrels lie buried under Albertan sand and clay.

For close to 20 years, both Liberal and Conservative governments have talked about using carbon capture and storage technology to filter out carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from exhaust streams and store it so it doesn’t get released into the atmosphere, where it traps heat and causes climate change. Yet, while oilsands carbon pollution more than doubled from 2007 to 2024 to 92 million tonnes, the ability of facilities in Canada to capture carbon from industrial sources hasn’t yet grown beyond a few million tonnes of emissions per year.

Meanwhile, the consequences of fossil fuels and climate change are being felt today. Life is more expensive, cities have dirtier air from wildfires, deadly heat waves and other extreme weather are more common, First Nations are disproportionately threatened with disasters and Canadians are more at risk of poverty, heart disease, cancer and premature death.

Around the time Harper spoke in Edmonton, mining the oilsands was thought to be generating 26 million tonnes of emissions. Since then, the federal national inventory report has recalculated historical emissions using updated methodologies and new data to find it was closer to 41 million tonnes. The petroleum in the oilsands starts as a viscous goo called bitumen, and takes large amounts of electricity, steam, fuel and heavy machinery to mine and transform into usable products. This extra activity means oilsands production has been associated with more emissions than some other oil deposits, adding to its climate impact when its end products like gasoline are eventually burned for energy.

There was also a boom happening when Harper made his remarks. Investment in the oilsands had tripled from 2003 to 2007, leap-frogging manufacturing, while oil and gas operating profits had doubled. Office space in Calgary, where many oil companies are headquartered, had dried up as the province rode a wave of record-low unemployment. By 2009, production levels from the oilsands would muscle out other forms of oil production in Canada.

Scientists agree the way to slow the chaos unleashed by climate change is to stop using so much oil, gas and coal. But Harper wasn’t about to impose strict government limits on oilsands emissions that day in 2007. Instead, he would talk about using carbon capture as a possible environmental and economic solution.

“This is a dream that could truly change the world,” he said.

“Friends, the era of empty rhetoric on the environment is over. We’re taking real action that will produce real, tangible results.”

Nineteen years later, that dream is still waiting to be realized.

From 2000 to 2024, 68.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide was captured in the country, Environment and Climate Change Canada confirmed to The Narwhal. That means the oilsands added more emissions to the atmosphere in one year, 2024, than carbon capture equipment has ever stopped from industrial sources over roughly a quarter-century.

It’s also a small fraction of the capture amounts once thought possible. A 2008 report that came out of Harper’s announcement said Canada could theoretically capture as much as 600 million tonnes a year, and that carbon capture could be “implemented quickly, within a decade, using existing technology.”

Carbon capture and storage “is a viable way to achieve significant domestic greenhouse gas reductions,” the report stated, and is a “must-have for western Canada which relies on fossil energy.”

Instead, after tremendous attention and investment, this year Canada will be able to capture “on the order of several [million] tonnes per year,” a Natural Resources Canada spokesperson told The Narwhal. (The department declined to offer a precise figure when asked.)

Capturing this amount when the oil industry is sending so much more into the air is equivalent to taking a million cars off the highway while 30 million more drive up the on-ramp.

“Carbon capture has never, ever been proven at scale, or price. That’s just a fact,” Catherine McKenna, a former environment minister under the Justin Trudeau government, said in an interview.

“The oil and gas companies talked to me about carbon capture and storage, and made promises, for like a decade. We have yet to see anything.”

Now, like Harper before him, Prime Minister Mark Carney is putting his faith in carbon capture technology to do the heavy lifting, while he advocates for more oil production.

Carney struck a deal with Alberta that promises not to follow through with a Trudeau-era proposal for an emissions cap on the oil and gas sector.

Instead, the deal, meant to grow oil production and get a new oil pipeline to the West Coast built, includes an agreement to build a carbon capture and storage network in the province.

In July, five oilsands companies agreed to terms that envision using carbon capture to suck out six million tonnes of oilsands emissions per year by 2035. The project, dubbed Pathways, is supposed to use a “range of technologies” to eventually capture 16 million tonnes per year by 2045.

“The Alberta [deal] will build carbon capture and storage,” Carney said in Parliament in January. “It will build our future.” The deal, he told reporters in June, is about “working together, getting results for the citizens.”

His minister of energy and natural resources, Tim Hodgson, a former oilsands company board member, told a Calgary business crowd last year that the government, as much as private industry, should be pulling to get Pathways off the ground.

“All of us — governments and industry — need to get the Pathways project done. This government will not be a government of talk, but a government of action,” Hodgson said.

The federal government was boasting about being ‘a world leader in carbon capture’ in 2011

Harper’s full remarks from that day in 2007 are held at the national archives in Ottawa, where The Narwhal listened to a recording of them in June.

But plenty of other comments exist online in the public record of others talking optimistically about carbon capture to lower emissions.

In 2011, for example, Harper’s then-natural resources minister Joe Oliver said Canada was “a world leader in carbon capture and storage” and was “in an excellent position to use this technology on a wide scale.”

The next year he repeated this message: “Canada is in an excellent position to lead the world in the development, implementation and deployment of carbon capture and storage technology.”

In 2013, he said the government was “devoting significant amounts of money to carbon capture and storage, and we are doing that in co-operation with companies.”

Oliver now opposes the latest carbon capture proposal in the oilsands, in part because of the technology’s spotty track record and uncertain impact.

The trend continued after Trudeau’s Liberal government won power in 2015. Trudeau’s first natural resources minister, Jim Carr, told a ballroom full of energy analysts in New York in 2016 that carbon capture is one of “the most pressing issues of the day.”

The next year, he said carbon capture improves Canada’s “environmental performance.”

One of Carr’s successors, Seamus O’Regan, would describe carbon capture as “an integral part of lowering emissions” and said it was part of “how we get to net zero.” In 2021, he told CBC News Canada was “on the cusp of doing a lot of these things.”

François-Philippe Champagne, who in 2024 was Trudeau’s industry minister and is now finance minister, described Canadian companies then as “world leaders in carbon capture” and portrayed it as one of the “clean-tech solutions for the net-zero economy.”

(Story continues below.)

Two decades of political support for carbon capture

• Jan. 23, 2006: Harper Conservatives win minority government
• May 11, 2006 “Canada is already on the right track, particularly in research on energy efficiency, alternative energy sources and carbon capture and storage technologies. These technological advances will help us reduce greenhouse gas emissions and will enable Canada to capitalize on its huge energy potential for the benefit of all Canadians.”— Christian Paradis, parliamentary secretary to the minister of natural resources, in Parliament
• March 8, 2007 “Instead of pumping tons of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, we may be able to collect it from our oilsands, our coal-fired electrical plants and other industrial emitters, and pump it deep underground where it will remain for eternity. … Friends, the era of empty rhetoric on the environment is over.”— Stephen Harper, prime minister, Library and Archives Canada
• April 4, 2008 “Our government is ensuring that Canada is at the leading edge of clean technologies to reduce emissions and adapt to environmental change. That is why in Budget 2008, we announced $5 million … [to] address outstanding issues in the deployment of carbon capture and storage technologies.”— Gary Lunn, natural resources minister, press release
• Oct. 14, 2008: Harper Conservatives win minority government
• Oct. 18, 2009 “Carbon capture and storage is the most viable technology for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Our government’s recent investment in large-scale demonstration projects further advances Canada’s leadership in this technology, while building a knowledge base to share this expertise with our global partners.”— Lisa Raitt, natural resources minister, press release
• March 16, 2010 “The $1-billion fund relating to green technology investments, including carbon capture and storage, which was set up in the 2009 budget, is not a research investment. These are demonstration projects investments. … The only known technology to abate carbon emissions from thermal coal plants is carbon capture and storage. It is the only technology that has ever been discovered that can actually abate emissions.”— Jim Prentice, environment minister, at committee
• May 2, 2011: Harper Conservatives win majority government
• June 24, 2011 “Canada is a world leader in carbon capture and storage and we are in an excellent position to use this technology on a wide scale.”— Joe Oliver, natural resources minister, press release
• March 27, 2012 “Canada is in an excellent position to lead the world in the development, implementation and deployment of carbon capture and storage technology.”— Joe Oliver, natural resources minister, at committee
• May 21, 2013 “We are devoting significant amounts of money to carbon capture and storage, and we are doing that in co-operation with companies, because that is the way to do it. Our government is a world leader in carbon capture and storage.”— Joe Oliver, natural resources minister, in Parliament
• Oct. 6, 2014 “We were proud to support the research and development of carbon capture and sequestration, and see the technology developed through commercialization at the Boundary Dam project, a technology that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions at that facility by 90 per cent. We remain committed to growing the economy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions with world-leading technologies.”—Greg Rickford, natural resources minister, in Parliament
• Feb. 19, 2015 “Since 2006, our government has made investments of over $10 billion to transition Canada toward a clean energy economy and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the long term. … These funds have helped establish Canada as a global leader in the research, development and demonstration of carbon capture and storage technologies.”— Colin Carrie, parliamentary secretary to the minister of the environment, in Parliament
• Oct. 19, 2015: Trudeau Liberals win majority government
• April 4, 2016 On a North American memorandum of understanding on climate and energy: “It’s an aspirational agreement that focuses our three countries on the most pressing issues of the day … [including] advancing the competitiveness of carbon capture, use and storage.”— Jim Carr, natural resources minister, prepared remarks for a speech
• Sep. 14, 2017 “Carbon capture and utilization technology creates new products and business revenue stream opportunities while improving our environmental performance, creating jobs and driving clean growth in the process.”— Jim Carr, natural resources minister, press release
• Nov. 9, 2018 About a $2-million investment in a carbon capture project: “This project leverages today’s traditional resources to deliver tomorrow’s clean energy solutions. Developing and adopting clean technologies will help Canada meet its domestic and international climate change commitments and help maintain our natural resource advantage for years to come.”— Amarjeet Sohi, natural resources minister, press release
• June 17, 2019 On signing two memorandums of understanding: “The second commits Natural Resources Canada and the Japan Coal Energy Center to work together on clean energy, including carbon capture utilization and storage technologies.”“Canada is taking a leadership role in the clean growth century by balancing the environment and economy both domestically and internationally.”— Paul Lefebvre, parliamentary secretary to the minister of natural resources, press release
• Oct. 21, 2019: Trudeau Liberals win minority government 
• June 15, 2020 “We see carbon capture and sequestration as an integral part of lowering emissions and making emissions more competitive, making our oil and gas industry more competitive.”— Seamus O’Regan, natural resources minister, at committee
• March 9, 2021 “Carbon capture technology creates jobs, lowers emissions and increases our competitiveness. This is how we get to net zero.”— Seamus O’Regan, natural resources minister, press release
• April 21, 2021 “I lead a department of scientists who are looking at things like carbon capture and storage, both onshore and offshore. … We are on the cusp of doing a lot of these things.”— Seamus O’Regan, natural resources minister, interview
• Sept. 20, 2021: Trudeau Liberals win minority government
• March 28, 2022 “We are taking bold action on climate change. … We see carbon capture and underground storage as part of the solution.”— Terry Duguid, parliamentary secretary to the minister of environment and climate change, in Parliament
• Feb. 7, 2023 “We are investing billions of dollars in climate action and into the new economy. We have eliminated six fossil fuel subsidies and are on our way to eliminating nine. We need to use every tool in the toolbox to reduce our emissions, including carbon capture.”— Terry Duguid, parliamentary secretary to the minister of environment and climate change, in Parliament
• May 8, 2024 “My colleagues are well aware that Canadian companies are world leaders in carbon capture and hydrogen fuel cell technology. That’s why we will continue to support the adoption of made-in-Canada clean-tech solutions for the net-zero economy.”— François-Philippe Champagne, industry minister, at committee
• April 28, 2025: Carney Liberals win minority government
• May 23, 2025 “We will invest in carbon capture, methane reduction and other technologies to ensure Canadian oil and gas is not only produced responsibly, but is the most competitive in the world. All of us — governments and industry — need to get the Pathways project done.”— Tim Hodgson, natural resources minister, prepared remarks for a speech
• April 13, 2026: Carney Liberals achieve majority government
• June 25, 2026 “We will deepen co-operative federalism with initiatives [like] Alberta’s proposed carbon capture and pipeline to the West Coast. … With the implementation agreement around carbon capture, [the government is] working together, getting results for the citizens.”— Mark Carney, prime minister, news conference (not online)

The Trudeau government’s emissions cap proposal came together after the Oil Sands Alliance, a group of major producers formerly known as the Pathways Alliance, had publicized a project they originally claimed could cut 22 million tonnes of oilsands emissions by 2030, with carbon capture being a central element of their plans.

The natural resources minister at the time, Jonathan Wilkinson, portrayed the emissions cap as a way to ensure the industry did what it said it could do.

Oilsands companies fought the proposal. A group of them pushed the government to delay and weaken the emissions cap’s rules, saying they needed “flexible and cost-effective” rules and a “long lead time” to prepare. By 2024, the boss of one of the country’s largest oil and gas companies was openly calling for the idea to be abandoned. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith also came out against the proposal.

Last year, after Carney won power, Canadian oil and gas executives and lobby groups called on him to “unwind the past decade” of Trudeau-era policy altogether, killing not only the emissions cap but also other environmental rules. The prime minister has ticked off several boxes on their wishlist.

The Narwhal reached out to more than a dozen current and former government officials to ask them if they stood behind their comments about carbon capture today, knowing what they know now.

Minister Hodgson’s spokesperson forwarded the questions to Natural Resources Canada. A spokesperson for his department responded that technologies like carbon capture are “important tools in Canada’s broader climate toolbox of measures to reduce or remove emissions, while strengthening growth and security.”

Carbon capture and storage “holds great opportunity to advance climate competitiveness, and is an area where Canada can lead internationally and sell components and expertise in global markets,” they said in an email to The Narwhal. It offers a “practical path to reduce emissions, protect and create jobs, sustain economic growth and keep Canadian industries globally competitive.”

A spokesperson for Champagne declined to comment. The others did not respond.

The Narwhal also sent separate questions to Natural Resources Canada directly. Another spokesperson claimed Canada’s industrial carbon capture rates will rise in the coming years.

“While Canada has already captured and stored or used significant volumes of [carbon dioxide] the sector is growing, with new projects and infrastructure expected to come online as technology improves and evolves,” the spokesperson said in an email.

There’s a “growing list of potential projects across multiple industrial sectors” today, they said, and “these projects are expected to increase capture volumes over time.”

Canada doesn’t publish an official forward-looking estimate of carbon capture potential, the department said. And the spokesperson pointed to a number of challenges with carbon capture adoption. For one, the projects are “large, capital‑intensive and technically complex.”

Carbon capture is expensive. The Pathways proposal was initially estimated at $16.5 billion and is now pegged at between $20 billion and $30 billion, despite lowering the amount of emissions it is intended to capture. At times it has seemed like it could struggle to break even, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

The government is offering federal financial incentives for carbon capture, and Carney reversed a Trudeau-era ban on companies from accessing that incentive when they pump the captured carbon into wells to loosen up more oil for extraction.

Despite hitting record profits in recent years, oil companies have in the past largely resisted spending the billions of dollars necessary to build out carbon capture equipment across their large properties. Instead the industry spent years lobbying the government for lucrative public subsidies to install and run carbon capture systems.

Scaling up carbon capture and storage also requires building new pipelines and storage hubs. A Natural Resources Canada spokesperson said the technology continues to “evolve” and investors are looking for enough “market demand for low‑carbon products,” which the government believes has been bolstered with the Alberta deal.

Globally, the technology has underperformed, according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development. One of Canada’s own flagship projects captured less carbon than initially thought. In 2022, more than 400 academics wrote an open letter to Canada saying carbon capture was “neither economically sound nor proven at scale,” despite decades of research.

Carbon capture used to secure social licence for pumping more oil

When it comes to techniques for keeping carbon out of the atmosphere, using carbon capture technology on industrial sources is only one approach.

Other types of technologies, collectively called carbon removal, can draw existing emissions from the atmosphere or store carbon permanently in other forms like rock.

There are 11 million tonnes worth of annual permanent carbon removal capacity in the planning stages in the country, according to Carbon Removal Canada, an independent non-profit. Those plans are for new projects such as direct air capture or carbon mineralization, but not industrial carbon capture.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body that provides governments with climate science, has said carbon capture and carbon removal technologies will have to be part of the mix of techniques that countries use to slow the rise in planetary temperatures causing climate change.

It’s a point Steven Guilbeault, who served as another environment minister under Trudeau and helped develop the emissions cap proposal with Wilkinson, raised several times in Parliament. Canada needed to look at every possible technology that could help reduce emissions, he argued.

But the United Nations panel was also clear these kinds of technologies are not a substitute for a “substantial reduction in fossil fuel use,” rather something to be used alongside those efforts.

In an interview with The Narwhal, Guilbeault said Canadian politicians have often misunderstood the difference, seeing carbon capture as “a way to continue pumping oil and gas in Canada.”

“It’s a technology we will need, but it’s not in lieu of reducing emissions, and unfortunately it seems that a lot of people haven’t understood that,” he said.

The technology “is a very convenient, theoretical, technical fix to a larger problem,” Guilbeault said. “We humans tend to look for easy fixes, sometimes, to complex problems.”

Evidence also suggests carbon capture has been popularized by the oil and gas industry to shield itself from criticism. In 2022, a U.S. Congressional probe found oil companies were talking about carbon capture publicly as a way to mitigate their climate impact, but internally were discussing it as a way to secure “social licence” to continue producing fossil fuels.

In June, the investigative outlets ProPublica and Drilled published evidence the oil company BP helped shape an academic paper that oversold carbon capture’s readiness, while the oil and gas industry funded research at universities that boosted the technology.

Guilbeault said he has “always been skeptical” of the oil industry’s carbon capture proposal in Alberta.

His skepticism is shared by former oilsands executive and former member of Parliament Martha Hall Findlay, who helped develop the industry’s initial Pathways carbon capture proposal. She now argues Canada should “postpone” the project and focus on other priorities.

Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is also skeptical of Carney’s plan.

A former Harper government minister of democratic reform, and employment and social development, Poilievre has supported subsidizing carbon capture in the oil and gas industry in the past. In 2022, shortly after becoming leader, he said the Canadian energy industry was “leading in the world” on carbon capture, and accused the Trudeau government of being “slow to support it and insufficient in that support.”

In 2023 he asked, “Why do we not use technology instead of taxes to fight climate change? Why do we not support our energy sector in pumping the carbon back into the ground through carbon capture and storage?”

More recently, Poilievre has criticized Carney’s deal with Alberta for committing billions of dollars to a “money-losing carbon capture project that has never been proven anywhere.”

Asked by The Narwhal why he’s soured on support for carbon capture, Poilievre said he only sees value if it’s used to extract more oil.

“When you pump carbon back in the ground and pressurize the geology, and you can bring up more oil, they can then go out and make the world a better place,” he said.

“The other is just pumping air into the ground and getting nothing in return. … How’s it going to make money?”

Updated on July 22, 2026, at 11:48 a.m. ET: This story was updated to include the latest figure for 2007 oilsands emissions from the national inventory report. While a report from Alberta published in 2008 put the figure at 26 million tonnes, the national inventory report has recalculated historical emissions figures with updated methodology and additional data, putting it at 41 million tonnes of emissions.

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Every time workers dig into the ground in Attawapiskat First Nation, Chief Sylvia Koostachin-Metatawabin says there is a chance they will uncover a problem the community has lived with for decades.

During repairs near her home, she said a worker stopped to tell her what he had found beneath the surface, close to a water line.

“Hey, chief, I saw the fuel on your property. A pool of fuel,” she recalled him saying.

But there was no equipment to clean it up, she said, so the excavation was covered again.

For community leaders, these discoveries are reminders of what they describe as a decades-long problem of diesel contamination beneath Attawapiskat, a Cree community in Ontario’s Far North on the western side of James Bay. It’s an issue both the federal and Ontario governments have known about for years but have failed to fully address.

Federal records show the issue was brought to the attention of Minister of Indigenous Services Mandy Gull-Masty last year, in a briefing note received on July 2, 2025.

A copy obtained through an informal access-to-information request revealed almost none of its contents. Most of the material was redacted under provisions of the Access to Information Act protecting personal information, government advice and recommendations and information subject to legal privilege.

A copy of the heavily redacted briefing note received by Minister of Indigenous Services Mandy Gull-Masty last July, regarding the contamination of the core of Attawapiskat.

These heavy redactions make it impossible to determine what officials advised the minister or what action, if any, was recommended.

But, a recent lawsuit filed by the First Nation claims that, a week after the briefing note was received, Canada refused to contribute to the costs of a remediation plan.

After years of negotiations and this alleged recent, unsuccessful, attempt to secure funding for a comprehensive clean-up, the First Nation is asking the courts to intervene.

Attawapiskat is seeking $200 million in compensation, including aggravated and punitive damages, from Canada and Ontario over diesel contamination in an area known as the Core of Community, provincial land that sits in the middle of Attawapiskat but is not legally part of the reserve.

“[The core] is not fenced off. It’s not separated physically from the community,” Chris Evans, a lawyer with Woodward & Co. Lawyers LLP, which represents Attawapiskat, told The Narwhal. 

The land isn’t empty. It is where children go to daycare and patients seek medical care. It contains a grocery store, a gas station, a place to access mental health and wellness services and the diesel generating station that provides backup electricity during outages.

“Many members of the community are unaware that it’s not part of the reserve because it’s fully integrated into it,” he said.

The lawsuit alleges Ontario has also failed to commit to funding, for the portion associated with the provincially-funded Weeneebayko Area Health Authority which owns facilities in the core.

The First Nation also says the contamination is preventing the core from being added to its reserve, wasting land it urgently needs for housing.

“There comes a time when we just say, enough is enough,” Koostachin-Metatawabin said.

Attawapiskat is also asking the court to declare that Canada and Ontario failed in their legal and moral responsibilities by breaching their fiduciary duties, the honour of the Crown and their duties of care.

None of the allegations have been proven in court.

In a written statement, Indigenous Services Canada told The Narwhal it is reviewing the claim, adding, “As this matter is currently before the court, we cannot comment further at this time.”

The Ontario premier’s office, Ministry of the Attorney General and Ministry of Indigenous Affairs and First Nations Economic Reconciliation did not respond to requests for comment.

A problem generations have lived with

Attawapiskat relied primarily on diesel-generated electricity for generations, from the 1960s until it was connected to Ontario’s power grid in 2003. Diesel continues to be used for backup power.

The nation alleges the pollution resulted from spills and leaks from the diesel infrastructure, including pipelines, trucks, storage tanks and the generating station.

“There have been many diesel spills,” Evans said. “They’ve happened for various reasons. Most likely, it’s because this system was not installed properly and maintained properly over the years.”

According to the statement of claim, there was no room for the generating system on the reserve. The federal government measures the reserve to be about 15 square kilometres, an area 1.5 times the size of Toronto’s High Park for a population of 2,000 people. The infrastructure was instead built on neighbouring provincial land. In 1973, after some reserve land was surrendered to build an airport north of the community and an equivalent area was added to the west, the core became the centre of Attawapiskat.

The lawsuit says the diesel infrastructure was owned or operated at different times by organizations including the local Roman Catholic mission, Ontario Hydro and its successors. Ownership of some infrastructure has since been transferred to Attawapiskat in connection with the community’s move to grid electricity, and is now used as a backup power system.

According to the claim, some individual spills have been partly cleaned up over the years, but the contamination across the core has never been fully remediated.

“There have been piecemeal efforts made at various times to identify and clean up the contamination,” Evans said. “But generally, it hasn’t been done.”

For many residents, the contamination of the core is part of an endless cycle.

J.R. Nakogee school closed in 2000 because of diesel contamination beneath the building and school grounds. Students spent more than a decade attending classes in portables before Kattawapiskak Elementary School opened in 2014.

The former school site is separate from the land involved in the current lawsuit. But Koostachin-Metatawabin said the earlier contamination continues to shape how residents understand the potential risks.

She said some former employees and families believe the contamination has caused them to become ill. 

“They attribute their health, their families’ health that pass on or are sick to being constantly exposed to fuel contamination,” she said.

Reminders of the contamination return whenever ground is disturbed, Koostachin-Metatawabin said.

“When you start excavating, you get the smell of diesel. It’s persistent,” she said.

The statement of claim alleges diesel has migrated from the core onto reserve land in several places. It also alleges the contamination could eventually reach Attawapiskat’s drinking water supply and the Attawapiskat River if it is not remediated.

“The diesel moves and migrates over time and the longer it stays in the soil the more likely it is to get into our water supply — and that would be catastrophic,” Deputy Chief Kara Fireman said in a press release about the court case. “It could even force us to entirely relocate.”

Diesel and fuel oils are complex mixtures that can contain substances such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes. Benzene has been considered toxic by Health Canada since 1993, and labelled it a “known human carcinogen” as recently as 2024. The health implications of a specific contaminated site depend on factors including which chemicals are present, their concentrations and whether people are being exposed through soil, water, air or direct contact.

The site-specific assessment prepared for the remediation project, which analyzes the concentration of chemicals in the core, has not been released publicly.

A clean-up plan was ready. Then it stopped

In 2023, Attawapiskat approached organizations with legal interests in the diesel infrastructure to develop a comprehensive remediation plan.

Attawapiskat, Hydro One Remote Communities Inc., the Weeneebayko Area Health Authority and the local electric transmission company hired Stantec Consulting Inc. to investigate the contamination and prepare a remediation action plan and budget.

According to the statement of claim, Stantec completed a draft plan in January 2025. The participating organizations agreed to a preferred option involving off-site disposal and bioremediation and agreed on how the costs would be apportioned among them.

The environmental report and total projected cost have not been released publicly.

“The parties agreed on an option and an apportionment of costs for implementing those options,” Evans said.

According to the lawsuit, the plan stalled at a meeting on June 9, 2025.

Canada advised the parties it would not contribute to the cost of implementing the remediation plan, the claim alleges. Attawapiskat had expected Canada to cover the share associated with assets assigned to the community, but the federal government advised the parties it would not contribute to the cost of implementing the remediation plan, the claim alleges.

“Attawapiskat doesn’t have the means to pay the apportionment that was assigned to it, and relied on Canada to cover that cost, and Canada refused,” Evans said.

Similarly, the claim says the Weeneebayko Area Health Authority expected Ontario to fund its portion, but the provincial government didn’t commit. 

The claim says Hydro One Remote Communities Inc. and the local electric transmission company remain supportive of the remediation effort and willing to cooperate, and that work could have begun in August 2025 and been completed within two years if funding had been secured. Instead, no comprehensive remediation has started.

Attawapiskat says housing crisis another reason diesel contamination must be cleaned up

Evans said testing has found considerable contamination beneath the daycare and health facility. Those findings are described in general terms in the statement of claim, but the underlying environmental report is confidential.

“Knowing that there is a toxic pollutant sitting there in the ground in the centre of your community, and that it’s been sitting there for decades in a place where people go and where little kids go to the daycare, where sick people go to the health facility, it’s extremely concerning to them,” Evans said.

Koostachin-Metatawabin said concerns also surfaced during construction of a youth centre, when workers discovered what she described as pooled fuel during excavation.

The discovery required remediation and delayed construction, she said. Further disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic left parts of the building exposed, contributing to mold and additional repair work.

“It’s been on the ground for a long time,” she said. “We know it’s there.”

The contamination is also an obstacle to one of the community’s most pressing priorities: finding more room for housing.

The statement of claim alleges the community received far less reserve land than it was promised under Treaty 9, which provided for 2.5 square kilometres for every five members. At the time of signing, the community had a population of about 550 people, equivalent to an area of about 300 square kilometres — 20 times larger than its current reserve.

Attawapiskat filed a separate specific claim with Canada in 2023 regarding its Treaty 9 reserve-land entitlement.

The current lawsuit states some members live in overcrowded, dilapidated or condemned homes, while others lack housing altogether.

The community has sought for years to have the core added to the reserve. But, according to the statement of claim, Canada’s rules about adding land to reserves require contaminated land to be environmentally assessed and, where necessary, remediated before it can be added to a reserve.

Because of the contamination, Evans said, “They can’t use [that land] to do things like add housing to remedy what is a just shocking humanitarian crisis that we’re seeing in the community, resulting from a lack of housing and overcrowding.”

Attawapiskat also provides services in the core, including water, garbage collection and snow removal, even though the land is not part of the reserve and the community says it does not receive federal funding to provide those services.

“I just want them to clean that site to turn it into reserve status,” Koostachin-Metatawabin said. “Because we need and can build some things there.”

The case may take years. The contamination remains

For Evans, the lack of a comprehensive clean-up raises questions about environmental injustice for Indigenous people.

“It’s hard to imagine there being a similar level of complacency toward the contamination here compared with other communities,” he said. “It’s been allowed to sit there for decades.”

He said the implications could extend beyond Attawapiskat.

“Attawapiskat is not alone in having these kinds of contamination problems in its community,” he said. “There are many communities in Ontario and Canada, especially remote communities, that are powered by diesel.”

The lawsuit is in its early stages.

Canada and Ontario had not filed statements of defence at the time of publication. Evans said the governments would ordinarily be required to respond within 30 days, although he expects they will seek more time because of the case’s complexity.

“It will be a few years at a minimum before we get a decision from the court,” he said.

For Koostachin-Metatawabin, the court case is one part of a much longer effort to make the community safe and create room for it to grow.

She said pursuing litigation was never her preferred option.

“I personally don’t like going through the legal court system. I don’t really want to do it,” she said. “But what other means do we have when we’re trying to get them to do the right thing?”

Rajpreet Sahota is a community and policy reporting fellow. Her position is generously funded by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, the foundation has no editorial input.

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Summary

• The World Cup prompted Vancouver to clear its False Creek harbour of abandoned boats, a sudden absence that highlights their usual presence in the city’s harbours.
• Abandoned boats are a jurisdictional challenge and environmental hazard across B.C. coastal communities, but in Vancouver they intersect with the city’s housing affordability crisis, as some rely on them for shelter.
• Provincial funding to support the removal of abandoned boats recently ended, but a new federal bill would prohibit the transfer of boats to people who cannot maintain them, offering another way to mitigate the issue.

Stephen Paetkau’s salvage boat, Lucky Dog, was built for the North Sea. When he bought the Norwegian-made vessel in 2021, the advertisement featured three giant moustached Norsemen on the deck, arms crossed and chests puffed out. Today, however, it is moored off Granville Island in Vancouver, on standby to recover abandoned boats in False Creek. It sits beside a black pirate ship that can be rented out for parties, where people don pirate hats and sail out into English Bay to drink and spray water cannons. Both vessels are designed for waters a little bigger than a narrow inlet in the heart of the city.  

Paetkau named it Lucky Dog after the Chinese zodiac year of his birth and because, he says, he’s “the luckiest man alive.” Ironically, much of Paetkau’s work begins when someone else’s luck has run out. 

Paetkau and his brother Jonathan run Skookum Yacht Services. Since 2020 the company has become the one most often called by Transport Canada when an abandoned boat sinks, washes up or breaks to pieces in the waters around Vancouver —  something that happens often enough the locals are used to seeing a boat on the beach or a half-submerged mast in the harbour. Paetkau says that since they began working with Transport Canada in 2020 they have lifted or removed close to 100 boats from the waterways, seabed and beaches of False Creek and English Bay. 

This June, the Paetkaus found themselves busier than usual. Transport Canada established an exclusion zone in False Creek for the duration of the FIFA World Cup — for which Vancouver is one of 16 host cities — forcing several boats normally anchored there to be moved elsewhere. 

Typically, if an abandoned vessel in False Creek — the inlet separating downtown Vancouver from the southern expanse of the city — is deemed hazardous to the public, infrastructure, navigation routes or to the environment, then the Canadian Coast Guard will act swiftly and have it removed. If it is not a hazard but, as Paetkau calls it, merely “offensive junk,” the issue is passed to Transport Canada, who try to find the owner of the vessel. 

In a statement to The Narwhal, Transport Canada stated the exclusion zone was created to “support marine safety and security during FIFA events at the request of RCMP and VPD.” Boats that were anchored in the restricted area were relocated to nearby waters, including off of Kitsilano and Jericho beach, which Paetkau says are difficult places to anchor. 

Though the boats will eventually return to False Creek, their temporary relocation brings attention to an issue coastal community harbours across British Columbia have been facing for years: the risks abandoned boats pose to navigation, public safety and marine ecosystems. But as housing costs continue to rise in Vancouver, some abandoned boats are also becoming makeshift homes, complicating efforts to remove them. 

Abandoned boats have environmental and cultural impacts

When I arrive at his office on Granville Island, Paetkau is on the phone with the Jericho Sailing Centre. After he hangs up, I ask him what has happened to the boats that have been relocated. 

“Well,” he says, gesturing to his phone, “one of them is crashing into the Jericho breakwater.”

Five minutes later, Jonathan walks in with more news.

“Another is on Kits Beach.” 

They don’t sound an alarm bell or take off running to their boat, but instead sigh and shake their heads. A lot more steps and phone calls are required first, a reminder of one of the more persistent issues facing abandoned boats in False Creek: jurisdiction. 

In an emailed statement, Transport Canada told The Narwhal the time required to address a vessel varies, but “in almost all cases, there is a minimum 30-day public notice period” to allow someone to claim ownership. The Vancouver Police Department puts up a notice and assists in monitoring the boat during this time.

If the abandoned boat is not claimed within the time period, a company like Paetkau’s is called in, and the removal is completed on the taxpayer’s dime. The process of moving the boats is slow and the water does not wait. Changing tides, strong winds and storms often blow the boats onto rocks or smash them into thousands of fibreglass fragments before Paetkau’s crew can get to them. 

According to Transport Canada, abandoned vessels start to become environmental hazards as they deteriorate, as they begin to leak oils, fuels and other toxic substances while releasing debris such as fibreglass and microplastics into fragile marine ecosystems.

In certain areas of Canada, these effects have been significant enough to have reached Parliament. In October 2024, John White, director of lands and natural resources for the Snuneymuxw First Nation, appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans alongside Chief Lenora Joe of the shíshálh First Nation, a councillor from the Snaw-naw-as First Nation and an elected chief councillor of the Tseshaht First Nation. Together, they described the environmental and cultural impacts abandoned vessels are having on Indigenous coastal communities. 

Chief Joe told Parliament how abandoned vessels contaminate marine food sources that are central to life for the shíshálh Nation. “Our food is part of our culture,” she said. “The way we collect food, the way we gather it, the way we celebrate — everything that we do depends on the food that we can gather.” 

White pointed to impacts on Pacific salmon in Snuneymuxw territory, describing what he said was a historic decline in salmon on the Fraser River. According to White, sockeye runs that once numbered tens of millions dropped to approximately 500,000 in 2024. 

Two years later, White says the problem persists for the Snuneymuxw Nation, where abandoned boats continue to impact their clam beds and shellfish. “Until we change regulations or change acts and we change regulations on a higher level, we’re still going to fight this problem,” he says.

White also acknowledges opportunities for Indigenous communities to be part of the solution: “How can the First Nations be included in this and develop business around breaking down ships and being part of that process?”

Abandoned boats a symptom of the housing crisis in Vancouver

In False Creek, environmental damage is only part of what Paetkau encounters. When storms drive abandoned boats onto rocks, Paetkau says what he and his crew find inside looks like “desperation.” 

One call in particular has stayed with Paetkau. He boarded a boat that had crashed onto rocks in False Creek, with a hole ripped in the side. His job was to assess the damage and determine a responsible bid for its removal. But, when he climbed inside, he found a woman. 

It was February, and the boat was sitting in an area that would soon fill with seawater when the tide came in. She was wrapped in three flotation jackets and was insisting she could repair the boat that Paetkau knew was beyond saving. She told him she had nowhere else to go. What looked like a wreck had become to her a “paradise,” Paetkau says, even as the boat broke apart around her. 

Housing in Vancouver is among the most expensive in Canada. In a city where the average one-bedroom or studio apartment can cost thousands of dollars a month, even a broken-down boat begins to look like a viable alternative. 

To see how these boats become a symptom of the housing crisis, it helps to first understand how they often become abandoned. 

In B.C., cars must be registered and insured. But according to Paetkau, boats are typically bought and sold privately, often without any formal record of transfer. When a boat reaches the end of its life, both disposal and repairs can cost thousands. At that point, there is a clear incentive to pass it along. 

“I’ve known of boats that we charged the Canadian taxpayer seven or eight thousand dollars to get rid of,” he says, “that probably changed hands over nothing more than a handshake and a six-pack.”

Because of this, Paetkau says, there is little to no paper trail, ownership becomes unclear and the boats tend to drift between hands.

While they can provide shelter, many of the boats stay broken-down in the hands of people who don’t know how to operate or maintain them. As a result, these boats can become harmful for the people on board and for the environment.

Provincial funding ends, but other solutions emerging for abandoned boats

Between April 2025 and May 2026, Transport Canada removed 19 vessels in False Creek. But while Vancouver’s housing crisis may intensify the problem, abandoned boats are not confined to the city’s shoreline. “What I hear from Transport Canada is there are other harbours [in B.C.] where the problem of abandoned boats is worse,” Paetkau says. 

On the west coast of Vancouver Island, in towns such as Tofino and Ucluelet, and the First Nations communities Opitsaht, Tla-o-qui-aht and Ahousaht, the problem is familiar. Until recently, the removal of abandoned boats in their harbours was funded through the provincial Clean Coast, Clean Waters Initiative.

That funding ended this year, as planned, raising concerns in communities where a lack of infrastructure, such as boat lifts, can make vessel removals particularly costly. In an emailed statement, the B.C. Ministry of Environment and Parks told The Narwhal that at this time “there is no funding identified beyond this.” 

There are still signs of efforts to address the problem before the boats become wrecks. Bill C-244, also known as the Clean Coasts Act, was introduced in 2025 and would prohibit owners from transferring vessels to people they know (or ought to know) cannot safely maintain or dispose of them. The bill has passed second reading and is currently under committee review. 

Down the coast, Washington State has taken a similar preventative approach with its Vessel Turn-In Program that allows owners to surrender boats free of charge that are likely to become abandoned before they reach that point, reducing both environmental damage and cleanup costs. 

In Vancouver, preparations for the World Cup pushed many of the boats elsewhere, but it is unclear what changes will outlast the tournament. The version of False Creek projected to the world looked a little different than what locals were used to seeing, and yet the issues beneath the surface remain the same. 

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I am standing in my kitchen in a grey cotton robe, holding my baby — 12 weeks old today — swaying back and forth as he sleeps on my chest. I am acutely aware that my heart is right under his head, that he can hear my heartbeat, a source of comfort and regulation. No matter how calm I look on the outside, no matter how slowly I sway, he can probably still feel it beating quickly. Too quickly.

I feel anxious looking at the eerie scene out the window. Our entire home has an orange glow. I noticed it as soon as I opened my eyes this morning, the light already wrong before I was fully awake. It’s familiar now — other parts of the country, other parts of the world, have lived this many more times than Toronto has. But even here, we know the scene: orange skies, a bright sun hazed over in the distance, headlines that Toronto has the worst air quality in the world, because fires are raging in northern Ontario. On Tuesday, it felt like 47 degrees outside. A couple of weeks ago, the same. We’ve been under multiple heat domes and heat advisories this summer.

When I found out I’d be giving birth in the spring, I was excited. I imagined parks, walks with friends; a summer spent outdoors. And yet over the past many weeks, it has often been too hot or too smoky to leave home — and I am aware, even as I say that, of how much safety our heat pump and well-insulated walls buy us. Not everyone gets to wait this out indoors. Right now, tenants across this city are stuck in apartments with no cooling at all, no way to open a window and feel relief, because our governments keep letting rent climb while doing nothing to guarantee a liveable indoor temperature. Toronto already legislates a minimum indoor temperature for winter. There is still no equivalent maximum for summer, even as doctors warn heat is causing excess deaths among seniors and that any delay in a bylaw will cost lives.  

A friend told me that her kids didn’t even question the N95 mask she wore to water the garden this week. They’ve grown up with summers like this, and to them it barely registers as strange. Yet when I called my dad to warn him about the air quality, he said, “Oh, that’s why it looks weird outside” — he had noticed the sky but hadn’t connected it to smoke. “But there aren’t fires here,” he said, as if that settled it. He described seeing ash on his car but wasn’t concerned because he doesn’t feel it’s affecting him. But the particles in this smoke are small enough to slip past the body’s defences, working their way deep into the lungs and bloodstream, where they can inflame and damage organs whether or not you ever feel short of breath. The distance between my friend’s kids’ understanding of this and how little urgency my dad feels is a reminder of how quickly the baseline is shifting, and how differently each generation is being asked to carry our reality.

Last night, when my baby was struggling for a few hours, I kept my nervous system calm, telling myself: let’s just sway a little, rock a little, walk a bit around the house. Sure, we can’t go outside, but there’s so much we can do in here. We can bounce. We can listen to music — his favourite song at the moment, Pump Up the Jam, discovered by my partner during a particularly stressful diaper change. It was manageable because a friend was over. It was also manageable because I knew it would end. My calm could regulate his nervous system, which he still borrows from mine, because I knew it would end. He eventually calmed down and went to sleep.

This morning, I changed him, fed him, played with him on the floor for a while — that orange cast still hanging over everything, a low hum in another room, there, but not yet something I could afford to feel. It was only once I’d gotten him down for his first nap, once I was standing in the kitchen swaying with him against my chest, that it actually landed: what that smoke actually is, and where it’s coming from. Here in Toronto, many of us can close the windows, turn on the air purifier, wait it out. 

In Namaygoosisagagun First Nation, there was no waiting it out — residents had only minutes to reach boats as fire jumped the rail line behind their homes, evacuating without the support of emergency services. And this is the summer our government chose to scrap emissions targets, support a new oilsands pipeline with public money and accelerate LNG projects — decisions that will likely make summers like this one more frequent, more severe and harder to survive for the people who have the least power to protect themselves. I am standing here trying to calm my own anxiety so my baby can keep sleeping, aware that my heartbeat alone can unsettle him, while people who hold so much more power than I do are making choices that will shape the rest of his life.

Baby Z, I don’t know yet how I am supposed to show you the beauty of the world, and everything there is left to save, everything there is to fight for, without burdening you with the grief of everything we have already lost, and all the things I experienced that you never will. Someday you’ll need to know all of it — who made these choices, and why, and what it cost — and I hope you’ll be someone who fights back. But for now, my job is to keep swaying, to keep the room calm, to let you sleep a little longer before any of this is yours to carry. 

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

Summary

• 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.

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