Summary

• Internal documents show LNG Canada’s original plans for the project included a commitment that operations would not include routine flaring. 
• While LNG Canada and the BC Energy Regulator have promoted the site as an environmental leader, the facility burned about 350 million cubic metres of gas in its first year of operation.
• LNG Canada did not directly respond to questions about the removal of the commitments and said it is currently working to “reduce flaring and progress toward steady, long-term operations.”

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

LNG Canada, the country’s first major liquefied natural gas export facility on B.C.’s West Coast, has made international headlines over the past year — for burning off the gas it should have been exporting. 

An issue with one of the facility’s flare stacks has caused the plant to burn off extra gas since starting up in late 2024. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Early versions of LNG Canada’s operational plans included detailed environmental commitments — and a promise the Kitimat, B.C., plant would operate “without routine flaring.”

In 2019, the consortium of five foreign-owned companies behind the multi-billion-dollar project told the BC Energy Regulator its massive gas liquefaction and export facility would have minimum disturbance to the local community, assuring the provincial government the plant would be built to specifications that would ensure flaring — the burning of unused gas — would only need to be done in extraordinary circumstances. 

These promises appeared in multiple versions of regulatory reports submitted to the B.C. government. Six versions of the reports — drafts of LNG Canada’s flaring management plans marked as “restricted” — were included in hundreds of pages of government documents obtained by The Narwhal and UK-based investigative journalism outlet Point Source. 

In November 2023, the commitments vanished from the latest drafts — and remained absent from all subsequent drafts and the final version. The removal of commitments close to completion raises fresh questions about whether potential problems during construction may have led the company to downgrade its environmental targets.

A few months later, the mega-project started its commissioning process. Then came the flaring.

As The Narwhal and Point Source previously reported, LNG Canada burned approximately 350 million cubic metres of gas in 2025, making it one of the most polluting LNG facilities in the world. Some unplanned flaring events included multiple occurrences of flames reaching heights of 90 metres, roughly as tall as London’s Big Ben, along with plumes of black smoke settling over the community. 

“The fact that LNG Canada showed the regulator multiple draft documents which all said that the facility would not flare on a routine basis was beyond misleading,” Tim Doty, a former state oil and gas inspector from Texas, said in an interview. “This was totally false information.”

During his tenure with the Texas government, Doty managed thousands of air quality monitoring projects as part of environmental assessments of industrial facilities. He’s now a consultant who works on behalf of companies and organizations to assess and monitor emissions at oil and gas facilities around the globe. 

Unnecessary flaring of gas essentially wastes the resource — and creates carbon pollution.

Even after LNG Canada quietly dropped its planned commitment to operate without routine flaring, stakeholders continued to tout its environmental credentials. In June 2025, Shell CEO Wael Sawan said LNG Canada would be “one of the lowest-carbon [LNG] projects anywhere in the world,” speaking at the Energy Asia conference in Malaysia. 

B.C. Premier David Eby echoed the claim in July that year, saying gas processed at the Kitimat terminal is the “lowest-carbon LNG in the world.”

Many experts now say these claims were fundamentally untrue.

Christopher Doleman, an LNG and gas specialist at the U.S.-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said the volume of flaring at the facility “undermines claims being made” about low-carbon LNG.

“Statements that have been made by officials saying that the LNG is the cleanest in the world now seem to be completely untrue,” he previously told The Narwhal.

The premier’s office did not reply to a request for an interview, referring questions to the Energy Ministry, which acknowledged it received the questions but ultimately did not respond.

LNG Canada did not directly respond to questions about the removal of the commitments and said it is currently working to “reduce flaring and progress toward steady, long-term operations.”

‘An extremely big polluter’: former oil and gas inspector

LNG Canada flared a minimum of 127,900 cubic metres of gas every day in 2025, with the daily average being much higher: almost one million cubic metres. Government data show 3,648 million cubic metres of gas were sent to the facility last year via the Coastal GasLink pipeline, meaning almost 10 per cent of all gas transported to the terminal was burned off without being used for power or exported.

The average household in Canada consumed around 2,216 cubic metres of natural gas in 2024, according to the Canadian Gas Association. That means LNG Canada burned off the equivalent amount of gas that could have provided energy to 157,942 homes.

Yet, LNG Canada’s documents submitted to the provincial government claim environmental excellence. 

“LNG Canada’s ‘commitment and policy on health, safety, security, environment and social performance’ focuses on ways to avoid and minimize negative environmental and social impacts resulting from our operations and enhance the positive impacts in a systematic manner,” the early documents noted.

Doty said regulatory plans for LNG facilities are often subject to multiple revisions by the government regulator. 

“It is normal for there to be a bit of back and forth between the operator and the regulator when documents are being prepared that are associated with operating permits which allow the company to release pollution,” he explained. “However, it does seem strange that these documents contained these environmental pledges that were later scrapped entirely.”

The BC Energy Regulator told The Narwhal and Point Source the early versions of the reports “included commitments and commentary that were outside of the intended scope of the report and not consistent with the design of their facility.”

“Routine flaring is authorized for specific purposes, including pilot systems, continuous purge systems, passing valves, manual sampling systems and online process analyzers,” a regulator spokesperson explained in a detailed response to questions.

Doty questioned whether the designs were ever intended for a facility that would operate without routine flaring or if something happened while building the plant. 

“You can see from the way that this facility was designed that there was always supposed to be some kind of combustion going on — and with that comes emissions,” he said, adding additional problems may have occurred early in the commissioning process.

The regulator spokesperson disagreed with the theory that the plant was designed for high rates of flaring. 

“The [BC Energy Regulator’s] reviews of the facility and LNG Canada’s submissions during design and construction … did not identify factors that would have contributed to increased flaring rates during operation,” the spokesperson noted.

James Smith, a Kitimat community member whose name has been changed to protect his family from potential repercussions, worked on the project during construction. He said he witnessed numerous problems on the job site, ultimately leading him to quit.

“They cut corners: it was about timelines and money,” he said. “They knew even before the flare arrived, before they started building it, that it wasn’t going to work. That was the word on the ground.”

The Narwhal could not independently verify Smith’s claims, and LNG Canada did not respond to questions about alleged problems during construction. 

In January, The Narwhal revealed an “integrity issue” with the facility’s flaring equipment resulted in LNG Canada burning significantly more gas than expected — and discovered it could take three to five years to fix.

The issue was identified shortly after the LNG plant started testing its equipment in late 2024, if not before, but the government regulator did not learn about the problem until April 2025.

“I’ve been assessing and monitoring facilities in the oil and gas sector for more than 30 years, and I can tell you that LNG Canada is an extremely big polluter,” Doty said. “In my opinion, it should not be allowed to operate with such excessive emission levels.”

The facility is currently operating with a cracked flare tip as well as several leaking valves, according to previous reporting from The Narwhal and technical reports since the issue was identified. A flare tip, which sits at the top of the flare stack, helps ensure the safe combustion of the gas.

The technical problems have increased the risk of flames from flares retreating back into the system’s pipes and causing an explosion. To stop this from happening, LNG Canada has substantially increased the gas flows to all of the facility’s flares.

“A replacement flare tip is currently being installed,” a spokesperson for the consortium wrote in an emailed statement. “While the replacement is expected to improve flare tip integrity, a longer-term redesigned tip is being developed.”

LNG Canada wants the B.C. government to let it increase flaring tenfold

Earlier this year, LNG Canada revealed it was planning to ask the B.C. regulator to increase its flaring limit tenfold for the next three years. The company’s deputy chief operating officer, Teresa Waddington, disclosed the plans during a Kitimat council meeting in March and at a recent presentation to Kitimat residents.

If approved, the new limit would allow the company to continually flare up to 300 tonnes of gas per day, an increase from its current limit of 28 tonnes per day. The company said the new, more permissive flaring limit would help accommodate operational problems which have led to higher-than-anticipated flaring volumes.

LNG Canada told The Narwhal and Point Source the proposed amendment is “not expected to materially increase emissions in the local air shed.”

“The original … authorization was based on long-term, stable operating conditions and did not reflect the higher flaring volumes typically seen during start-up and early operations at an LNG facility,” the spokesperson wrote. “LNG Canada is requesting a temporary, three-year provision that reflects overall flaring during the early operations period.”

However, flare tips are large and complex pieces of equipment and can take more than a year to procure, according to Waddington. As a result, she said LNG Canada wants to keep purging extra gas to prevent the flames from spreading downward into the pipes, likely until 2028.

“LNG Canada has said that it’s going to take three years to replace the flare [tip], but I can tell you that it doesn’t take three years to replace a flare [tip] like this,” Doty said. “The plant should be shut down. It should be properly repaired and engineered and then started back up again.”

Tracey Saxby, a marine scientist and executive director of non-profit environmental organization My Sea to Sky, worries LNG Canada is setting a precedent that other liquefaction and export facilities will follow.

“Woodfibre LNG in Squamish has estimated that flaring during startup will last for one month, with intermittent flare events of three to four days,” she said in an interview. “After that, during regular operations, they are saying they will only flare three per cent of the time, which is 11 days a year. But after what we have seen at LNG Canada and other facilities worldwide, this seems unrealistic.”

She said the excessive flaring at LNG Canada held against its previously stated commitments demonstrates there is “nothing anyone can do if the operator of one of these facilities breaks its promises about pollution.”

The regulator said it is “actively overseeing LNG Canada’s progress on short-term and long-term corrective actions and measures to reduce flaring from all facility flare systems.” 

“[BC Energy Regulator] technical experts review flaring and air contaminant discharge information submitted by LNG Canada, conduct inspections and take compliance actions where required,” the spokesperson noted, adding an “investigation into potential non-compliances is ongoing.”

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

Summary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Community in the face of climate crisis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are some things you need to know.

Wildfire smoke may increase health risks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Leslie, 

Almost all of the money I save goes toward travel — meeting friends abroad, visiting relatives or checking national and international parks off my bucket list. I try to be as sustainable in my personal life as possible, but I love traveling, despite knowing that travel is where some of our greatest carbon emissions come from. Every time I fly now, I feel this guilt and fear, and it’s sometimes hard to balance it with my excitement. How would you recommend proceeding when some of the decisions we make in our personal lives are at odds with our beliefs and goals?

— Wondering Wanderer

Dear Wondering Wanderer,

The tension you’re describing — the pull between loving this world and worrying about harming it — is a sign of a very intact compassion compass. Sometimes, that compassionate awareness stretches us beyond what’s comfortable or easy to resolve.

Don’t dismiss your discomfort, because it’s inviting you to stay awake to your impacts on the planet — but don’t let it shut down your capacity for joy. If guilt grows so heavy that it diminishes your ability to connect and feel alive, it’s lost any usefulness it once offered. The work now is to metabolize your guilt and fear into something that guides you rather than pulls you apart.

You might ask yourself this question: Given what I know, what kind of traveler do I want to be?

That opens up more nuanced choices than simply “Go or don’t go?” Maybe you’ll travel less often but stay longer, explore more locally using lower-carbon methods of transport or prioritize trips that deepen relationships.

You might also focus on destinations where you can make a positive impact as a tourist. In countries like Costa Rica, Rwanda, Tanzania and Bhutan, responsible tourism helps keep conservation efforts alive by funding wildlife protection, supporting local communities and sustaining fragile ecosystems. 

There’s a larger truth in this as well. You’re just one person — and your choices matter, but they were never meant to bear the full weight of a systemic crisis. You didn’t build the fossil fuel-dependent systems that make flying one of the only practical ways to stay connected across long distances or encounter the wider world. Guilt can keep us preoccupied with ourselves rather than on the larger structures driving the harm.

Continue to balance your personal choices with collective ones. To start, you might want to discuss your dilemma with friends and family — whether they’re your travel companions, or people in your life who may have already made different calculations about travel. (In last month’s column, I shared similar advice with a question asker who could well be on the other side of that conversation.) Having a shared understanding with loved ones might help you process your inner tension, while also letting your care for the planet ripple out in community. 

Take some time to reflect, and then settle into commitments that feel right for you. Return to your decision from time to time and make changes as needed. When you feel a pang of guilt, let it keep you honest but not overwhelmed.

Remember: The places you visit, the people you love across long distances and the wonder you feel in national parks aren’t separate from your love for the Earth. They’re expressions of it. Add in a dose of reflection, gratitude and perhaps even awe, and your journeys will strengthen the passion and resilience that allow you to stay engaged in your work. In this way, the same travel that stirs your guilt can also help protect what you love. It’s not a clean or simple solution, but it’s real.

The aim is to stay present for the whole of it — to allow your love for our planet to be large enough to hold grief, responsibility and joy at the same time. Let yourself embrace and enjoy the world wholeheartedly, even as you engage in protecting it.

Holding this with you,

Leslie

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.

For 15 years and counting, my commute from Mississauga to Toronto has been mired by everything imaginable — construction, cancelled buses, traffic jams, frozen tracks and train delays with no explanation at all. It’s likely about to get worse, or at least more crowded. 

There are more than 60,000 public servants working in the Ontario government. Starting next week, they’ll head back to the office five days a week, even as provincial politicians take an extended break from the legislature until March. 

The province issued that directive last August, changing the pandemic-era policy that first ordered everyone to work from home, then continued to allow for flexible work schedules. The directive was a far cry from Premier Ford’s thinking only five years ago, when he said working from home was “the way of the future.” 

On social media, people who said they were public servants were upset at the change. 

“Hope every single driver knows that I am clogging up traffic unnecessarily because of Ford,” said one person on Reddit. 

“I am reminded I am now paid not to be at my most productive. But instead, it is now also my job to use more gas, contribute to ridiculously congested traffic and emit more pollution,” said another on the same platform. 

The greatest concentration of provincial government offices is in Toronto, including the legislature. But not all government workers live in the city, so bringing them all back five days a week is going to strain southern Ontario’s already stressed and overpacked roads and transit system — and its air.

Transportation is already the single greatest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in Ontario, a province where the quality and quantity of transit leaves much to be desired. As provincial workers join the employees of big banks and other companies that have ordered everyone back downtown, there will inevitably be more people in cars, increasing traffic pollution. 

It already happened in Ottawa when federal workers returned to the office for just three days a week in 2024. A Carleton University study, conducted on 1,500 federal bureaucrats, found remote workers produced a quarter less emissions than those who went into the office. The researchers found the difference was even more drastic in Quebec, where remote workers with the federal government produced 64 per cent less emissions. 

The report’s conclusion was that working from home — even just part of the time — does cut emissions, as well as easing congestion. 

This would all look a lot different if our transportation infrastructure could handle tens of thousands more people. But it can’t, and little has changed in that regard over the Ford government’s seven and a half years in power, for either drivers or transit users. 

The long-promised Highway 413, which would cut through the Greenbelt and connect the suburbs north and west of Toronto, and the Bradford Bypass farther north, have yet to be built, even though the government has passed legislation after legislation to enable construction. 

And even if they were built, they almost certainly wouldn’t ease traffic congestion — even the province’s own modelling says so. 

More lanes simply means more cars on the road — a concept known as induced demand that is best illustrated by the fact that when the Ford government lifted provincial tolls off sections of the usually quiet Highway 407 last June, those stretches soon became busy. Meanwhile, there’s still no shortage of traffic on the 401.

But lifting those tolls was moving in the opposite direction of a proven solution for crowded streets: charging drivers through tolls and congestion pricing has worked in New York, reducing traffic congestion by 11 per cent since 2024. Instead, Ontario has killed several tolls and outlawed congestion pricing in its most recent budget. 

Transit-wise, if you’ve taken a GO train or TTC streetcar at rush hour you know there’s often no room for even one more person to make their way back to the office in January. 

The government says it’s investing in “the largest transit expansion in North America” and the “largest subway expansion in Canadian history.” Cool, but how long is it going to take? 

Toronto and its neighbouring communities remain trapped in decades-long construction mazes for light-rail transit and subways whose end dates are aspirational at best, as is their effectiveness. The city’s newest line since 2002 is Finch West, a $3.7-billion, 10.3 kilometre light-rail transitway that runners can outpace, as several people have demonstrated. 

If nothing else, maybe Ontario’s lagging transit upgrades and lack of real solutions for congestion will make walking to work the commute of choice — even if it means marathon distances. Otherwise, and more likely, we’ll continue down this road, which may involve paying another $120 billion in health costs associated with air pollution across the country, particularly in the most densely populated regions like the Greater Toronto Area. And more air pollution means more global warming and more extreme weather events like flooding and wildfires. 

But that shouldn’t be the cost of going to work — nor should the void of human interaction from working at home be a better solution.

Here’s to hoping the ever-elusive Goldilocks option of better transit and less traffic is on the table one day, for public servants and the rest of us.

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.

Growing up in Alberta, Julia Sawatzky heard talk of the oilsands her entire life. But she hadn’t actually traveled much farther north than Edmonton before she went to Fort McMurray to complete a month-long residency as part of her physician training in March.

The 30-year-old, who is specializing in emergency medicine, wants to address the health impacts of environmental issues and climate change. She saw the heart of oilsands country as the perfect place to see how those forces are converging close to home. 

“I was starting to have this reckoning as I learned more about the impacts of climate change in Alberta and in Canada,” she said. “I was interested to figure out ways that, as a doctor, I could help contribute to solutions to serving communities that are impacted.”

When she got there, Sawatzky was surprised to learn the only emergency room serving nearly 70,000 people had no resident emergency doctors. Patients were treated by doctors living in places like Edmonton, Vancouver Island and as far as Ontario, who flew in for lucrative work, Sawatzky said, then headed home again. 

During her time in Fort McMurray’s emergency room, Sawatzky was also surprised by the number of cases of asthma she was seeing in young, otherwise healthy patients. She suspected a relationship with the oilsands and other industry in the region. However, research doesn’t exist to definitively prove a connection.

She looked into health data collected by the province. The most current community health profile for the municipality of Wood Buffalo, where the Athabasca oilsands are located, shows emergency room visits for asthma are nearly double the rest of the province. Emergency room visits for chronic bronchitis and emphysema are four times higher in Wood Buffalo than the rest of Alberta. In Fort McMurray, emergency room visits for asthma are 40 per cent higher than the rest of the province and nearly twice the provincial average for chronic bronchitis and emphysema.

Sawatzky is concerned that fossil fuel extraction is playing a role in an increased risk of respiratory diseases. Asthma has long been linked to air pollution and a peer-reviewed Canadian study, published in early 2025, documented the increased risk of respiratory illnesses among Albertans living close to oil and gas activity. 

“Oil and gas activities in Alberta are associated with negative impacts on human health,” the researchers wrote, adding, on average, their results indicated a nine to 21 per cent increase in the odds of cardiovascular and respiratory illness for people in closer proximity. 

The study didn’t focus on the oilsands, but for Sawatzky, the area’s increased emergency room visits for asthma speak for themselves.

As she weighed the risks — and the unknowns — Sawatzky began to form a theory of why many of her colleagues chose not to put down roots in the region, and to reconsider living there herself.

Yet the idea of being a non-resident doctor makes her uncomfortable. Living where they work “can allow doctors to have a deeper understanding of the local health context: health determinants, health-care needs and broader community resources,” she said. “The ability of doctors to move around and the fact that after I graduate residency, I’ll probably have a lot of choice, really underscores my privilege,” Sawatzky said. But she still wonders whether the four-and-a-half-hour drive from Edmonton might be a better choice for her if she decides to work in Fort McMurray after completing her training. 

Sawatzky is not alone. In environmental hotspots across the country and around the world — where health outcomes can be affected by pollution or extreme weather — some highly sought-after and mobile doctors are quietly leaving to safeguard their quality of life. Across the country, people struggle to access family doctors and, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, only seven per cent of Canadian doctors work in rural areas, such as the oilsands region. The problem is driven by a multitude of complex factors, including doctors’ concerns about environmental risks, according to experts interviewed by The Narwhal.

Uche Ralph-Opara, the chief health officer at global health non-profit Project HOPE, co-authored a recent report examining how extreme weather, such as floods and wildfires, has disrupted care delivery. A physician herself, she is starting to see health workers weigh climate risk alongside compensation and infrastructure when deciding where to live and practise. “Across the different regions where we work, you know, we’re finding some doctors avoiding placements,” she said.

The connection between access to care and environmental factors is an emerging area of research. A 2021 study published in The Lancet surveying doctors in Australia’s Northern Territory, a region facing extreme heat, storms and water insecurity, found 34 per cent of respondents said climate change is either already causing, or likely to cause, them to consider leaving the area.

But it’s a subject that’s difficult to quantify in Canada, both because of a lack of data and because many of those closest to the issue are reluctant to speak out. The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment said some doctors are worried about professional repercussions after witnessing the treatment of medical whistleblowers, while others worry about jeopardizing future care for the patients they left behind by drawing attention to the environmental risks of serving these high-need communities.

The Narwhal reached out to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, which represents companies that develop and produce oil and natural gas in Canada, to ask about concerns that its members’ operations pose health risks to nearby communities and may be contributing to the ability to recruit doctors. The association did not respond.

The Narwhal also asked Alberta’s Ministry of Health and Alberta Health Services to verify Sawatzky’s observations about respiratory illnesses and fly-in doctors in Fort McMurray multiple times over nearly six months and never received a response.

Doctors’ association says health risks of LNG are contributing to shortage

The issue is not isolated to the Alberta oilsands. In the past few years, at least seven doctors have left Dawson Creek, B.C., over concerns about the health impacts of the liquefied natural gas industry, according to the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

Their departure left the town without half of the doctors required to fully staff the hospital’s emergency department, the doctors’ association said in August 2024. Access to primary care in Dawson Creek lags behind the provincial average, with 61.5 per cent of residents attached to a family doctor or nurse practitioner, compared to 76 per cent elsewhere in B.C.

Stephen Ashwell left in 2014. The physician’s reasons were two-fold: one, his aging parents needed more help and two, the town he once loved had been transformed by the rise of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry. 

The region is home to one of the country’s most substantial gas deposits. The industry has been a huge economic driver in the area, but it’s come at a cost, Ashwell said. “It was just kind of progressive degradation of the environment and the town the whole time I was there. It became a less attractive place to live.”

Ashwell came to work in the town in 1987, drawn in by the rural lifestyle. For 25 years he worked as a general practitioner, doing everything from obstetrics to emergency medicine. By the end of his tenure he was focused on oncology and palliative care. 

During his tenure there, a lack of data meant he couldn’t say whether the cancer cases he saw were statistically unusual. But Ashwell said he wouldn’t be surprised to see cancer rates rise over time. “These things often take many years to unpick and to reveal themselves,” he said. “We know there are carcinogenic hydrocarbons being released. Eventually, that’s going to bite you.”

His biggest concern for his patients was prenatal exposure to low doses of toxins from the oil and gas industry. In the years since he left, his concerns have been bolstered by research.

In a 2018 pilot study led by the school of public health at the Université de Montréal, elevated levels of benzene metabolites were found in the urine of 29 pregnant women in British Columbia’s Peace River region. While noting the small sample size and the need for more thorough monitoring, the researchers reported a byproduct of benzene was 3.5 times higher in women in the area than the national average. That figure was six times higher in Indigenous women. 

A 2022 study out of the University of Alberta showed that communities living near fracking operations have experienced higher rates of adverse birth outcomes. And in 2024, a team of doctors and researchers in B.C., Ontario, Quebec and the U.S. reviewed more than 50 studies — including two from Canada — on fracking and health, which also pointed to an increase in adverse birth outcomes, as well as respiratory diseases. 

Ashwell relocated to Victoria. “I feel it’s safer from an environmental standpoint. I feel that I’m less likely to be exposed to environmental toxins here than in Dawson Creek,” he said.

Environmental health concerns aren’t the only reason Dawson Creek has a hard time keeping doctors, physician Ulrike Meyer said. She moved to the Peace Region in the 1980s and has seen other doctors come and go for decades. “It’s not an easy sell to attract somebody in the northeast or in rural practice, any rural community will tell you that,” she said.

Meyer’s colleagues are often foreign-trained doctors who must spend a certain number of years in underserved areas to get licensed in Canada. But many don’t stay, telling her larger centres offer better schools and job opportunities for their families. Often, they leave to join family living in other parts of the country.

The region’s natural beauty is one reason Meyer chose Dawson Creek as her home. She remembers buying a pair of sunglasses soon after arriving — having grown up in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany, where thick industrial smog obscured the sunshine, pristine northeastern British Columbia felt dazzling in contrast. Over the past 33 years, she has worked as a rural family doctor while raising three children with her late husband, a farmer. 

“I love this area, it’s home for me,” Meyer said.

Her appointments often involve taking environmental histories of her patients, asking if they work for the LNG industry or how close they live to compressor stations, which pressurize gas to move it along pipelines, or flare stacks, used to burn off excess flammable gas. Some of their homes are surrounded by industrial infrastructure. 

Stories etched in her memory include the woman from a decade ago who had tingling in her lower legs and lived next to a compressor station and a body of wastewater she described as being on fire 24/7. A young industry firefighter with unexplainable neurological symptoms told her they mostly resolved when he left town. Another patient who worked his whole career in oil and gas, dealing with toxic substances, told her he believed work was the reason he was dying of cancer. 

Her own stories add to those shared by colleagues, including the seven doctors who left in recent years, all of whom she knew. Meyer suspects some of the health issues she has seen in her practice have resulted from exposure to contaminants, but an absence of rigorous population-level studies makes this hard to prove. 

Dawson Creek belongs to the Northern Health authority, which released a regional cancer report earlier this year. It found that while residents generally experienced stable or slightly increased rates of new cancers between 2011 and 2021, rates of lung cancer exceeded the province-wide rate. Northern Health also consistently had a higher rate of cancer-related deaths, specifically for kidney, colon, lung, prostate, head and neck and invasive bladder cancer.

While studies showing a direct link between fracking and specific health outcomes are lacking in Canada, studies from other countries have shown living near LNG and hydraulic fracturing operations is associated with increased risks of respiratory, skin, reproductive and possibly carcinogenic health effects. 

The Narwhal reached out to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers to ask about B.C. Peace River region doctors’ worries that their patients’ illnesses were linked to the liquefied natural gas industry. The association did not respond. 

“The very industry that’s leading to some of these health harms is also exacerbating a crisis in access to health care,” Melissa Lem said in an interview. A family physician and past president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, Lem interviewed three of the doctors who left Dawson Creek. They cited diagnoses of rare tumours and deadly cancers in their own patients, colleagues, friends and family members, as well as the quality of their children’s education, as their primary reasons for leaving, she said.

Despite “their concerns about the health of their families,” none were willing to speak publicly, Lem said. Some told her they still work remotely with the community and don’t want to jeopardize those relationships.

Others told Lem they got pushback for voicing their concerns. It’s a worry John O’Connor can relate to. 

In the early 2000s, the former northern Alberta physician began to call attention to what he considered above-average cancer rates and other health concerns in Fort McMurray and Fort Chipewyan, Alta., an oilsands region home to Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, Mikisew Cree First Nation and Fort Chipewyan Métis. O’Connor believed high rates of respiratory illness, inflammatory bowel disease and autoimmune diseases across the region could be attributed to industrial pollution.

His advocacy was met with intense criticism, including complaints to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, which investigated O’Connor for raising undue alarm. While he was eventually cleared of the allegations, the backlash was so intense that Lem said it sent a clear message to other doctors — speaking out about environmental health risks can come at a personal and professional cost.

“Nothing will change unless more physicians speak up about what they’re seeing,” said Lem. 

Despite her deep relationship with the community, Meyer is contemplating leaving. “It’s hard because you know logically you should not live here, probably, or you might take a toll for your health,” she said. If she leaves, it will make the town’s care gap even more acute. 

In Ontario’s Chemical Valley, doctor shortages and concerning health impacts have both lasted for years

In southwestern Ontario, the area of industrial activity spreading out from Sarnia is known as Chemical Valley, and has some of the worst air quality in the country. Concerted efforts over the past decade have improved the situation somewhat, but studies from the Ontario government and others have found increased risks of cancer, particularly leukemia, due to air pollutants such as benzene. A 2021 study by researchers at Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario also found children in the Lambton region, which includes Sarnia, were more likely to develop asthma than children in the nearby Ontario regions of London-Middlesex or Windsor. 

Last year, Aamjiwnaang First Nation, which is located near petroleum and petrochemical plants in the Sarnia region, declared a state of emergency after a month of elevated benzene emissions caused headaches and nausea in the community. In February this year, the First Nation and the federal government signed on to a pilot project to address the impacts of industry — a move that came after the nation sounded the alarm for decades.

In July this year, Western University medical student Allison Pert completed a four-week rural medicine rotation focused on Indigenous health in the region. Two weeks were spent in the Sarnia area, including seeing patients at Aamjiwnaang First Nation alongside health practitioners. 

“People seem well aware of the potential health risks associated with living in such close proximity to, you know, this expansive chemical industrial area,” she said. Patients told her anecdotes about adverse health effects — fertility and respiratory issues — that they attributed to pollution. 

Like other parts of Ontario, the region struggles to fill family practice vacancies. INSPIRE-PHC, a network of primary care researchers and stakeholders in Ontario, found that more than 10,000 patients in Sarnia had no regular primary care provider in the city in 2022, up from 8,200 in 2020 and more than in similar-sized cities such as Belleville and Welland. Since December 2024, Sarnia’s Bluewater Health hospital has shut down urgent and emergency general surgery services three times due to a surgeon shortage.

The intensity of industry in the region dates back over a century, and concerns about health care access aren’t new either. In 2011, Tor Oiamo, an associate professor in the department of geography and environmental studies at Toronto Metropolitan University, led a study that showed people living in areas with high air pollution in Sarnia had less access to primary care than other residents.

“The results were pretty striking,” he said, noting that in general, economic marginalization is associated with lower health care access and utilization, and lower income neighbourhoods commonly experience higher levels of air pollution.

This confluence of factors can have serious outcomes. Air pollution is associated with an earlier chance of dying as well as stroke, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer and pneumonia. A well-trained doctor can make this linkage and plan interventions, Oiamo said — that is, if a doctor is available. 

Pert expects to graduate in 2029 and is already weighing the risks of where to practise. 

“I’m someone who loves rural practice, and I’m passionate about Indigenous health, and I went into medicine really to remediate these exact needs that we’re talking about, but it is a dilemma,” she said. “If I choose to live in these communities, what am I sacrificing?” 

Worries about the health risks of climate change could add to Canada’s doctor shortage pressures

Along with the risks of pollution, major weather events linked to climate change are impacting the global and Canadian health-care workforce. When a 2017 fire in 100 Mile House, B.C., destroyed the home of a couple of near-retirement doctors, they chose not to rebuild. The rural community temporarily lost oncology, obstetrics and anesthesia services.

Evidence from around the world shows extreme heat, wildfires and floods can drive doctors away, Ralph-Opara of Project HOPE said. A 2020 World Health Organization report on workforce planning advises governments to consider and address the effects of climate change on staffing, warning that populations with climate-related health issues are increasingly vulnerable to health-care shortages . 

“When we talk about climate change, our focus is often around infrastructure and health impact, but we’re not talking enough about the human toll it’s taken on the people actually delivering care,” Ralph-Opara said, adding that climate stressors are exacerbating burnout, anxiety and mental health impacts for health providers. 

While Canadian data exists on physician supply and some environmental health risks, no government agency appears to be formally considering connections. Health Canada said it has not investigated potential links, though it does have programs to support expanding access to family health services in rural and remote areas. 

The Narwhal sent questions to the health ministries in Canada’s four largest provinces, British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec. Alberta and Ontario did not respond. Neither British Columbia nor Quebec had specific plans to make sure environmentally risky areas are adequately staffed. 

The British Columbia Ministry of Health sent an email statement saying it does not formally track if environmental factors are impacting recruitment, but does “recognize that climate change is reshaping health risks in B.C.” The department said it is training health workers on addressing how climate change might be affecting their mental health and improving occupational health and safety for workers affected by climate risks.

In Quebec, the Ministry of Health and Social Services said it hopes to have a plan to adapt its public health response to the changing climate by 2027. The plan will be informed by regional health assessments and the knowledge that climate change has a “disproportionate impact on disadvantaged subgroups of the population or those with fewer resources to adapt,” a media spokesperson said.

In Alberta, Fort McMurray still struggles to recruit, which the province is trying to address with financial incentives for doctors living in rural, remote and northern communities. But northern incentive programs in that province and others that have them, like Ontario, are designed to compensate health-care workers for moving to remote locations, not taking on environmental or climate risk. 

Meanwhile, Pert, Sawatzky and a new generation of doctors are weighing more than pay cheques. They are taking into account their own health risks, too. And they know this comes at a cost to the community.

“A lot of community members and patients don’t have the option to decide not to live near places where the environment is being destroyed,” Sawatzky said. 

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.

There’s something in the air in Aamjiwnaang First Nation. The community is located next to an industrial area of Sarnia, Ont., known to many as Chemical Valley. There are dozens of factories and refineries here, accounting for 40 per cent of Canada’s chemical industry — and an enormous amount of air pollution.

That pollution comes in many forms, but the levels of one chemical in particular caused Aamjiwnaang to declare a state of emergency last spring. Benzene is a byproduct of petroleum refining, used to make Styrofoam and other plastic materials. It’s also a volatile organic compound — a category of chemicals that evaporate easily into the air. Inhaling very high amounts can make you very sick, very quickly. And constantly breathing benzene-laden air, even in very small amounts, can do a lot of damage, too — notably by increasing your risk of leukemia and other cancers. 

Ontario’s Environment Ministry set emissions benchmarks much higher than those that triggered the state of emergency, which remains active to this day. A recent investigation by The Narwhal showed the province knew about the health risks this posed to the Aamjiwnaang community, and failed for years to take action that would meaningfully control benzene exposure. 

It wasn’t until after the state of emergency was declared that the ministry introduced stricter regulations aimed at controlling emissions from INEOS Styrolution, the chemical plant located across the street from Aamjiwnaang’s band office, and the primary source of benzene emissions in the area. 

Ontario’s Environment Ministry didn’t answer detailed questions related to these findings. INEOS Styrolution said it “consistently operated within the strict limits” set by the ministry. The company halted operations last spring and went on to decommission the facility, but said the closure was not related to the benzene spikes.

How much benzene in the air is too much? And what does that actually look like? Here’s a graphic, numerical look at the story of benzene pollution in Aamjiwnaang. Each represents concentrations of the chemical, averaged over different periods of time, and are expressed in micrograms per cubic metre of air. 

This series of graphics demonstrates the large discrepancy between the levels known to cause measurable health impacts, the levels that residents say caused serious symptoms of illness and the levels the Ontario government used to assess whether the company was doing enough to control its emissions.

Benzene levels, averaged over a single hour

191 micrograms per cubic metre, left: This was the maximum hourly reading recorded at an air monitor in Aamjiwnaang on April 25, 2024, the day the First Nation triggered a state of emergency. The community has recorded even higher hourly concentrations; in 2023, the maximum hourly level recorded was 372 micrograms per cubic metre. The First Nation now uses a benchmark of 27 micrograms per cubic metre to trigger the closure of some facilities.

580 micrograms per cubic metre, right: Ontario also gave this number to INEOS in 2019 as a benchmark to assess the risk of short-term health impacts. It’s based on standards from Texas that have been criticized as too lenient and allowing unacceptable increases in the risk of cancer. It is also several times higher than the levels in Aamjiwnaang when several people went to the hospital with headaches and nausea.

Benzene levels, averaged over a 24-hour period

2.3 micrograms per cubic metre, left: This is the level the Ontario government says could indicate a higher cancer risk with long-term exposure.

50 micrograms per cubic metre, centre: This was the average concentration level recorded by an air monitor in Aamjiwnaang on April 16, 2024. Around the same time, people in the community reported headaches and nausea, strong enough to send some to the hospital.

320 micrograms per cubic metre, right: This is the level the Ontario government said, in 2019, it would use to evaluate the risk of acute exposure from emissions from INEOS Styrolution, located across the street from Aamjiwnaang’s band office, playground and sports fields.

Benzene levels, averaged over a full year

0.45 micrograms per cubic metre, left: This is Ontario’s legal air quality limit for benzene. It is based on health studies that say this concentration, over a lifetime, presents a non-negligible increase in the risk of cancer. This isn’t enforced across the board; facilities that can’t meet it, including INEOS in Sarnia, are required to report emissions to the government and bring exposure down to a level that is “as low as reasonably achievable.”

4.5 micrograms per cubic metre, right: In 2019, the Ontario government told INEOS it should aim to gradually reduce its benzene emissions to this level to reduce the cancer risk to people nearby. It’s also the level established as a regulatory limit in June 2024. Annual recorded concentrations of benzene in Aamjiwnaang, measured at the band office monitoring station, were about 6.5 micrograms per cubic metre in 2019 and in 2023. That’s about ten times as much as industrial areas in Michigan and California, included for comparison in a 2024 health report.

— With files from Emma McIntosh

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.

Last spring, Aamjiwnaang First Nation hit a breaking point.

For weeks, enormous amounts of benzene had been leaking from a plastics plant across the road from the southwestern Ontario community’s band office. Long-term exposure to low levels of benzene causes cancers like leukemia. If you breathe in a lot of it at once, the carcinogen can also make you feel very sick, very quickly — and people in Aamjiwnaang were breathing in levels of benzene hundreds of times higher than what health-based guidelines recommend. 

Sore throats, nausea, dizziness and headaches struck members of the Anishinaabe community, located alongside a cluster of petroleum and petrochemical plants in an area of Sarnia, Ont., known as Chemical Valley. A few wound up in the emergency room due to “noxious exposure,” the local hospital said at the time. The nation sent staff home from the band office and warned families to stay away from a playground. On April 25, 2024, the nation triggered a state of emergency, a watershed moment that made headlines across the country.

The Ontario government imposed new limits on the plastics plant owner, INEOS Styrolution, days later — but years after provincial officials identified the problem. Ontario’s Environment Ministry had known since at least 2019 that INEOS was emitting similar amounts of benzene regularly and failed to stop it, documents obtained by The Narwhal through freedom of information show. The company said it has always remained within its legal limits for emissions. The documents show the province knew the threshold for benzene posed a significant health risk to Aamjiwnaang First Nation long before imposing the new limits.

The Ontario government’s delayed action is one example of a pattern laid out in more than 250 pages of records obtained by The Narwhal, all dated from fall 2023 but detailing events that happened years earlier. In 2022 and 2023 alone, the Environment Ministry documented at least six incidents where the company leaked enough benzene to risk acute health problems for people nearby, according to the documents. That included two incidents where levels of the chemical were higher than what triggered the 2024 state of emergency — when the province took stricter steps to curb emissions.

Beyond that, the documents show government officials realized INEOS and other facilities were emitting more benzene than the Environment Ministry was originally aware of, in large part due to leaks from storage tanks. Despite this, officials still declined to take steps to limit them. Altogether, it paints a hazy picture of how industry is regulated in Chemical Valley, and just how bad the air really is.

It’s an issue Aamjiwnaang First Nation has been raising red flags about for years — and increasingly taking into its own hands, establishing air pollution standards, increasing its oversight of the maze of pipelines that cross the reserve and working with the federal government on a pilot project addressing environmental racism. 

“We cannot wait for governments to be the one that acts for us,” Aamjiwnaang Chief Janelle Nahmabin said in an interview. “We need to be there as well.”

On June 13, Aamjiwnaang’s band council again recommended certain areas of the community be evacuated due to high benzene levels from the INEOS plant — though the levels were still legal under provincial guidelines. In a letter to several federal and provincial ministers and mayors, the band council wrote the community’s annual powwow was scheduled for the June 21 weekend, coinciding with National Indigenous Peoples Day. The event already saw lower than usual attendance last year “due to fear in the community over benzene exposure and potential health impacts.”

Ontario’s Environment Ministry did not answer detailed questions from The Narwhal about the documents and how it regulates air pollution in Chemical Valley. The Narwhal also sent detailed questions to INEOS Styrolution. The company did not answer most of them, but sent a statement saying it prioritizes safety and has “consistently operated within the strict limits” set by the Environment Ministry.

“INEOS Styrolution remains steadfast in its commitment to protecting the health and safety of our employees and the community, and we have consistently adhered to [the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks’] emissions requirements,” spokesperson April Ludwikowski wrote.

Benzene emissions in Chemical Valley higher than reported estimates 

Aamjiwnaang is located on the St. Clair River, just south of Lake Huron. The nation’s name means “at the spawning stream” in Anishinaabemowin. Today, about 900 people live on its reserve, where cul-de-sacs are lined with brick houses and a creek trickles past the nation’s community centre. 

Every year, as spring turns to summer, more than 10,000 sturgeon — a species that’s endangered on the Great Lakes — return to the river to spawn, many of them meeting below the Bluewater Bridge, which connects Sarnia to Michigan. When The Narwhal visited in February, a kingfisher dove to scoop fish from the icy waters while an eagle soared overhead. 

Still, Chemical Valley is nearly always visible over the tops of trees and fences, its stacks and tanks a reminder of the heavy industry a stone’s throw away. The Sarnia area’s history with petroleum and petrochemicals stretches back to the mid-1800s, when the first oil well in North America was drilled nearby, in a village now named Oil Springs. Refineries soon followed. During the Second World War, Sarnia produced synthetic rubber for the Allied forces. Even more companies followed after the war ended, and Chemical Valley now hosts about 60 refineries and chemical plants. 

As workers flooded the area in the 1940s, a village called Blue Water sprang up outside the gate of the first plant in Chemical Valley. Governments ended up relocating residents away from it two decades later, concerned about how living there could impact their health. Aamjiwnaang’s baseball diamond is located about 800 metres from the plaque that now commemorates the old village site. The nation is still surrounded by industry.

INEOS is among the closest plants to the reserve, directly across the road from Aamjiwnaang’s band office and that same baseball diamond. The plant has been shut down since regulators stepped in last spring, and INEOS has announced plans to decommission it by the end of 2025. But for years it was a “heavy benzene emitter,” according to internal Environment Ministry documents — releasing “significantly more” than other facilities in Chemical Valley.

Benzene is a byproduct of petroleum refining that’s also found in crude oil and fuel. It’s one of the foundational ingredients in plastic that, along with other chemicals, can be used to make anything from food containers to car parts. At its Sarnia facility, INEOS Styrolution used benzene to make plastic and rubber. It stored the benzene — which regularly came from refineries in the area — in massive tanks that were known to leak, according to the documents. 

Aamjiwnaang residents are exposed to way more of the chemical than people living in big cities and other industrial areas: 30 times more benzene than people living in Toronto and Ottawa, according to the First Nation, and 10 times more than a city in California that has a similar mix of plants. 

“Ontario’s air pollution requirements to limit industrial pollution are lagging requirements in the U.S.,” said a briefing prepared for then-environment minister Andrea Khanjin in late 2023, noting the elevated levels of benzene and other pollutants near Aamjiwnaang.

“In many cases, Ontario’s facilities emit far more than comparable U.S. facilities.” 

Aside from the long-term cancer risk that comes from breathing in small amounts of benzene, exposure to a lot of it at once can cause headaches, tremors and dizziness. 

One set of provincial guidelines that consider cumulative sources of air pollutants, but aren’t legally binding, recommends benzene levels stay below a daily average of 2.3 micrograms per cubic metre. On April 16, 2024, during the event that sickened people in Aamjiwnaang, the daily average was 50 micrograms per cubic metre. On April 25, the hourly reading at a community air monitor reached 191 micrograms per cubic metre.

Ontario’s air quality regulation, which considered the long-term cancer risks posed by benzene, mandates average concentrations of the chemical be no higher than 0.45 micrograms per cubic metre annually. But the air quality regulation does not apply to some of the companies operating in Chemical Valley.

INEOS Styrolution’s Sarnia plant, along with six other facilities in the area, are exempt from provincial benzene emissions guidelines because it wouldn’t be “technically and economically feasible” to meet them, according to the Ontario government. Instead, the seven facilities follow a set of rules called “technical standards,” which are also common in other types of industrial sites, like pulp and paper mills and asphalt plants. The provincial Liberal government of the day created the standards covering petrochemical plants and petroleum refineries in Sarnia in 2016 after industry there pushed back on the province’s air quality standard for benzene, then a brand-new policy.

Technical standards don’t put a hard limit on benzene emissions. The ministry instead requires companies to use the best available equipment to lower emissions as much as possible. To get there, the standards have requirements around emissions-reduction technology and air monitoring, among other things, and the Ministry of Environment can order more measures if it believes they’re needed. 

The technical standards affecting Chemical Valley were written based on an assessment of benzene sources in Sarnia. They used air monitoring and a review of how much several facilities were emitting at the time, the ministry said in 2016. 

Some of the estimates the ministry relied on were provided by industry — and in at least one case, they were wrong, according to a briefing note prepared for Khanjin in late 2023. The memo points to one company as an example: INEOS Styrolution, which it said was emitting maximum concentrations of benzene 15 times higher than what the province was aware of. 

The documents do not detail how the error happened, which other companies may have also submitted incorrect estimates or when the Ontario government realized its gauge of benzene emissions was wrong.

The Narwhal sent questions about the problem, including direct quotes from the documents, to every company in the Sarnia area that operates under a petrochemical or petroleum industry technical standard, a list that also includes Imperial Oil, NOVA Chemicals, Shell Canada, Suncor Energy and Diamond Petrochemicals. Two responded. INEOS denied giving incorrect information to the ministry: “At no point have we underreported our emissions or misled the regulator,” Ludwikowski said. Imperial said it “complies with air emissions reporting requirements under the applicable regulations” but “wouldn’t be able to speak to documents” that it hasn’t seen.

Ontario’s Environment Ministry did not answer questions about the flawed figures.

The documents obtained by The Narwhal show the current Progressive Conservative government has been aware of how much benzene INEOS was actually emitting since at least 2019, when a new air monitor started picking up high levels at times when the wind was blowing from the direction of the plant.

Ludwikowski, the INEOS spokesperson, said the company maintains “full transparency” in its emissions reporting.

“Property line emissions monitoring at our Sarnia site is conducted by independent third parties, in accordance with [Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks] requirements, ensuring there is no internal influence over the results,” Ludwikowski said in a statement. Ludwikowski and INEOS Styrolution did not directly answer follow-up questions.

The Ford government was scheduled to review the policy in 2023 but skipped it — despite a warning in the 2023 briefing for Khanjin that said updates are “needed.” The same document also noted companies would likely push back. 

“Industry is looking for further simplifications and relaxations,” the memo said. “Will be opposed to more stringent requirements.”

The update to the technical standard was one of several air pollution-related moves the government hadn’t followed through on, the memo indicated.

Another was a planned update to a policy that, among other things, was aimed at addressing the cumulative effects of benzene emissions from multiple facilities both in the Sarnia area and Hamilton. The previous Liberal government introduced the policy in its last few months of power in spring 2018 and committed to reviewing it by 2020, but the Progressive Conservatives did not follow through. 

Ontario allowed INEOS to emit benzene levels higher than what led to Aamjiwnaang’s state of emergency 

In spring 2019, after the new air monitor near INEOS Styrolution’s Sarnia facility started to show how high its benzene emissions were, the Environment Ministry issued the first in a series of compliance orders, mandating the company take steps to gradually cut its benzene emissions. 

Compliance orders are usually legally binding, and the ministry can use them to compel companies to fix issues and prevent harm to people and the environment. In practice, however, Aamjiwnaang has said the ministry failed to engage with the nation about the orders, which were not enough to protect people from contaminants.

“Aamjiwnaang has not been involved in the decision-making” Nahmabin told The Narwhal. “And that’s what we’re looking for, because this is our territory, this is our home.”

The goal of the spring 2019 order to INEOS was to eventually get average benzene emissions below 4.5 micrograms per cubic metre annually, and 30 micrograms per cubic metre over a two-week period. The figures were higher than Ontario’s health-based standards, but would reduce the cancer risks to people nearby, according to the government records obtained by The Narwhal. 

But the order didn’t come with a strict limit and a timeline for getting there. It also appeared to clash with a letter the province sent in January of the same year, which included a looser target. They recommended benzene levels remain below an hourly average of up to 580 micrograms per cubic metre — three times more than the levels recorded in Aamjiwnaang as people went to the emergency room in 2024. Those benchmarks were based on standards from Texas, whose benzene limits are the loosest in the United States and have been criticized for putting residents at higher risk of cancer.

Aamjiwnaang Chief Nahmabin said the benchmarks were a “slap in the face.” 

“Why is that allowed when we’re right across the street?” she said. “That just seems very disheartening for the health of our community and our staff that are right there.”

Those January 2019 guidelines also included a limit of 30 micrograms per cubic metre over two weeks, in line with the province’s goal for INEOS. If the company breached it, the Environment Ministry warned it would be in touch to figure out the root cause and, “if necessary, identify corrective actions,” the letter said. The limits in the January 2019 letter were “not regulatory benchmarks,” the ministry wrote, but would instead be used to “assess acute exposures” of benzene.

Ludwikowski, the INEOS Styrolution spokesperson, said in her statement that the 580 micrograms per cubic metre was an “established” emissions limit set by the ministry, but did not answer follow up questions about it.

“To further reduce emissions, INEOS Styrolution has proactively invested $50 million in modernizing the Sarnia plant,” Ludwikowski wrote. “As a result, our emissions have remained well below the [ministry’s] established limits of 580 [micrograms per cubic metre] over an hour. … These plans and timelines were developed collaboratively with the [ministry] and received full regulatory approval.”

The Environment Ministry did not answer questions about the benchmarks outlined in the January 2019 letter and how it applied them to INEOS. 

Air monitors near INEOS continued to detect spikes of benzene for five years after the ministry sent the company contrasting targets.

INEOS complied with the asks in the ministry’s 2019 order, but “elevated benzene emissions from the site” persisted in 2020, according to one internal ministry document. The ministry issued a second order that year asking the company to install more emissions control equipment. Those measures reduced benzene emissions in some areas around the plant, but not all, the ministry found — prompting it to send INEOS a third order in May 2023.

Benzene concentrations at one air monitor in particular “have increased every year following the issuance of the orders, indicating that benzene emissions at this location have not been addressed and may instead be worsening,” the 2023 order said.

The order also outlined six periods in 2022 and 2023 where air monitors detected “significantly elevated” concentrations of benzene from INEOS. In February 2022, for example, the ministry noted a two-week average of 122 micrograms per cubic metre, four times higher than the ministry’s goal for the facility. That August, the ministry detected an hourly average of 290 micrograms per cubic metre, a concentration of 100 cubic metres more than the peak levels of benzene that sickened people in Aamjiwnaang in spring 2024. An air monitor recorded even higher readings for three consecutive hours in January 2023, with levels in the 300s, the order said.

INEOS told the ministry the benzene emissions were caused by spills, planned maintenance and the “prolonged storage” of waste containing the chemical in one particular area, the document said. 

None technically violated the laws governing the company, even though benzene concentrations in Aamjiwnaang had been so high they would bring a “non-negligible risk of cancer for those who may be exposed to such concentrations over the long term,” the order, signed by a ministry officer, said. 

“I believe that the [INEOS] site continues to be the primary source of the elevated benzene concentrations measured within the [Aamjiwnaang] community and that additional measures are required.”

Those measures included more technological upgrades and requirements to notify the ministry about various aspects of the operation of INEOS Styrolution’s plant. Like the previous orders, they did not include firm emissions targets for the company. 

INEOS pushed back, according to a document prepared by ministry officials that outlined the context for air quality measures in Sarnia: “INEOS [is] concerned that orders require them to do too much, too soon. They believed that since they were complying with the [standard], they shouldn’t have to do more.”

Ludwikowski didn’t directly answer questions about the company’s conversations with the Ontario government. 

By the end of 2023, Aamjiwnaang had maintained the orders were “inadequate and slow,” according to the late 2023 briefing. And in the meantime, a long-anticipated health study funded by the Ontario government reiterated what people from the First Nation have been saying for a long time: air pollution from Chemical Valley was putting people’s health at risk in Aamjiwnaang. First Nations were “frustrated,” the briefing noted, because “proven technologies exist that can better manage and control” emissions of benzene and other pollutants.

“They also believe that [the ministry] provides priority access to industry and that [the ministry] continues to ignore the First Nations’ input,” the briefing said.

In one meeting between ministry staff and the nation, Aamjiwnaang representatives warned the Ontario government it would “take actions into its own hands” if the ministry didn’t act quickly to limit air pollution. 

The Environment Ministry did not answer questions about the meeting, and it’s not clear what steps it might have taken afterwards. In a notice sent to INEOS in 2024, which the province publicly posted online, the ministry said it had developed new interim guidelines in December 2023 — the month after the health study was released — about how staff should interpret the risks posed by benzene exposure.

Those internal guidelines indicated exposures of 90 micrograms per cubic metre over an hour, or 30 micrograms per cubic metre over 24 hours, would increase acute health risks. Those thresholds are dramatically lower than the 580 micrograms per hour the ministry recommended in its 2019 letter to INEOS, but still far higher than benzene standards that take long-term cancer risk into consideration.

A few months later, in April 2024, as benzene levels spiked in Aamjiwnaang and sent people to the emergency room, the ministry issued INEOS a fourth order. It required INEOS to notify the public if readings of benzene spiked, develop another plan to “address benzene from wastewater” and investigate where the carcinogen might be coming from. High levels of benzene were reported again a week later, prompting Aamjiwnaang to issue its state of emergency.

The following month, Ontario barred INEOS from storing benzene at its Sarnia site and suspended its approval to operate until the company made major repairs. The federal government stepped in at this point, issuing a temporary order to petrochemical companies in the area to cut benzene emissions. (The federal government has some jurisdiction to set nationwide air quality rules, like laws limiting emissions from new cars, but usually leaves local air quality rules to provinces and territories.)

Ontario followed suit, imposing benzene limits of its own on INEOS that came into effect that June. The limits, which remain in place, include a cap of 90 micrograms per cubic metre over an hour. It limited annual average emissions to 4.5 micrograms per cubic metre — 10 times higher than the province’s usual air quality standards. 

Ludwikowski said those limits were “stringent” and “imposed without prior notice, consultation or a sufficient time for implementation.” INEOS temporarily shut down the plant following the ministry’s 2024 order, and soon announced it would close the plant entirely due to the “economics of the facility within a wider industry context.” It said the situation was unrelated to the benzene spikes. 

The process of shuttering the facility is scheduled to be finished by the end of 2025. Aamjiwnaang’s state of emergency is still in place, and won’t be lifted as long as benzene continues to be stored at the site, Nahmabin said.

Benzene levels on Aamjiwnaang have mostly stayed lower since spring 2024, but the risk isn’t gone. As well as the most recent partial evacuation in mid-June, days before Nahmabin spoke to The Narwhal in late May, high benzene readings forced the community to close buildings and warn people away from the baseball diamond. In April, Aamjiwnaang temporarily closed access to the community’s cemetery after a benzene spill from the adjacent Suncor refinery — days after the company also spilled hundreds of litres of crude oil into the river. Suncor did not answer questions from The Narwhal about either incident.

In January, the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada told the Sarnia Observer that without INEOS accepting benzene produced as a by-product at other sites in Chemical Valley, companies had resorted to moving it out of the region by ship, rail and truck. 

Aamjiwnaang has asked the province for copies of any approvals it has granted to companies to store benzene in the area, Nahmabin said. “The problem is not going away, we just want to make sure that it’s being handled safely.”

Nahmabin is hopeful governments now understand they have to work with Aamjiwnaang to fix their oversight of Chemical Valley.

“It’s a big can of worms, and it’s peeling back decades of environmental racism,” she said. 

“We see the gaps, and this is where we feel like we can step in to effectively regulate Chemical Valley, because we’re here. This is our homeland. This is our Traditional Territory.”

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.

Aamjiwnaang First Nation and the federal government will work together on a pilot project to address environmental racism.  

The nation, located in Sarnia, Ont., has spent decades fighting to stop pollution from a cluster of petrochemical plants known as Chemical Valley that surround it. On Monday, Aamjiwnaang Chief Janelle Nahmabin and Environment and Climate Change Canada signed the terms of reference to kick off the Lighting of the 8th Fire conference, bringing together various nations, as well as industry and government, to discuss the impacts of development on communities. The terms of reference includes the creation of a new joint committee aimed at addressing contaminants in the air, water and soil.

The agreement stems from the federal government’s Bill C-226, a law aimed at addressing environmental racism — the ways Indigenous, Black and other racialized communities in Canada disproportionately bear the harm of pollution and contamination. The bill, which passed last year, requires Canada to come up with a national strategy to prevent and address environmental racism, in collaboration with the most affected communities.

“Today is a significant day that will chart a course that acknowledges the historic and ongoing injustices that people of Aamjiwnaang have endured,” Nahmabin told an audience at Aamjiwnaang’s community centre for the signing ceremony. 

“Although we are strong, resilient, beautiful people who are rich in community and ambition, we still have been impacted for decades by systematic pollution and lack of environmental protection … Aamjiwnaang will be a pilot for how this rolls out across Canada, and we are ready.”

Aamjiwnaang is an Ojibwe community tucked alongside the St. Clair River, a stone’s throw from the southern tip of Lake Huron. Studies have confirmed what many in the community have been saying for decades: air pollution from industrial plants, particularly the cancer-causing chemical benzene, are putting people’s health at risk in Aamjiwnaang and Sarnia.

The terms of reference, which were read aloud after the signing, lay the groundwork for Aamjiwnaang and Environment and Climate Change Canada to co-develop “tangible and meaningful” solutions through the joint committee. The federal government agreed to follow Aamjiwnaang’s protocols for consulting with the nation. The terms of reference also acknowledged the nation may need capacity funding to fully participate in the joint committee. 

John Moffet, an associate deputy minister at Environment and Climate Change Canada, signed the agreement on behalf of the federal government. In a speech before the signing ceremony, he thanked the nation for its leadership on environmental justice and said the government recognizes the need for trust and honesty.

“We have to be honest about how we got to where we are, honest about the actual impacts in the community,” he said. “We have to be honest with each other about what is possible for the future.” 

Aamjiwnaang has been pushing for change in Sarnia’s Chemical Valley for decades 

Sarnia has a long history with the petrochemical industry. The first oil well in North America was drilled just southeast of Sarnia in the mid-1800s, in a village now named Oil Springs. Further wells followed in the area and, in the 1890s, Imperial Oil bought one of the first refineries to open in Sarnia. More refineries also followed, and during the Second World War, synthetic rubber for the Allied forces was produced in Sarnia. 

More companies set up shop once the war ended, and today, Chemical Valley is home to about 60 refineries and chemical plants. 

Air monitoring data shows Aamjiwnaang residents are exposed to 30 times more benzene than people living in Toronto and Ottawa, the nation has said. And the pollution is worse than in other cities with heavy industries — Aamjiwnaang experiences 10 times more benzene exposure than a city in California with a similar mix of facilities.

Aamjiwnaang’s then-chief and council declared a state of emergency in April 2024, when air monitors in the community picked up massive spikes of benzene. The carcinogen appeared to be coming from the INEOS Styrolution plastics plant across the road from Aamjiwnaang’s band office, and people in the area were hit with headaches and nausea. Band members were warned to stay away from the office and outdoor recreation areas near the plant. Later in the fall, when the company removed benzene from a tank, part of the reserve was evacuated. 

Following the incident, both the Ontario government and Environment and Climate Change Canada ordered the company to cut its benzene emissions. The company temporarily shut down the plant last spring, and has since announced it will permanently shutter and decommission the site. But other industrial sites continue to emit pollutants and, in recent months, Aamjiwnaang has called on the provincial government to crack down and address the problem.

Speaking in Aamjiwnaang on Monday, Nahmabin acknowledged the efforts of people from the community who have spent years advocating for environmental justice, including some who have passed away. It will take time for the nation to undo years and years of environmental damage, Nahmabin said, but the nation knows what needs to change and is ready to lead the way. 

“What we want for our community is clean air, less pollution, pristine waters, plants we can grow and not be afraid to eat,” she said. “And the most basic ask for every living being on this planet: a healthy environment.”

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.

By January 2022, Heather Hanwell was at her wits’ end. Like many mothers she was bearing the bulk of the burden of education disruption in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a parent, she was angry and overwhelmed; as an epidemiologist she was puzzled by the province’s approach to keeping schools open, and students healthy.  

“They were making decisions that didn’t make sense,” she says of the Ontario government from her home in York Region, north of Toronto. Those decisions included ending case reporting in schools, data that could have provided valuable insight into how successful the government’s investment in health and safety measures were.  

As it cycled through school closures and reopenings, the Ministry of Education cited investments in improving air quality as making schools safer. But Hanwell wanted to see supporting data. She started asking questions about her daughter’s elementary school.  

Hanwell knew schools with mechanical systems were at an advantage compared to those with only partial ventilation systems or none. In general, mechanical ventilation systems support indoor air quality by bringing outdoor air in to dilute indoor air pollutants. 

A February 2021 air quality audit done by the Toronto Catholic District School Board on three schools illustrated how air quality in schools with mechanical ventilation had significantly lower carbon dioxide concentrations when compared to those without. Carbon dioxide, or CO2, is a proxy measure for air quality indoors because its concentration is a rough indicator of the ventilation rate per person and can be used to indicate whether a building is in compliance with suggested air quality standards. The Catholic school board report showed a Grade 7 and 8 class in one school without mechanical ventilation spent nine hours with carbon dioxide concentrations above what’s considered good and 4.5 hours above acceptable levels, and noted having the windows open did little to clear the air.

Portable high-efficiency particulate air filters, better known as HEPA filters, can also improve air quality by filtering infectious disease particles, mould, bacteria and outdoor pollutants that are brought in, including from car exhaust or wildfire smoke. The Ministry of Education only requires portable air filters in schools without mechanical ventilation, as well as in kindergarten and childcare spaces. Hanwell’s daughter’s classroom didn’t qualify. 

In the fall of 2022, Hanwell accelerated her concerns about a lack of HEPA usage with the school’s facilities manager. Hanwell says he assured her portable air filters in most classes weren’t necessary. The school’s mechanical heating, ventilation and air conditioning, or HVAC, system exceeded minimum air quality standards, he said, and matched both industry and public health advice. 

Hanwell asked to see an air quality audit to support the claim. When her request was ignored, she made a freedom of information request for it. 

The audit, which she shared with The Narwhal, confirmed what the facilities manager said: the school’s system did offer the suggested average of six air changes an hour. (Air change rates are another way to measure ventilation based on how many times the total volume of air in an indoor space is exchanged.) But it also revealed the complexity of assessing indoor air quality in a school building, where rates can vary in individual classrooms and over the course of a day. One classroom had only three air changes an hour.

For Hanwell, these are nuances that make a difference. 

“If you’re sending your kid to school, do you care what the average air change per hour is? You care about the air in their specific classroom,” she says. 

Hanwell isn’t the only parent-turned-indoor-amateur-air-quality-investigator to emerge from the pandemic. In the past four years, a small-but-active parent-led movement has cropped up in Ontario, acting as a bug in the ear of principals, boards, trustees and the Ministry of Education as they push for greater transparency about the scope of the government’s pandemic-era investments. They’re asking for carbon dioxide monitors in order to measure air quality in classrooms. They also want a healthy maximum carbon dioxide threshold, publicly reported data and an expert-led strategy that establishes measurable indoor air standards for all schools, in line with the most recent ventilation industry standards.

The new, COVID-driven parent movement joins experts and environmental organizations that have been advocating for improved air quality in schools and childcare spaces for much longer. 

The pandemic has given new purpose to this “time-worn” concern and its direct relationship to children’s health and wellbeing, Erica Phipps, executive director of the Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment, says. 

“Those of us working on children’s environmental health have known for forever that children are more susceptible to the harm of exposure to adverse air quality and other toxicants and pollutants,” Phipps tells The Narwhal.

The impact of poor ventilation in the spaces where children spend the bulk of their days is a well-established risk factor for poorer outcomes in education and health. 

Kids in low-income neighbourhoods are more vulnerable to the cumulative effect of these impacts especially during extreme heat events, Jacqueline Wilson, counsel for the Canadian Environmental Law Association, says. 

They’re more likely to live in neighbourhoods with less tree cover, she says, and in homes that don’t have air conditioning; schools therefore become a critical public health intervention. 

Aside from higher rates of infectious diseases, poor air quality in schools is linked to absenteeism and lower cognitive performance, including standardized tests results, University of Toronto professor Jeffrey Siegel says.

“Forget COVID,” Siegel, an air quality expert, says, “poor ventilation is a problem in itself.”

The need to tackle air quality issues in schools will only grow exponentially as the impacts of climate change increase. 

Data from the 2023 Lancet Countdown report underlines how much more often Canadians are exposed to wildfire smoke these days — a 220 per cent increase in 20 years.

Wildfire smoke’s complex mix of toxic gases and fine particulate matter are harmful to the heart, brain and respiratory system and have a direct impact on respiratory conditions. In 2023, exposure to wildfire smoke in Ontario was causally related to a 23 per cent increase in asthma-related emergency department visits. 

The long-term health implications of increased exposure to wildfire are the subject of ongoing research, including the link to increased incidences of heart disease and other chronic conditions. 

Protecting people from the harms of wildfire smoke and ambient air pollution includes plans for indoor air, says Angela Yao, a senior scientist at the Environmental Health Services at BC Centre for Disease Control in Vancouver. 

“Just being indoors is not enough. You need to be indoors with cleaner air,” she says.

The prospect of increased lifetime exposure to wildfire smoke poses both short-term and long-term health effects for kids, who are also more vulnerable to the effects of air pollution from diesel bus fumes, for example, because of their rapid respiration rate, activity levels and growing lungs. 

Indoor air quality is a public health issue, says Wilson, counsel for the Canadian Environmental Law Association, but it’s one that clearly intersects with environmental policy.

“There’s an immediate need to protect people’s health, and we need to act now,” she says.

Funding for ventilation rolled out during the COVID-19 pandemic. But where did it go?

Since August 2020, Ontario schools have been able to access around $660 million to improve indoor air quality by replacing ventilation system filters, windows, repairing systems and purchasing portable HEPA filters. The federal government kicked in 80 per cent of the funds and the province the remaining 20 per cent.  

In 2022, the Education Ministry told TVO less than 10 per cent of schools in Ontario lack mechanical ventilation. It’s unclear whether this encompasses older schools with newer additions, where some wings or buildings have updated ventilation and others don’t. The ministry did not respond to inquiries for comment on this story. 

On its website, the Toronto District School Board, Ontario’s largest board, says it received $81.6 million from the federal government to undertake various projects related to promoting health and safety measures and facility conditions. According to Jatin Amin, a senior manager in facility services and planning, Toronto’s board had spent $75.43 million of that money as of Aug. 31, 2024. 

But figuring out how much of it went directly to air quality upgrades is tricky. Amin confirms information found in documents advocates shared with The Narwhal, which indicate the cost of many HVAC projects were bundled with other pandemic-related upgrades like touchless entry points.

“The $81.6 million was for projects including ventilation, windows, water bottle-filling stations, Wi-Fi, outdoor playground sitting areas, etc.,” Amin says. 

For anyone wondering how that money was spent, or where more investment is needed, each board’s publicly available ventilation report provides basic information on which schools have partial or full mechanical ventilation, if it’s been assessed, as well as if there are portable air filters in the school and how many. 

It doesn’t post a system’s age, capabilities or air quality assessment publicly or indicate whether the filters are still in use. So regardless of where or how that pandemic-related funding for ventilation was spent, there are scant details on how effective it was and still is. Understanding the reality of the work undertaken — and its impact — requires more information, argue parent-advocates.

“It’s not a report,” Farheen Mahmood, a parent-advocate based in Toronto, says. “It’s just a checklist.” 

In some schools, staff members have taken on the task of tracking just how effective pandemic-era investments have been at clearing the indoor air.

Andrew Dobbie, an elementary school teacher in southern Ontario, says his school was able to do a full retrofit of its HVAC system with the government’s pandemic funding. In 2020, Dobbie started bringing a monitor to work to check the carbon dioxide levels and even measured the presence of harmful particulate matter like that found in vehicle exhaust, and says the overall air quality has vastly improved as a result of the retrofit. 

“But we still have areas in the building that have relatively poor air quality,” he says, which could be helped with portable air filters, which the school relied on prior to the upgrade. The filters were noisy, which made teaching difficult, and are now gone. He’s not sure where they went. 

Anecdotally, many parent-advocates complain about the use, misuse or non-use of portable air filters.

Mahmood says in her experience use comes down to individual teachers. Her youngest child’s teacher understood the value of keeping hers on and even allowed her to put a carbon dioxide monitor in the class. But at her older children’s middle school and high schools, she says it’s entirely different. 

“The filters aren’t on. They are used as coffee tables, or they are out of place.”

Investment information is one thing, but transparency about how effective that investment has been is another, parent-advocate Mary Jo Nabuurs says.

“How well is it working?” Nabuurs, who co-founded the advocacy group Ontario School Safety, says.

Parents have little recourse when it comes to pinpointing accountability. But blaming teachers or principals is counterproductive in the view of Siegel, the University of Toronto professor. He’d like to see an autonomous body put in place, either federally or provincially, to do the hard work of oversight when it comes to maintaining healthy air in schools.

Joey Fox, an HVAC engineer for an Ontario school board and chair for the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers Indoor Air Quality Advisory Group, says in addition to funding, school boards got basic guidance about optimizing air quality that aligned with minimum industry standards from the province. Those minimum standards don’t apply to infection control, but are mostly designed to ensure there’s no strong odours present, Fox explains. 

“If these measures were implemented, it is likely they improved the air quality, but we really do not know how much and if it was substantial or minimal. There were no standards applied, no oversight and there was no system to test the air, so we do not know how effective it was,” Fox says. 

He says it’s also unclear if places are still taking the same measures they were at the height of the pandemic, though he believes some are.

Both Fox and Siegel are sympathetic to the scope of the task governments faced in 2020, a challenge that remains daunting now. “This is not easy stuff,” Siegel says, and indoor air quality is not yet part of building codes in schools.

The province hasn’t publicly acknowledged changing standards when it comes to improving air quality either. 

In 2023, the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers introduced an air quality standard designed to support the challenge of airborne disease transmission. In a Medium post that July, Fox broke those standards down for typical classroom spaces based on occupancy. For elementary school classrooms with a maximum of 20 kids in the class, the recommended air change rate is equivalent to 6.7 air changes an hour; in high schools, it’s equivalent to nine air changes an hour.

And while this standard is designed to tackle airborne disease transmission, the combination of increasing ventilation and filtration efforts it demands could “theoretically” confer overall benefits to air quality, including reducing pollutants, Fox says. 

Fox characterizes Ontario’s pandemic-era scramble to address schools’ ventilation issues as “here’s money, do what you can,” but says the province deserves credit for trying. “To be fair,” he says, “other provinces didn’t have unified strategies. Ontario did take steps.”

While the complexity of addressing air quality isn’t to be underestimated, Siegel argues the amount spent was wholly insufficient to address the scope of undertaking such a project across Ontario’s 4,500 aging schools.

The amount of investment “has been low, the quality of that investment has been poor and the effect is probably minimal,” he says. 

How do we clear the air in Ontario schools?

To bring schools up to standard would necessitate an investment in the billions, akin to the investment needed to reduce class sizes, Siegel says. That level conflicts with a decades-long trend of underfunding education in Ontario. 

As a result of underfunding by both Liberal and Conservative governments, Ontario schools have accumulated a significant maintenance and repair backlog of at least $16.8 billion. 

Chandra Pasma, NDP Education critic, believes the number is “undoubtedly higher.” 

The province’s response has been to commit $1.4 billion a year through its combined school condition improvement and school renewal funding, which Pasma says isn’t even “enough to fund the repair backlog of a couple years ago. We’re going to have this gap continuing to grow.”

Pasma has pushed forward a private member’s bill. The goal of Bill 140 is to have carbon dioxide monitors installed in classrooms, with an established maximum level, and a comprehensive expert-led air quality action plan. 

She’s unsure whether the bill has a future. There are so many pressing needs in education, she says.

A December 2024 report by the provincial Financial Accountability Office underlines the need for greater investment in Ontario schools. According to that report, nearly 40 per cent of Ontario’s schools are in a state of poor repair, ventilation systems included.

The Toronto District School Board is cited in the report as one of the boards with the greatest need for investment, with 84 per cent of its schools falling short of the good repair threshold. The board has a $4-billion repair backlog, nearly half of which can be attributed to its mechanical repair and maintenance needs, says Richard Christie, senior manager, sustainability for the Toronto board’s facility services and planning. 

“Parents want this to be solved. But people need to be more forthcoming about what effort is required to achieve it,” Christie says. “It’s not a few years of funding for projects. What we need is significant sustained funding over a long period.”

Unfortunately, the tap has slowed to a trickle as pandemic-related funding dries up. 

That doesn’t bode well for schools’ ability to factor in the need for building out their climate resilience in the coming years. While few could have predicted COVID-19 and the rapid upgrades and shifts it required, we know extreme heat and wildfire smoke are certain to become more frequent and deadly occurrences, Siegel says. 

Ontario’s 2023 Climate Change Impact Assessment concluded southern parts of the province could face more than 60 days with temperatures of 30 C or more by 2080, compared to an average of nine extremely hot days currently. Canada’s National Adaptation Strategy has identified extreme heat as the deadliest weather event in Canada, Wilson says, adding these events are often coupled with exposure to wildfire smoke. 

“Three things get worse, certainly duration and number of extreme temperature events, frequency and severity of wildfires, and also frequency and severity of ambient air pollution events,” Siegel says.

Keeping indoor air healthy during these events will become more challenging and require more established knowledge about best practices, Siegel says.

Prompted by increased concern over prolonged exposure to wildfire smoke, in November 2024, the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers introduced new guidelines that underline the importance of prioritizing filtration as well as the use of sensors that monitor indoor concentrations of harmful particulate matter.  

Yao, the B.C. environmental scientist, agrees that understanding the capacity of individual mechanical ventilation systems within individual schools — what these systems are equipped to filter out and to what degree — is imperative. They may have to be supplemented by portable air filters appropriate to the space, she says, adding air particulate sensors in classrooms would even better equip us to understand the quality of air in classrooms. 

Robert Lepage, a building science engineer based in Waterloo who focuses on climate resilience, says there needs to be a sea change in how we assess the health and safety of schools, moving from historical concerns about heating to cooling. 

“The predominant focus in Canadian building codes has been that of cold- dominated climate concern, i.e. people freezing,” he says. 

Climate change challenges that guidance for design, and going forward, “every single building everywhere in Canada will probably need some sort of mechanical cooling, at least in one room or so.”

Even schools that do have mechanical ventilation systems may not have central air conditioning. The need for schools to address a lack of sufficient cooling is urgent. As with rental units, Ontario has a legally mandated minimum temperature in schools, but no mandated maximum. And as with rental units, many would like to see an acceptable maximum established, and enforced.

Kimiko Shibata, an elementary school educator in Kitchener, Ont., says many of the schools she’s worked in have had primitive mechanical ventilation and no air conditioning. In addition to making kids miserable and feel unwell, extreme heat in poorly ventilated spaces affects their ability to focus and learn. 

“Kids are literally sticking to the seat. They’re crying. It’s a write-off,” she says.

Samantha Green, a family doctor at Unity Health in Toronto, says her child’s school doesn’t have air conditioning either. When temperatures reach extremes, classes rotate in and out of the air-conditioned gym. 

Her concern for her child’s well being led her to dig into the literature around extreme heat and children’s health. Underlying medical conditions like asthma can worsen, and learning outcomes often take a nosedive, she says. 

Christie, who authors the Toronto school board’s annual Climate Action Report, says this will be the first year it moves from discussing long-term mitigation efforts like reducing their greenhouse gas emissions to stressing the urgent need for immediate climate adaptation in school buildings. 

“We need to think about it now, plan for it and sort out the funding,” he says. “We can’t sit on our hands.” 

“We really need a partner with the Ministry of Education that understands that investments are required for ventilation but also cooling.”

Last April, the Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment released a report on indoor air quality that called on governments to establish clear and comprehensive policy addressing both longstanding concerns about schools, including radon and exposure to diesel bus fumes, as well as the impacts of climate change. And, it said, it’s time to plan accordingly. The tools to make these changes already exist, the report said, listing occupational health legislation, public health mandates and human rights codes that could be deployed to protect students and teachers. 

Some advocates are seeing change, like Waterloo’s Clean Air For All. Through sustained parent-led activism, it helped push the Waterloo Region District School Board to establish an air quality committee and, in 2023, use carbon dioxide monitoring to investigate the air in three schools to determine the usefulness of placing monitors in classrooms. 

In October 2024, the Waterloo board ratified its first clean indoor air policy, probably the first in the province. 

The policy is still beholden to Education Ministry standards. But it marks a baby step in the board’s willingness to make the conversation public — and to protect students.

Hanwell’s 11-year-old daughter Jane has caught the air-quality investigating bug. She takes a carbon dioxide monitor to class in her pencil case each day. 

A few of her classmates are curious, she says, and come to her desk asking to know the readings and what affects them. “Fresh air makes the numbers go low,” she tells them. “The bad air that we breathe makes the numbers go high.”

Updated on Feb. 7, 2025, at 10:08 p.m. EST: This story has been updated to correct a statement that portable high efficiency particulate air, or HEPA, filters remove carbon dioxide. Portable filters remove air particles, not gases, like carbon dioxide.

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.