Beena Ruparelia does not need to check a thermometer to know when heat has settled into her northwest Toronto home.

She can see it on her skin.

“You see me sweating,” she says while waving a handheld fan and placing a standing fan right beside her. The temperature inside the rental home she shares with her husband, Peter, near Martin Grove and Albion roads, reaches as high as 40 C during heat waves, including this past July.

The couple does not have central air conditioning. Beena says their home traps heat throughout the day.

“So even having a shower, coming out, you’re literally sweating,” she says. “It’s unbearable.”

At night, the heat rises to the second floor, making it difficult to sleep. Peter, who recently turned 65, says there’s no escape.

“The way the sun is directed in, the morning sun comes right into our bedroom,” he says.

The couple use portable air conditioners overnight, but the units cool only part of the home and increase their electricity bill by about $20 to $30 a month during the summer, Beena says.

When the heat becomes stifling, they retreat to the semi-finished basement.

“We go right down,” Beena says. “That’s the only other place to go.”

The temperature also dictates what they eat. Turning on the stove would add even more heat, so Beena says she relies on sandwiches, microwaveable food and other meals that require little cooking.

The Ruparelias’ experience sits at the centre of a growing gap between provincial and municipal housing rules and the changing climate.

The Ruparelias’ home was built in the 1960s. Like much of Toronto’s rental housing, it was built for surviving winter, when keeping heat in was a greater concern than keeping it out. But as the city gets hotter, low-income renters are among those most vulnerable to extreme heat. 

Renters also have no legal right to a maximum indoor temperature. The City of Toronto will likely take at least another year to institute a maximum indoor temperature by-law, while the Ontario government hasn’t committed to introducing one at all. 

As Toronto experiences longer and more frequent periods of extreme heat, the debate is shifting from whether cooling in rental units is necessary to who should be responsible for providing it — and who should bear the cost.

“Is it on working-class people or is it, in this case, on landlords?” Bruno Dobrusin, co-chair of the Toronto Tenant Union, asks. He has become all too familiar with renters’ stories of frustration and, in some cases, desperation.

“I feel like the main change in the last few years has been mostly the scale: how many more people are going through this and how much more often we hear of tenants just fighting to have some form of cooling in their apartments,” Dobrusin says.

Unlike Mississauga to the west, Toronto does not have a maximum indoor temperature by-law for rental units. Dobrusin says tenants have reported being denied permission to install an air conditioner or being told they must pay an additional $50 to $80 a month to operate one, he says, mostly due to the increased electricity needed to run them.

“Another $50 a month is quite a bit on your budget,” he says.

He says residents often go to Tim Hortons or TTC stations as cooling spaces because they are widely available, require little or no spending, stay open late and allow people to remain for long periods without being disturbed. But they can’t sleep there. 

The lack of cooling cannot be separated from Toronto’s broader housing and affordability crises, he says.

As rents rise, more people are sharing homes. During extreme heat, multigenerational and crowded households can face an additional burden as several people share a space designed for just a few occupants.

Dobrusin says working-class tenants may also spend their days in poorly ventilated or inadequately cooled workplaces before returning to apartments that offer no relief.

“What people are going through are multiple crises that are exacerbated by the climate crisis,” he says.

Toronto was built for a different climate

The city projects the number of days each year with temperatures above 30 C could rise from an average of 10 days between 1971 and 2000 to between 36 and 44 days by the 2050s. By the 2080s, Toronto could experience between 46 and 78 days above 30 C annually, depending on future greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate change is accelerated by greenhouse gases concentrating in the atmosphere from many sources, but primarily from the burning of fossil fuels like oil and gas.

Health Canada data shows 66.3 per cent of the heat-related deaths recorded in Canada since 1981 occurred after 2016. More than one-third occurred in 2021, the year of the Western Canada heat dome.

Extreme heat can cause dehydration, fainting, heat rash and heat stroke. It can also worsen pre-existing health conditions of the heart and kidneys, as well as respiratory diseases. 

Children, seniors and people with existing health conditions can be more vulnerable to extreme temperatures.

And outdoor temperature alone does not determine who is most at risk.

Pavement, concrete and buildings absorb and radiate heat, while neighbourhoods with fewer trees and less vegetation lack natural sources of shade and cooling. This creates what is known as the urban heat island effect.

Karen Smith, an associate professor at the University of Toronto’s department of physical and environmental sciences, helped develop what’s known as a heat vulnerability index for Toronto.

Smith says heat vulnerability considers residents’ sensitivity to high temperatures and their capacity to adapt. That includes whether someone can afford an air conditioner or travel to a cooling space. A resident’s age, health, income and housing conditions can also determine whether a hot day becomes dangerous. 

What the index shows is that the areas with the highest heat vulnerability are also among the city’s lowest-income neighbourhoods, and have high concentrations of immigrants.

Overall, she says, city blocks highly concentrated with apartment towers are more vulnerable to heat than the rest of the city. And while a public cooling space may offer temporary relief, it does not necessarily help a tenant who returns to a hot apartment at night.

Toronto Public Health wrote in an email to The Narwhal that it is continuing to work with the University of Toronto to update the heat vulnerability index with additional indicators and more recent data, but otherwise referred questions to the City of Toronto. 

Why Rexdale faces overlapping risks

The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority has identified Rexdale, the area where Beena and Peter Ruparelia live, as a community facing overlapping environmental and socio-economic vulnerabilities.

A 2023 resilience strategy found apartments account for about 61 per cent of the neighbourhood’s housing and most of its housing stock was built before 1980. Jennifer Taves, senior manager of sustainable communities with the conservation authority, says the community also has older single-family homes that have not been retrofitted for central air conditioning. 

The strategy flagged heat stress, limited tree canopy in some areas, food insecurity, transportation barriers and flood risk as additional concerns. It also found that Rexdale has a higher proportion of children aged 14 and younger than Toronto as a whole.

Because of these risks, the conservation authority decided to prioritize Rexdale for climate adaptation strategies, creating a Sustainable Neighbourhood Action Program with help from community stakeholders.

In 2024, residents in three towers received 47 climate-resiliency kits containing things like instant cold packs and temporary window shades, as well as portable air purifiers and purifying plants for days the sky is filled with wildfire smoke. Taves says there are no current plans to expand that program, but some bigger projects involve gardening, tree planting and engagement efforts. 

“We know that heavily shaded neighbourhoods are much cooler than neighbourhoods that don’t have that shade canopy. So investing in that natural infrastructure or [shade] infrastructure is a very important part of preparing for these effects,” Taves says. The official term is shelterbelt infrastructure, which is when a line of trees and shrubs are planted in one or more rows to help lower surface temperatures like at Rowntree Mills Park and areas along Kipling Avenue.

What is the province doing about heat vulnerability

This past July, a three-year-old amendment to Ontario’s Residential Tenancies Act finally kicked in: now, tenants have the explicit right to install and use a window or portable air conditioner when the landlord does not provide cooling.

The change addresses one problem Beena and Peter say they faced for years: being told they were not supposed to use portable units.

The tenant must notify the landlord in writing. The air conditioner must be installed safely and must not damage the property. If electricity is included in the rent, the landlord can raise it to cover higher bills — but rent hikes can’t exceed the actual electricity cost or stay in place when the tenant removes the unit or stops using it for the season.

But even when a charge accurately reflects electricity use, it may remain unaffordable for a senior or another tenant living on a fixed income, according to Dania Majid, a staff lawyer and director of the tenant duty counsel program at the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario. 

Majid says her organization has heard concerns about lump-sum charges, administrative fees and installation requirements associated with air conditioners. Because the provincial provisions are new, many disputes have not yet been considered by the Landlord and Tenant Board.

She’s one of many tenant advocates that want Toronto to pass a legal maximum indoor temperature of 26 C that applies to all rental units, similar to the legislated minimum during colder months.

“We wouldn’t do that to them in the winter,” Majid says. “So why are we doing this to them in the summer?”

But the Federation of Rental-housing Providers of Ontario says a legislated maximum indoor temperature would raise significant logistical and financial questions.

The federation agrees tenants need protection from extreme heat, Marielle Hossack, the federation’s director of policy and regulatory affairs, says. That’s why it supported the  air-conditioner changes to the Residential Tenants Act, giving tenants the flexibility to buy their own. Even so, some older buildings may not have the electrical capacity to power an air conditioner in every apartment at the same time. 

Honouring a maximum temperature could require electrical upgrades, new mechanical systems and other major retrofits, she says. And that work would require time, planning, skilled labour and significant investment.

“Requiring landlords or housing providers to absorb the electricity cost is not a sustainable solution where electricity is included in rent,” she says.

Governments should instead provide targeted energy or income assistance to low-income or medically vulnerable tenants, Hossack says.

The Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing did not respond to questions by publication time.

The long, long road to a maximum temperature for Toronto renters 

Toronto does not currently have a maximum temperature that applies to all rental units.

When a landlord already provides air conditioning, it must be operated from June 1 to Sept. 30 and keep the unit at no more than 26 C. But if no air conditioner is installed when the tenant moves in, no maximum temperature applies.

As of June 1, apartment buildings that don’t offer in-unit cooling must keep at least one existing indoor amenity space at or below 26 C during the summer. This only applies to buildings that are three or more storeys and 10 or more units and does not apply if construction is needed to meet the requirement.

Toronto city council seems to be moving toward a broader maximum indoor temperature by-law, but slowly. In June, the city manager was instructed by council to report back by June 2027 on findings and key considerations for a by-law and implementation plan.

The city has also asked Ontario to establish a province-wide maximum temperature of 26 C and to prevent landlords from increasing the rent above the normal annual limit if the city does pass a by-law. Right now, landlords can hike rent if it’s meant to comply with municipal by-laws.

In an email to The Narwhal, a City of Toronto spokesperson wrote equity is central to the city’s Heat Relief Strategy.

“We continue to explore new ways to strengthen the strategy and help residents stay safe during periods of extreme heat,” it says. 

The city offers cooling spaces at libraries, community centres and civic centres, along with more than 700 park drinking fountains and mobile water trailers. Residents also have access to pools, splash pads, wading pools and supervised beaches, with some pools extending hours during heat warnings.

Toronto is also expanding programs intended to provide and install up to 2,400 air conditioners for low-income and vulnerable residents.

For Beena and Peter, organizing with other tenants has become part of that solution.

After years of feeling that she and her husband were dealing with the conditions in their home alone, they joined the Toronto Tenant Union. She says she wants governments to hear directly from the people living through extreme indoor heat.

“The first thing is that they need to come and speak to the landlords,” she says. “They need to fight on our behalf.”

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.

Read by reporter Drew Anderson

Assar Grinde is the kind of man whose calm is infectious, even as he rattles off an encyclopedic knowledge of facts about drought, water and the impacts of fracking on the region he calls home. A cattle rancher by trade who studied geology at the University of Alberta, you get the sense he’d rather be tending his herd than fighting with regulators and oil and gas companies.

But on a Sunday in early July after a morning on the ranch, he sits in the back of his friend Daniel Iseli-Otto’s truck, sporting a sweater knit by Iseli-Otto’s mom, and talks about the reasons he can’t just walk away.

It started three years ago when Lloyd Creek — a tributary of the Blindman River, which runs through the land Grinde’s family has ranched for generations — dried up. It was something he’d never seen before and he says the oil and gas companies were still pulling water from the river.

“We wanted to make sure that the river didn’t dry up because we thought that was crazy,” Grinde says.

He and Iseli-Otto helped found the Blindman River Watershed Society and dove into the labyrinth of data used by the Alberta Energy Regulator and the equally bewildering bureaucratic divisions of the provincial government.

It’s a funny time to be talking about the stress on the Blindman River watershed and the concerns he and Iseli-Otto have when it comes to the vast quantities of fresh water being used by oil and gas companies for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

The fields around Rimbey, Alta., about 200 kilometres north of Calgary, are saturated in surreal hues of green, stark against the grey skies of an abnormally wet July that has brought much-needed rain.

It’s a far cry from the drought-like conditions of May and June, conditions that have become all too common in a region suffering through a decade-long dry spell.

But the sudden rush of water isn’t enough to quell the concerns of area ranchers and residents who watched that creek run dry and their drinking wells drop. They say the rain isn’t enough to make up for how much has been lost from the aquifers — the deep underground natural reservoirs that feed those wells.

And then there’s the issue of oil and gas companies using billions of litres of water to crack open the earth beneath those green fields and exploit one of the hottest gas fields going, the Duvernay. They take surface water when there isn’t any to spare, and a fleeting moment of plenty might only make it worse, according to landowners who met with The Narwhal.

Grinde says promises were made by those companies, but rarely kept.

“ ‘We’re going to be taking the water at high flows when there’s too much of it, and we’ll store it and then use it when we need it.’ That was the industry’s sales pitch,” he says, driving through the region southwest of Edmonton along with Iseli-Otto. “But then we’ve been in a drought eight of the last 10 years, and they are still pulling water down.”

Dana Kreil, the chair of the nearby Medicine River Watershed Society, and a councillor for Lacombe County, says there’s no trust in the province to monitor the water and to intervene. Her society has bought its own monitoring equipment and is pressuring the government for solutions.

“You can’t fool the locals,” she says, making it clear she’s speaking for the watershed society and not the county. “There are people telling me the top of their runners wouldn’t get wet in that river. So you can’t tell me that those are acceptable levels for pumping from there.”

‘You only get conflict when there’s scarcity’

The Blindman River, as well as the Medicine, aren’t among the great waterways of the world. With enough momentum, it wouldn’t be hard to leap from one bank to the other. They are slow and meandering, but they are critical to ranchers and farmers.

They are also tenuous.

Neither river is fed by the mountain glaciers to the west. They rely instead on spring runoff and underground aquifers to keep water flowing. This year’s early-summer drenching is an indication of the feast and famine cycles expected to be the norm as the climate shifts — droughts with sudden onslaughts of rain. Grinde says his ranch received almost as much rain in June as it did the entire year previous.

For decades, fracking companies here have been injecting water deep into the ground to break up rock holding gaseous wealth in tight crevasses. That water, vast quantities of it, is almost entirely permanently lost to the water cycle as it remains trapped in the reservoirs that previously held gas. The practice was largely accepted by area landowners, but then water became scarce and drilling activity increased.

“We haven’t had to care about fresh water because we never had this issue before,” Grinde says. “You only get conflict when there’s scarcity, and you have that imbalance between supply and demand, and that’s really what’s happened in the last few years.”

Once Grinde and others started paying attention, they discovered a system of what they say is weak oversight, weak data and regulatory capitulation.

Water use is overseen by both Alberta’s Environment Ministry and the energy regulator — depending on who’s using the resource — and Grinde says it leads to a lot of plausible deniability. Water monitoring in the area is based on a federal government sensor 50 kilometres away in Blackfalds, Alta., but Grinde says it doesn’t actually measure the flow of the river, just the water pressure. Even if it did, Grinde thinks the minimum flows established by the province to determine when a company can pull river water for fracking are too low.

The Alberta Energy Regulator did not answer a question about the monitoring situation on Blindman River, but said monitoring is used to inform when a company can divert water. It noted that monitoring can be seen on the Alberta Rivers site.

The regulator says companies are responsible for measuring flow if there is no station nearby.

“So then that kind of led us down this path of trying to figure out: ‘Do you guys have rules around it?’ ” asked Grinde.

For some in the area, the answer is more uncertain than they’re comfortable with.

Company wants to pull billions of litres from critical freshwater aquifer

In March, Spartan Delta, a fracking company operating in the area, applied for a water licence to pump a maximum of 475 million litres of water per year — about 2.4 million bathtubs’ worth — from the Paskapoo Formation, a vast underground freshwater reservoir that stretches south past Calgary and north past the Athabasca River near Fox Creek.

That raised red flags for those in the region already worried about a strained system.

Grinde wants the government to prevent oil and gas companies from accessing shallow fresh groundwater for fracking, implementing a ban now so that it doesn’t have to draft new rules in the midst of a full-blown crisis.

“Right now [the companies] say, ‘Well, we don’t have any more surface water available to get licensed, we’re just going to start drilling shallow groundwater wells,’ which is really concerning because we don’t know enough about the groundwater, and it’s so vital to everybody who’s living here,” he says.

Tens of thousands of wells tap into the aquifer for drinking water, as do towns across Alberta. According to a report by the federal government, the Paskapoo “supports more groundwater wells than any other aquifer system in the Canadian Prairies,” making it “the most significant supply of groundwater” in the whole region.

That same federal report — published almost 20 years ago — also cautioned the aquifer is slow to recharge and the amount of water that can be pulled from the aquifer might be limited and may have already been exceeded in 2008.

Spartan Delta already pumps water from the Medicine River, with hoses stretching along ditches and culverts throughout the region pulling water into massive reservoirs. It also uses recycled water from its operations, but that only accounts for approximately 10 per cent of its use.

In 2024, the latest year of data from the Alberta Energy Regulator, Spartan Delta used approximately 171 million litres of fresh water for fracking. Its latest application shows the company estimates it will need much more than this, around 1.5 billion litres per year for the next 10 years.

The company did not answer emailed questions but sent a statement instead, saying it is focused on “responsible, sustainable development of oil and gas.”

Spartan Delta said it adheres to all rules and regulations set out by the regulator, Alberta’s Environment Ministry and local bylaws.

“All of our water use is determined by Alberta Environment,” reads a portion of its statement. “The company receives temporary diversion approvals, term licences and has undergone several audits to validate we are in compliance with all of the terms of the water approvals. All resident concerns are evaluated by the appropriate regulating body of our activities during the approval process.”

The regulator also did not directly answer questions emailed by The Narwhal, but did provide information on water use. An unidentified spokesperson said the regulator reviews all water licence applications and considers risks to individuals and the environment. The spokesperson added there are restrictions on water use if levels drop below prescribed thresholds and that restrictions can also be implemented in response to “landowner concerns.”

Analysis on aquifers is conducted by hydrogeology experts, the email said.

Though landowners are concerned about Spartan Delta’s water use, the company is a small player compared to others.

Parallax Energy Operations used almost one billion litres in 2024, while Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., one of the largest oil and gas companies in Canada, used 2.9 billion litres of fresh water for operations across the province. Overall, fracking consumed 20 billion litres of fresh water in 2024, up sharply from the seven billion litres consumed in 2013.

Grinde’s goal is to prove to the province and the regulator that the aquifer is dropping, realizing that officials could just turn around and say, well, it’s a drought.

“But even if it is a drought, the volume of water that the companies are using for fracking is accelerating that,” he says. “It could be that if there’s only a certain amount of water, you have to justify the use for certain things, right? So maybe you have to talk about hierarchy of use.”

Time and again, Grinde, Kreil and Iseli-Otto talk about the amount of work required to collect information, to get in touch with provincial officials, to make someone listen. Without decades of data, the response from officials and companies is: prove it.

“It’s the province’s job,” Kreil says. “It’s not the watershed society’s job. We’re volunteers.”

The provincial government did not respond to questions emailed by The Narwhal.

Alberta ranchers say their bison herd collapsed when a fracking company moved in

It’s easy to look out across the fields and patches of trees and imagine the landscape in central Alberta is largely unchanged, but Iseli-Otto, who works as a carpenter and has lived here his whole life, looks out his truck window and remembers bush where fields now stretch — a child’s wilderness transformed into cropland. It’s a reminder of how quickly things can change. How the immutable becomes a memory.

The change can be slow, or it can come on in a relative blink.

Tucked into a secluded corner of the countryside, is the home of Butch and Nicole Smith, two bison ranchers who have lived and worked in the area for decades, with the dream — shared by one of their daughters — of passing their ranch to the next generation.

Inside the home, a stuffed cougar looks down from its final perch above the kitchen, and the walls are covered in framed rodeo photos showing the victories of the family’s horses. Tail Light was the “team roping heading horse of the year.” Hickory, the “2011 pole bending horse of the year.” Their daughters have won an astonishing number of championship rodeo belts and saddles, all of which are on display.

A hint of the Smiths’ directness, and their frustration, comes in the form of a small sign by the kitchen table: “What (and I can’t stress this enough) the f*ck,” it reads.

Over bison burgers and sausages, the Smiths talk about how Spartan Delta cleared the land across from their feedlot and built two massive reservoirs two years ago to store the vast quantities of water the company pumps. They talk about how construction and pumping for the reservoirs, which bisect a wetland, led to startling changes in their bison herd.

“We started seeing the wildest behaviour from them,” Nicole says. “They’re very habitual animals.”

The herd was refusing to move to the areas they usually feed, and there was a sudden drop in their herd.

Nicole says they had 240 pregnant cows in the fall of 2024, but only 194 live births.

“We had many dead calves, aborted calves and calves that starved as stressed mothers produce not enough milk,” she says.

The Smiths blame the stress of the industrial activity and the disruption to stubborn routines.

The Smiths, however, aren’t the types to sit back and watch. They say they’ve spoken with their MLA, Jason Nixon, with the premier, with two environment ministers — Rebecca Schulz and RJ Sigurdson — and Energy Minister Brian Jean. They are working with Ecojustice, an environmental legal outfit, and were invited by the Alberta NDP to sit in the legislature last spring after speaking with MLA Nagwan Al-Guneid.

Now, after two years of fighting, they’re losing faith and plan to move.

“Neither one of us is a — how do I say it — a sitter arounder. I’m not gonna sit here and be miserable. I can’t even walk anymore because both ways just reminds you of all of it,” Nicole says.

“I’m raging when I hit the end of my driveway — every single time.”

‘There’s very little oversight right now’

Tensions are high in the region where fracking butts up against homes and ranches. In early July, a rumour spread that some of the hoses that pump water from ponds and rivers were shot at, but the Alberta RCMP said there were no reports of an incident on that day. Perhaps most telling was that none of the people who spoke with The Narwhal seemed surprised, although no one supported the idea and warned of the danger of puncturing the high-pressure lines.

There is a real sense that landowners have been abandoned in favour of oil and gas.

Kreil, whose society includes representatives from eight municipalities, including Red Deer, Lacombe County and Sylvan Lake, said the group recently met with the minister of Environment and Protected Areas and the CEO of the Alberta Energy Regulator to talk about the stress on the watershed. In its presentation, the society noted more than half of all fresh water in their watershed is allocated for oil and gas. Temporary water licences are almost entirely for fracking.

She says the minister told them to write a resolution calling for policy changes through the Rural Municipalities of Alberta — an organization which represents towns and districts across the province.

“I think he felt that he had dealt with us enough to say: ‘Write a resolution,’ ” she says.

Kreil stresses she’s not opposed to oil and gas, or to fracking in particular, but there has to be a balance.

“When we went to the minister, we said we want some solutions,” she says. “We’re not just coming here to bellyache and complain.”

Her organization wants to see more wastewater treated and reused, including municipal wastewater, to reduce or eliminate fresh water use. It wants better data on the state of the watersheds and a better understanding of drought and its impacts. And it wants new regulations governing use by agriculture, oil and gas and municipalities.

But those critical of the way fracking companies are operating all point their finger at the regulator when asked what the biggest problem is. The rules are weak and out of touch, responsibility is passed on and there’s no enforcement, they say.

“The problem with the Alberta Energy Regulator is there’s very little oversight right now,” Kreil says.

Iseli-Otto says he tried alerting a contact at the regulator about companies pumping from the Blindman River in May when the water levels were worryingly low, but nothing came of it.

Two days later, he was driving home and the pumps were running.

“So I texted him and I said, ‘Hey man, pumps are running, what’s going on? Why is this happening?,’ ” he says. In screenshots of the text messages shared with The Narwhal, Iseli-Otto then asks if someone from the regulator had checked to see if the pumps had stopped.

“That’s the point at which I got the automated text message saying this number is not monitored.”

Alberta pushes to double production, build pipelines

The regulator is an arms-length government body, but that doesn’t mean it’s entirely independent. The government sets the overall policy direction for the regulator to follow, for example, and the government appoints the regulator’s board of directors.

Recently, it appointed David Yager to the board, a long-time friend of Premier Danielle Smith who also acts as one of her special advisors, and tasked him with overseeing a revamp of the organization.

There have also been revelations of direct intervention from the provincial government into regulatory decisions.

And the direction from the government is clear: it wants to double oil and gas production and it’s willing to incentivize companies to do so, even as it helps finance a new pipeline to the West Coast.

With the push for more production and without more stringent rules on water use, the problems in the area are likely to continue, or increase.

“We’ve had companies tell us ‘We’re not doing anything differently until the government tells us to,’ because it’s a competitive industry,” Grinde says.

“We said to the minister, as long as this is free, they will never change,” Kreil adds.

But in the end, something has to give, she says.

“You can’t be running the people out of water for oil.”

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.

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

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

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

Summary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who pays to keep B.C. renters cool?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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While health officials urge people to stay indoors due to the smoke draping the Midwest, experts say we should remember the same polluted air affecting humans is also threatening animals. 

On July 16, Detroit ranked as the worst air quality in the world with a 724 index — climbing past the 300-point threshold on the Air Quality Index, where air quality is considered hazardous. In second place sat Toronto, then Minneapolis, Minnesota and in fourth place was Chicago.

According to Dr. Jack Harkema, a veterinary pathologist at Michigan State University, the effects of wildfire smoke on animals aren’t just a single symptom. 

“It doesn’t affect just the lungs, but also the cardiovascular system and the metabolic system,” Harkema said. “We’ve actually even looked at the effects on the brain, and there’s increased inflammation in the brain as well.”

Wildfire smoke may be even more harmful to animals than the everyday air pollution found in cities, he said. 

“Wildfire smoke is probably even more toxic than our regular urban particulate matter. These particles create a lot of oxidants, they damage tissue and they cause inflammation locally in the lung, but then that inflammation can spread to other organs.”

Wildfire smoke contains a mixture of pollutants, including fine particles known as PM2.5. Those microparticles are small enough to go deep into the lungs and, sometimes, enter the bloodstream.

“PM2.5 particles are inhalable,” Mayra Oyola, an assistant professor in the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Wisconsin Madison, said. “They can get into the lungs and, just like in humans, they stay there. They can damage respiratory and cardiovascular tissue in anything that breathes. So it’s not just us.”

The fires that are impacting the Midwest are mainly contained toward the lower part of Ontario. But the smoke from these fires has migrated from wind paths to reach the Midwest.

“Animals close to the fires, that’s the biggest concern, because they will be displaced,” Oyola said. “More often than not, they move into human-populated areas. That creates risk for both humans and the animals.”

Birds are especially vulnerable to wildfire smoke because their respiratory system is more efficient than other mammals, according to research scientist at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology Olivia Sanderfoot. While that helps them get more oxygen, it also means they breathe in more harmful particles from polluted air.

“Birds are able to take up twice as much oxygen with each breath compared to mammals, which also means they’re getting an extra-heavy dose of anything toxic in the air,” Sanderfoot said.

“We’ve known for a long time that birds are more vulnerable,” she said. “So I’m especially worried about them in this smoke.”

Other outdoor animals can also suffer. Because of respiratory diseases like heaves, livestock that spend their time outdoors are exposed for days or weeks to smoky conditions, which heightens risks, Harkema said.

“If this continues, you’re going to see more illness in humans and animals.”

For pet owners, Dr. Jennifer Henderson, a veterinarian at Vetco Total Care in Chicago, said taking the same precautions you would take for yourself is ideal. 

“The same concerns apply to our pets that apply to humans,” Henderson said. “You just want to keep them inside or limit their activity outside so it doesn’t cause any flare-up.”

Owners should also watch closely for signs that smoke may be affecting their animals.

“I think respiratory symptoms, with the coughing and the lethargy, are the main things to watch for,” Henderson said. 

She also recommends monitoring for bloodshot eyes, squinting or other signs of eye irritation. The guidance is ultimately simple, Henderson said: if the air isn’t healthy for people, it probably isn’t healthy for pets either.

“Similar to how they’re dealing with it for themselves, [they should] apply the same concerns and strategies to their pets,” she said. “You can’t put a mask on a dog, so it’s really just keeping them out of the environment or limiting their time.”

Harkema recommends limiting walks to brief bathroom breaks and avoiding strenuous exercise.

“You don’t want to exercise them because more of these particulate matter and other air toxicants can get into the lung and cause inflammation,” Harkema said.

Sanderfoot said keeping pets in cool, air-conditioned spaces with clean, filtered air whenever possible is best. 

As wildfire seasons grow longer and more intense, Sanderfoot says she expects poor air-quality events to become a more frequent occurrence across North America.

“The issue is that climate change is supercharging these fires and lengthening our fire season,” Sanderfoot said. “The bigger the fire, the more smoke.”

According to Oyola, research shows wildfire smoke will become a persistent problem.

“It’s very clear that climate change is real and that it’s not slowing down,” she said. “With drier conditions and warmer conditions, we should expect more events like this.”

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This investigation is a collaboration between The Narwhal and Point Source, a U.K.-based investigative journalism organization.

LNG Canada told the BC Energy Regulator its Kitimat, B.C., gas export facility was likely to emit black smoke continuously for multiple days, a warning that came ahead of key environmental permits being granted, according to recently released documents.

The new documents, obtained by The Narwhal and U.K.-based investigative journalism organization Point Source through freedom of information legislation, raise questions over whether the regulator should have sought more assurances about measures to stop this kind of pollution before permits were granted.

Summary

• LNG Canada has been emitting more black smoke than originally planned and some Kitimat, B.C., residents are concerned.
• Black smoke can indicate gas is not burning efficiently, releasing higher levels of toxic pollutants, according to one expert.
• The BC Energy Regulator knew about the smoke ahead of giving the project approvals but has now ordered LNG Canada to make changes.

In July 2022, LNG Canada — a consortium of five foreign-owned companies led by Shell — submitted a document to the provincial government outlining its expectations around black smoke emissions.

“Given the unpredictable nature of these types of events, it is not possible to give a frequency of them occurring although an estimate is provided,” the consortium wrote. 

The colour of black smoke is caused by a concentration of particulates and unburned fuels, which is toxic. The estimate provided to the regulator said black smoke would be emitted at the facility for between 15 and 60 minutes one to three times per year prior to the facility completing 200 shipments. LNG Canada sent its 100th shipment in mid-June, nearly one year after its first. It also estimated slightly less dark smoke would be emitted continuously from the facility for between five and 15 days on four to six occasions in the first year

Despite this information, the regulator issued LNG Canada a facility permit requiring that black smoke not be continuously emitted for more than 15 minutes. The company committed to that limit, but has failed to keep to it.

On Jan. 6 2026, the export terminal emitted black smoke emissions during non-emergency conditions for more than seven hours. The next day, it emitted black smoke for over two hours. 

In April, the BC Energy Regulator told LNG Canada to identify the root cause of black smoke emissions during flaring at its facility in Kitimat, and implement a fix by October.

In late June, the regulator instituted new requirements, including mandated reporting of instances of black smoke emissions.

A spokesperson with the regulator said the facility’s permit “contains clear statutory requirements regarding black smoke emissions designed to minimize air pollutants to protect public safety and the environment.” 

“When our oversight activities identify non-compliances, such as in this case, we can place additional requirements (e.g., having to report black smoke) on permit holders,” the spokesperson noted in an emailed statement.

Black smoke from the flare stack of a LNG facility usually indicates that gas from the facility is not being burned off in an efficient manner and higher levels of toxic pollutants are being released, according to Tim Doty, a former oil and gas inspector with the Texas state government.

“The black smoke that can be visually seen being emitted from the flare is soot, basically,” Doty said in an interview. “In theory, flares are designed to burn in an efficient way that doesn’t produce this black smoke.”

According to the regulator’s reply to detailed questions, LNG Canada’s new requirements as of June include:

• Report to the BC Energy Regulator (BCER) all instances of black smoke that exceeds 15 minutes in duration and provide operational details concurrent with such instances;   
• By Aug. 15, 2026, submit a report completed by a qualified professional to the BCER that identifies the root causes of the emission of black smoke and measures to prevent the emission of black smoke; 
• By October 15, 2026, identify and implement measures to prevent the emission of black smoke based on the root cause analysis as required by the report; 
• For the months of October 2026 to March 2027, submit a monthly report to the energy regulator BCER completed by a qualified professional that assesses the effectiveness of the measures implemented .

‘I want to have a family’: community members concerned about potential health impacts

For some community members, the black smoke and presence of other potential pollutants are a source of great concern. 

The Narwhal and Point Source spoke to a young resident who we are calling Avery Sutherland, to keep her name confidential and protect her identity. Kitimat is a small town where LNG Canada is a significant employer and a major donor to local causes, and criticism is often seen as a threat to that.

Avery Sutherland said she tried on multiple occasions to get answers to questions about potential health concerns, but LNG Canada representatives would not respond.

“As a young person, I want to have a family,” she said in an interview. “There’s been a lot of back and forth I’ve seen over the last couple of years at different talks that LNG [Canada] gives, where they refuse to directly acknowledge the studies that have been done on the impacts of flaring on women who are pregnant and their children, and how that often leads to like more birth complications and more premature births.”

In response to questions about this, the regulator spokesperson said: “It is important to note for the benefit of residents of Kitimat that air quality measurements in the Kitimat Valley have remained below B.C. Ambient Air Quality Objectives since LNG Canada received its air discharge permit.”

But some critics claim the air quality monitoring program is insufficient.

“The current ambient air pollution monitoring is not sufficient to get a real handle on what the health implications are for the people that are living close to this facility,” Tracey Saxby, executive director of environmental non-profit, My Sea to Sky, said in an interview. “When you dig into the data you realize that there aren’t enough sensors, they aren’t gathering data in the right places and not enough of the sensors are continually operating.” 

The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment has said the facility’s flaring activity has exposed residents to “health-harming chemicals, including black carbon and benzene.”

“They are not consistently monitoring for some of the most harmful pollutants, like benzene,” Saxby said. “These are big monitoring gaps.” Health Canada has labelled benzene a known carcinogen since 1993.

In 2024, the U.S.-based Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice published a report highlighting how LNG export facilities degrade air quality by releasing pollutants known to cause respiratory illnesses, cancer and birth defects from prolonged exposure.

Scientific studies have shown that burning gas also releases other toxic pollutants as a result of incomplete combustion, such as volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and fine soot particles, which are directly associated with respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and risks to fetal development.

“When you see this kind of pollution, it’s a sign that the flare isn’t being operated correctly and usually that comes with a lot of other emissions that are actively being released that are not visible to the naked eye,” Doty explained.

“It’s likely that the real world pollution levels are far worse than the picture painted by the current data,” Saxby said. “Even though the existing data is very sparse, it shows worrying spikes in benzene levels that raise a lot of questions about the health impacts from the LNG Canada facility.”

As The Narwhal and Point Source recently reported, LNG Canada originally told the regulator it would operate its facility without routine flaring — and then quietly removed this commitment months before commissioning. 

Sutherland wishes the consortium that owns LNG Canada was more forthcoming with information. Its presence in the community has been divisive for as long as the facility has been in development, which means for young residents like herself, it’s been a factious issue for most of their lives. 

“When I was growing up, there were schoolyard and classroom arguments about this since as long as I can remember,” she said of the facility, which was proposed in 2013.

James Smith, another Kitimat resident whose name has been changed to protect his privacy, worked at the plant during construction. He said while he was expecting problems to occur at the facility, he didn’t predict the scale of the impacts. 

“I wasn’t expecting the black smoke,” he said. 

Smith said he’s experienced excessive noise and bad smells at his house since the facility started operations and on multiple occasions found his yard covered in a thin film of black residue.

Doty said the ongoing problems suggest to him the facility’s problem with its flare tip could be causing the black smoke.

“Flares like this should be operating with about 98 per cent combustion efficiency, but there is no way that the flare is operating with anything close to that efficiency,” he said. “If there’s too much pressure going to it, you’re never going to get things to combust properly — and that seems to be what is happening at LNG Canada.” 

In response to questions from The Narwhal and Point Source, the regulator spokesperson noted: “The causes of the black smoke events have not yet been definitively determined.” 

‘Truly massive’ invisible emissions

On top of the elevated levels of flaring at the LNG Canada export terminal, there are increasing concerns about the facility routinely releasing natural gas into the atmosphere.

Natural gas is mostly composed of methane, which is an invisible, odorless and an extremely potent greenhouse gas. When released directly into the atmosphere it is 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide for its short-term warming impact on the climate.

“If people could actually see the invisible emissions that are being released from the LNG Canada facility that are detectable with an optical gas imaging camera, it would really blow them away,” Doty said. He monitored emissions at the Kitimat facility with a camera.“The emissions that could not be seen with the bare eye were shocking. They were truly massive.”

Doty said the emissions — both visible and invisible — could have “very negative health implications for nearby communities and downwind receptors.” 

“If I was living nearby, I would be very concerned, and I would want the plant shut down, at least in the short term, while it is re-engineered,” he said. He noted the unburned gas could contain volatile organic compounds such as benzene and butane, in addition to the climate-warming methane.

“At the moment, the program to monitor ambient air pollution in the area isn’t effective and doesn’t have enough monitors in place to truly calculate how air quality is being impacted,” he said.

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The Bradley Creek wildfire ignited on reserve lands at nk̓maplqs (the head of Okanagan Lake) on Friday, July 31. More than 30 band members have lost their homes, while around 200 homes and structures belonging to non-band members are also gone. kelsie, who was evacuated and has not yet returned home, shared her reflections in the midst of the evacuation. This story was co-published with IndigiNews.

Saturday, Aug. 1, started like any other day.

I woke up early with my partner. We sat on the front deck, coffee in hand, watching the morning unfold. We talked about the day ahead, my son Skookamina’s graduation party and my grandmother’s 83rd birthday. There was meat to smoke, cakes to bake, tables to set. The day felt like a blessing because we had so much to celebrate.

I checked my phone. A small fire had started the night before, nothing unusual for this time of year. Our Okanagan Indian Band fire department is amazing. I figured it’d be out by noon, so I kept moving.

I seasoned the meat, I lit the smoker, and I sang while I cooked, the way I always do in my kitchen.

But I kept checking my phone, as we had family that was traveling in for the event.

Mid-morning, we decided as a family to move the party from the beach in town to my uncle’s house in the community. Some of our family had community obligations they’d need to tend to if the fire got out of control. We wanted to be close.

Everyone was there. My grandmother sat in her chair, full of joy as each person arrived. Skookamina was surrounded by his cousins, and the sound of our family filled the air, aunties laughing loud, making outlandish jokes, the familiar banter of people who know each other’s rhythms.

For one hour, we were just a family celebrating, living our lives the way we always do.

Then, one by one, family members started picking up their phones.

Some stood up. They’d been put on evacuation alert. They had to go home, pack, and wait. I watched them go, first one, then another, then a handful until the room thinned. The laughter quieted and my grandmother sat in her chair, watching her grandchildren leave, one by one. She didn’t say much, she didn’t need to, she knew this dance, she’d done it before.

Eventually, I had to leave too.

We packed the rest of the food. We hugged. We said “see you soon,” and we meant it. Then everyone went home. My father had to evacuate with only minutes to spare. I raced to my dad’s house and we helped him pack what we could as the fire grew at an alarming speed toward him. He was evacuated two minutes from my house, so I knew I was next.

By the time I got home, our family friends were already there, packing for me. They’d already been evacuated without time to take anything with them. Now they were saving us while their own home burned behind them.

One minute I was laughing with my son. The next minute I was grabbing what I could carry. I was not thinking about taking what was valuable, I only grabbed what was irreplaceable. Old ceremony blankets, medicine necklace materials, baskets, photographs, my computers with language recordings and the eagle feather my son gave me. Everything else I left.

On my way out, I looked back, and the smoke was climbing toward us. Flames moved over the ridge toward my house, and the sky was turning black. I felt an overwhelming need to just get out, this fire had taken on a life of its own. I could tell this fire doesn’t know our names the way our cultural burns do. It was consuming everything equally, the sacred and the ordinary, the medicine plants and the invasive brush. 

But, even as I watched the fire consume everything in its path, I realized this is exactly what my people prepared me for. This is why they taught me about grief.

They taught me that grief is not a destination, it’s like a creek — you don’t stop it. You discipline yourself to sit beside it, make kin with it, let it flow, and let it carry away what it needs to carry.

They taught me that grief has a shape. They taught me that grief is so special to us that it has its own ceremony, its own songs, its own prayers for specific losses. I was always told, “Name your grief, give it boundaries. Tell it, I see you. You are welcome here. But you will not take me with you.”

They taught me that the deeper you love, the deeper you grieve. That grief and joy are not enemies. That you can weep and laugh in the same breath. That you can feed people even when you can’t eat yourself.

My people taught me that a community that grieves together stays together. To suppress grief is to go against our own syilx intellect, against the very way we are made to commune with the world. Feeling is not weakness, we are to honour that it is our Way of Knowing. It is the thread that connects us to what we love, to cut it is to sever ourselves from the land, from each other, from the truth of what we carry.

My people taught me that grief is not something to outrun. It is something to sit beside, to name, to sing, to let drip into each other’s minds, drop by drop, until a shared truth emerges. The image of that process is enowkinwixw, the syilx word for a gentle way of coming to understanding together. The word itself conjures liquid being absorbed drop by drop through the mind, filling in gaps, softening resistance, building a common picture. The process is about finding clarity, where each person is offering what they know, no matter how small, until the whole circle sees more clearly. That is how we hold the loss in the centre of the circle and face it together.

So now I think about that morning. Coffee on the deck, with my partner beside me. The sun rising over the valley. I didn’t know it would be the last ordinary morning for a while. I didn’t know I would spend the next few days learning what my people have always known, that you can lose everything and still have everything that matters.

Okanagan Indian Band Chief naspəpʕásəs Dan Wilson confirmed as of Aug. 5, more than 30 band members have lost their homes to the fire, and numerous other structures are also gone. Some families have been contacted directly, and others are still waiting, still hoping, still not knowing if their homes are standing. 

He told IndigiNews, “Our loss is measured in the family histories that have been lost — especially the Elders who have lost their homes. The old pictures, the memorabilia; the Salish baskets.”

As I write this, it’s Aug. 6. I wash dishes in someone else’s sink. I cook without my grandmother’s tools. Today, I am learning to grieve the way my people taught me, by sitting with it, and letting it flow like the little creek that runs beside my house.

Tomorrow I will wake up and make coffee. I will stand on whatever deck I am given and be grateful for it. I will look out at whatever sky is above me and I will remember that I am grateful to be sqilx’w in these times, I am blessed to be syilx, and I am proud to be from the Okanagan Indian Band, proud to have called it home my entire life. Now, I have both the responsibility and the profound honour to continue dreaming, as we have been directed by our Creator to do, and that does not end when the smoke clears.

 If you are a member of the Okanagan Indian Band and are struggling, help is available through the OKIB Mental Health and Wellness team at 250-540-7416. Resources are also available from First Nations Health Authority and Interior Health.

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When a Michigan court shot down Enbridge’s plan to bury a section of its aging Line 5 pipeline in a concrete tunnel under two Great Lakes, Ontario Premier Doug Ford responded with a pipeline pitch of his own.  

“The fuel that powers Ontario’s economy should never be put at risk because of decisions made in another country,” Ford wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Aug. 1. “That’s why we’re building the Northern Shield Energy Corridor — a new Canadian pipeline, made with Canadian steel, by Canadian workers, exclusively within Canada’s borders.” 

Summary

• The Michigan Supreme Court cancelled the state regulator’s approval of Enbridge’s Line 5 tunnel project, telling it to reassess potential harm to two Great Lakes regions.
• Ontario Premier Doug Ford said the decision highlighted a need to build a new all-Canadian pipeline from Alberta to Ontario.
• Ford’s warnings about relying on energy “decisions made in another country” come as his government continues to push natural gas expansion, and the province increasingly relies on American supply.

His comment came a day after the Michigan Supreme Court ruled in a 6-1 decision against the state commission’s approval of Enbridge’s plan to build a tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac, a narrow, fast-moving waterway that joins Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. The purpose would be to bury a portion of the 73-year-old pipeline, which is currently exposed on the lakebed. 

The pipeline is 1,038 kilometres long, roughly the driving distance between Windsor and Timmins, Ont. It carries crude oil and natural gas liquids (such as propane and butane) from Superior, Wisconsin, passing through Michigan on its way to refineries in Sarnia, Ont.

The court found regulators hadn’t properly studied the environmental harm the project could cause to the lakes before approving it in 2023. Justices said the regulator must study not just the environmental impact of the underwater tunnel, but also how the tunnel would extend the lifespan of the pipeline and what the environmental consequences of that may be. Indigenous nations have said it will increase the risk of oil spills and increase greenhouse gas emissions from the fossil fuels it transports. 

“It is impossible to prevent or mitigate an environmental risk without understanding the nature of that risk,” the justices wrote.

As a result, the project’s approval is now cancelled, with the court ordering the commission to redo its review. The ruling doesn’t shut Line 5 down, but delays efforts to repair it and keep it in commission. 

Enbridge spokesperson Ryan Duffy called the decision disappointing in a statement to Bridge Michigan, saying the company remains committed to “the safe and responsible operation of Line 5,” while it reviews its legal options. 

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who has long fought to shut the pipeline down altogether, said “the pipeline is a ticking time bomb,” pointing to Enbridge’s 2010 spill in the state’s Kalamazoo River, the worst inland oil spill in U.S. history. 

Indigenous communities and environmental groups that brought the case to court celebrated it as a win for the Great Lakes.

Ford took a different route, using the court decision to re-up a pipeline concept he announced with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith in July. The Northern Shield Energy Corridor is a proposed 3,300-kilometre line to carry crude oil from Hardisty, Alta., through Saskatchewan and Manitoba to Sarnia.

If built, Northern Shield would retrace some of the route of the long-dead Energy East proposal from TransCanada, before the company scrapped it in 2017, citing regulatory delays and falling oil prices. That proposal also met significant Indigenous opposition.

Ford has framed it as an all-Canadian pipeline that would be immune to the kind of cross-border legal fights now delaying updates to Line 5. Northern Shield is undergoing a feasibility study, due by the end of the year, with no confirmed cost, timeline or construction approval.

That proposed route of Ford’s new pipeline ends in the same place Line 5 does: Sarnia, next to Aamjiwnaang First Nation. Chief Janelle Nahmabin told The Narwhal her community is “closely following” the discussions around Line 5 and the Michigan court decision. 

“While governments continue to debate energy security and future infrastructure, it is important that First Nation rights, environmental protection and community health remain at the centre of those discussions,” she wrote in an email. 

She pointed to an unresolved crisis in her community over benzene air pollution from industry, and a pipeline spill near Aamjiwnaang’s land into the St. Clair River in March 2026 as issues that need to be addressed before a new pipeline is considered. She said that these “cumulative impacts of industrial development” were the result of “decisions being made elsewhere.” 

“Communities that have carried disproportionate environmental burdens for decades should not be asked to shoulder even more,” she said.

Ford’s pitch for domestic supply comes amid growing reliance on U.S. gas

Ford’s warnings about relying on energy “decisions made in another country” come as his government continues its longstanding push to expand natural gas use, which increasingly relies on American supply. 

Natural gas is largely made up of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere. It is the primary source of heating for three-quarters of homes in Ontario.

According to Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator, natural gas accounts for nearly 30 per cent of the province’s total generating capacity, up from 28 per cent in 2020. The operator attributes that growth largely to nuclear facilities being taken offline for refurbishments as well as rising electricity demand. 

Ontario is underlaid with a network of pipelines supplying natural gas for heating. According to the province, 3.6 million homes and 160,000 businesses rely on natural gas.

Per analysis by the Canada Energy Regulator, Ontario’s historical reliance on natural gas from Alberta has declined as western producers focus on western U.S. markets. Meanwhile, production in the U.S. northeast has increased, making importing gas cheaper for eastern provinces. As a result, as of 2009, Ontario has become a net importer of gas from the U.S.

Between 2015 and 2020, the most recent data available, imports at three key crossings into Ontario increased by 31 per cent, with most coming through Niagara.

Ontario’s ties to natural gas have deepened under the Ford government

This increase in U.S. natural gas imports is compounded by recent provincial decisions that ensure natural gas remains a key part of Ontario’s energy mix. 

In December 2023, the government took the unprecedented step of overruling the independent Ontario Energy Board after it ordered Enbridge Gas to stop passing the cost of new gas hookups on to homeowners’ monthly bills. Documents obtained by The Narwhal through freedom of information requests showed Enbridge staff in frequent contact with officials in the premier’s office in the lead-up to that decision, and Ford personally called Enbridge to discuss a stalled gas connection. 

Meanwhile, a growing number of Ontario municipalities, including Guelph and Waterloo Region, have pushed back against a long-standing provincial rule that lets Enbridge Gas build pipelines under municipal roads and other public land for free. Enbridge Gas has these decades-long free-access agreements with more than 340 municipalities across the province.

When Guelph and Waterloo Region refused to renew their agreements last year, the dispute went to the Ontario Energy Board, where it is still being deliberated. Energy Minister Stephen Lecce said the province isn’t considering changing the rule despite the municipalities’ calls to do so. 

As all of this plays out, including the Line 5 saga, Enbridge has told investors it expects to return tens of billions of dollars to shareholders over the coming years, in part because of the strength of continued gas demand growth in Ontario.

Updated on Aug. 7, 2026 at 2:026 p.m. ET: This story was updated to include a statement from Aamjiwnaang First Nation Chief Janelle Nahmabin sent to The Narwhal after publication.

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Summary

• Indigenous culture camps are happening across Canada this summer. Revitalizing cultural practices, spending time on the land, and participating in ceremonies is the focus of most camps. 
• Despite dozens of wildfires across B.C., organizers are fulfilling their commitments, highlighting the importance of hosting communities and organizations.
• Some culture camps have been happening for decades, while other communities hosted their first camp this year.

For 10 days in July, Qaqaqam Chris Wells spent time on the land camping with Líl̓wat youth, teaching Lil̓wat7úl cultural protocols, songs and stories. The Kwáozán̓tsut cultural summer camps have been “a long time coming,” he said. 

“Bringing our children back onto the land is teaching them land based healing and learning,” Wells told the Narwhal. “It was really awesome to bring back our culture.”

Hosted at Klháka7min, previously known as the Coast Mountain Outdoor School, two separate age groups camped for five days each between July 6th and July 17th. 

Though the youth were a bit shy at first, Wells and fellow camp leaders Ánwasúlmec Brett Wallace and Sík Sík Joshua Anderson say that by the end of each cohort, seeing how the participants had come out of their shells was a highlight.

“It was extra special for me: I had two of my daughters there, one in each age group,” Anderson said. “It was an opportunity to spend more time with them during the busy summer.”

During this year’s culture camp, a wildfire prompted evacuations in Pemberton, located approximately 25 kilometres down the road. Despite the nearby fire, the culture camps were a success — connecting youth with tradition, the land and culture. 

“We were pretty safe from all the fires happening around us,” Wells said. He’s stewarded the territory since he was a youth.

Land-based learning, education and connection

Between the two age groups — 9 to 12-year-olds, and teens — 30 youth attended the camps. 

Líl̓wat Elders took youth out onto the land, teaching them about edible berries and teas that grow in the area during that time of year.

“Every evening we had singing and drumming, and talked about cultural protocols. We talked about the origin of the songs. We talked about our ceremonies,” Wells said. 

Archery, axe throwing and rifle shooting with the older age group all took place with laughter and storytelling throughout. 

Youth had the opportunity to make traditional rattles and smudge bowls, ceremonial items that can be hard to access for a young person. Anderson said numerous parents reached out to him after the camp, sharing how their child went home wanting to practice their culture more through smudging. 

The youth even made a swimming hole to jump into cold glacier water, adding some casual fun into the mix, and relief from the hot summer days. 

“You can’t forget the fun part of it. We had the opportunity to play bone game in the evening time,” Anderson said, which showed the youth “how disputes were settled in a traditional manner.” 

The bone game is a traditional game used historically as an alternative to war by nations along the Salish Sea, and has other names such as “stick game” or “hand game” in other regions of Western Canada.

Youth were also split into three groups and tasked with helping in the kitchen. Local Lil̓wat7úl chef Casey Gabriel taught them how to cook for the group and clean up afterwards. 

The Kwáozán̓tsut Cultural Summer Camps were championed by the organizing trio of Anderson, Wells and Wallace, who are no strangers to hosting culture camps. But despite hosting camps in St’át’imc Nation communities for years, it took some time to prepare and build the trust required to host youth camps in their own nation. 

Now the Líl̓wat Nation wants to host another culture camp this fall. Wells, Wallace and Anderson are all looking forward to sharing their knowledge and helping out.

Now in its 15th year, Nlha’7kapmx annual culture camp is a ‘safe haven’

Excitement for future camps is a sentiment shared by Michelle Isaac, who always lends a helping hand at an annual Nlaka’pamux culture camp hosted at Pasulko Lake, located in B.C.’s Southern Interior.

“My stepmom at the time, Amy Chapman, brought me up to what used to be called the healing gathering. All I remember from there was how much of a difference it made in my life,” Isaac told the Narwhal. 

She attended the healing gathering after surviving a severe car accident, but over the years, the annual gathering lost volunteers and resources. 

Having experienced the healing energy of gathering herself, and meeting with the service agency about how to support community members, Isaac and a group of ladies working for Nlha’7kapmx Child and Family Services decided to spearhead a community based culture camp.

Now in its 15th year, people in the area look forward to gathering at Pasulko Lake each summer, practicing culture and being together on the land. 

This year, a mix of cultural activities, including drum making, cedar weaving and language friendship bracelet making took place, along with activities such as a tug-of-war game between youth and the local firefighting group, the Lytton Rattlers, and a performance by local band Ritchie and the Fenderman.

Isaac attends camp each year with her children, who are part of the Lower Nicola Indian Band community. While Isaac is not Indigenous herself, she still attends with an open heart and mind, supporting in any way she can. When wildfires are burning, she sees the camps as an especially important place for youth. 

“They’re able to come up there and do the activities, do the crafts, I find it takes a lot of stress and fear from the fire away from them,” Isaac said. This year, it’s also been an important refuge for her as well, after she was evacuated in July due to the nearby Brunswick Creek wildfire.

“Fire-wise, for me it was a safe haven. My one daughter came up as well, who was also evacuated, and hung out all week there. It gave me a safe place,” she said.

Across B.C. and Canada, wildfires disproportionately impact First Nations communities. Though they represent only five per cent of the population, it’s estimated that First Nations make up 42 per cent of all wildfire evacuations. 

As wildfires blaze all around the Interior, the camp offered a break from smoke for those in attendance. On event posters this year, air quality warnings were addressed, with evacuation routes marked along the way to camp as a precaution.

People who attended camp were asked to register at the sign in desk daily, to track who was there, and were informed about a muster point in the event of evacuation. 

The decision to continue on with both culture camps was deliberated by organizers carefully, with designated people monitoring surrounding wildfires.

Renegerating the land through fire

B.C. was the first province or territory in Canada to ban cultural burning in 1874, prohibiting generations of Indigenous people from stewarding their territories with fire. In 2024, 150 years later, the province officially amended wildfire regulations to support cultural burns. Today, many nations are in the process of reclaiming this practice, including Líl̓wat. 

“We can’t look at fire as dangerous all of the time. We gotta look at it as an element that helps us regenerate, and help us repurpose the land,” Wallace added.

An example of fire regenerating the land was visible to those at Líl̓wat’s culture camps through an abundance of berries, following a cultural burn several years before.

“That specific area was culturally burnt seven or eight years ago and now finally it’s starting to reproduce huckleberries,” Wallace said. “It’s not just a small piece of land, it’s a really big area, and the whole area was covered in huckleberries and raspberries because of these cultural burns that happened.”

Youth were able to harvest these berries, and surrounding wildlife have a tasty treat. 

And in the era of technology, culture camps give youth the opportunity to disconnect from the internet, and to connect with the natural world. 

“Back in our time, we didn’t have technology to hold us back from being out on the land,” Wells said. “It’s important to return to land-based healing … to be St’át’imc, and to do St’át’imc things.”

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“What are you going to do about wildland firefighter mental health?”

The question came to Jim Johansson — a former wildland firefighter and assistant professor in the faculty of nursing at the University of Alberta — from a student in December 2023. Canada had just experienced its deadliest wildfire season on record.

Eight wildland firefighting personnel died in 2023 in Western Canada and the Northwest Territories, prompting scrutiny of the profession’s hidden costs: chronic fatigue, physical and mental burnout and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Now, the 2026 fire season has made one thing unmistakingly clear: the psychological toll of wildland firefighting in North America has reached new levels. In June, two wildland firefighters and a bush pilot died in a plane crash near Fort Simpson, N.W.T. Several days later, three firefighters were fatally burnt while working on a wildfire along the Utah-Colorado border, while a fourth died on July 24 from injuries he sustained. 

Kylie Foisy, the nursing student who sent the email about mental health to Johansson back in 2023, had just wrapped up her rookie season as an initial attack crew member in northwestern Alberta. Initial attack crews are the first on the scene of new blazes, tasked with quickly extinguishing them. On her second day on the job in May 2023, Foisy’s crew was dispatched to a 5,000-hectare wildfire. “It was so crazy,” she says. “But so fun.”

She loved the intensity of the work and the strong bonds she developed with her crew, but the summer unfolded with more sobering events, including a fatal helicopter crash in her district. For Foisy’s crew it was “business as usual” the next day, she says. For the duration of the season she felt the impacts wearing on her mental well-being, and could see others were also struggling.

For Johansson, Foisy’s email was a call to action. And it was the very start of what is now Canada’s first wildland firefighter peer-support network. Johansson has assembled a team of veteran wildland firefighters, occupational health therapists, psychologists and climate specialists to co-create and launch a new peer-support network in Alberta “by wildland firefighters, for wildland firefighters” — the first of its kind in Canada.

Johansson hopes to apply what he’s learned over the past decade as a mental health nurse to bolster support for those on the frontlines of wildfire. A year after Foisy’s email landed in his inbox, he hired her as a research assistant. Together, they’re undertaking a qualitative research project to examine the mental health challenges related to wildland firefighting and climate change in Alberta.Already, they’ve heard stories from those who have experienced or witnessed crew members escape near-death scenarios, including close calls with fallen trees or vehicle collisions. Others were impacted by fatal tragedies, like in August 2024, when 24-year-old firefighter Morgan Kitchen was killed by a fallen tree while working on the Jasper wildfire. Last week, as the two-year anniversary of Kitchen’s death approached, six workplace safety charges were laid against Alberta’s Ministry of Forestry and Parks in relation to it, for failing to take measures to assess and control hazards related to dangerous trees — along with failing to adequately train firefighters to identify hazardous trees. The first court appearance is scheduled for this September, in Jasper.

Wildfire fighters lack the supports of municipal firefighters

Despite working on the frontlines of some of Canada’s most intense climate-related disasters, most wildland firefighters are classified as forestry workers — not first responders — under Canada’s national occupational classification system. They also often lack the wages, pensions and benefits afforded to municipal firefighters. 

Johansson was all too familiar with the working conditions on the frontlines of wildfires. He had worked as an initial attack firefighter in Alberta from 2001 to 2009, then taught up-and-coming crew members and leaders at the Hinton Training Centre until 2013. Johansson led an initial attack crew from 2005 to 2009, working 12- to 16-hour days over three-week shifts, hauling hose through muskeg and pumping water from swamps to extinguish wildfires.

Despite the low pay, the camaraderie and joy of spending days in the bush “got into his blood,” Johansson says. “There’s a culture of wildland firefighting that I felt so happy in, and that didn’t really exist anywhere else,” he says.

Yet, there were psychological hazards, too. In 2007, a helicopter carrying an initial attack crew crashed near Fort McMurray, killing 22-year-old Patrick Dominic Watters-Michaud. After the news arrived, Johansson had to “jump in a helicopter and go day-base that day,” he says. Day-basing involves relocating crews to high-risk wildfire areas to increase their chances of extinguishing the fires when they’re still small. The next day, wildland firefighters informally banded together, lowering the flags at bases across the province, “mourning the loss of one of our people,” Johansson recalls.

Alberta Wildfire managers raised the flags, citing that the firefighter did not meet the criteria of their flag-lowering policy. The policy changed in 2008 after crew leaders filed formal complaints. Alberta Wildfire did not respond to questions from The Narwhal about this incident or any other questions.

The incident opened Johansson’s eyes to the “legitimate danger” of wildland firefighting, and he became increasingly anxious to fly on helicopter patrols — a routine part of firefighting work where crew members survey the landscape for new ignitions. But it also shone a light on what he says is the government’s ongoing failure to provide safe, culturally relevant mental health support to wildland firefighters.

Johansson became increasingly vocal as a leader, advocating for the safety and well-being of his crew. He would eventually be “DNRed” by the Edson district — a term referring to Alberta Wildfire’s “Do Not Rehire” policy. Alberta Wildfire does not grant seasonal firefighters automatic recall rights from one season to the next, unlike other Canadian provinces like B.C. Alberta Wildfire did not respond to questions about whether this policy exists or how it’s applied.

After leaving wildfire, it felt like Johansson was “starting all over again,” he says. He decided to pursue higher education in nursing, specializing in mental health. 

Johansson doesn’t want his research limited to publishing papers.

“When I put my nursing lens on firefighting, I’m always looking for strengths and how we can mobilize those to help people. In wildfire, that strength is the people,” Johansson says. “That’s what keeps firefighters coming back every season.”

Climate change and gaps in mental health support put Alberta’s wildland firefighters at risk

For his research, Johansson interviewed 17 former and current wildland firefighters in Alberta. He shared preliminary results with The Narwhal.

Early data from Johansson’s qualitative research has raised some red flags. The majority of wildland firefighters Johansson spoke to agreed the 2023 fire season was a “turning point” in their careers. Crews spent a higher number of days actively fighting fires in increasingly risky and volatile environments. It’s “non-stop all season long,” and there’s fatigue and additional safety issues that come with that, researchers found.

Initial attack and unit crew leaders also spoke to Johansson about mental health challenges related to high turnover of crew members. “In the past, most crews would only have a small number of rookies each year,” Johansson says. An Alberta Wildfire document, leaked to The Narwhal, analyzes the results of a wildfire crew exit survey in 2023, and indicates that “60 per cent of all firefighters were either brand new, or entering their second year.” 

Alberta Wildfire did not respond to any questions about the findings of Johannson’s research.

Johansson’s research found leaders were worried about dividing their attention between managing large-scale wildfires, and simultaneously supervising a higher number of rookies less familiar with volatile fire behaviour and danger trees, whose unstable roots and surrounding soil could result in suddenly toppling over. In addition, some reported that third-year firefighters were being pushed prematurely into leadership roles, he says.

There are broader labour issues in Alberta too, including that wildland firefighters lack paid sick days and health benefits. There are some limited mental health services available — including a counselling hotline — but interviewees expressed hesitation, or lack of trust about confidentiality when using the services for fear they might not be hired back the following spring, Johansson says.

Wildland firefighters are left to fend for themselves in the off-season — when they often need supports the most

Johansson often compares the dynamics of wildland firefighting to that of soldiers returning from combat. “[Wildland firefighters] exist in these really high-intensity situations. They have a tight-knit peer support network that keeps them safe mentally,” he says.

But when the wildfire season ends in the fall and seasonal firefighters’ contracts are terminated, they suddenly lose that support network.

For Jessica Broder, a former wildland firefighter with the BC Wildfire Service, when she left her crew to spend the winters in other communities she lost her “sounding board for processing.” She also points to the reality of wildland firefighters relying on substances to cope through the off-season. A study of U.S. wildland firefighters found that nearly four in five respondents reported binge drinking before and after the fire season.

Broder worked on a unit crew in Revelstoke, B.C., in 2023, the summer her colleague Devyn Gale was killed by a fallen tree. The accident felt all too relatable, Broder says. She herself had narrowly avoided falling trees and knew others had experienced similar close calls. 

After Gale’s accident, she and her crew participated in critical incident stress management debriefs, and had access to a clinical counsellor with a history in wildland firefighting.

Broder and her crew accrued approximately 100 fireline days in the 2023 season (a unit crew would be happy if they got 60 days, according to Broder). While initial attack crews respond to wildfires with the goal of quickly extinguishing them, unit crews are 20-person crews that specialize in “sustained action,” or longer-term firefighting efforts on mega-fires. In September, her crew was deployed to northern B.C. to work on the Big Creek fire, which she described as her “breaking point.” The Big Creek fire grew to more than 175,000 hectares in 2023 and triggered evacuation orders in the Takla Lake First Nation. Broder led a night shift, working from 5 p.m. until 9 a.m. the next morning, and had to evacuate camp when the wildfire threatened to burn it.

Broder worries that increasingly destructive wildfire seasons are exposing firefighters to greater psychological strain. While BC Wildfire Service has some mental health training, including a course offered through the Canadian Mental Health Association, adapted specifically for wildfire, called Resilient Minds, Broder would like to see more preparatory training for all wildland firefighters.

“We’re not giving people the tools to tell someone at 4 a.m. that their house is not ‘an achievable objective,’ or to go into a rural or Indigenous community [to engage with community members],” she points out, referring to how wildland firefighters have to knock on doors and tell community members to leave their homes — and sometimes warn them they are unlikely to have a home to return to.

Recently, Johansson recruited Broder — today a student at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C. — onto his team to research existing mental health support programs for wildland firefighters in North America. “It’s something that really lacks across Canada,” she says. “I think [a peer-support network] could be transformational.”

‘It’s not a hopeless endeavour’: veteran wildland firefighter

Over a 30-year career, Michelle Wigmore fought wildfires across Canada and North America, led a 20-person unit crew and developed national training courses. Today, she’s teaming up with Johansson to help launch the peer-support network.

Over the years, Wigmore has seen wildland firefighters struggle with mental health, but says “it’s often not in the way people think.” Busy seasons and long hours can be challenging, but they’re also “why people join fire and stay in it,” she says. “It’s the excitement, adrenaline, you’re working as a team — it’s the greatest thing ever.” But it comes with immense pressure.

Wigmore has lost colleagues to helicopter accidents, health conditions and suicide. One year, a crew member died by suicide on his day off. 

A recent survey in the U.S. found 22 per cent of wildland firefighters have attempted suicide, while 37 per cent reported suicidal ideation. 

Rainy seasons can be just as psychologically hazardous, Wigmore says. When wildfire activity is low, crews may spend extended periods away from home without the opportunity to earn overtime. “That’s when I’ve seen the most issues come up,” she says.

The solutions don’t always need to be complicated, Wigmore says, and they’re most effective when they come from the ground up. Crew morale is at the heart of it, she says. “It’s not a hopeless endeavour.”

What helped her crew the most when they lost a colleague to suicide, was the show of solidarity from other wildland firefighters on base. They collectively decided to construct a bench in honour of their colleague and flew it to a nearby mountaintop.

In 2023, Wigmore wasn’t hired back on — she was “DNRed.” The “do not rehire” policy in Alberta is “barbaric,” Wigmore says. Wildland firefighters deserve job security and automatic recall rights, so they’re not afraid of advocating for their well-being, or safety, says the veteran firefighter

But she’s quick to credit recent progress. The Alberta government and union signed a new agreement in 2025 that will increase wages for crew members with the most years of service by more than 19 per cent by 2027. Wages for longest-serving crew leaders and supervisors will rise by more than 27 per cent and 31 per cent, respectively. 

“This is career-changing for people,” Wigmore says. “[Firefighters] that were planning their exit strategy … are now planning to stay.” Other major wildfire agencies in Canada, including B.C. and Ontario should take note, Wigmore says.

BC Wildfire leads cultural shift in mental health awareness

The devastating losses of six firefighters in B.C.’s wildland firefighting community in 2023 “struck a chord” for the BC Wildfire Service, Olivia Goldney, a safety specialist with the organization, says. “We need to have a strengthened culture of care for our staff and develop trauma-informed systems that can allow our staff to do this job long-term,” she adds.

Aside from chronic fatigue and burnout, wildland firefighters are grappling with a profound sense of “ecological grief,” as their communities and landscapes are burnt over by wildfires. Goldney experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from her experiences as an initial attack crew leader in 2021, witnessing the devastating events of the Lytton fire, which tore through the community in 15 minutes, destroying homes and businesses, and killing two people.

Today, she’s leading the development of a new psychological health and safety strategy within the BC Wildfire Service. “We want to align psychological injuries closer to how we approach physical injuries,” Goldney says.

All wildland firefighters in B.C. have automatic recall rights and benefits, including sick days and partially paid short-term disability leave, according to Goldney. Once they have worked over a certain number of hours, they also receive a $1,000 annual health and wellness allowance that can be used for services such as massage therapy and counselling. A counselling hotline is available to all firefighters, while First Nations firefighters can also access a crisis line to access culturally informed support. A 2021 survey found more than 50 per cent of Indigenous wildland firefighters in Canada had experienced additional risks related to cultural discrimination on the frontlines.

After the 2023 season, BC Wildfire Service also launched a recovery program, a four-day intensive retreat that provides firefighters with therapeutic tools for their long-term recovery from work-related traumatic stress.  

While wildland firefighting has long been dominated by a culture of stoicism — “a kind of buck up and do the job,” Goldney says — she’s seeing a cultural shift within BC Wildfire Service’s leadership to acknowledge and address the psychological toll of the work.

“From the bottom to the top, there’s this ‘shake’ that’s happening culturally,” Goldney says. “People are understanding the work we do has profound impacts on a person.”

She points to systemic changes that are underway in B.C.: wildland firefighters are becoming increasingly recognized by their first responder peers in the province. Recently, BC Wildfire Service was invited to join the BC First Responders Mental Health committee, Goldney says. In addition, B.C. wildland firefighters will soon have the most comprehensive cancer coverage in all of Canada. She’s hopeful that federal legislation will change to recognize wildland firefighters as first responders.

“I think only good things are to come,” Goldney says.

Wildland firefighting peer-support network sets sights on launching in early 2027

If you had asked Johansson at 25 whether he was struggling with his mental health, he would have shrugged and replied, “Job’s fine. I’m fine.” Twenty years later, he’s no longer sure that was really the case.

That realization is part of why Johansson sees value in long-term support. His team plans to build a year-round support network for both active and retired wildland firefighters, offering a space where those still processing their experiences can find an informed, listening ear.

“You could be two, three, five, 10 years out and still access [support],” he says. 

Come September, after the fire season, Johansson’s team will brainstorm what the network could look like. There are already ideas of starting an online platform, a peer-support counselling line, group fitness challenges or even integrating supports into video games. 

They plan to launch the pilot peer-support network in Alberta in the spring of 2027 with the broader goal of eventually expanding across Canada. 

Already he’s receiving overwhelmingly enthusiastic reception and support for the project, he says. “[People] are like, ‘Thank you for doing this’, or ‘How can I help?’ It’s obviously filling a need.”

It’s been a full-circle moment for the former wildland firefighter, although Johansson admits that, emotionally, a part of him has never really left. 

Gardening in his backyard in Calgary often evokes the memory of “digging in the dirt, looking for hot spots,” he says. Even the faintest trace of wildfire smoke has a way of transporting him back to the frontlines. “It’s total nostalgia,” Johansson says.

“For a minute, I’m back in it.”

Updated on Aug. 7, 12:52 pm PST: A number of photographs in this story have been changed. The images originally used did not show a wildfire, but an Indigenous cultural burn, and misidentified attendees at the burn as employees of BC Wildfire.

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Summary

• The 2026 wildfire season in Canada, which has been particularly severe in Ontario, has prompted significant interest on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
• Many of these posts contain misinformation, including AI-generated maps with incorrect details on the locations or severity of fires across Canada, or conspiracy theories linking wildfires to lasers, 15-minute city initiatives or eco-terrorism.
• Many posts focus on mismanagement and place blame on Canadian governments, which complicates valid critiques of wildfire response and funding with destabilizing misinformation.

Ontario is grappling with one of the worst wildfire seasons in recorded history, which has put thousands of people, especially those in the province’s north, at risk. Last month, two Indigenous communities — Namaygoosisagagun First Nation and Whitewater Lake First Nation — were burned to the ground. The scale of the crisis has made headlines around the world, and prompted a blaze of posts on social media.

But many of those posts contain misinformation, both AI-generated and hand-crafted: maps that purport to show Ontario wildfires labelled with communities that don’t exist; false information about air quality and evacuation alerts; captions with conspiracy theories about 15-minute cities and arson. 

Look closely and you might see clues about what’s real and what isn’t. One viral AI-generated graphic purports to show the location of Ontario wildfires, but directs people to a non-existent Ontario government website. Another, claiming 10,000 people in Alberta were under evacuation orders as of July 16 (not true), includes a map where Jasper National Park appears to cover most of the province. One map puts Ontario on the West Coast, Quebec over the southern United States and Alberta up around Alaska — and includes a province called “Onjebio,” where the wildfire situation looks pretty bad. 

But just as often, it’s hard to tell fact from fiction. And it’s getting harder: in May, Statistics Canada reported 43 per cent of Canadians find it more difficult to distinguish between facts and misinformation online, compared to three years ago. Those with less trust in news media reported even more difficulty. 

Each year, it seems, the onset of wildfire season in Canada is accompanied by the onset of wildfire misinformation season on social media. As AI-generated content becomes more ubiquitous — and often tougher to spot — across social media, it presents new challenges to Canadians looking for trustworthy information about unfolding crises across the country. Wildfires are getting worse because of climate change. But what’s driving the escalation of misinformation?

2023 marked a shift in online wildfire misinformation

Gwen Roley, a digital verification journalist covering Canada for the international outlet Agence France-Presse, recently reported on some of the AI-generated maps spreading across social media platforms. “The labels on it were really wonky, and the symbols for the wildfires didn’t make sense,” she says. Roley has covered wildfire misinformation extensively, and there are certain trends that pop each year — “eco-terrorists, directed energy weapons,” also known as lasers — but this year’s maps struck her as a new trend. 

Roley has been debunking wildfire misinformation since 2023 — a “really superlative year, as we all remember,” she says. In addition to being the worst year for wildfires in Canada so far, there were also devastating fires in Hawaii. “These were almost like never-before-seen events, very scary events, where people are looking for explanations,” she says. In some parts of Canada, wildfires are familiar, even if the scale of recent years is not. But when wildfires rage in New Brunswick or the Northwest Territories or Hawaii, they may prompt more fear — and more speculation — than usual. When something that feels extraordinary happens, people are inclined to look for extraordinary explanations: even back in 1954, residents of Bellingham, Wash., became convinced hydrogen bomb tests or space rays were responsible for a sudden rash of damage to car windshields. 

Climate change denial, likewise, is not a new phenomenon. Chris Russill is an associate professor in the school of journalism and communication at Carleton University, where he’s also an academic director of Re.Climate, a centre focused on public engagement and climate communication. He says denial or skepticism of climate science dates back decades. 

But he agrees 2023 was an inflection point for wildfire misinformation online. Some of that was because of what was happening in the real world, such as the impact of Canadian fires on American air quality. 

But many were linked to shifts happening on major social media platforms: “Elon Musk had just bought Twitter,” he recalls. The Canadian government had passed the Online News Act, an attempt to make foreign social platforms pay to share news. Instead, Russill remembers, “Meta was refusing to negotiate with journalists around the News Act and stripped out Canadian journalism [from its platforms Facebook and Instagram].” It was also the first wildfire season since the widespread adoption of generative artificial intelligence; within two months of its release in November 2022, ChatGPT had more than 100 million monthly active users.

That chain of events is definitely still reverberating today: though Canadian news has been banned by Meta since 2023, a majority of Canadian users still don’t know that, according to a June 2026 report by the Media Ecosystem Observatory at McGill University. Of 1,518 Canadians surveyed for the report, only one in four Instagram users knew that news outlets in Canada could not publish on Meta platforms. Many people believe they’re seeing news on Facebook and Instagram when what they’re seeing is misinformation and conspiracy theories. And users searching Google for wildfire updates are shown AI-generated summaries, which launched in Canada in October 2024, and may contain inaccuracies. (Over the August long weekend, a Narwhal editor looking for air quality information at a lake in the B.C. Interior was shown a summary that incorrectly stated the lake was closed — information pulled from social media posts about two different places that were closed.)

Russill also attributes the 2023 sea change to the post-pandemic atmosphere of suspicion. “There was a more adversarial, conspiratorial way that climate was being dragged into other culture-war type issues that were becoming more and more salient through the [COVID-19] period,” he says.

This year, once again, Canadian wildfire smoke is impacting the United States, triggering posts from President Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform and AI-generated graphics that distort the impact of smoke on Americans.

Who benefits from wildfire misinformation on social media? 

As much as they complain about it, Russill says American politicians are also finding an opportunity in the effects of wildfire smoke on air quality. 

“The U.S. politicians, MAGA politicians, definitely have an interest in leveraging narratives — misinformation, conspiracies, false and misleading content — around wildfires to pursue a narrative they have about Canada as a bad neighbour, and leveraging that for trade and security,” he says. In a post on July 17, Trump threatened that the “cost of this pollution must of necessity be added to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying.”

Researchers call this “participatory disinformation,” in which political leaders and influencers seed disinformation across platforms, and it’s then amplified and reproduced by ordinary users, in this case shaping online narratives about extreme weather events. (Disinformation is distinguished from misinformation by the intentions of the person sharing it. While people may unintentionally share misinformation, disinformation is false information shared on purpose.)

The McGill report on Canadian news notes, “When journalism loses visibility on social media, it is not replaced by nothing — it is replaced by content that serves a different function.” Conspiracy theories and images that distort the reality of wildfires get engagement, and a real crisis presents a fertile opportunity for content generation. 

Ad revenue from Google and other ad exchanges is another motivating factor, the Media Ecosystem Observatory also reported in June: the push behind a coordinated, international network of Facebook accounts pushing “news slop” — AI-fabricated stories — onto Canadian users. 

It’s easy for everyday users to get caught up in spreading untruths, too. Across social media, engagement is currency, which may provide an incentive to use the most dramatic or striking images without checking — or caring — about accuracy. “You can find a real map that you can very easily take a screenshot of that is using real data,” Roley says. But the real maps aren’t as dramatic as the AI-generated ones, “where it looks like all of Ontario has been burnt to a crisp, or one of the videos I saw where it looks like the wildfires are visible from space.” And lingering on those images — even if we’re skeptical of them — rewards the algorithm. 

As Russill points out, it’s “faster, easier and cheaper than ever before to generate fake and misleading content with AI.” It’s also easy to see what does well with your audience, and react accordingly, he says. “Like, let’s make the smoke bigger. Let’s put a fleeing polar bear in there. Who knows, right?” Some people may be diehard believers in climate conspiracies, and others might be deliberately seeding disinformation, but some are almost certainly agnostic to the culture wars; they just want the engagement. 

Whether users want to gain followers or further a political agenda, Russill says, they have “almost nothing to lose.” While AI posts may be flagged and removed on some platforms, it’s easy to replace them. “In these moments like wildfire evacuations and emergencies, this surges forward because it’s a real high engagement opportunity,” he says. 

This happened in 2025, he adds, prompting the BC Wildfire Service to warn of AI-generated images circulating on social media. And it’s happening this year, too.

From climate change denial to ‘mismanagement’: the narrative online has shifted

Misinformation typically downplays or denies the role of climate change in worsening wildfires, and displaces it onto other, implausible explanations. A few years ago, it was space lasers and 15-minute cities.

But no part of the world’s media ecosystem is free of Trump’s influence, including reporting on wildfires. After the 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles, which killed 31 people, the president blamed mismanagement of California forests. (Experts attributed the disaster to climate change, prolonged drought and southern California’s high winds, which spread the fire rapidly.)

“So the impacts people were seeing were a result of government mismanagement, not climate, not other types of things,” Russill says. The same argument is now being directed at Canada; in July, a Michigan senator posted on X, “Unless you want to become the 51st state, learn to manage your forests.” Such a task would be impossible in Canada, which has 369 million hectares of forest — covering more than a third of its landmass — 260 million of which is boreal forest in the sparsely populated north. Much of these forests have never been “managed,” but are experiencing more severe and frequent wildfires because the planet is getting hotter, a crisis that cannot be solved with rakes.

In part, this is a problem of our own making. In 2023, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith dodged a question about climate change and wildfire by pivoting to arsonists. And she’s not the only Canadian leader minimizing the severity of the climate crisis, while pushing more fossil fuel investments. “As politicians everywhere have gotten more quiet about climate, it becomes more difficult for people to understand why these [wildfire] situations are becoming much more unmanageable,” Russill says. 

The question of government responsibility is legitimate, he adds. There are valid criticisms of the Ontario government’s response to recent wildfires, or its habitual underfunding of emergency wildfire response. But in a news ecosystem rife with disinformation, it can be hard to balance valid criticism with simply undermining Canadian authorities. “It’s being leveraged as a frame in which to challenge and create distrust of authorities during these moments of crises in a more substantive way,” he says. 

Wildfire misinformation can bring real-world risk to Canadian firefighters — and everyone else

AI-generated images are annoying and possibly being weaponized to destabilize democracy. What researchers don’t know yet is if they are also putting individual lives at risk. 

“One of the things I would be curious to know is how it’s impacting people’s understanding of wildfires,” Roley says. “Like, is someone fleeing from their home because they saw this AI-generated map? I have no idea.” 

Wildfire agencies are now also spending precious time and resources combatting misinformation or pushing back on AI-generated images — especially when it targets them. Russill says that degrades trust that is already wearing thin. “In B.C., you know, BC Wildfire is not trusted by every rural community that experiences wildfire, so they already have that issue to deal with.” The effect of untruths and conspiracy theories on public trust is just one of the mental health stresses faced by frontline firefighters. 

Russill adds people might also be overly reliant on AI overviews to check for news on evacuation orders, park access or campfire guidelines. “But I think more likely it’s inducing a sort of widespread cynicism or distrust or confidence in people.” 

Online misinformation is a problem without a simple solution. Providing facts is important, but there is a depressingly robust body of research suggesting they’re not enough to change peoples’ minds or strongly-held beliefs.

“Certainly around moments of crisis like this, [providing fact checks] can introduce friction into the ways people are engaging with content,” Russill says. “Maybe they share a little less. Maybe they reset and ground-truth on something that’s happening, as opposed to letting their feelings start to overwhelm them.” 

Wildfires are still at their worst during hot, dry seasons; misinformation can burn all year long. At least for now, you can still limit your exposure to one of those risks by closing an app.

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

Summary

• As polls suggest a majority of Canadians support building new pipelines, the Alberta government is proposing a new pipeline to the West Coast to help boost production in the oilsands.
• The terms of the pipeline proposal name Alberta and the Canadian government together as majority owners, suggesting taxpayers will foot much of the construction bill.
• Pipelines are very expensive to build. A recent analysis of the federal government’s Trans Mountain pipeline, which is already operational, showed that the pipeline’s revenues aren’t high enough to cover its construction and debt costs, making it a money-loser for taxpayers.

Pipelines, pipelines, pipelines. No matter how you feel about them, it’s hard to escape news of them lately. 

In July, the Alberta government announced it is formally proposing another pipeline to the West Coast. On the weekend, the federal government took another step towards designating the pipeline as a project in the national interest, meaning environmental assessments and other parts of the approval process could be fast-tracked.

Recent polling shows the majority of Canadians — 63 per cent according to the Angus Reid Institute in July — support that new pipeline from Alberta to B.C.

Why? Mostly for economic reasons. A majority told pollsters they were convinced by the argument that Canada needs to diversify its oil markets away from the U.S., while half said oil is just generally important to the economy. Forty-five per cent said the project would create jobs. 

The economic forecast, though, isn’t quite that simple. There’s still the question of who’s going to pay for it. A poll commissioned by the Pembina Institute and conducted by Probe Research in April found a majority of Albertans — 61 per cent — say they don’t want to spend taxpayer money on a new pipeline.

It’s increasingly clear: many Canadians say they do want a new pipeline, but they don’t want to pay for it. Companies aren’t exactly lining up to build new pipelines by themselves either. That raises a question: why?

So what are the economics of a pipeline in Canada? Do they make money? Here’s what you need to know.

How much do pipelines cost to build?

No one is going to build a pipeline on a shoestring. These are multibillion-dollar projects, often crossing multiple provinces. Even expanding an existing pipeline, or building along an existing pipeline route is a huge endeavour involving tens of thousands of people working on the project.

Take the Trans Mountain Expansion project, as an example. That increased the capacity of an existing pipeline, built in the 1950s, from Alberta to the West Coast. That expansion project ultimately cost taxpayers $34 billion — notably, that’s almost $30 billion more than initial estimates. 

The latest pipeline idea making headlines was proposed by the Alberta government, with an estimated cost pegged at between $35.2 billion and $43.7 billion. That proposal was brought forward alongside the federally owned Trans Mountain Corporation, which will lead the project, and Pembina Pipeline Corporation (which is not connected to the Pembina Institute that held the poll). 

Under the proposed partnership, Trans Mountain and the Government of Alberta — through the Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission — would hold a majority interest. 

So who would actually own it? Well … taxpayers, in a way.

How much have taxpayers spent building pipelines in the past?

It varies. Canadian taxpayers have been on the hook for billions since the Government of Canada purchased the Trans Mountain pipeline in 2018.

And maybe that’s okay. Some would argue that pipelines are infrastructure, much like highways or railways. Others disagree that billions of dollars of public money should be put toward increasing oil and gas infrastructure.

Nonetheless, it continues to happen. TC Energy’s cancelled Keystone XL expansion was backstopped by Alberta taxpayers to the tune of $1.5 billion in 2021.

And it’s happening again. Alberta’s government has already contributed a little more than $18 million to its latest pipeline plan, saying the money went to early planning work “including preliminary engineering, cost estimates, economic modelling, early Indigenous engagement with communities and development of the proposal for federal consideration.”

The Alberta government calls it a “myth” that it will pay for the entirety of the pipeline, saying, “Now that this preliminary work is done, we will work alongside Trans Mountain and Pembina Pipeline to move this project ahead.” But Pembina Pipeline currently has only a 10 per cent stake in the project.

So, in the end, it appears if the West Coast pipeline project moves ahead, it will be governments — and taxpayers — who foot much of the bill.

“I am quite comfortable that this is a good investment for Canadian taxpayers,” federal Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson told CBC in July.

How does a pipeline operator make money?

Whether pipelines are owned by companies or governments (and taxpayers like you), they charge fees for companies to move their products. The fees paid to use pipelines by companies such as oil producers are called tolls or tariffs. 

The Canada Energy Regulator oversees pipeline tolls, saying it ensures “they are just and reasonable.”

According to the regulator, tolls “cover the company’s cost of service, including a fair and reasonable return to pipeline investors.” Rates vary based on many factors: whether there’s a long-term commitment to shipping, how far, what the product is and how much of it.

The Trans Mountain expansion ended up costing so much that the tolls it charges customers to move oil are higher than expected. Still, according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development, only $15.4 billion of the $34-billion cost of the pipeline is covered by the tolls it charges.

Does running a pipeline actually make money?

Let’s look at Trans Mountain Corporation as an example — that pipeline we all own together. 

The company says it is now profitable. It reported its net income for 2025 was $556 million — up from $5 million the year before.

It’s what Minister Hodgson described to CBC as “generating oodles of cash.” 

But that claim has raised some eyebrows. And untangling it is complicated. 

The Trans Mountain Corporation is a wholly owned entity of another company, Canada TMP Finance Ltd., which is itself a subsidiary of Canada Development Investment Corporation, the entity which holds the Government of Canada’s investment in Trans Mountain. Still following? 

Let’s do it in the opposite direction. The Government of Canada owns a Crown corporation. That corporation has a subsidiary, which then in turn owns Trans Mountain Corporation. Hopefully that helps.

The debt of the expansion, and the interest on that debt, isn’t paid off. But Hodgson can claim the pipeline is profitable because of the confusing corporate structure of which Crown corporation holds its construction debt and pays the interest, and which takes in the tariffs, according to a report from the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

The author of the report described Trans Mountain’s profit claims to The Tyee as a “misrepresentation of finances.”

Trans Mountain Corporation did not respond to questions from The Narwhal by publication time.

But a company’s balance books aren’t the only way of looking at it. Industry advocates argue pipelines generate money in other ways too, including tax and royalty revenues and making oil prices more competitive.

For example, a 2024 report from a group created for Alberta credit unions argued the Trans Mountain expansion project resulted in a significant increase in access to markets for Alberta oil and that access significantly narrowed the price difference between a type of Western Canadian oil called Western Canadian Select and a type sold out of Texas called West Texas Intermediate. The report estimated this had already increased revenues by about $10 billion in the first six months the pipeline expansion launched.

There’s little doubt that producing and exporting oil and gas makes money for Canada — and especially for oil and gas companies themselves. But many have argued a fuller accounting would include the significant costs of the health risks, environmental degradation and other damage that comes from increasing carbon pollution from the burning of fossil fuels.

What are the costs of carbon pollution from increasing oil production?

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

As The Narwhal has reported, it’s possible, at least broadly speaking, to compare the economic output of fossil fuels with health costs. The federal energy regulator, for example, has reported the total value of crude oil exports from Canada was $138 billion in 2024. A Health Canada report that same year found the total cost of health impacts attributable to air pollution in 2018 was $146 billion. The cost of many foods produced here is also rising as farming becomes less predictable. 

Estimates vary, but the short answer is climate change is expensive. A 2022 report from Queen’s University projected trillions of dollars in losses in Canada due to climate change this century, with the greatest contributor to that change being the burning of fossil fuels.

Does Alberta produce enough oil to fill a new pipeline?

Trans Mountain is currently “Canada’s only pipeline system transporting oil products to the West Coast.” The company says its 1,200-kilometre pipeline network has room for 890,000 barrels of petroleum products to be shipped each and every day. 

The new pipeline proposed by the Alberta government would be capable of transporting one million barrels of crude oil per day from the Edmonton area to the West Coast.

If it goes ahead, that would significantly increase the network of pipelines leading from Alberta.

There are already several other pipeline systems in use — leading to other locations in the U.S. and eastern Canada — and according to the Alberta Energy Regulator, all of them together could carry 5.4 million barrels per day. 

Currently, Alberta produces an average of more than four million barrels of oil per day. That suggests Alberta’s oil production stands to increase substantially if a new pipeline is going to be filled each and every day. 

Meanwhile the International Energy Agency has predicted global demand for oil from combustible fossil fuels may peak as early as 2027 — raising questions about the long-term outlook for expanded oilsands production.

— With files from Drew Anderson and Carl Meyer

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.