Canada is the world’s fourth-largest oil producer. Yet it imported about 500,000 barrels of crude a day in 2025, three-quarters of it from the U.S., according to the Canada Energy Regulator. And much of the western Canadian oil that reaches Ontario and Quebec travels through pipelines that cross the U.S. before coming back north. As diesel prices have skyrocketed, politicians across the spectrum have pointed to a solution they say is simple: build more Canadian refineries.

Case in point: in September, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre pushed Prime Minister Mark Carney to invest in new refineries, saying, “Canadian workers should be turning Canadian oil into Canadian fuel.” In July, Ontario Minister of Energy and Mines Stephen Lecce said Canada needs to “expand domestic refinery capacity.” Departing B.C. premier David Eby said in January that if governments have “tens of billions of dollars to spend,” they should spend it on a refinery rather than a pipeline.

Why now? “Energy security” has become a powerful political argument as the trade war with Washington has made relying on the U.S. feel riskier, and war in Iran and attacks on Russian refineries squeeze global diesel supplies. As Poilievre put it, “the current diesel price crisis will … expose our overreliance on the U.S. to refine our own oil.”

But despite current geopolitics, the idea isn’t new. “It’s like the seasons,” said Pierre-Olivier Pineau, an energy economist at HEC Montréal who has watched refinery fervour come and go for years.

The idea returns just as, in Pineau’s words, “there has never been a better time in human history to run a refinery,” profit-wise. Imperial Oil’s refining division, for example, earned $787 million in the second quarter of 2026, more than double a year earlier. The industry, meanwhile, has been busy bending the ear of the federal government. The Canadian Fuels Association, a lobby group for refineries, reported 51 communications with federal officials in the first nine months of 2026 — more than in any full calendar year since at least 2021. Most of those contacts came in the spring, when diesel prices soared.

In the face of all that, seemingly simple solutions can look like a silver bullet. The thing is, everyone The Narwhal interviewed, from the refiners’ lobby group to its critics, agreed on one thing: Canada isn’t short of refineries. 

Here’s what you need to know.

What exactly is a refinery, and what does it produce?

A refinery is an industrial plant that turns crude oil into products people can use. In Canada, more than 80 per cent of what refineries produce is gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, according to a 2024 analysis by oil market analyst Rory Johnston.

The rest includes heating oil, asphalt, propane and the base oils used to make lubricants for engines. Refineries are different from Alberta’s upgraders, which turn thick bitumen from the oilsands into lighter “synthetic” crude that refineries can then process.

How many refineries does Canada have?

Canada has 16 oil refineries, including two that make asphalt. They have room to process about two million barrels of crude a day. In 2025, Canadian refineries ran, on average, at 90 per cent of that capacity, according to the Canada Energy Regulator.

That’s enough for the country’s needs. “The Canadian market is essentially in balance,” said Carol Montreuil, vice-president for Eastern Canada at the Canadian Fuels Association. Pineau, a frequent critic of the industry, agrees. So does Ottawa. “Canada does not need more refining capacity to meet current domestic needs,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement to The Narwhal. In 2025, Canada exported a net 200,000 barrels a day of refined products, it added.

The real issue is that Canadian refineries don’t process much of the oil this country is best known for: thick, heavy bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands. Heavy crude is only about a quarter of what Canadian refineries process, according to Johnston’s 2024 analysis.

For that reason, most of Canada’s heavy oil goes south, via pipelines, to refineries in the U.S. Midwest and Gulf Coast that can handle heavy crude.

How do refineries affect the people next door?

Refineries support more than 18,000 jobs in Canada, according to the industry. For their neighbours, they can be both a paycheque and a burden.

Near Edmonton, the Imperial and Suncor refineries release benzene and sulphur dioxide, among other pollutants. Limited monitoring makes it hard to pin down how much of the region’s air pollution they are responsible for, The Narwhal has reported.

Sarnia, Ont., is home to Chemical Valley, a cluster of roughly 60 industrial facilities, including three oil refineries. Residents of neighbouring Aamjiwnaang First Nation are exposed to about 30 times more benzene than people in Toronto and Ottawa. Sarnia would be the destination if Ontario and Alberta are able to make Northern Shield happen: that proposed pipeline would carry Alberta crude north of the Great Lakes.

And when the industry leaves, the impact isn’t over. Montréal-Est was a hub of refining activity by companies such as Imperial Oil, which opened the island of Montreal’s first refinery in 1916, and Shell, which closed its last in 2010. Decades after most refineries closed in the 1980s, the area has about 270 hectares of industrial brownfields, roughly the size of 330 football fields, awaiting cleanup and redevelopment.

What are the arguments in favour of a new Canadian refinery?

Gasoline and diesel prices are high, but experts say a new Canadian refinery wouldn’t necessarily ease prices at the pump. Even Montreuil concedes that local refineries offer consumers limited protection from price spikes, since fuel prices are set on global markets.

For Montreuil, it’s more about fuel supply security, which the industry has also raised in recent months, according to the federal lobbyist registry.

Canada’s refineries ensure the country has enough fuel, and without them, we’d be rationing fuel right now, according to Montreuil, who pointed to recent examples around the world. Indonesia and Russia both rationed fuel this year. While some argue refining more oil at home would mean independence from an increasingly unpredictable neighbour, Montreuil and Johnston say that isn’t our only exposure.

Another vulnerability is pipelines that carry Canadian oil back and forth across the border, such as Enbridge’s Line 5. Political skirmishes with Michigan over that pipeline are one reason Ontario Premier Doug Ford is pushing the Northern Shield Energy Corridor. Much of Atlantic Canada relies on crude, much of it American, delivered by tanker to the country’s largest refinery, Irving’s in Saint John. No pipeline exists to bring Alberta oil to the Atlantic provinces, meaning a U.S. export restriction would leave them scrambling for other fuel sources.

Heather Exner-Pirot, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, said federal clean fuel rules are another weakness, because in order to meet emissions reduction targets, suppliers blend in biofuels largely imported from the U.S. “We are artificially making ourselves dependent on an American product,” she said. She argues the rules should be redesigned, and they’ve been a constant topic in the industry’s communications with federal officials, according to the lobbyists registry.

Carney’s government announced tweaks to the clean fuel rules last week, saying it would “make it easier and cheaper for companies to comply.” Transportation is one of Canadian households’ biggest costs, according to Statistics Canada, but Pineau thinks that addressing that by scrapping clean fuel rules would “chain Canadians even more tightly to an extremely expensive way of life,” one built around the car.

On its own, experts say, a new refinery fixes none of that.

How much would it cost to build a new refinery, and who would pay?

Companies are not lining up to build a refinery in Canada, and Ottawa isn’t offering to pay for one. In a statement, the Prime Minister’s Office said the government supports “additional refining capacity where supported by market conditions.”

A large new refinery would cost $10 to $15 billion, take at least five years to build and need 20 to 25 years to pay off, according to Montreuil and Exner-Pirot. Alberta’s last attempt, the Sturgeon refinery near Edmonton, saw its original projected cost double to about $10 billion, with much of the risk carried by taxpayers, though high diesel prices have since improved its profitability.

A new refinery would also struggle to compete on a global market. India’s newest are so big that two of them could supply all of Canada, from gasoline to jet fuel and more, Montreuil said.

With the domestic market already balanced, the purpose of a new plant would mostly be exports. But there is no real export route for refined products to Europe, Ian Sanderson, a senior oil and gas analyst at the Pembina Institute, said in an interview, adding the biggest markets are in Asia and “have substantial refinery capacity to refine Canadian [crude] at a lower price.”

There’s also the issue of decreased global demand for fossil fuels. Global demand for refined oil products could peak as early as 2027, according to the International Energy Agency. “It really is an act of faith,” Montreuil said, to bet that export markets will still want Canadian fuel by 2030 or 2035.

Sanderson points to the coal phase-out in Alberta, which hit mining towns very hard. The lesson, he said, is to “get ahead of the transition” and support oil workers into new jobs.

So far, though, Canadians aren’t using less fuel.

What part of Canada faces the highest risk when it comes to U.S. energy threats?

The most immediate risk is to Ontario, whose refineries run mostly on western crude carried by Line 5 through Wisconsin and Michigan.

Michigan’s governor has tried for years to shut it down over environmental concerns. In late August, the line was offline for more than two weeks after being struck by a truck at a work site in Wisconsin. The episode offered a glimpse of the crisis Canada would face if the Americans shut Line 5 down for good, Montreuil said.

Northern Shield would carry Alberta crude to Sarnia north of the Great Lakes, bypassing Line 5. It wouldn’t add any refining capacity, though: “Same refinery, same oil, just a different route to get it there,” Exner-Pirot said. The open question is how much this new pipeline would cost, and who would pay.

Quebec has more options, but not more independence. The Valero refinery in Lévis gets its oil by tanker through the St. Lawrence River, though much of what Quebec imports comes from the U.S. And Suncor’s Montreal-East refinery gets much of its western crude through Line 9, which runs from Sarnia, so it too depends on oil that crosses the U.S. to reach Sarnia.

What would make Canada’s fuel supply more secure?

Without building a new refinery, there are other ways to shore up supply.

Canada is the only G7 country without a strategic petroleum reserve. Despite being a member of the International Energy Agency, we’re formally exempt from its mandate to hold emergency oil stocks equivalent to at least 90 days of the previous year’s net imports because we produce more oil than we import.

Consequently, when the G7 agreed in early October to release 100 million barrels of oil from emergency stocks to lower prices at the pump, Ottawa’s contribution was to stagger maintenance at its refineries so as not to affect supply. Poilievre has proposed a reserve of refined fuels, though someone would have to pay to fill and maintain it.

Another option is to expand what already exists. Adding 10 to 20 per cent to an existing refinery may be more realistic than building a new one, Montreuil said.

But “the solution isn’t necessarily to cut taxes or to produce more,” Pineau said, noting that new oil and gas infrastructure would run counter to Canada’s climate targets. Unlike past oil shocks, “there are a lot of options to move away from oil,” Sanderson added.

Whichever path Canada takes, the big decisions will largely belong to companies, as HF Sinclair showed this summer by announcing it will stop making base oils in Mississauga, Ont., at Canada’s only such plant. Base oils, used to make motor oil, were already at the centre of a global shortage.

While politicians may bring up building new refineries as an easy solution to a very complicated problem, right now at least, even the industry itself isn’t pushing for it.

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Using night-vision goggles and thermal cameras, believers in Bigfoot traverse North American forests under the cover of darkness, as the large ape-like creature is believed to be nocturnal. Some Bigfoot trackers use plaster kits to make casts of suspected footprints; they record first-hand sightings and mysterious knocking sounds in detailed online databases, much like birders document observations on eBird.

On Oct. 10, about 50 of these believers — many avid outdoors-people who also spend their time camping, hunting and trapping — gathered at a church in North Bay, Ont., to discuss their experiences looking for Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch. It was a good turnout for a small northern city on Thanksgiving weekend. The energy was lively but focused and, at times, even emotional. 

Some were sharing their stories for the first time; this felt like a safe space to discuss their beliefs, one person said, as others agreed that they felt likely to be ridiculed elsewhere. Creating a welcoming environment was the goal of the conference’s organizer, Andrew MacKellar, who has searched for the creature for nearly 15 years, and is a well-known “squatcher,” or Bigfoot investigator.

“Most humans do find things fascinating that they don’t fully understand,” MacKellar told The Narwhal after the event, the first of its kind in North Bay. “[Recently] there seemed to be, around the Great Lakes, a spike of sightings or encounters with people, even compared to usual. So I just wanted to draw that out for the North Bay area, and to see if that was the case.”

Research from University of British Columbia found that around 10 per cent of Canadians believe in Sasquatch. Some of those believers, like MacKellar, collect detailed data to support their theories, and thousands of reports have been uploaded to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization.

And their data, believe it or not, is being put to use by University of Montreal ecologist and data scientist Timothée Poisot. From the documented sightings of cryptids — creatures anecdotally sighted but lacking scientific proof — he is testing how accurately computer models are predicting the impacts of climate change on scientifically accepted plants and animals.

Part of the reason he chose Bigfoot is the abundance of data.

“We have, collectively, more information about Bigfoot sightings than we have about maybe 90 per cent of mammals in North America,” Poisot said.

Bigfoot’s contribution to science

Poisot studies how machine learning tools can help solve complicated ecological problems; he’s been working on improving computer models that predict where species might live in the changing climate. The models use data — like where a certain animal has been spotted, weather conditions of those places and how the climate might change there — to make these predictions for the future. 

The problem is these models aren’t always great at communicating how certain they are about a prediction. For example, if we don’t understand a particular climate well, the resulting model’s predictions for that area might be less accurate. This is an issue when policymakers or researchers use those predictions for things like early detection of invasive species or making expensive decisions to protect endangered animals.

To address this problem, Poisot looked to a statistical technique called conformal prediction, which helps scientists measure uncertainty in computer-generated biodiversity predictions. 

That’s where Bigfoot comes in. 

Poisot fed a computer model data from thousands of reported Bigfoot sightings, along with environmental data about the area where they occurred. The model learned patterns in these observations, predicting where Bigfoot might live as the surrounding environment changes. Then, Poisot applied conformal prediction, revealing where the model could confidently predict Bigfoot’s supposed presence or absence, and where it couldn’t. 

“I wanted to figure out a way to get a model to tell you ‘I don’t know’ when it’s about to make a prediction about whether species should be here or not,” Poisot said. “The models don’t know and don’t care whether the species that we’re working on actually exists or not. As soon as you feed them numbers, they’re going to give you numbers.”

The model is identifying relationships between the climate conditions and the reported sightings, not determining whether those sightings are real. 

“Assume Bigfoot exists,” Poisot said. “We’re going to talk about the models, the behaviour and the statistics and the predictions, and that gets easier to move the conversation to a place where you can make the methodology better by not thinking too much about the biology.”

This makes Bigfoot a useful test case for a technique that can later be applied to other species.

What Poisot found using data from Sasquatch enthusiasts surprised even him: the areas where the climate is expected to change the most were not necessarily areas where the model’s uncertainty increased. The models were most uncertain in harder-to-reach areas with fewer observations.

In the future, Poisot told The Narwhal, scientists will need more information in remote areas, far from cities and roads, to be able to make accurate predictions about the state of biodiversity in a changing climate.

“You go to the areas where you are writing a lot of question marks because you don’t really know what’s going to happen here,” Poisot said. “The model is not certain about its outcome, so that should be a priority for sampling.”

Bigfoot’s origin and modern day stories

The legend of Bigfoot has centuries of history rooted in Indigenous storytelling. The name Sasquatch is believed to come from the Halq’eméylem word Sasq’ets meaning “wild man” or “hairy man,” used by the Stó:lō people, a Coast Salish First Nation in what’s now called British Columbia.  

For Thomas Sewid, a Kwakwaka’wakw and Cree Sasquatch investigator who guides expeditions in British Columbia and Washington, the subject has been on his mind from his earliest memories. Especially D’sonoqua — Sasquatch’s female companion in Kwakwaka’wakw tradition — thanks to stories from his father.

“He said, ‘Tommy, you behave yourself. D’sonoqua is always watching you,’” Sewid said. Growing up on Vancouver Island, he was told if he didn’t behave, do his chores or listen to his Elders, “she can come at night and reach that big hairy arm into where you’re sleeping and grab you … she’s going to boil you up and eat you.” 

“That’s when I became interested in Sasquatch,” Sewid said. “The greatest teaching Sasquatch can share with us is about respect.”

Several of the attendees at the North Bay event from nearby Nipissing First Nation and other Indigenous communities, and agreed with Sewid that many distinct Indigenous cultures  across North America have their own beliefs and understandings about the creature.

When citizen scientists across Canada collect data, whether on Bigfoot or using more conventional apps like iNaturalist and eBird, Poisot said it can be used to help inform policy and conservation decisions, or the tracking of invasive species and zoonotic disease. So, despite a recurring theme of distrust toward “mainstream science” in speeches at the North Bay conference, the interests of “squatchers” and scientists may actually be complementary. 

“The effort of documenting biodiversity is something that is done primarily by amateur scientists and members of the public,” Poisot said. “It’s really important. Most of what we know about biodiversity was not collected by researchers … and so, the more people contribute observations, the more likely we are to detect trends at the location where they are important.”

While they’re certainly approaching their interest in Bigfoot from different angles, there is one thing MacKellar and Poisot agree on: the value of getting out to collect more environmental data.

“Go out and try and prove their existence, or … go out to disprove them. Either way, you go out for a hike outside in the wilderness. I mean, what side really loses, right?” MacKellar said.

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Hundreds of rats across the small town of Hawkins, Indiana, scurry into a dark, abandoned building in season three of the science fiction series, Stranger Things. When the horde reaches the basement, they stop and squeal as they burst into a writhing sludge of fur, bones and blood. It’s an omen of danger to come.

This scene sticks out to veterinary pathologist and epidemiologist Chelsea Himsworth. It’s an example of how rats have become entrenched as a symbol of evil. 

Rats have become the “fall guy,” Himsworth says: a species that’s taken the brunt and the blame for underlying issues. She took an interest in the long-tailed rodent back in 2010, when she learned there was little known about rat ecology or the risks they pose to city dwellers today. So she started the Vancouver Rat Project with the goal of understanding more.

The rat problem “is going to get worse,” Himsworth warns. “Our cities are enormous and rats rely on humans for resources. The more humans, the more resources, the more rats you will have.” 

In response, many cities have declared a “war on rats.” Alberta’s concerted campaign to control rats started in the 1950s, and today the province claims to be rat-free. (A dead rat was found in Alberta last month.) Common tactics include traps, poisons, gases or other technologies that promise to eradicate rats. Those might have worked when smaller populations were spread across large areas. But today, Himsworth says, this approach is a losing one. 

Himsworth is also a clinical associate professor in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia and the B.C. regional director for the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative.

The Narwhal asked her to explain why we’re doomed to lose this war, what cities should be doing instead — and if we really need to be afraid of rats. (We also asked if rat kings are real. No spoilers!)

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

News stories report rankings of Canada’s rattiest cities, and I’ve read that warming temperatures will spur on even more rat population growth. Are rats about to take over?

There’s not really any empirical evidence to say how many rats there are or the degree to which the rat problem is increasing. No one’s been able to figure out a good way to count rats across the landscape. 

When you look at the impact of climate change, there have been some that have hypothesized that just strict warming will stimulate increases in rat populations because it will do things like prolong the breeding season or prevent freezing cycles that might reduce food sources for rats. I don’t think there has been great evidence to show that that’s the case. I mean, rats exist on every continent except Antarctica, and they exist in places that are bitterly cold.

Instead, I hypothesize that climate change will impact rat populations in terms of the societal chaos that it causes. Rats really capitalize on chaos. For example, natural disasters like floods that disrupt garbage collection and waste management and allow the accumulation of waste that will serve as resources for rats.  

You’ve been researching rats for over a decade with the Vancouver Rat Project. What are the key things that you’ve learned?

We were looking at how different cities approach rat management, with the belief that someone must have figured this out. But unfortunately, rather than finding the solution, we were able to identify a very entrenched problem, which was really a barrier to success, almost globally. 

I call the way we approach rats and rat management the ‘war on rats mentality.’ This is the idea that the way to deal with rats is to kill as many as you can wherever you find them, which has quite a few parallels to the war on drugs. The way we will deal with drugs is by taking as many drugs off the street, making drugs illegal. We’re just going to try and get rid of this entity or substance that we perceive as being harmful. And now we realize that ‘war on rats’ mentality wasn’t working for two key reasons. 

One, winning a war requires an inordinate amount of resources, both in terms of cash and labour. With all of the issues facing society today, no program is ever going to be funded sufficiently to win the war on rats or to really eliminate or substantially reduce rats across the landscape. 

The second is that the ‘war on rats’ mentality doesn’t take into account the complexity of the rat problem. We kind of have a good idea about how to get rid of rats on a property. A city is just a bunch of properties side by side. So if we just do the same thing many times, then we’ll be successful across the city. But it doesn’t take into account the complexity that comes with scaling. 

We need to take a more nuanced and systems-based view of rats in order to start addressing the problem. 

What makes it so complex?

The number of rats, or even the rats themselves, are not the main problem.

If I told you there were rats on the moon, you probably wouldn’t be as concerned as if I told you there were rats in your kitchen. So really, the harm occurs at this interface between rats and people. Sometimes it’s a mental health impact, sometimes it’s a physical health impact, sometimes it’s damage to your vehicle. 

You can look to the ‘war on drugs’ and how one of the different approaches was harm reduction. Rather than just getting rid of all the drugs, can we find ways to reduce the harms that drugs cause? And so we’re trying to borrow some of that thinking when it comes to rats. Rather than just indiscriminate removal of rats from the landscape, can we actually look at where harms are occurring and have more targeted interventions. That may include reducing the number of rats, but may be actually more focused on the harm.  

What does a ‘harm reduction’ approach look like when dealing with rats?

We did a study looking at the mental health impacts of rats on people living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. This is a really, really marginalized community. We found that exposure to rats caused a variety of negative psychological impacts. If you had rats in your living space, then people were losing sleep. They were feeling anxious. 

There was also a more powerful undercurrent where rats were really symbolic of the lack of an individual’s control over their living environment. There’s a feeling of disempowerment and neglect by the municipal government and overall poor environmental health.

Just going into these single-room-occupancy hotels, killing all the rats and leaving them as they are is ultimately not going to solve the broader public health issue, which has to do with the living environment. 

In that case, it could look like working with the city and looking at alternative approaches like improving bylaws that enshrine the right of tenants to a healthy living environment. Improving the overall upkeep, hygiene and waste management. 

Those actions will have a byproduct of reducing the number of rats, but will create a healthier living space for these individuals beyond what would have been achieved by just killing the rats.

What are the underlying problems rats can help illuminate?  

When you see a rat problem, the first question to ask is: What are humans doing that is providing resources allowing rats to exist in that space? 

Maybe it’s having buildings that are made in a way that have opportunities for rats to invade, or the frequency of garbage collection, or the design of garbage bins, or how garbage is used or the way we design green spaces. 

Can we invest in responses that will address the rat problem, but also make the overall urban ecosystem healthier and more resilient? 

Could we provide homeowner grants that would both make homes more energy efficient and make them refractory to invasion by rodents? 

Another program I like is the Urban Gleaners. We have urban fruit trees and when that fruit falls, it serves as a food source for rats. But wasted fruit is also wasted food. Rather than putting rat traps around these fruit trees, could we actually take that same amount of money and get people to harvest the fruit? To me, those sorts of approaches are ultimately more fiscally responsible and sustainable than reverting to the ‘war on rats’ mentality.

How do you actually implement a rat strategy focused on harm reduction?

We’re working on creating new ways to measure the rat problem that combine the relative number of rats with the harms rats are causing in specific circumstances.  

Ultimately, what we’re hoping to do is create what we call a rat risk index. This new metric helps cities figure out where they should prioritize their resources and interventions. It also gives a more meaningful metric of success. 

Let’s say, we’ve invested a lot of money in making rat-proof garbage cans. Are there less rats after the garbage can intervention than before? It’s trying to figure out ways we can create rat estimates in a way that are meaningful for prioritizing intervention and evaluating success. 

A rat infestation in an abandoned house is probably not as harmful as a rat infestation in an airplane hangar, because the potential for harm of rats damaging aircraft is much greater than rats damaging an abandoned building.

If I have a limited number of resources, I want to address the rats in the airplane hangar first. You can apply that across a broad range of scenarios. 

What are the benefits of rats?

This is a tough question to answer as there has not been much research on the benefits of rats compared to the harms. It has been postulated that rats may serve as a food source for native predators, although this might actually be a harm if those rats have been exposed to rodenticides, which can then poison anything that eats them. They may also play a role in soil turnover, seed dispersal and removing waste from the landscape.

What’s your go-to, fun fact about rats? Maybe your icebreaker at a party?

Rats in the wild only live for a year. Why don’t we see dead rats everywhere?

We were looking at the livers of rats from Vancouver and we saw they all had this parasite called Capillaria hepatica. The only way for a rat to get infected is basically to eat another rat’s liver. So, rats, in the secrecy of their underground homes, are engaging in the practice of cannibalism. I guess a dead rat is another food source. You don’t want to have your dead friends and family accumulating in your house. It’s a way to sort of clean up. 

So they’re eating their dead.

That’s our suspicion. 

Okay. Wow. If this was your fun party fact, I would stay to keep talking to you. Can you make the case on behalf of the rat why we should not fear them this Halloween?

Rats have been our strange bedfellow since the dawn of civilization, and as such, we have a very complicated relationship with them. I understand the many ways in which we have been programmed to fear them. It makes sense, but ultimately that fear is hindering us having an effective and efficient response to our rat problems. 

So I would say engage in the cultural fear of rats for Halloween, but on Nov. 1, go back to recognizing they are species of wildlife that need to be managed and proceed as such.

My last question is: are rat kings real? 

That is a holy grail for a rat researcher. I think our best titled paper ever was called, “The Secret Life of the City Rats”, because it’s astonishing that although they exist beneath our feet, their goings on are still a mystery to us. Whether they all get stuck together by their tails is another mystery to add to the lore.

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Like many farmers, Nick Matheson has multiple weather apps on his phone. 

“If I find something I don’t like, I switch apps,” he laughs during a phone interview.

No amount of forecasting, however, could have prepared Matheson for the deluge of rain that hit his Stonewall-area grain and cattle farm this spring — or for the lingering challenges that have trickled through the rest of his season.

“I’m still in it,” he says in mid-October. “And I won’t be out of it until the snow flies at this point. And even then, I’ll probably be dealing with some residual effects come next spring.”

The region north of Winnipeg was drenched with 255 millimetres of rain over a 13-hour period on June 9 — a storm the local mayor described as “unprecedented.” Matheson awoke to an overflowing rain gauge, hail damage and 300 acres — a quarter of his cropland — destroyed by flooding. A promising year with “unreal” early-season germination was quashed overnight.

Since then, his herd of 100 cow-calf pairs has been plagued by insects and hoof rot, a bacterial infection triggered by muddy conditions. Harvest hasn’t gone much better. During a recent tour of his property 30 kilometres north of Winnipeg, Matheson points out patchy wheat and flax fields with poor yields and subpar plant quality. He’s also fighting weeds that have thrived in damaged fields.

Matheson, 42, is the sixth generation of his family to farm this land. Despite several recent years of drought, the extreme weather of 2026 stands out.

“It’s the worst Dad’s seen. I’ve never seen anything like this,” Matheson says. “But we just make do, pick ourselves up and try to not let it get in our head. … You’ve just gotta roll with the punches.”

Extreme weather events, from floods to droughts to wildfires, are expected to become more frequent and severe with climate change. Those in Manitoba’s agriculture sector are split on how to prepare for these kinds of unpredictable events and whether mitigation is even possible.

‘Keep the wolves at bay’: Insurance payouts in the millions keep farmers afloat

Matheson is one of hundreds of farmers to make insurance claims with the Manitoba Agricultural Services Corporation related to overland flooding this season. The provincial Crown corporation, which covers weather-related farm perils, paid out $11 million this year for 478 excess moisture claims on about 157,000 acres that were too wet to seed, David Van Deynze, the corporation’s chief product officer, says. It also received 790 crop damage claims across 180,000 acres; those payouts won’t be tallied until after harvest season.

Since most farmers pay for seed and inputs like fertilizer upfront, often through loans, insurance can be an important business tool when the weather goes sideways, Van Deynze says in an interview.

“Requirements to pay off those loans on an annual basis don’t stop, whether you have a good crop or a bad crop,” he says. “We hope insurance can keep the wolves at bay and allow them to continue to farm.”

Van Deynze says excess moisture insurance has become a “very major” part of the corporation’s portfolio since it was introduced in 2000, with drought being the other main cause of crop loss in Manitoba. 

He believes losses from the extreme drought of 2021, which saw Manitoba Agricultural Services Corporation pay a record $570 million in indemnities, would’ve been worse without modern farming adaptations, such as new crop varieties and minimum tillage, which aims to limit the amount of soil plowed during seeding and after harvest.

At the same time, Van Deynze says there’s often little farmers can do to prepare for localized natural disasters. 

“No matter how hard you try … to mitigate losses, it seems like there’s still times where Mother Nature’s going to win out,” he says.

Farmers see risks, but also benefits, from a changing climate

Despite the spectre of extreme weather, many who spoke with The Narwhal/Free Press are optimistic about the possible agricultural benefits of climate change — such as warmer temperatures and longer growing seasons.

“I live in northern Manitoba, if the environment is warming, it’s good for me from an economic perspective,” rancher Peter Tokar says. “It will bring about new pests and whatnot, but I think with the way I manage things … I should be the most resilient when it happens.”

Tokar grows cash crops and manages 450 head of cattle on 2,200 acres of grassland near Swan River, Man. He credits regenerative farming practices for saving his season after the region 500 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg was hit with a once-in-a-200-year flash flood in June, followed by a second major downpour less than a month later. It was Swan River’s fourth-wettest summer on record, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada.

When the water receded, part of his pastureland was covered with more than a foot of silt deposited from the nearby Duck Mountain Provincial Park escarpment. 

The shelterbelts around Tokar’s property kept floodwater debris at bay and his pastures recovered quickly thanks to years of rotational grazing, a practice of moving livestock frequently through small sections of pasture which allows grazed areas to regrow and helps improve soil structure, carbon sequestration and water dynamics. He expects the silt-covered fields to bounce back over the next year.

“What I have been doing actually worked really, really well,” he says.

While Tokar enjoys the environmental benefits of rotational grazing, he ultimately adopted the practice for cost-saving reasons. His cows need less feed because they’re able to graze for longer and leaving fields idle requires less fuel, labour and fewer chemicals, like pesticides, he says.

Tokar has found like-minded peers through the Manitoba Forage & Grassland Association, which promotes regenerative agricultural practices within the livestock industry. Soil and water health are “vitally important” to extreme weather and climate resilience, Duncan Morrison, the association’s executive director, says.

The grassland association has developed a climate forecasting tool, called Aquanty, to help local producers understand how extreme weather and heat will impact their groundwater supply and what kinds of management tools, such as rotational grazing, can be deployed today to protect those resources.

“We’re interested in how we can recharge the aquifer through grasslands and wetlands, which are both key parts of grazing systems,” Morrison says.

The Aquanty project recently expanded to several cattle-producing regions in Alberta, B.C., Ontario and Quebec with funding from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

Manitoba has 14 watershed districts that provide farmers with funding for projects that protect local water resources and improve regional climate resilience. The Prairie Watersheds Climate Program, for example, incentivizes the use of rotational grazing, nitrogen management and cover cropping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve soil health.

The Swan Lake Watershed District — which encompasses Swan River and a 7,200-square-kilometre section of Manitoba’s northern parkland region — has been inundated by applications from farmers for stream-bank-stabilization projects to shore up on-farm riverbanks eroded by this year’s flooding. 

“I had eight projects for 2027 and that just got blown out of the water,” district manager Edward Shao says. “I think I have 45 file folders on my desk that were brought in after July.” 

Shao spends much of his time encouraging farmers to maintain the natural features of their land — like shelterbelts, wetlands and riparian zones — that act as buffers during extreme weather events. Preventative measures can be a hard sell in normal times, due to the financial pressures of industrial farming, he says. 

“A lot of producers farm up to the water’s edge and crop every inch of land,” Shao says, adding the worst damage occurred on farms without the aforementioned buffers.

“There might not be any effects when there’s no flooding, but in a year like this you see a lot of impact.” 

Shao acknowledges there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to climate resilience, but hopes this year’s flood helps locals prepare for future extreme weather events.

‘I don’t have that crystal ball’: farmers prepare for a future of reacting to change

Back in Stonewall, Nick Matheson isn’t planning on changing how he manages his farm in light of this year’s flooding. He says he already practices minimal tillage, plants cover crops between annual harvests and keeps wetlands on his property intact.

“I don’t think there’s a lot I can plan for because I don’t have that crystal ball to see further in the future, so I’ll probably just carry on with what I’m doing,” he says.

Robert Misko, a grain farmer and head of council for the Municipality of Roblin, agrees that extreme weather is hard to plan for — even with the cutting-edge management practices.

“We try to use whatever technology that’s going to make us more efficient and more sustainable. Farmers, we’re pretty adaptive,” Misko, who manages a 7,000-acre grain operation, says.

Agriculture accounts for 27 per cent of Manitoba’s greenhouse gas emissions, but, at the moment, Misko doesn’t see many viable alternatives for individual farmers to make a dent in that number.

“We rely on diesel. I can’t buy an electric combine. I can’t buy an electric tractor to pull an air seeder,” he says.

“Climate change is sadly something that, as farmers, we have very limited control over and we don’t really have a lot of levers that we can pull to slow it down. We just have to try to adapt to it,” he adds.

Eva Wasney is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

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Elijah Washington pushes through wet ferns and branches left by logging, crossing the mossy forest floor on Haida Gwaii. He kneels beside a massive western red cedar stump.

The cedar was felled decades ago during the industrial logging boom that cleared swaths of old-growth forest across the archipelago off British Columbia’s north coast, leaving a hollow, decaying stump.

Its top has since been trimmed with a chainsaw to fit a plywood sheet, capped with weather-resistant roofing material and covered with thick green moss collected from the surrounding woods. Near the base, an opening roughly the width of Washington’s safety helmet leads into a sheltered hollow lined with moss.

“You just want it to be small enough for a mother bear to move in,” Washington, a stewardship technician with the Haida Nation, said. “So it’s got to be just right, just like the Goldilocks, [the entrance] can’t be too big, can’t be too wide.”

The retrofitted stump is one of seven the Council of the Haida Nation had modified this summer to provide winter shelter for the coastal black bear, known in the Haida language as taan. Found nowhere else in the world, this subspecies of black bear is among the largest in North America. 

A bear’s winter den may bring to mind a rocky cave, but coastal black bears in B.C. rely heavily on large old-growth trees and the hollow logs and stumps they leave behind. Decades of logging have removed many of those shelters, however — and the younger trees growing in their place have yet to develop hollows large enough for bears, said Helen Davis, a wildlife biologist working with the Haida Nation to identify and restore bear dens.

Cubs are born weighing about a pound, with their eyes still closed. They need a dry, protected place where their mothers can nurse them through the winter, and they stay there for up to 100 days. “The only place where bears can have babies is in a den,” Davis said. “And so these dens are critical to population sustainability.”

The old trees bears need for shelter are also sought-after by the logging industry. B.C. has expanded protections and temporary logging pauses, but old-growth tree harvesting continues. In August, B.C.’s then-minister of forests Ravi Parmar said stopping it altogether would shut down the sector.

Davis has heard that argument for years. People repeatedly suggested making shelters from melted tires or culverts instead of leaving old-growth trees for bears.

“People would just sort of throw that out somewhat frequently and since nobody seems to want to conserve old growth for them, I was like, ‘Well, fine, then let’s see if we can build them,’ ” Davis said.

Now, the first-of-its-kind program could set a model for bear conservation worldwide. But in providing an alternative to simply protecting old-growth trees, some worry building dens gives an easy excuse for logging to continue without pause.

Lisa White, a councillor with the Old Massett Village Council, said the sight of plywood laid over old-growth stumps was difficult to bear. “I actually cried,” she said. The plywood roofs, she said, showed how deeply the land had been damaged: bears now needed people to help provide their shelter. 

White said Haida people had needed wood long before commercial logging. Thousands used it for homes, canoes, clothing and heat, yet the forests appeared virtually untouched to the first newcomers, she said. People selected individual trees, used them fully and left the surrounding forest standing, so animals could continue living there, including northern goshawks, which are at risk of disappearing from the islands. The Haida also were known to pull entire planks from trees without felling them, leaving the tree standing.

White worries about how well the second-growth forests surrounding the modified dens will hold up through winter. She has seen extensive blowdown in those stands and is concerned about placing shelters among trees vulnerable to the islands’ storms.

“It’s also the forest around them that needs to be strong,” she said.

Building bear dens

Sometimes, loggers discover a bear den only after cutting into it.

Davis, who has been studying coastal black bear dens since the early 1990s, recalled stories from loggers: “They cut into trees and a bear popped out — or worse, they cut into a bear.” 

Those accounts led to a three-year provincial government study with forestry company Canfor to investigate whether black bears needed large trees for dens.

Davis tracked radio-collared bears to roughly 65 dens; her field research confirmed that bears were almost entirely dependent on large, hollow old-growth trees and that second-growth forests left them with virtually no options.

At the time, despite the rate of loss of old-growth forest in the province, the research didn’t set off alarm bells. “I don’t think they thought they’d run out of old growth,” she said.

But building a den meant manually crafting what a living cedar takes centuries to create. As a cedar grows, fungi can slowly rot the wood at its centre, creating a hollow large enough for a bear while the tree remains alive. Forests managed for timber are often logged again before those chambers develop, so the new trees do not replace the dens lost when old-growth trees are cut.

Davis began working with Taan Forest, the Haida-owned forestry company in 2019, teaching staff to identify natural bear dens and convert suitable stumps into new ones. The company was already restoring streamside forests damaged by earlier logging and adding den restoration became a natural extension of that work, Jeff Mosher, its chief forester, said.

“Protecting bears is a priority, even if it means a lower dividend,” Mosher said. 

Taan Forest has since created six dens across the Mamin River, Survey Creek and Ghost Creek watersheds on Graham Island, in northern Haida Gwaii, Mosher said.

Mosher said bears usually took about a year to start using the shelters, though they checked out one new den almost immediately. Signs of use at other modified stumps encouraged Taan to build more. Bears used one of the dens through the winter and spring of 2023 and have returned annually since.

Those results also encouraged the nation to expand the effort, Washington said. His crew spent the summer searching previously logged forests for stumps with a hollow large enough for a bear and an entrance leading inside. Davis helped the council secure funding from the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation and spent a week in July teaching the crew to scout stumps, assess their suitability and turn them into dens using chainsaws, plywood and moss.

The crew is also trying to make the new shelters smell familiar. When the Haida crew comes across a bear that has died, they respectfully collect some of its hair to place in some of the modified dens, a trick Davis has tested elsewhere in the field with encouraging results.

By the end of October, the team plans to complete three more dens, bringing the total to 10 modified sites across Haida Gwaii ready for winter monitoring. The exact locations of the sites are being withheld to prevent exposing denning bears to hunters. 

Haida members remain concerned about black bears killed for their gallbladders, which contain bile sought for use in some traditional Asian medicines. B.C. bans possession of bear gallbladders or bile and prohibits their trade.

Washington said that while the nation’s presence on the land has helped protect bears from such hunting, the killings still occur. Haida members have reported seeing bears left dead on the side of the road with the paws cut off and gallbladder removed. 

What a stump cannot replace

Tracing his hand over a living western red cedar in a different part of the forest, Washington points to the distinct tool marks left by a traditional adze. Sometime in the early 1900s, he estimates, Haida ancestors cut into the tree to see if it could be used for a house pole. Finding rot at the core, they left it standing. Bears later widened the opening with their teeth and claws, turning the hollow into a natural den, its floor already lined with soft cedar bedding and green branches still growing above.

This den sits high in the tree, which is among the safest places for a female bear to raise cubs, Washington said. But his crew cannot recreate one at that height.

The modified dens also provide only temporary shelter. “They’re dead stumps and so they’re rotting and they won’t be there forever,” Davis said.

But shelter is only part of what a bear needs. Noel Bellis, an Old Massett member of the Haida Nation and a carver, grew up in a logging family and later worked in cedar forests. After visiting modified dens and attending workshops, he believes bears would move in but questions whether they would find enough food nearby. When bears come out in spring, they feed on green vegetation, including horsetail, fireweed shoots, salmonberry shoots and grasses.

But in the second-growth forests he has visited, deer have eaten much of the low-growing vegetation, leaving little for bears to forage. “It’s a moss lawn between trees,” he said.

Nearby salmon streams provide a seasonal source of food, but Bellis worries about what bears will find once those runs end each year. He wants den-building accompanied by efforts to restore food plants, using cages to protect young growth from deer until it grows beyond their reach.

“It will cost money, but that’s what the costs of clear-cutting are going to be,” he said.

Davis agrees bears need both shelter and feeding areas within their home ranges, where they generally remain to den. “They don’t just pick up and march off to some far-flung patch of remaining old growth and all den there together,” Davis said. 

Taan Forest is opening gaps in the canopy to encourage shrubs to grow, with at least two modified dens in or beside those restoration areas, Davis added. 

‘They’re our kin’

When Barney Edgars worked along Haida Gwaii’s creeks as a fisheries guardian, his crew carried air horns and flares but rarely needed them. The Elders who raised him had taught him to respect bears and speak to them when their paths crossed: “You go your way, I’ll go my way.”

“We were taught that everything we grew up with had a spirit,” said Edgars, a Haida Elder.

He recalled an older woman fishing for sockeye salmon when a bear and its cub approached her net. She threw the bear a fish and told it to leave the net alone. It never returned, he said.

Earlier generations ate bears and used the whole animal. His grandmother asked him to hunt one for her, though he never did. Travellers also followed bear trails through northern Haida Gwaii, finding routes between waterways on the journey from Massett toward Naden Harbour.

Neither Edgars nor his grandparents had heard of a bear attack on the islands, he said. But he worries that losing forests and feeding grounds will push bears into communities to rummage through garbage, increasing the possibility of conflict. 

Fears about conflict with bears are new to the Haida. “They used to sleep under the trees and there was never any fear of that. … I never learned any fear from my grandfather about bears,” White said.

Washington said Haida people want to know whether bears are healthy, have enough food and have places to live. Monitoring the new dens will help answer part of that question.

Cameras facing the den entrances will record activity year-round while their crew stay away from roughly October to April to avoid disturbing bears. After winter, the crew will review the footage to see which shelters bears explored and which they used as dens.

Hair naturally caught at den entrances can be tested for DNA to help show whether the same bears return year after year or others move in.

Even if bears take to the shelters, the crew does not plan to turn every suitable stump into a den. Once one is finished, workers move to another area, leaving space between shelters to limit competition for food and places to raise cubs.

“We don’t want to create a whole community out here,” he said. “We want to have like one bear that’s safe enough to come out here.”

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Iconic. Sexy. Yellow. Just a few words used to describe the Canadian-made water bomber, built specifically for fighting fires. This legendary aircraft, which was invented in Canada and transformed the way wildfires are attacked around the world, has been used since the 1960s. But while wildfires have increased in intensity and frequency, the country hasn’t added any new water bombers in over a decade. 

For months, Calgary-based aerospace company De Havilland Aircraft of Canada Limited has been pushing for a national fleet of 50 new planes, lobbying the federal government and urging Canadians to write to their members of Parliament. The newest model has a wingspan wider than six cars from hood to trunk. In 12 seconds, it can scoop up more than 6,000 litres of water, then fly over a wildfire and open its belly to release a waterfall from the sky. The company says it is the best firefighting tool in the world.

“Forest fires won’t wait,” reads a full-page newspaper ad bordered with flames. “It’s time for a national water bomber fleet.”

“We don’t have enough aircraft for the fires of today. We certainly don’t have enough aircraft for the fires of tomorrow,” Neil Sweeney, De Havilland’s vice president of corporate affairs, told The Narwhal. With increasing drought and extreme weather, Sweeney said, “it’s time to invest today for the problems of tomorrow.”

De Havilland’s lobbying efforts may have paid off. Leaked documents obtained by American journalism organization Politico suggest Canada has a new deal with the European Investment Bank to jointly purchase 50 water bombers. The announcement is expected this week at the European Union-Canada summit in Montreal.  

So far, there are no details and plenty of unanswered questions of how this joint fleet could work; both continents have experienced simultaneous, record-setting wildfire seasons. And as wildfire response is provincial, not federal, it’s unclear who would take ownership of such a fleet. A national fleet is a multibillion-dollar project: if Canada were to purchase 50, it could be in the range of $3 billion to $4 billion. The newest model is still in production and it will be years before any new planes take flight. 

The Narwhal talked to aviation and wildfire experts, read through Senate hearing transcripts, studies and media releases to try and understand if a national fleet could be part of the solution to Canada’s growing wildfires. 

Many experts we spoke with hedged the idea with concerns or questions about how many planes Canada really needs, their effectiveness, wait times and costs. Some said dollars should be better spent on a variety of aircraft or, better yet, wildfire prevention.

Stretched for wildfire resources 

There were 23 days in the 2026 wildfire season when fires were so significant that firefighters and equipment in every jurisdiction across Canada were maxed out. International help had to be requested.

When possible, wildfire resources are shared across jurisdictions in Canada. The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, a not-for-profit corporation owned and operated by federal, provincial and territorial wildland fire management agencies, acts as a resource broker. It coordinates sharing everything from hoses to personnel to aircrafts. As fossil fuel emissions drive climate change, Canada’s wildfire seasons are becoming longer and more severe. Water bombers can be a powerful tool to make fires more manageable and help crews on the ground. 

Across Canada right now, there are about 50 water bombers owned by some provinces or private contractors. These planes were first manufactured in the 1960s by Canadair and then Bombardier. Over the years there have been some modifications and upgrades until orders slowed and production stopped in 2015. The average age of the current fleet is around 32 to 35 years.

“That was sufficient, you know, until the world started to catch on fire,” John Gradek, a lecturer at McGill University in aviation and supply chain management, told The Narwhal. He has worked in aviation for more than 30 years. Designed from scratch to be an amphibious, firefighting water bomber, Gradek said this built-in-Canada plane has a place in global aviation history.

Now, De Havilland is restarting production with a newer model. When The Narwhal spoke to Sweeney, he said they can currently build about 10 water bombers a year. There are several orders already queued up. The first 22 planes will go to Europe. Manitoba will be the first Canadian province to obtain a new water bomber, which is expected to be ready by 2031. He estimated the wait time for a plane ordered now as six to seven years. 

“Obviously, that’s a long time to wait for an aircraft,” Sweeney said. “We’ve never produced [this aircraft] before. We’re bringing a supply chain back into production. We’re making small but important changes to the aircraft. So there’s a lot of engineering that goes into all of that.”

The federal government spends about $1 billion a year on wildfire suppression and response, according to Natural Resources Canada. Sweeney couldn’t confirm the cost of a new plane but news releases from European and Canadian orders put the price tag from $60 to $80 million.

Water bombers not the ‘silver bullet’ to Canada’s wildfires 

Whether or not 50 is the number of water bombers Canada will need for the wildfires of the future is a question experts couldn’t answer, telling The Narwhal more information was required. Namely, a better understanding of a national wildfire strategy and if there would be investments in other supports like a mix of aircraft, more crews or training.  

The federal government didn’t give any details on who would manage the fleet or where the planes would be stationed. There are several federal agencies, like Public Safety Canada and Natural Resources Canada, which support provinces and territories to manage wildfires and emergencies. But wildfire management is ultimately the responsibility of each province or territory. While the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre acts as a clearing house for resources, the country doesn’t have an integrated, national plan on how to best deploy a fleet of 50 planes, Gradek said.

“I don’t know if 50 is the right number. It may be too little. It may be too much,” Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildland fire at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, told The Narwhal. “It’s part of the toolbox, absolutely. But to me, it’s not the most frequently used tool or the most important tool.” Flannigan is also the B.C. Innovation Research Chair in predictive services, emergency management and fire science. For Flannigan, firefighters and helicopters are more crucial as is a national wildfire strategy.

While water bombers are a tool, “they’re not always the most appropriate tool, depending on the landscape or the fire,” Alexandria Jones, a communications and engagement advisor with the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, said. They are most effective when they don’t have to travel far from a large body of water to a fire. In swampy or mountainous terrains, water bombers have a more challenging time filling up. In those scenarios, Jones said it’s better to rely on smaller aircraft or helicopter bucketing. 

Water bombers do not extinguish flames, experts said many times over; firefighters do. Aircraft are used to make intense fires more manageable, buy time for crews to get established or help them put the fire out. Water bombers are “really not the silver bullet to the national fire situation that we’re seeing year after year,” Jones said.

Ahead of this year’s wildfire season, the federal government invested $316.7 million over the next five years to increase Canada’s aerial wildfire firefighting capacity. Water bombers were considered, but because there is a shortage and significant wait, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, which received the funds, decided to hire a mix of other aircraft.  

Sweeney acknowledged there should be investment into a variety of firefighting aircraft but sees the water bomber as the “backbone of most fleets.”

Fundamental questions unanswered, experts say

De Havilland has been actively lobbying the federal government to “buy Canadian” and is pursuing several projects. Sweeney told The Narwhal that if the government did agree to buy 50 planes, they “could be in Canada by 2029” as the company would set up a second production line and employ Canadian workers. 

Representatives for De Havilland have been busy this year meeting with several departments, including Innovation, Science and Economic Development, National Defence, Global Affairs, Public Services and Procurement and the Prime Minister’s Office, according to data summarized by the Investigative Journalism Foundation. About three-quarters of De Havilland’s government contracts since 2009 were awarded without a bidding process.

The Narwhal reached out to several federal departments to ask how aerial firefighting procurement decisions are made, what research is considered and if water bombers are being considered. Our interview request was declined. An emailed statement from the office of Eleanor Olszewski, minister of emergency management and community resilience, said emergency management is a shared responsibility between several levels of governments, and pointed to recent public engagement on natural disasters and funding for aerial suppression that went to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.  

“The federal government continues to strengthen our national emergency preparedness and response capacity, including through significant investments in wildfire response and resilience in recent years. For example, Budget 2025 included funding to lease firefighting aircraft to create new federal surge capacity.”

But several experts told The Narwhal that investments should be preceded by more clarity on Canada’s wildfire strategy, including where the fleet would be stationed and which agency would manage it. What’s more, Gradek said, there’s still questions around how many planes Canada really needs, and whether water bombers are the most effective tool for the money. 

“Those are the fundamental questions that we have to ask ourselves before we start throwing hundreds of millions and billions of dollars into a firefighting fleet aircraft,” Gradek said.

‘The decisions we make today are really, really crucial’

Preparing for, responding to and recovering from worsening wildfires is mostly the responsibility of provinces and territories. To coordinate efforts more, the 2026 Senate report, Canada on fire, called on the Canadian government to create a national “office for wildfires and emergency response” and fund “a national fleet of modern firefighting aircraft.” Exactly how that would work is still unclear.  

Olszewski’s office told The Narwhal in an email there could be the creation of a “federal emergency management agency,” based on input they heard from a national engagement on natural disasters. 

Robert Gray was among the dozens of witnesses who shared expertise at the Senate hearings. A wildland fire ecologist, he believes water bombers perform an important role in fire suppression, and “we could probably use more,” but if we choose to spend billions on them, “it damn well better work.” 

The water bomber question gets at a core tension to Canada’s wildfire strategy. “Do we double down on suppression or do we shift to trying to get ahead of the problem?” Gray asked. He sees a political culture willing to spend on visible solutions, like water bombers, versus mitigation and prevention efforts.  

Studies show that mitigation and prevention efforts have high cost-benefit ratios. Clearing underbrush and prescribed burns, strategies that Indigenous communities have been using for centuries, have an estimated return of almost $4 to every $1 spent. In one study, restoration of fire-prone forests returned $7 for every $1 spent. Some nature-based solutions have an estimated return of $100 for every $1 spent. 

“Those water bombers are really like the sexy part of firefighting, the prevention and mitigation aspect is less so, but equally, if not more important,” Jones said. 

A year ago this month, Gradek spoke at the Senate hearings telling the committee the country could probably use 100 water bombers. 

“What was the science behind that? Nothing,” Gradek told The Narwhal. 

He’s since reflected on that answer and has stepped back, saying we need more research and clarity around what the country really needs and how these planes would be used most effectively.  

A number helps us write a cheque but it doesn’t solve the wildfire problem, he said. 

“The decisions we make today are really, really crucial,” Gray said. “If we spend $4 billion on air tankers, will we see a return on investment? We’re at a tipping point where we’re going to have to make a significant decision either way.”

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Last summer, Lauren Wright was planting lentils in a field outside of Saskatoon. The air was thick with wildfire smoke and, as temperatures climbed, a co-worker was hit with a sudden asthma attack. 

Rushing to the truck for an inhaler, Wright remembers fighting blurred vision, their head pounding from the smoke exposure. The episode is etched in Wright’s memory — not for the sudden moment of panic, but as a lasting reminder that summer life on the Prairies had morphed into something both unfamiliar and dangerous. 

Both of Wright’s parents were raised in northern Saskatchewan, their father on a farm and their mother in a small town. While Wright was the first in the family to grow up in the city, they spent much of their childhood canoeing, fishing and working the family farm during harvest.

A multi-year drought dropped water levels on the river where they used to fish and canoe. Some summers, extreme heat would make it nearly impossible to play sports or go on camping trips. Drought sunk crop yields. Then the wildfires came, and with them, forests burned and smoke filled the air. 

“I really started to understand, you know, what was going on in my city, my country and how climate change was very much a current reality rather than a distant future problem,” Wright said. 

“It’s really a culmination in the change of my way of life, the way of life that my family has lived for so many generations.”

The 22-year-old is among 15 young Canadians whose experiences with heat waves, floods and wildfires form the backbone of a legal case that has wended its way through federal court since 2019. After a series of appeals and amended pleadings, the landmark constitutional challenge — known as La Rose vs. His Majesty the King — will finally be heard at a federal courthouse in Vancouver starting Oct. 26.

Over a four-week trial, lawyers and multiple experts are expected to submit evidence that the federal government’s Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act — which legally binds Canada to absorb as much carbon pollution as it emits by 2050 — is not ambitious enough, and so violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

The court challenge claims the government’s plan to curb emissions is not in line with the best available science. As a result, the plaintiffs claim it fails to safeguard the life, liberty and security of Canadians, a direct breach of Section 7 of the Charter.

Plaintiffs hope a win would take the politics out of climate policy

Canada’s climate is already warming nearly twice as fast as the global average. Canada could see 5 C of warming by the end of the century if governments around the world do not pursue emissions reduction with more effort than laid out in current climate policies, warned federal scientists in September.

The claim warns of a continued rise in heat-related illnesses, life-threatening diseases, allergies, asthma, exposure to dangerous pollutants and death. As permafrost melts, shorelines destabilize and rivers run dry, ecosystems will suffer, leading to severe consequences — both for spending on public infrastructure and the livelihoods of Indigenous communities who rely on fishing and hunting, according to the claim.

Children are already at higher risk from heat and smoke, and the court challenge emphasizes they will disproportionately suffer in a world where climate-driven disasters become more common and more extreme. 

The plaintiffs, who hail from nearly every corner of Canada, have already seen the destructive power of water and fire tear into the places they call home.

At 21, Haana Edenshaw of the Haida Nation Tsitts Gitanee clan has witnessed sea-level rise damage her family home on Haida Gwaii. 

In 2018, wildfire destroyed Montay Jesse Beaubien-Day’s home in Telegraph Creek, B.C. Today, climate change has limited his Wet’suwet’en and Tahltan families from harvesting wild food like salmon, moose and berries. Multiple studies have shown those food sources have also been impacted by everything from fishing and logging to the exploration and extraction of gas. 

Further north, Kira Young and her family were among 20,000 people evacuated from Yellowknife when fire threatened the territorial capital in 2023. Court documents describe ash falling from an orange sky and fires burning alongside the highway as they fled. 

Abandoning home is a familiar feeling for Sadie Vipond, who in 2013 was evacuated to higher ground when the Bow River flooded her neighbourhood in Calgary.

“I was only seven years old at the time. I had to be woken up by my grandmother and told we had to evacuate,” she told The Narwhal. “I was really scared for my home and family.” 

The plaintiffs’ individual experiences will inform a multi-pronged argument, one that claims Canada’s Net-Zero Act “sets targets and requires development of plans” but fails to require any reduction in carbon pollution.

Canada produces a fraction of total global emissions but has one of the highest per-capita emissions profiles in the world. It is also the world’s fourth largest producer of oil and gas. 

The scale of carbon pollution coming from Canada could grow even more in the coming years as Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government seeks to fast-track several new fossil fuel export projects. That includes a clutch of major liquefied natural gas terminals, as well as the Pacific Link oil pipeline meant to boost bitumen shipments from Alberta’s oilsands to B.C.’s West Coast. 

If the court sides with the plaintiffs, the federal government would need to re-write their net-zero policies to be in line with the Charter. The decision would not force the federal government to pursue a specific climate policy, but it would almost certainly challenge the notion that confronting climate change is a purely political question that can be bumped down Ottawa’s list of priorities, David Wu, one of the lead lawyers in the case, said.

“If there is a shift in the politics of the day, the government can’t just wave away its climate change commitments,” Wu told The Narwhal.

“It raises these broad constitutional questions about whether governments have an obligation to protect their citizens.” 

Feds argue Canada has ‘little or no control’ over climate change 

Federal lawyers pushed back against claims Canada has failed to fulfill its international climate obligations under the 2015 Paris Agreement, whether through its Net-Zero Act or in collaboration with provinces. 

In court documents, Ottawa contends the 15 young people have failed to establish a causal link between federal legislation and their alleged harms from climate change. Submissions from government lawyers state Canada’s plan to lower emissions is consistent with its international commitments, including the 2015 Paris Agreement. 

Canada’s actions at the federal level have “little or no control over the ultimate impacts of globally-fuelled climate change,” the government claims.

Ottawa also argues the court lacks the “institutional competence” to evaluate the scientific, economic and political complexities of global climate change policy. It also ignores the separation of political and legal powers within Canada’s democratic system by attempting to have the courts weigh in on a government decision.

“It’s an argument we’re expecting,” Wu said. “We’re not asking the court to dictate climate policy.” 

“What we’re asking the court to find [is] that Canada has infringed our clients’ rights, and they, the government, need to do better to ensure that those rights are protected.”

Both sides’ arguments have yet to be tested before a judge.

Vancouver trial to test international climate law

The La Rose trial is the latest in a wave of climate litigation supported by the non-profit Our Children’s Trust. Of the nearly 100 rights-based climate change cases currently being brought worldwide, about half are backed by the U.S.-based group, Kelly Matheson, the group’s deputy director of global strategy, said.

The organization has seen some success. One court challenge it supported in Hawaii led to a settlement which pushed the state to aggressively decarbonize its public transportation sector. And in 2024, the Montana Supreme Court sided with 16 young people who had sued the state for violating their right to a “clean and healthful environment” guaranteed under Montana’s Constitution. 

What sets the Canadian case apart is that it is among the first in the world to make it to trial following a handful of major international rulings. Chief among those is a 2025 advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice that found states have a general duty under international and human rights law to protect the world’s climate system for present and future generations. 

Canada’s legal system is not bound by the international court’s ruling. But it can be used to inform judges’ interpretation of constitutional rights. One federal judge has already cited the case in ongoing litigation involving two Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs who challenged Ottawa over the full balance of carbon pollution produced by its policies. 

“It’s so rare for these cases to go to trial,” Matheson said of the La Rose case. “It will have persuasive weight all over the world — in part because Canada is a big emitter.” 

Elsewhere in Canada, seven young people led by Sudbury teenager Sophia Mathur sued the Ontario government in 2019 after the province clawed back its own climate targets.

And in June, Mathur joined two other young people to launch a parallel legal challenge against the federal government’s Net-Zero Act. That case, which has yet to go to trial, claims Ottawa abandoned or weakened its interim emission reductions plan, thereby failing to adhere to the 2050 plan.

The La Rose case makes a much broader claim, arguing the Net-Zero Act is weak enough on its own to be unconstitutional, said Andrew Gage, a lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law.

Whatever the outcome, many of the young plaintiffs will finally have their chance to tell their stories. When the case was first filed seven years ago, Wright was still in high school and struggled with the thought that they had the responsibility to represent the experiences of an entire generation. In the years since, Wright said they have found ways to be grounded in their own stories.

“I’m a good snapshot of life here in the Prairies,” the 22-year-old said. “I really have grown to see it as a privilege of being able to show people what is happening in the place that I love so much. And to tell them why it matters.”

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A group of students, residents and environmental advocates gathered in Winnipeg on Friday afternoon to discuss Indigenous sovereignty and the future of northern Manitoba.

The event at the University of Manitoba was the final stop on the Arctic Crossroads tour, an Indigenous-led public engagement campaign highlighting the potential impacts of proposed major infrastructure projects on northern First Nation communities. The tour also stopped in Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation, Churchill and Brandon, Man., this week.

Event host Clayton Thomas-Müller — a local climate activist, author and member of Pukatawagan Cree Nation — said concerns raised by attendees run counter to Premier Wab Kinew’s assertion earlier this year that there is no Indigenous opposition to a proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) pipeline to Churchill.

“There is a ton of Indigenous concern, as well as fear to speak out,” Thomas-Müller, the Arctic and Hudson Bay campaigner for Climate Reality Project Canada, said in an interview ahead of Friday’s event. 

“A lot of folks in Churchill are arm’s length away from government-funded agencies — the ecotourism industry is very much wrapped up in both federal and provincial interests and funding streams — and so folks don’t want to speak out.”

The federal and provincial governments want to introduce year-round shipping and build an offshore LNG terminal at the Port of Churchill, which is owned by the Arctic Gateway Group. The proposal to expand the deep-water Arctic port includes a new energy corridor, an all-weather road, critical mineral storage and an upgraded rail line through northern Manitoba.

In an emailed statement, Environment and Climate Change Minister Mike Moyes described the Port of Churchill expansion as a historic opportunity and said his government is committed to working closely with Indigenous and northern communities on the project. He pointed to provincial and federal efforts to establish a national marine conservation area in western Hudson Bay as a way to balance economic growth and environmental stewardship.

Feasibility studies related to the port expansion have flagged concerns about the impact of increased shipping on Hudson Bay’s sensitive marine ecosystem and resident species, including polar bears and beluga whales.  

During the tour, participants expressed worries about the cumulative effects of climate change and increased industrial activity on access to traditional hunting, trapping and fishing grounds, Thomas-Müller said. 

“There’s no Safeway up where I come from in Pukatawagan, and a lot of our people still depend on country foods,” he adds. Pukatawagan is one of 29 First Nations with an ownership stake in the Arctic Gateway Group.

Attendees also raised concerns about the social implications of the proposed northern resource projects.

“A community member in Churchill said one of his biggest fears is Churchill becoming one giant ‘man camp,’ and what that would mean for the safety of not only his sisters but future women and girls in the community,” panelist Kakeká ThunderSky, an Anishinaabkwe member of Poplar River First Nation, said.

The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls found high rates of violence against Indigenous women connected to work camps, or “man camps,” associated with the resource extraction industry.

In Winnipeg, ThunderSky also emphasized the importance of thinking about the multigenerational impacts of energy and mining projects. “Whatever we do to the land, we do to the children,” she said.

Questions and comments from those in attendance ranged from tactics for engaging future generations in resource-development resistance to Treaty Rights to self-care.

ThunderSky, the northern and rural coordinator for Climate Action Team Manitoba, was joined on the panel by Indigenous youth organizers and land defenders from Ontario and British Columbia who have advocated for better government consultation and opposed industrial development projects in their home communities. 

“It’s important to bring people who have had these experiences and have gone through similar things in their territories, to share and talk about what the reality is and what it actually is like and to push back on these narratives,” ThunderSky said. “We’re not alone in this.”

Denzel Sutherland-Wilson hails from the Gitxsan village of Anspayaxw in northwestern B.C. and is a member of the Fireweed Clan of the house of Git’luuhl’um’hetxw’it. He was arrested by the RCMP’s Community-Industry Response Group — a unit tasked with policing resource extraction protests — in 2021 while resisting the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory. 

Sutherland-Wilson sought to share what he learned during that experience with Manitoba audiences. He believes Indigenous solidarity will be integral as Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to fast-track major national projects through Bill C-39, the Build Canada Strong Act. First Nation leaders across the country have opposed the bill, which would centralize Indigenous consultations and limit the timeline for environmental assessments.

“We need to find creative and new ways to resist on our own terms,” Sutherland-Wilson said. “We have to have our own people’s safety and security [in mind]. We have to develop strong protocols and … collectives that are accountable to one another, rooted in our own culture, in our ceremonies and our ways of life.”

Thomas-Müller hopes this week’s speaking tour inspires political engagement locally and nationally. Climate Action Team Manitoba has launched a petition opposing the LNG pipeline to Churchill. 

“We need to go back to the drawing board and create economic plans that don’t create sacrifice zones across the country … disproportionately in Indigenous communities, in our lands that we depend on,” he said.

Eva Wasney is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

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On Canada Day, parts of Ottawa were hit with a one-in-200-year storm. Nearly four months later, it’s still having an impact as the polls open for Ontario’s municipal elections.

As much as 167 millimetres of rain, more than an average month’s worth, fell in a matter of hours on the southwest corner of the city on July 1. Combined with high winds, the storm closed roads and downed power lines. City staff admitted the sudden deluge overwhelmed neighbourhood drainage systems, and more than 7,000 people reported their basements had flooded. It was a big contributor to what became Ottawa’s wettest summer on record.

But it was all heavily concentrated in one part of the city — so localized, in fact, that Environment and Climate Change Canada didn’t even clock it in its system for monitoring climate-driven extreme weather, a spokesperson confirmed to The Narwhal. That system only looks at rainfall across the broader region, which didn’t record the same degree of rainfall levels that day.

The lopsided impact demonstrates how climate change doesn’t affect everyone equally.

Some residents are more exposed to climate risks, like those who live along shoreline, or in neighbourhoods that don’t have robust enough sewer systems to handle huge amounts of stormwater.

That’s a big issue for Ottawa, as both heavy rains and flooding are expected to be significant risks across the city in the future, as the climate keeps heating up from fossil fuel use.

A 2020 report commissioned by the City of Ottawa and the National Capital Commission predicted that climate change will bring “more intense precipitation.” This will increase the risk of flooding and stormwater overflows, and “municipal planning must account for climate impacts, including future flood risks,” the report noted.

“The real surprise isn’t the storm. The surprise is that we are still treating these events as unexpected rather than preparing for the climate reality we know is already here,” Community Action for Environmental Sustainability Ottawa said in a statement following the storm. 

“Every flood, every heat wave and every major storm is another reminder. Climate action isn’t only about preventing a dire, far-off future, it’s about protecting our communities today.”

Many Ottawans have spent months dealing with the mess the storm caused, removing ruined furniture and mould, while also dealing with the complexities of insurance that left some people out of pocket. Meanwhile, the city has been investigating flooding impacts and studying what can be done to fix the situation.

The issue has spilled over into the Oct. 26 municipal elections. All four leading candidates in Ottawa’s mayoral race have promised to do something to protect residents from future flooding.

Ottawa mayoral candidates talk flooding

According to Jeff Leiper, a three-term city councillor who is running for mayor, the Canada Day storm was another example of the extreme weather, energized by climate change, that has pummelled the city in recent years. There have been multiple tornadoes, heat waves, flooding, toxic wildfire smoke and a derecho storm.

“On the whole, we have a good idea that we need to make our infrastructure considerably more resilient to more extreme storms,” he told The Narwhal in an interview. “But we are not at the point where we have funded making our infrastructure appropriately resilient.”

Leiper has announced a $50-million plan to fix sewers and other infrastructure in the three Ottawa wards hit hardest by the Canada Day storm. His plan would also increase grants to those impacted by flooding, create a new team to help residents with insurance claims and relief programs, waive permit fees for flood repairs and increase municipal staff responding to 3-1-1 calls during major storm events. 

Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, who has held the title since 2022, is running for a second term. He plans to prioritize $500 million in funding for “infrastructure that make[s] our communities stronger in the face of extreme weather,” including heavy rains which cause flooding. He said he would “expand the application of a climate lens for infrastructure investments.” A spokesperson for his campaign told The Narwhal he will make “all necessary investments” to fix infrastructure “in the areas directly impacted by the July 1 storm.”

Sutcliffe’s plan includes upgraded storm sewers and ditches, with priority “given to addressing infrastructure gaps in flood-prone communities as guided by expert recommendations.” 

The campaign spokesperson said they disagreed with Leiper’s assertion that climate infrastructure hasn’t been funded. Ottawa’s 2026 budget includes $94 million in capital contributions “that apply a climate lens to projects across the city.”

Another mayoral candidate, Neil Saravanamuttoo, an economist, plans to replace sewers, prioritize infrastructure investments in existing neighbourhoods and carry out flood mitigation measures like creating stormwater ponds and planting trees. He is also promising “city-run neighbourhood retrofits,” where the city arranges the bulk of the buying and financing, and also helps residents apply for federal rebates.

“The Canada Day flooding was a wake up call for Ottawa,” Saravanamuttoo’s platform states. “Weather events that we thought were once-in-a-century events are now happening every few years, and we are seeing the significant cost that flooding can impose on Ottawa households.”

Alex Lawson, a business owner who is another contender for mayor, said he would review the city’s process for responding to disasters and produce a report that examines maintenance records for sewers, street by street. 

A spokesperson for the Lawson campaign, Laura Kurkimaki, also said Lawson has experience navigating disaster response from his time on the board of West Carleton Disaster Relief, and he believes the city’s emergency response plan puts “too much pressure on volunteer organizations.”

City staff, mayor dispute minister’s comments on flood response

Leiper said he felt the city’s response to the flooding was “far too slow” and that as mayor, he would have “visited the flooded sites earlier and more frequently.”

At an Oct. 6 meeting of the Ontario legislature’s Justice committee, Chandra Pasma, the NDP MPP for Ottawa West–Nepean, the riding which includes the affected area, also criticized the provincial response. 

“Why was no help sent to Ottawa, despite the city’s request to actually help people clean out their homes and make them safe to live in again?” she asked.

“In the situation in Ottawa, the flooding and the rain happened on July 1. We didn’t receive a request for assistance until July 9,” Ontario Emergency Preparedness Minister Jill Dunlop said. “When we did have the request for assistance from Ottawa, we did work with some of our partner organizations.”

Sutcliffe’s campaign disputes both the minister’s timeline and Leiper’s comment about the city’s response. 

The campaign’s spokesperson told The Narwhal that Sutcliffe and his office had spoken with city staff and emergency officials the day of the storm, and that the following day, July 2, he “spoke personally with residents and councillors in the affected areas.” 

“Over the course of the following days he continued to contact affected residents, visit them on site and direct city officials to provide immediate solutions,” the spokesperson said. He then spoke with Dunlop, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Municipal Affairs Minister Rob Flack on July 2 and 3, the spokesperson added.

A city general manager also told CBC News city staff were in touch with the provincial emergency operations centre immediately following the floods and maintained contact “nearly daily.”

Dunlop’s office did not respond to a request for comment from The Narwhal. 

Ottawa is just one of 414 municipal governments holding elections across the province, with 2,800 elected positions to be filled, according to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. Local governments are responsible for administering the vote. Find your municipality’s contact information here.

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For the first time in nearly a century, B.C. has a Conservative government.

Lorne Doerkson’s BC Conservatives won a majority government, defeating David Eby’s incumbent NDP. It’s a stunning win for the Conservatives after a chaotic couple of months, culminating in Eby’s decision to call a snap election almost two years ahead of schedule. 

Doerkson, a low-profile MLA first elected in Cariboo—Chilcotin in 2020, became the party’s interim leader one day before the snap election was called. 

On the campaign trail, Doerkson presented himself as a mild-mannered former rodeo rider and grandfather, promising to bolster B.C.’s economy while cutting taxes, reducing regulations and courting investment. The Conservative campaign platform mentions climate just once, stating “climate decisions” should be based on three principles: protecting people from extreme weather, reducing emissions in B.C. and beyond and delivering measurable results. 

In the end, a majority of voters threw their support behind the Conservatives, handing the former opposition party the reins of the province for the next four years.

“Together, we seized this opportunity, you guys, and together we voted for a better British Columbia,” Doerkson told an electric crowd in Vancouver. During his victory speech he promised to “supercharge” the province and “cut red tape like it’s never been cut before.” 

Despite choosing to call an election while the Conservatives were in chaos, the BC NDP will now form the official opposition. Eby held on to his Vancouver—Point Grey seat but in his concession speech offered his resignation as party leader. 

The BC Greens maintained their seat count with party leader Emily Lowan winning the Saanich North and the Islands riding where she was seeking a seat in the legislature. Incumbent Green MLA Jeremy Valeriote was re-elected in West Vancouver—Sea to Sky.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the promises Doerkson and the Conservatives made on the campaign trail.

The end of DRIPA and a new approach to Indigenous Rights

One of Doerkson’s first public statements after becoming interim leader of the BC Conservatives was to declare his intention to repeal B.C.’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, or DRIPA.

The pledge, which is a top priority for the Conservatives, appears in the party’s platform under a section titled “protect private property rights” — despite the fact that the act doesn’t deal with private property.

During the campaign, Doerkson was vague about what his government’s next steps would be after repealing the act. Ditching the law will not eliminate the B.C. government’s consultation obligations with First Nations or eliminate friction related to Indigenous Rights and Aboriginal Title. Even in a post-DRIPA province, the constitutionally guaranteed rights of First Nations can be hashed out in the courts, as they have been for decades.

“Simply just repealing it isn’t going to do anyone any service,” Dallas Smith, president of the Nanwakolas Council, told The Narwhal in an interview during the early days of the election campaign.

The Conservative platform promised to pass a law requiring information about Aboriginal Title claims and ongoing negotiations to be made public. The proposed law would also publicize information about legal actions and agreements related to First Nations Rights and Title.

The party’s platform also promises to “restore equal access to Crown land and provincial parks,” a pledge that appears to target annual temporary closures of Pipi7íyekw/Joffre Lakes Park, which restrict visits to members of Líl̓wat and N’Quatqua First Nations, whose unceded territories encompass the park. These reconnection periods have been taking place since 2023 and are intended to allow the nations to conduct traditional harvesting, as well as ceremonial and cultural practices.

Under a BC Conservative government, reconciliation with First Nations will focus on “practical co-operation, clear and fair treaty agreements and economic opportunities,” the platform says. It emphasizes opportunities for First Nations to benefit from projects through revenue sharing and ownership opportunities.

LNG, fracking and fossil fuels

The Conservatives have promised to make B.C. an “energy superpower” by doubling liquefied natural gas (LNG) production by 2032 and tripling it by 2035. With LNG Canada the only LNG export facility currently operating in B.C., the province is already on track to more than triple the province’s LNG production by 2035 with five additional LNG projects currently in development.

On the campaign trail, Doerkson lamented the number of LNG projects proposed under the BC Liberal government of the 2000s and 2010s and said his party is keen to see if any can be revived.

The Conservative energy platform also pledges to get rid of B.C.’s industrial carbon tax and replace it with new rules that it says would ensure B.C.’s gas exports are competitive with the United States and Qatar.

A BC Conservative government would take a new approach to tallying B.C.’s greenhouse gas emissions, one that runs counter to the 2016 Paris Agreement. The Conservative platform proposes taking credit for “emissions avoided through cleaner B.C. exports,” using the example of exported gas replacing coal. 

Doerkson has also promised to use deregulation as a tool to spur economic development, partly by bringing back a ministry dedicated to getting rid of rules, processes and laws it deems burdensome or unnecessary. For every new regulation a Conservative government makes, it would axe two existing regulations, according to Doerkson.

Energy, electrification and renewables

Beyond boosting natural gas and LNG production, the BC Conservatives are promising to boost B.C.’s energy self-sufficiency, a commitment that would mean building a considerable amount of additional energy generation capacity. The province currently balances its energy needs through a mix of energy imported from other jurisdictions (mostly Alberta and western U.S. states) and locally generated power.The strategy, basically, is to use local sources when they are cheap and convenient and buy imported power — such as solar-generated power from California — when it is plentiful and cheap. To date, the strategy has worked out well, though recent drought conditions have put a squeeze on those margins.

The Conservatives are committed to boosting B.C.’s energy production “from every available source,” according to its platform.

Boosting biomass production is a key part of the Conservatives’ energy pitch. The party is proposing to increase the use of logging and mill waste to make renewable fuels. On renewables, the Conservatives support wind, solar and small-scale hydro power “where economics and reliability make sense,” as well as geothermal projects where a business case can be made — i.e. with little investment from the provincial government.

Notably, the 2026 B.C. Conservative platform did not mention nuclear power, an energy source the party touted as part of the solution to B.C.’s energy crunch during the 2024 election.

Beyond increasing exports, a Conservative government would consider opening the door to more natural gas power production in B.C. by making it eligible for BC Hydro’s call for energy project proposals. 

The Conservatives are also promising to “restore choice in energy for home heating and cooking” — a commitment to attacking restrictions and bans on natural gas use implemented by local governments — and overhaul B.C.’s Energy Step Code, which sets energy efficiency standards for new buildings.

Logging and old-growth forest conservation

On the campaign trail, the BC Conservatives promised to do many of the same things the NDP government did to bolster the province’s floundering forestry industry — secure support from the federal government to offset the impact of U.S. tariffs on softwood lumber, boost policies aimed at getting more woodfibre to mills and provide cash for mills to upgrade their operations.The Conservatives’ forestry platform promised to make more trees available for harvest — but does not address how the party would ensure companies actually harvest the maximum amount allowed, something that has not happened in years due largely to the dwindling availability of economically viable trees to log. The Conservatives are also promising to focus on streamlining permitting, reduce costs for forestry companies and support value-added manufacturing.

Conservative forestry policies would double government revenue from stumpage fees by 2028-29, according to the campaign platform. The 2026 provincial budget did not include a specific revenue estimate for stumpage but estimated total forestry-related revenues will increase 3.3 per cent per year through 2029.

The BC Conservative platform claims conservation is a conservative value but doesn’t offer many specific conservation-focused commitments. The party pledges to increase enforcement in parks and wilderness areas with more conservation officers in the field, and to establish sustainable fish and wildlife population objectives.

The platform promises a science-based approach to wildlife management with input from hunters, anglers and First Nations. It also repeats a 2024 campaign commitment to develop a made-in-B.C. species-at-risk law. The Conservative platform doesn’t mention B.C.’s existing commitment to protect 30 per cent of lands and waters by 2030, known as 30-by-30. In May 2024, former BC Conservative leader John Rustad told The Narwhal he would abandon the goal.

 What now?

When the B.C. legislature began its summer break at the end of May, the BC NDP held 47 seats, the BC Conservatives held 39, and the BC Greens held two. There were five independent MLAs, all of them formerly members of the BC Conservative caucus.

The BC Conservatives had just elected a new leader, Kerry-Lynne Findlay, a former Conservative Party of Canada MP and cabinet minister. Findlay won the leadership race to replace John Rustad, who resigned as the party’s leader in December 2025 after weeks of caucus infighting. Findlay’s victory was narrow; she won 51 per cent of party members’ votes, barely beating out second-place finisher Caroline Elliott. Elliott is set to head to the legislature after winning the West Vancouver—Capilano riding for the BC Conservatives.

The BC Conservatives had a spectacularly chaotic summer. Findlay’s leadership lasted just 113 days, ending in her resignation on Sept. 20. Before she stepped down, 13 MLAs had left or been removed from the BC Conservative caucus and one more — Abbotsford—Mission MLA Reann Gasper — stepped down to allow Findlay to secure a set in a by-election.

Doerkson was appointed the party’s interim leader the day after Findlay stepped down.

After Eby’s snap election call, the by-election was cancelled, Findlay exited the party and 10 of the 13 MLAs who had left the caucus signed up to run again. 

“I think David Eby is going to regret this,” Doerkson said at a Vancouver press conference following the snap election call. “Because this election actually offers an opportunity for hope and for real change.”

He was right. The Conservatives won a historic victory, though Doerkson’s future as premier is uncertain. His party’s constitution bars interim leaders from running to become a permanent leader, though the constitution can be changed. Tweaking the rules to allow Doerkson to remain premier will require the support of two-thirds of party members at an annual general or special general meeting. The Conservative Party’s board of directors committed to “pursue the appropriate means” to keep Doerkson as party leader in the event of an election win.

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In 2019, municipalities across Ontario declared a climate emergency. The backdrop was a groundswell of attention to global warming, including tens of thousands of people filling the streets around Ontario’s legislature in September, demanding urgent action on climate change.

The demonstration was part of the Global Week for Future, inspired by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future movement. Young people marched alongside families, seniors and environmental advocates. The crowd outside Queen’s Park in Toronto was so large that some demonstrators couldn’t hear the speakers addressing the rally.

Table of Contents

• Toronto: uphill battle on reducing building emissions, promoting active transportation
• Mississauga: possible rise in emissions as Ontario’s grid gets dirtier
• Brampton: torn up bike lanes, no published emissions reductions reports

Lyn Adamson, co-chair of the environmental advocacy group ClimateFast, spent months helping organize the demonstration. “It was something I’d never seen,” she said. “I’d never seen that kind of mobilization.”

Mississauga and Brampton had declared an emergency in June, while Toronto City Council joined the list the week after the march. In the country’s largest city, council called for accelerated action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and asked city staff to examine how Toronto could reach net-zero emissions by 2040.

Seven years later, municipalities across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area have introduced new climate policies, invested in energy-efficient buildings and expanded programs aimed at reducing emissions. But despite that progress, emissions are not falling quickly enough to meet many of their targets.

With Ontario’s municipal election approaching on Oct. 26, environmental advocates say the next four years will be critical in determining whether cities can turn their commitments into measurable results. And the term will take municipalities to 2030, a deadline attached to several major greenhouse gas reduction targets.

In Toronto, decisions about building emissions standards and retrofits, and transportation investments remain outstanding. Mississauga’s next council is expected to consider an updated emissions reduction plan in early 2027 and Brampton faces questions about how much progress it is actually making on its climate commitments.

And progress across the province has been slowed by the Ontario government stepping in to prevent cities and towns from instituting ambitious strategies it said could impede development. 

Here’s a look at some of the commitments and progress made by municipalities, as they welcome the next municipal council to take the helm.

Climate action hasn’t kept pace with promises

Greenhouse gas emissions across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area represent 46 per cent of Ontario’s emissions. They reached approximately 54.7 million tonnes in 2024, a modest increase of 1.1 per cent from the previous year, according to the latest carbon emissions inventory from the Toronto Atmospheric Fund.

Buildings accounted for 45 per cent of regional emissions, largely from natural gas used for heating and electricity generation. Transportation made up another 37 per cent.

Overall emissions remain far from where they need to be to reach net-zero targets that were developed in line with the United Nations and global scientists to stave off some of the worst effects of climate change.

The Atmospheric Fund, an agency of the City of Toronto, estimates the region would need reductions of approximately 11 per cent every year to meet its collective 2030 climate targets.

Gabriella Kalapos, executive director of Climate Action Partnership, said municipalities have made progress since 2019, particularly in understanding where emissions come from and identifying opportunities to reduce them. “It’s nowhere near the level of action that’s actually needed to respond to this climate emergency,” she said.

Toronto has strengthened its climate plans, but targets remain out of reach

For Adamson, Toronto’s climate commitments aren’t just about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They’re about making everyday life easier for residents, whether that’s because cycling is safe, public transit is reliable or utility bills are lower because homes use less energy.

She believes progress has been too slow.

Under its TransformTO climate strategy, the city has set a target of reducing community-wide emissions by 65 per cent below 1990 levels by 2030, and ultimately reach net-zero emissions by 2040.

Toronto acknowledges it is not on track to meet that goal. In 2023, the city released its most recent inventory of greenhouse gas emissions, finding community-wide emissions were just 35 per cent below 1990 levels. Buildings accounted for 55 per cent of emissions, followed by transportation at 36 per cent.

In an email to The Narwhal, James Nowlan, executive director of City of Toronto’s environment, climate and forestry division, wrote that buildings and transportation remain among the most challenging sources of emissions to address because many of the necessary changes extend beyond the city’s direct control.

Take the city’s multi-year battle with the provincial government to maintain some existing bike lanes and build more on main arteries of the city. Right now, the province is winning, having dispatched crews on a $48-million job to rip lanes out of major streets in the middle of the election campaign. 

Premier Doug Ford’s government has also clamped down on how municipalities can implement green building standards. It restricted municipalities from mandating any green building features that go beyond provincial requirements. This put the Toronto Green Standard, a framework that has shaped development in Canada’s largest city for more than 15 years, in the crosshairs.

The standard required developers to incorporate features — such as bicycle parking, electric-vehicle charging stations and green roofs — to reduce emissions and improve resilience to climate change. The province has argued that standardized development requirements can help speed up construction during a housing crisis.

Environmental advocates, however, say the changes undermine municipal authority, including the ability to address local climate priorities. Kalapos said municipal progress on energy-efficient development policies has been complicated by provincial intervention.

“If you don’t have a supportive framework for climate action at the provincial and federal level, municipalities are really hamstrung to be able to move forward on their targets,” she said. “We are not going to meet this climate change imperative off the property tax base.”

The city is still developing emissions standards that would see building owners gradually reduce emissions through upgrades and retrofits. But provincial legislation will prevent Toronto from making the changes mandatory.

“It’s all voluntary. There is no deadline for anything,” Adamson said, arguing that relying on voluntary measures makes it difficult to achieve the scale of change needed.

Still, cities are trying. In Toronto, a new TransformTO action plan outlines further measures to reduce emissions between now and 2030, including support for community-led initiatives.

The city budgeted more than $2 billion in 2026 for emissions-reduction initiatives, including ongoing support for a bike share program and household composting. 

In Mississauga, emissions are not falling fast enough

In neighbouring Mississauga, the city reports progress on 59 of the 89 actions outlined in its 2019 climate change action plan, a 10-year municipal roadmap aimed at reducing emissions by 40 per cent by 2030 and 80 per cent by 2050. The plan was adopted months after council declared a climate emergency in June 2019.

Only 13 of the actions are considered fully complete, standalone actions, such as developing a program that diverts dog waste from landfills and converts it to energy and a strategy on increasing urban agriculture. Another 46 items, like gradually replacing municipal vehicles with electric alternatives, are mostly complete, with work ongoing and possibly evolving.

Carrah Bullock, Mississauga’s supervisor of climate policy, said the original plan was designed to lay the groundwork for future climate action, but did not include ways to measure its direct impact on emissions. The city is now updating its climate plan to better track the reductions associated with individual initiatives.

Despite this progress, Mississauga acknowledges, like its neighbouring cities, that it is not on track to meet its 2030 emissions targets. In fact, preliminary 2025 data suggest that emissions may have been higher than 2024, due largely to issues that, once again, are in the provincial government’s hands. 

Ontario’s power grid has become less clean since 2021, when it was 94 per cent emissions-free. That number is now below 90 per cent, due largely to nuclear plants being taken offline for refurbishment. Having cancelled hundreds of renewable energy projects upon taking office in 2018, the Ford government has relied mainly on natural gas to replace them. The Atmospheric Fund reported that electricity-related emissions increased 28 per cent across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area in 2024 because of greater reliance on natural gas-fired generation.

The city has made progress on emissions reductions within its own buildings and vehicle fleet. Dianne Zimmerman, Mississauga’s environment manager, pointed to the introduction of a green standard for city-owned buildings, including a new fire station built to a net-zero standard. The city has also electrified municipal vehicles and equipment.

But reducing emissions from privately owned homes and commercial buildings remains a significant challenge. Bullock said a proposed community building retrofit program has been progressing more slowly than the city would like.

The city’s updated emissions reduction plan is expected to go before council in early 2027, followed by a separate climate resilience strategy focused on coping with extreme heat, storms and other effects of a warming planet.

Residents see both progress and setbacks in Brampton

David Laing, president and co-founder of the Brampton Environmental Alliance, regularly uses a bicycle for transportation. When Brampton began introducing cycling infrastructure in the years after declaring a climate emergency in 2019, he noticed the difference.

The improvements, he said, “made my life an awful lot easier and safer and more comfortable.”

But now, the city is reversing course, removing some of those bike lanes to make way for cars — such as on Howden Boulevard in the city’s Westgate neighbourhood — leaving him frustrated with what he sees as inconsistent decisions about transportation and climate action.

According to The Atmospheric Fund, transportation produced approximately 1.81 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in Brampton in 2024, accounting for nearly half the city’s total.

It’s one example of why the city’s progress on community-wide emissions has been in question.

In 2019, Brampton released its community energy and emissions reduction plan, aiming to cut community-wide emissions by 50 per cent below 2016 levels by 2041, and at least 80 per cent by 2050.

Since then, it has taken steps to electrify public transit, including a $4-billion partnership in 2025 with U.K.-based company Zenobē to transition to as many as 1,000 electric buses over the next decade. And the city has developed an updated environmental master plan, subsidized building retrofits and launched a program to help local businesses reduce their energy use.

But the results of those efforts haven’t been published. Laing said the city needs to make it easier for residents to understand which climate commitments have been completed, how much money has been spent and whether emissions are actually declining.

Without that information, there’s little to keep city administration — and incoming mayors and councillors — accountable.

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.