Watch: explaining Ontario's Greenbelt cuts

This article is more than 1 year old

The last few months have been an endless rollercoaster of non-stop news in Ontario — and The Narwhal’s team is here to help you make sense of it all.

Ontario’s integrity commissioner and auditor general have each announced investigations into the Progressive Conservative government’s plan to open the Greenbelt to development. Meanwhile, the Ontario Provincial Police is mulling a probe, an endangered species official has resigned, an environmental organization is taking the province to court and a First Nation is considering legal action of its own.

Every step of the way, our Ontario bureau of Emma McIntosh, Fatima Syed and Denise Balkissoon has been hard at work breaking story after story.

Wondering what might happen next? Want to hear more about how we get leaked documents? Emma, Fatima and Denise dove into all things Greenbelt and beyond at a very special online event on Thursday. Watch the recording below.

Like a kid in a candy store

When those boxes of heavily redacted documents start to pile in, reporters at The Narwhal waste no time in looking for kernels of news that matter the most. Just ask our Prairies reporter Drew Anderson, who gleefully scanned through freedom of information files like a kid in a candy store, leading to pretty damning revelations in Alberta. Long story short: the government wasn’t being forthright when it claimed its pause on new renewable energy projects wasn’t political. Just like that, our small team was again leading the charge on a pretty big story.

In an oil-rich province like Alberta, that kind of reporting is crucial. But look at our investigative work on TC Energy’s Coastal GasLink pipeline to the west, or our Greenbelt reporting out in Ontario. They all highlight one thing: those with power over our shared natural world don’t want you to know how — or why — they call the shots. And we try to disrupt that.

Our journalism is powered by people just like you. We never take corporate ad dollars, or put this public-interest information behind a paywall. Will you join the pod of Narwhals that make a difference by helping us uncover some of the most important stories of our time?

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