Norm Lamothe soiled his undies twice. The second time, he was much happier with the result. 

Soiled them — in a manner of speaking that is. After two months, buried in the ground, the cotton fabric of a once-pristine set of white men’s briefs had largely disappeared, and mostly just the elastic waistband remained. It was a sign changes in farming techniques were paying off. 

Lamothe runs the family-owned Woodleigh Farms outside Peterborough, Ont. Far from the realm of bodily functions, the brief burial experiment — dubbed a “Soil Your Undies” test — is popular in farm country. It’s a simple, albeit cheekily named, way of measuring just how active the tiny organisms like bacteria and fungi are in soil — and by extension, how healthy the soil is. Just bury a plain cotton undergarment, wait a couple months and dig it back up. The organisms chew up the natural cotton fabric, so more microbial activity means a more degraded undergarment. Dig up a fully intact set of tighty-whiteys, and you know the soil in that area needs some TLC. 

Lamothe first diagnosed his poor soil by doing a Soil Your Undies test in 2015.

“That’s really what started my journey down the soil health path,” Lamothe says, standing in front of one full pair of Hanes and the tattered remains of another, lovingly displayed on his office wall. “Much to our chagrin, they were completely intact.”

It was a self-described “wake-up call” to improve his farm’s practices for the climate, biodiversity and his own business resilience. 

The environmental impact of farming is an extraordinarily complicated subject, and the footprint agriculture leaves is suitably quite varied. In terms of emissions, agriculture accounts for about eight per cent of our national total, or 10 per cent if you include emissions from energy use on farms. The culprits are many: nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas, can escape to the atmosphere from soil. Cattle, sheep and other ruminant livestock create methane — another greenhouse gas — through their digestive processes and release it into the atmosphere, mostly by way of belching. And carbon dioxide is released by decaying plant matter.

Another major source of emissions is fossil fuels. Diesel, made from crude oil, is the main fuel source for the vast majority of tractors and other farm equipment, and fossil fuels — used on and off farms — are the single greatest contributor to climate change globally.

On the flip side, some farming methods can also be a real boon for ecology. Grazing cattle on native grasslands or in pastures with a diverse array of plants (called forage crops in farming circles) can benefit soil health and bird communities, while sequestering enormous amounts of carbon. On the other hand, regular ploughing and excessive fertilizer use can be harmful to soil and waterways. When it comes to environmental impact, the reality on the ground often necessitates doing things that are both better and worse for the environment.

Lamothe isn’t unique in his drive to find climate solutions on his farm. He joined peer groups like the Ontario Soil Network and Farmers for Climate Solutions for guidance, and to support others looking to make positive change. There are farmers and ranchers across Canada — and across the globe — doing this work. I’ve had the good fortune to meet many of them, as a farmer myself, as well as a journalist. They are doing their best to produce the food and commodities we all rely on, in a way that leaves the land in a better place. Some are motivated by water quality and biodiversity, others by profitability and resiliency in the face of extreme weather conditions like heat waves, floods and drought. Some have their eye on trade disruptions and other business challenges forcing them to rethink the status quo. 

Each has a compelling story. And not every one involves undies.

Energy

Lamothe’s farmyard sits at the end of a meandering tree-flanked driveway, eventually opening to buildings set partway up a gentle slope. The landscape here is a mix of rolling pasture, cropland and woodland — all things a flat-lander like myself can appreciate; from the centre of the county where my family farms in southwestern Ontario, it’s so flat you can see the skyscrapers of metropolitan Detroit, about 33 kilometres away as the crow flies, on a clear day. From Lamothe’s driveway, I can’t even see the extent of his property.

Photographer Bryan Dickie and I arrive to find Lamothe in the greenhouse near a cluster of outbuildings and then a pasture where a flock of sheep graze at the far end. Past the outbuildings, we can see the beginnings of his crop fields.

As is typical on farms, there is a little bit of everything everywhere at Woodleigh. Not messy, but clearly busy.

Lamothe is rinsing a pile of plastic flower pots used in the greenhouse —  a structure he calls a “passive solar” facility. It’s built with a sloped roof to capture ambient heat at the peak. That heat gets pulled down into the ground where it’s stored in ducts during the hottest parts of the day. That heat can then be recovered in the cooler months, and at night when the temperature drops, keeping the greenhouse above freezing, even when it is -25 C outside. No additional heating is needed.

Reducing fossil fuel use, as it turns out, is just one of Lamothe’s many proclivities. Norm assures me he “absolutely loves” his fully electric pickup truck, not least because it saves him about $6,500 a year in fuel. 

Another is soil health, ever since that fateful and telling first untarnished pair of Hanes.

Soil

The two most common field crops in Ontario are seed corn — the kind used for animal feed, ethanol and myriad other purposes — and soybeans, both for human and livestock consumption. Winter wheat, which is planted in autumn, typically into recently harvested soybean fields, takes third place. A typical yearly crop rotation for farmers in much of Ontario will involve at least a couple of these. What farmers plant ultimately comes down to economics. Corn and soybeans tend to pay better than winter grains, meaning the latter can sometimes fall out of favour.

Soil health, however, thrives on diversity. 

Keeping different crops in the rotation adds different root structures, helping to break up hard soil to create better water retention and provide a more biodiverse environment that, in turn, supports a wider (read: healthier) variety of soil organisms. Long-term research trials from the University of Guelph have shown more diversity helps build soil health, as well as crop yields. 

Lamothe’s crop rotation was once dominated by corn and soybeans. Adding wheat and oats was one of the first things he did after failing that undies test. When I visit in July, Lamothe’s fields are flush with corn, soybeans and oats. He’ll sow winter wheat on some of his soybean acres later in the year. On areas of the farm that have historically been less productive, he planted trees and native grasses. Cover crops — planted to improve soil, rather than for harvest and sale — will go on his winter wheat fields after they’re harvested.

He also started growing hay on areas prone to erosion, so there would always be roots present to anchor the soil. 

Then came the sheep. 

In 2022, Lamothe brought in the flock to graze the hay. The manure from the sheep flock also reintroduces nutrients to the fields — alongside compost Lamothe makes from wood chips, crop residue and other organic waste. 

Ten years after burying his first pair of britches, Lamothe tried soiling his undies again. The results were much better.

“Whether the change came from our practices or differing weather conditions is up for debate, but certainly we saw we had microbial activity,” he says, adding the physical remains, framed in his office, “make a nice conversation piece with people in here wondering why there is underwear on the wall.”

Carbon

A common challenge for farmers — myself included — is ensuring crops get the nutrients they need at the right time. Sometimes there might not be enough of a given nutrient in the soil, like phosphorus or boron. In other cases, the amount is fine, but they timing is off. 

Fertilizers help, which brings us to another outbuilding on Lamothe’s farm. This one is rich with the smell of barbecue smoke. 

It was the main farm workshop in a past life, a large steel shed that’s more steampunk than down-in-the-country. Conveyor belts and hay bale elevators connect two large trailers with steel sifters, feeding into a cylindrical dryer the size of a bus. It’s all part of Lamothe’s latest venture: a biochar production system.

Biochar is a black, charcoal-like substance created by heating organic material, like wood, in an oxygen-free environment (known as pyrolysis, if you’re technically inclined). The process starts with wood chips from the farm’s forestry business — as I said, there’s a little bit of everything here — which are loaded from old trailers, previously used for hauling potatoes, onto the conveyors and sifters, where they’re sorted by size. Chips that are too big or small are removed for composting, while what remains is put through the dryer, then into a burner.

“Ecologically speaking, this plant is very efficient because we’re using the energy it’s creating to run the whole system,” Lamothe says. And even the acidic byproduct of this process, known as “wood vinegar” — a product similar to the liquid smoke you might use in barbecue sauce — has valuable properties for soil. It helps with plant growth and acts as a natural pesticide.

Biochar is full of carbon, which when added to soil, becomes soil organic carbon — an indicator of good soil health. It helps to regulate nutrients in the soil, microbial activity and moisture. Combined with compost and manure, that can translate to more nutrients slowly released to crops over a long period.

“We’re taking all that carbon that would otherwise go up in the atmosphere and sequestering it in these particles that are going into the soil forever,” Lamothe says. On an annual basis, running at full capacity, the system will sequester 1,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, making approximately 500 tonnes of biochar. 

“That’s net — after all the trucking, the forestry activities, moving of materials,” Lamothe says. “That’s pretty remarkable, and it says something about what could be done at scale for the environment in this country.”

Biodiversity

On the other side of the urban hive that is the Greater Toronto Area, and closer to my own family’s farm, I find myself looking at a beautiful herd of Hereford cattle. They’re grazing, rather lazily, in what to the untrained eye might look like a pasture overrun by weeds.

It’s actually a 19-acre tallgrass prairie, established by farmer Blake Vince in 2018. Here, outside Chatham, Ont., we’re in what’s known as the Carolinian forest zone that covers the southernmost part of Ontario, and peters out just north of Toronto. Vince is cultivating grasses like big bluestem, flowers like black-eyed Susan, prairie dock and much more. My favourite might be the compass plant, with its weird leathery leaves that look almost tropical. The prairie has become Vince’s self-described “happy place,” and is the result of years spent trying to improve his farm’s ecology.

Vince planted the tallgrass prairie as part of a federal government initiative to bring at-risk species back to agricultural lands. Insects, birds — and the birders that come with them — have arrived from near and far. One memorable birding visitor, Boris from Bulgaria, encouraged Vince to sell coffee at the roadside. “He said ‘Charge $10 a cup. People will pay. You’ll make money,’ ” Vince says with a chuckle. As of this writing, he’s opted to not pursue that particular revenue stream.

Most recently, the cattle brought the prairie pasture to another level. 

Despite their reputation as a source of methane — a potent greenhouse gas that breaks down into carbon dioxide over about a decade — Vince says livestock can complete the proverbial circle on farms. Among rows of crops and cover crops, or on pastures, cattle add nutrients to the soil (via manure) and encourage nutrient cycling as they eat the plants, which regrow, pulling more carbon into the soil. He introduced the small herd of Herefords to his fields, where they graze in different areas on a rotating basis, including the prairie.

The side benefit was yet more insects — including dung beetles, highly valued for their ability to transfer nutrients from manure into the soil — and more birds to eat those insects. 

He encourages me to “just listen” as I go by the prairie. The chirping, buzzing and other sounds of life are distinctly loud compared to the adjacent corn and soybean fields, and get louder the closer you get.

“I wanted to do something for nature,” Vince says. “And realized the only person stopping me was the guy looking back in the mirror.”

Water

Like myself, Vince farms a landscape that is very flat, relatively void of trees and intersected everywhere by roads and drainage infrastructure like culverts. In 2011, when nearby Lake Erie endured a particularly severe summer of algae blooms and attention focused on the farms sprawling across that flat land, Vince started thinking more about the impact his own farm had on the surrounding environment. 

Generally speaking, algae are organisms found in water that can rapidly expand into large blooms if they encounter excess nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus — two elements used extensively on farms. In turn, large algae blooms can create toxins and low-oxygen “dead zones” in the water. Lake Erie is particularly prone to algae blooms because of its warm, shallow waters that encourage growth.

Excess nutrients come from many sources, including municipal and industrial wastewater. On the farm, nutrient runoff can spike when fields are hit with heavy rain shortly after fertilizer is applied. Because nutrients bind to soil particles, soil loss from wind or water erosion can also contribute to algae blooms. The nutrient losses from individual farms might be small, but because agriculture dominates the landscape here, repeated small losses add up. 

While he can’t control municipal water systems or the weather, Vince recognized he could exert more control over how much water and nutrients his soil was capable of holding. In 2013, he enrolled in an agricultural scholarship program — the same one I completed earlier this year in biodiversity and climate solutions — to investigate methods of keeping soil, and soil nutrients, in the field where they belong.

By the end of the two-year program, Vince had adopted a new mantra: “roots, not iron.” It means using plant roots to manage the soil, rather than metal tillage equipment. As Lamothe saw, living roots improve the soil’s ability to hold water like a sponge, whereas a hard surface lets it run off. All of it helps keep soil and soil nutrients in the field, and out of local waterways.

And these days, with up to 18 different cover crops potentially growing in his fields during parts of the year, there is almost never bare soil left to potentially wash or blow away.

As the soil holds the water better, it helps insulate crops from drier conditions. That’s key, as more severe swings in weather conditions are being seen by farmers as the climate changes. With so many nutrients inherent and available in his soils, Vince’s fertilizer bill is also substantially lower. He estimates saving “a minimum of 10 per cent” each year for nitrogen fertilizer, which “is a huge cost savings” for nitrogen-hungry crops like corn and wheat. Nutrients can still leave his fields after a heavy rain, but data he collected in partnership with his local conservation authority indicate he’s losing less overall. 

And remember that Soil Your Undies test that kicked off Lamothe’s journey into underground health? Vince is one of the originators. He buried his first pair of briefs in 2015, and helped kick off a trend that, just this year, won an Ig Nobel Prize — a parody of the prestigious awards — for soil science.

“Soil is a collection of living, breathing organisms,” Vince says. “We need to learn to appreciate and respect them.”

Economics and the environment

Across Canada, farms operate on slim margins. Land and equipment are horrendously expensive, and for most, the price they earn for their crops and livestock is beyond their control.

I like to say farming, just the biology of farming, is inherently complex. Then add to that the complexity of weather — with climate change bringing on even more variability, and the occasional introduction of new crop and livestock diseases — along with economics, politics, family and social dynamics, even what it takes to keep machinery running. Most of the time, farmers and ranchers want to do whatever they can to reduce the number and size of variables they face. Trying something new more often adds uncertainty, rather than reducing it. 

I know this firsthand. On our farm, for example, we have been trying to introduce more cover crops after we harvest soybeans. The first year, our cover crop of oats hardly grew because we planted it too late. Another year, the spring was so wet we couldn’t drive machinery into the field to knock back the cereal rye cover crop, meaning it was chest-high and a pain to deal with come spring planting. 

Still, we want to try new things. A lot of farmers do.

There’s the Bernard family, from Prince Edward Island, who are rebuilding their soils and local biodiversity by incorporating cattle into their organic cereal crop business. In Manitoba, the Nerbas family have adopted a grazing system that maximizes the time their pastures have to regrow, supporting their farm’s biodiversity and carbon sequestration potential. Sean Smith, another Manitoban, has partnered with local conservation groups to turn a low-lying and unprofitable part of his family’s farm into a naturalized wetland. 

I could go on.

Lamothe and Vince are the first to tell you they don’t have everything figured out — and likely never will. Investing in ecology on the farm can be complicated, frustrating and require constant troubleshooting. It took time for them to get where they are, and whatever they try next will necessitate the same learning process. But it can be fun, and rewarding as well.

Back in July, as we walked through one of Vince’s fields, some parts waist- or knee-high with a cover crop of crimson clover and cereal rye, I nearly stepped on a wild turkey hen. She was minding her clutch of eggs and I could barely make out her brown-feathered form among the greenery. It’s a sign that I should watch where I’m walking, but also that Vince’s efforts have done a lot for above-ground ecology. White-tailed deer also like to bed down in the thick green cover.

Just the day before, Vince had planted corn directly into that cover crop. In a little more than four months, he’ll harvest it. In spring, the cycle will start again.

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In the 1960s, David Crawford was boating in his backyard on Nipigon Bay when he thought he spotted raw sewage floating in the once-pristine waters of Lake Superior. Years later, he realized the “turds,” as Crawford describes them, were craft paper deposits from the nearby pulp mill in Red Rock, Ont. The mill was also known to billow a harmful smoke into the air and release a hot, foamy plume of effluent into the lake. If the noxious smell wasn’t enough, log drives filled the bay with floating timber and bark, meaning Crawford didn’t often tempt the tumultuous waters of Nipigon Bay.

Along with the pulp mill, raw sewage actually was poisoning the clear bay, coming from two inadequate municipal wastewater treatment plants, but trouble didn’t stop there. The unnatural rise and fall of the water level, due to four hydroelectric dams upstream on the Nipigon River, were causing riverbanks to erode, adding silt to the water, while simultaneously washing out fish spawning habitat.

The reality, Crawford said, was haunting: Nipigon Bay was on the verge of dying.

But in late August, as fishing boats glided across calm, turquoise water behind a podium set up at the Red Rock marina, it was easy to forget about the bay’s past.

A small crowd was gathered as federal Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin visited Red Rock, a town of fewer than 1,000 people, to celebrate those very waters. The air was fresh with the smell of wild mint and Canada geese migrating in undulating waves, stopping to feast in and by the water, honking their approval. Dabrusin spoke into the quiet space left by the calm waters, about “a bay that was heavily polluted and is healthy again. The fish came back, the habitat was rebuilt, and water that people once could not trust, they can trust again.”

Gone are fish with tumours, unnaturally fluctuating water levels, noxious odours, effluent foam barriers, mill plumes and drifting timber. Nipigon Bay is a success story that stretches beyond the Canadian border. It’s one worth noting at a time when the relationship between Canada and the U.S. is strained by President Donald Trump’s trade war and moves to rename another Great Lake — Lake Ontario — to Lake America.

In 1972, Canada and the United States agreed upon their mutual role in polluting a portion of the Great Lakes, which contain 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water. The two countries joined forces to create the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. In 1987, the agreement listed 43 official areas of concern where this industrial pollution was the most deleterious. Twelve of those were in Canada, including Nipigon Bay. 

It was a time when the countries were friendly neighbours, the type that could agree to clean up their backyards and prioritize clean drinking water for millions of people. Remedial action plans were created for the affected areas to create a pathway for healthy environments to thrive.

Which brings us to Nipigon Bay, on Aug. 28, 2026. Four decades after being identified as an area of concern, the federal government announced it was officially delisted at the small celebration beside the still waters of Lake Superior. It was attended by ministers, government officials, local First Nations and Crawford, who chairs a public advisory committee made up of local residents who help to monitor the remediation work.

For Crawford, witnessing the bay heal over his lifetime is a cup of water he’s happy to enjoy. He still worries about the pressures of a rapidly changing world. Currently, there’s a proposal to build a lithium processing plant on the shores of Nipigon Bay in Red Rock, talk of further dams being built upstream on Lake Nipigon and geopolitical tensions straining longstanding bilateral agreements. All the while, climate change has created greater pressure on fresh water and how humans interact with it, from floods to drought and invasive species. 

But for now, Nipigon Bay is one of four areas of concern in Canada that have been delisted. To Crawford, that’s worth celebrating.

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This story is part of a series called Shockwave: Rising energy demand and the future of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes region is in the midst of a seismic energy shakeup, from skyrocketing data centre demand and a nuclear energy boom, to expanding renewables and electrification. In 2026, the Great Lakes News Collaborative will explore how shifting supply and demand affect the region and its waters.

It’s the summer of data centre controversies in Ontario.

In a season where city council chambers are usually quiet, residents of Hamilton, Oakville, Mississauga, Burlington and Toronto have shown up to public meetings in droves. Many are there to resist proposals for massive new data centres in their backyards, worried about noise, water use and energy bills.

By mid-August, Oakville and Mississauga moved to freeze new data centre construction for a year. Hamilton came within an inch of doing the same.

On Aug. 13, Ontario Premier Doug Ford weighed in. 

Standing in front of a wall of servers at a government-owned data centre in Guelph, Ford unveiled the province’s new “data centre playbook” — and made clear he had little patience for local revolt against the boom he wants to usher in. 

“This is the way of the future,” he said. “Either we do it or Donald Trump’s going to do it, and I’m not giving Donald Trump nothing, absolutely nothing.”

Pushback is also happening in Fergus, Sault Ste. Marie and Armour Township, where a project was cancelled in June in the face of public opposition. Ford calls data centre skeptics “hypocritical,” suggesting residents fighting these projects were “misinformed.”“It just doesn’t add up,” he said, arguing that people can’t rely on artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud storage while also refusing the infrastructure that enables them. 

It was a blunt, campaign-style pitch for a $122-billion industry that has been lobbying hard to take root in Ontario, attracted by its clean electricity grid, temperate weather and proximity to the Great Lakes (four of the five count shorelines in the province). But the data centre push has sparked real concerns about the very few rules governing these massive facilities, and the resources needed to run them.

It’s a story with chapters being written across Canada — including Alberta, where more than 40 are proposed, and New Brunswick, stirring worries about the impacts on old-growth forests and wetlands. Around the world, communities are making it clear they view the centres and the technologies they enable with increasing caution.

And now Ontario is making moves. The province’s playbook has been posted online for public consultation until Sept. 12. It’s currently just a draft, not yet in force — and the legislature won’t be back to debate it until Oct. 27, after an extended summer break.

Here’s everything you need to know.

What are data centres — and why do they matter so much right now?

Strip away the technical jargon and a data centre is just a warehouse full of computers — racks and racks of servers that store and crunch the data behind everything from your email to chatbots to this very story. 

Whether you like them or not, data centres have become the backbone of the modern economy: cloud storage, artificial intelligence, banking systems, health care and government services all run on them. 

They’re not new — Ontario already has dozens — but artificial intelligence has supercharged their scale and size. Today’s data centres are requesting hundreds of megawatts of power, dwarfing older facilities that ran on less power and used less water to cool their servers. While artificial intelligence has its own tension points (which we won’t get into here, but feel free to check out our AI policy), resource use is the root cause of local concerns around the physical space occupied by data centres.

How does a data centre get built in Ontario?

Energy Minister Stephen Lecce has said the province “welcome[s] data centre entrants” — but that welcome comes with strings attached and an approval process that can take up to three years, maybe more. 

The groundwork for this process was laid out first in Bill 40, formally the Protect Ontario by Securing Affordable Energy for Generations Act — the first law governing data centres among provinces — and further in the new playbook.Between the two, it’s clear that data centres need to prove two things to be able to connect to Ontario’s grid.The first is to prove they will be able to cover the full cost of their own electricity connections and use — something other businesses aren’t required to do — so regular households aren’t stuck covering the cost. To enforce that, Ontario wants to create a new, higher electricity rate for any data centre over one megawatt. Quebec’s version of this rate kicks in at five megawatts, so Ontario’s lower bar would catch a lot more projects.

The second is to show the centre will be good for Ontario’s economy. The playbook lays out a three-part criteria to determine this: what jobs, investments and tax revenue it could bring to Ontario; whether it would keep local data in the province; and whether benefits to the host community outweigh the financial and environmental costs. If a data centre can’t satisfy these criteria, Bill 40 gives the energy minister the power to reject its grid connection request. 

“The bottom line is, if a data centre wants to come to Ontario, it is not your right,” Lecce said in a July press conference as the criteria were unveiled. “We now have the right to say no.”

Data centres also have to get approval from municipalities, which determine zoning and building permits. However, most Ontario municipalities don’t yet have zoning rules that specifically address data centres. This means projects can often move ahead on land already zoned for general industrial use, leaving councils with limited power to say no. 

Notably, data centres in Ontario do not have to go through a full environmental assessment, according to analysis from law firm McCarthy Tétrault. It’s also unclear if the province will enforce the constitutional duty to consult Indigenous communities on proposed data centre projects. 

But the province is ensuring other things. The playbook says the government will favour centres that use quieter equipment. It’s also encouraging companies to build their own power supply instead of relying entirely on the public grid, since that can get them running faster than waiting in line for a grid connection. Doing so would exempt a data centre from the process outlined in the playbook. It may also see data centre projects proposed with on-site natural gas plants, as we’re seeing in Alberta. 

One thing neither the playbook nor Bill 40 makes clear is what size of data centre the new process applies to.

How will data centres impact Ontario’s electricity demand?

Significantly — and the numbers keep increasing with every new forecast. 

In 2024, the system operator forecast Ontario’s overall electricity demand will grow 75 per cent by 2050 — a sharper jump than previously projected, driven largely by factories and data centres. The centres are expected to account for about 13 per cent of that new demand by 2035.

A more recent forecast suggested data centres could eventually make up close to nine per cent of all electricity used in Ontario by 2050.

What are data centres using all that electricity for? To stay running all the time; servers never sleep, constantly processing web traffic and requests. 

The province says it’s already fielding interest in data centre builds that would add up to roughly 30 per cent of Ontario’s current peak electricity demand. 

That’s a lot of energy demand — and brings us to the supply challenge ahead.

Will this increase in data centre energy demand result in Ontario using more natural gas?

Possibly, at least in the short-term future.Most of Ontario’s electricity comes from low-emissions sources like nuclear and hydro power. But when demand spikes, like during a heat wave when those who have air conditioners turn them on, natural gas plants are usually what fills the gap, since they can be switched on and off quickly.

That matters for data centres, which run around the clock. If a facility is drawing heavily during one of those peak moments, it could be leaning on gas power to do it. And that fossil fuel is primarily made up of methane, a potent greenhouse gas driving climate change and the worsened wildfire seasons, floods and other severe weather we’ve experienced as a result.

How will data centres impact Ontario’s water usage?

We don’t know yet. 

Existing large data centres use water-based cooling systems to keep servers from overheating. That means that all the water pulled into a centre absorbs the heat from the servers and evaporates into the air. Any water that doesn’t evaporate is reused and then sent to a local plant as wastewater. In closed-loop systems, water just circulates in pipes that cool the servers, so there is little lost to the air. 

According to one estimate, a single one-megawatt data centre can use up to 25.5 million litres of water a year just for cooling — about what all of the homes in the city of Mississauga use in a day. Many of the data centres being proposed in Ontario are larger than that, which means, depending on their cooling system, they could also be using a lot more water. 

Microsoft is building three data centres in Ontario, which share an estimated total demand of approximately 200 megawatts. One planned in Toronto’s Etobicoke area was approved to use up to about 40 litres of water every second for cooling — that’s about five bathtubs full every five seconds, and 1.2 billion litres a year. A separate Microsoft complex in Vaughan is expected to use about 730 million litres of municipal water a year.

The province’s playbook says Ontario will favour data centres that use water-free or closed-loop cooling and reuse waste heat — for instance, to help warm nearby buildings.

What are Ontario municipalities doing about data centres?

On Aug. 11, Oakville became the first Ontario municipality to pass a one-year pause on building new data centres. Mississauga is set to follow suit. Both were facing major AI data centre proposals, or at least land acquisitions that suggested them.

Other municipalities are taking different approaches. Hamilton voted down a proposed pause. Burlington and Waterloo Region have asked staff to review existing rules and impacts. Both, along with Toronto, have asked the province for clearer regulations. Centre Wellington and Sault Ste. Marie are sussing whether they can pass temporary bans.

Ford has resisted calls for a province-wide ban, saying local councils will still have a say and that he’d “rather go to a willing host.” While Ontario law requires municipalities to indicate their support before a wind or solar farm can be developed (usually through a council motion or resolution), no such formal rule was proposed in the data centre playbook.

What does Doug Ford mean when he says Ontario needs data centres to address ‘data sovereignty’?

Both Ford and various companies aspiring to build data centres in Ontario have framed this push as a matter of national security: keep the servers here or risk losing control of Canadians’ data to countries like the United States. 

But it’s harder said than done. Yes, building data centres would mean Ontarians’ data is kept in Ontario physically. But what actually determines control over data isn’t the building’s location — it’s who owns the company running it, and which country’s courts and laws they’re accountable to.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘You only get conflict when there’s scarcity’

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

They are also tenuous.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Company wants to pull billions of litres from critical freshwater aquifer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘There’s very little oversight right now’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alberta pushes to double production, build pipelines

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Federal Minister of Indigenous Services Mandy Gull-Masty has unveiled a new and long-awaited bill to provide safe drinking water to First Nations, which she says was written to ensure “we have provincial partners at the table.” Ontario chiefs say they were shut out and their right to clean water was not recognized. 

Gull-Masty denied her government caved to provincial pressure in Bill C-37, or An Act respecting water, source water, drinking water, wastewater and related infrastructure on First Nation lands, that sets out principles to provide safe drinking water and disposal of wastewater for First Nations.

“My conversations with leadership and the chiefs that have spoken to me understand that we are trying to pass a bill that is going to be protected and stand the test of time,” the minister said at a press conference on Parliament Hill on June 16.

“I’m not trying to put a bill forward that is going to be challenged,” she said. “I’m trying to put a bill forward that partners, provinces and territories feel can advance, that they can work with us.”

The Chiefs of Ontario, however, say First Nations were not consulted in the process. The group is “cautiously optimistic” but remains concerned about the approach to this issue by the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney.“Unlike previous legislative efforts, which were developed through meaningful dialogue and partnerships with First Nations Knowledge Keepers [and] technicians, Bill C-37 was introduced without broad or meaningful input from First Nations,” Linda Debassige, Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief, and a member of the Chiefs of Ontario leadership council, said in a Tuesday press conference in Rama, Ont. 

“Our letters of advocacy have been met with a deafening silence, to be honest. We do not have access to parliamentary privileged dialogue or cabinet discussions in relation to this.”

It’s been over a year since the Liberal Party promised in their election platform to “immediately introduce and pass legislation affirming that First Nations have a human right to clean drinking water.” In the last six months, two First Nations in northern Ontario have declared severely worsening water crises due to failed infrastructure; one of the communities, Kashechewan, remains entirely evacuated.

The bill released this week states that the quality of water on First Nations lands must at minimum meet either federal guidelines for Canadian drinking water quality and for wastewater, or the standards in place in the province or territory where the lands are located. It’s backed by $4.6 billion for First Nations communities to build, operate and maintain water and wastewater systems, according to the press release, which adds to the $9.4 billion committed to these projects over the past decade.

The minister will still have to come out with regulations for a “protection zone,” which the bill leaves undefined. The use of these zones would hand First Nations jurisdiction over water sources adjacent to their lands — that is, if the nation and the federal and provincial governments have all agreed on the rules in force. 

“We have to acknowledge that [water] is not stagnant, it moves around,” Gull-Masty said. “For water that is adjacent or flowing in and out, I think that the important part of the work that we’re undertaking is that partners and territories understand that they also have a role to play.”

In addition to defining “protection zones,” the bill empowers the minister to come out with regulations on a dozen different aspects of water services, including source water protections, training and certification, occupational health and safety, monitoring and inspections, emergency planning, permitting and more. The government can even design regulations to govern the disclosure of information.

But the bill doesn’t commit to the same kind of rights language that the Liberals promised in their platform. Instead, it declares that the government’s policy is to “further the progressive realization, for individuals on First Nation lands, of the human right to safe drinking water as protected by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.” That covenant is a multilateral treaty adopted by the United Nations that came into force in the 1970s.

“To me, [this] is insane,” Debassige told reporters. “It’s been a progressive realization for many of our nations for decades.”

Debassige has been working on First Nations water issues for more than a decade and has been involved in negotiations over previous federal bills on the matter. She said that by excluding language like “in collaboration with First Nations” in Gull-Masty’s new legislation, the Carney government is “hiding from their obligations.” 

“We must remember that most of the drafters of Bill C-37 have never spent time in our community,” she said, citing the speedy passage of the federal Bill C-5 and the provincial Bill 5, both of which aim to “fast-track” infrastructure and mining approvals and construction. “And we’ve seen the pushback on the previous iteration of this bill. And now we see the results of that weakening of our inherent rights to pave way for economic development.” 

“I think it’s a deflection of responsibility, a fear of provinces, a fear of nation-building projects not coming through because our nations want to protect water.” 

The bill comes as tensions grow over these issues between the federal government, provincial governments and First Nations. 

Some chiefs, particularly in Treaty 8 territory, which spans northern B.C., Alberta and parts of Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories, asked the federal government to rethink its approach. Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation’s chief said the bill didn’t meaningfully incorporate inherent and Treaty Rights to water while Mikisew Cree First Nation’s chief said the bill didn’t do enough to deal with the potential release of oilsands wastewater into rivers.

Last July, the environment ministers from Ontario and Alberta asked the federal government to “refrain” from introducing a new First Nations water bill, claiming it would “undermine competitiveness, delay project development and disproportionately harm specific provinces and territories without any quantifiable benefits to the natural environment.” 

Ontario’s Environment Minister Todd McCarthy apologized for any “confusion” the request may have caused First Nations. But First Nations have not been convinced by the apology. The Ontario government has skirted meaningful consultation with First Nations in its push to open the Ring of Fire region in northern Ontario, with significant implications for water use and sources, and broadly speed up mining approvals and development. It has also signalled its own plans to make broad changes to provincial clean water rules.

As Canada and Ontario rush to expedite major projects, including in the mining sector, First Nations have long been asking for the same expediency to pass laws to protect drinking water before shovels hit the ground. With a few days left before MPs are scheduled to rise for the summer, this bill is unlikely to become law before the fall. 

“I wish one of Canada’s major projects were to provide us clean drinking water,” Knowledge Keeper Sally Gaikezheyongai said, as she offered a prayer to begin the Tuesday press conference by the Chiefs of Ontario. “I ask the Creator to make sure that happens hopefully within my lifetime.” 

Why does Canada need a law to protect access to clean drinking water on First Nations? 

Indigenous Services Canada reports that there are 36 Indigenous communities that have been under orders for more than a year to boil their drinking water for one minute. Most of these communities are in Ontario. The longest-standing boil water advisory is for Neskantaga First Nation in northern Ontario, just south of the Ring of Fire region. It hasn’t had clean drinking water since 1995. (The federal count is not comprehensive, as some jurisdictions, such as B.C., track their own boil-water advisories in Indigenous communities.)

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to end all these boil-water advisories by March 31, 2021, but did not succeed. Post-colonization, and as stated in the Indian Act, the federal government has a fiduciary obligation to ensure safe, potable drinking water for First Nations. Instead, there is a regulatory black hole for and chronic underinvestment in on-reserve water and wastewater services.

A month before Trudeau’s deadline, a government audit found that Indigenous Services Canada “did not provide the support necessary to ensure that First Nations communities have ongoing access to safe drinking water,” thus prolonging boil water advisories. 

The impacts of these failures are severe, including preventable illnesses, costly reliance on bottled water and long-term evacuations. 

Kashechewan First Nation, a community of 2,000 residents, has been entirely evacuated since January due to a catastrophic sewage pump failure. There is still no access to safe drinking water on their reserve. 

In May, Pikangikum First Nation declared a second state of emergency, a year after the original declaration, due to collapsing water and wastewater systems. The community’s only water treatment plant is operating beyond capacity, even as more than 300 homes remain without direct water service. The community’s reservoir is also at critically low levels and is losing water at a rate roughly four times greater than it can be filled.As a result, the nearly 4,000 on-reserve residents are dealing with daily water rationing and forced evening shutdowns. As wildfire season looms, Pikangikum is now suing the federal government. 

“It’s so important that we take action as a country, as First Nations leadership, to ensure that there are no more Kashechewans, that there are no more Pikangikums,” Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler of Nishnawbe Aski Nation, told reporters. 

“It’s unacceptable that this is a reality that many of our communities are being put in: to try to negotiate on big, major nation-building projects while they’re trying to make sure that their children and their youth can have access to water to drink.”

Why is the federal law to protect clean drinking water on First Nations so delayed?

There have been different iterations of this legislation, Kathleen Padulo, director of environment for the Chiefs of Ontario, told The Narwhal in a conversation before Bill C-37 was released, but none have proved durable.

Since the 1970s, the federal government has been promising to provide Indigenous communities with water and wastewater systems equal to those enjoyed by most Canadians, but no matter which party is in power, it has continuously fallen short of that goal. 

In 2013, the Stephen Harper government passed the Safe Drinking Water for First Nations Act. This law created a regulatory regime to govern water infrastructure on First Nations lands, but without any financial backing or centring Indigenous decision-making or rights. It also didn’t protect the sources of water flowing onto First Nation lands.

“It had no teeth, and it was really watered down,” Padulo said. “It was a piece of paper just floating around for years.” 

As a result, this law was met with widespread disapproval from First Nations. Several, including Neskantaga, launched a class action lawsuit in 2019, claiming “Canada has been negligent, breached its fiduciary duties, breached the honour of the Crown and breached various rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

Ottawa settled that lawsuit in 2021, agreeing to provide $1.8 billion in compensation and spend $6 billion on water infrastructure over nine years. The federal government also promised to repeal and replace the Conservative law. 

That didn’t happen until 2023 when the Trudeau government introduced Bill C-61, or the First Nations Clean Drinking Water Act. The landmark bill involved First Nations in its creation, doing so over a two-year-long consultation and co-development process. This bill established clean drinking water as a human right, set minimum standards for drinking water and wastewater on reserves and pledged funding for water-related infrastructure. This bill also created an Indigenous-led First Nations Water Commission to help implement the law and monitor its impact. 

After weeks of consultation with First Nations, the bill did not pass before Parliament was prorogued in January 2025. Then-Indigenous services minister Patty Hajdu said the delay was the fault of opposition parties. 

Padulo said they’ve been waiting for this bill to re-emerge and be passed “with the speed of light like Bill C-5” and then put it in place in communities right away. 

“What is happening here is colonization at the end of the day, that’s what it is,” Padulo said. “And Canadians not understanding that not everybody has basic human rights.”

What happens next?

Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief Debassige is asking the government to ensure “sufficient engagement” with First Nations as this bill goes through the parliamentary process, urging the government to move quickly from legislation to action. 

“We’re cautiously optimistic,” she said, but with the Liberals holding a majority government, “It’s going to be a difficult process.”

“Water is a human right. Full stop,” Debassige said. “We are looking to Canada to help us champion a shift from the outdated and colonial perspectives of First Nations being viewed as second-class citizens to ensuring our people can enjoy the same clean and safe drinking water guaranteed to non-First Nations across this country.” 

Gull-Masty said the government supports consultations with First Nations governing bodies to develop the many regulations that the bill authorizes. 

Ontario Regional Chief Abram Benedict told reporters that the government needs to focus on accountability to ensure First Nations communities have “confidence in the drinking water.”  

“We are calling on the federal government to move swiftly from legislation to action. The goal must not only be to eliminate advisories, but to prevent new ones from coming on,” he continued. “Legislation is only the beginning of ending these challenges.”

“Our communities have waited long enough.” 

Updated on June 16, 2026, at 8:40 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to include the amount of federal funding dedicated to building, maintaining and operating water and wastewater infrastructure in First Nations communities as part of Bill C-37.

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

• The North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit officially stopped testing water at public beaches.
• In place of testing, the health unit is updating public signage to warn swimmers of risks of heavy rainfall, murky water and large numbers of birds congregating — things that deteriorate water quality.
• Researchers and advocates argue beach water monitoring is important, especially as climate change makes cooling off in the water more necessary — and more hazardous, thanks to algal blooms and pathogens.

Kevin Marois wasn’t aware that the health unit spanning North Bay and Parry Sound, Ont., had stopped testing the water at local swimming spots.“I don’t think it’s a good decision,” Marois told The Narwhal after learning about it on a hot June day at Shabogesic Beach in North Bay. “Not having the information on water quality is the main [concern],” he said as he came out of the water, “And we know that there are problems with water quality during the summer.”

There were six harmful algal bloom events in the health unit’s area in 2025, and more than a dozen in 2024.

After announcing its plans earlier this year, the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit has officially stopped testing water at public beaches as of this summer. 

In its place, they’re offering public signage, which the health unit says will warn beachgoers to assess risks from recent heavy rainfall, visibly murky water or large numbers of birds in the water — all things that alter water quality and can make swimming unsafe due to high levels of E. coli or harmful algae.

Despite the updated signage, those who study beach water safety in Canada say ceasing testing could impact people’s ability to make informed decisions about safe swimming this summer. 

Meanwhile, researchers have argued a warming climate in Canada, including more severe summer heat waves, means swimmable water for people to cool off in is more important than ever. 

“We see changing climate patterns, we see urban heat island effects, we see heat domes, we see that there’s a tremendous need for community cooling spaces,” said Gregary Ford, vice-president and Lake Ontario Waterkeeper at Swim Drink Fish, an environmental non-profit that advocates for safe, usable water bodies. Its name comes from signs often posted on shorelines in Canada: no swimming, no fishing and no drinking. 

Ford explained that warmer temperatures and extreme weather events — a part of climate change, which is primarily driven by the burning of fossil fuels — also contribute to more harmful algal blooms and other pathogens that affect the health of the water and people who use it.

Health unit says water testing is resource-intensive and too slow

In March 2026, the North Bay health unit, which also covers Kearney, Nipissing and South River, sent a letter to member municipalities saying sampling the area’s 60 public beaches was too resource-intensive, and lab results took three or four days, limiting their usefulness when water conditions change quickly. The health unit also argued that the risk of illness from water recreation in the region is low. The water was only tested about three times each summer, it said.

Last year, Public Health Sudbury and Districts, a region which includes Manitoulin Island and French River, ended routine water sampling as well — one of many cuts made after the medical officer of health said their funding has not kept pace with inflation.

“Obviously, there are growing pressures on municipalities and public health units … and so we understand that compromises have to be made, but not in something that affects public health,” Ford said. “This is a trend that we see during periods of economic stress and strain … Unfortunately, as these scalebacks start happening, the public is left with less information about their water and, honestly, that becomes the most important part.”

Swim Drink Fish aggregates data from across swimming spots in North America into an app called Swim Guide. But these helpful third-party tools rely on local data collected by public health departments.

“It’s really important that municipalities also provide historical data, even if they’re not sampling today. They should at least publicly make available the data and information that has been collected over the last five years, the last 10 years, so people can still make a somewhat informed decision about where they spend their time,” Ford said. That’s not something made available by the North Bay Parry Sound Health Unit, either.

There are options for protecting beachgoers, but they can’t replace testing: experts

A recent study from Toronto Metropolitan University, which surveyed 4,085 beachgoers at seven beaches in Canada between 2023 and 2025, found that about 2.6 per cent of swimmers reported becoming sick, with children and elderly people facing higher risk of “recreational water illness,” such as stomach issues, ear and eye infections or rashes.

Ian Young, principal investigator on the Canadian Beach Cohort Study, tracking recreational water illness across Canada, said despite that low risk, “having a solid monitoring plan is important to give people confidence in the beach.”

He pointed to other methods being used across the country to help combat the slow, unreliable nature of current testing. For example, at Bluffer’s Park Beach in Scarborough, Ont., the City of Toronto implemented a bird management program, involving removing sources of food and training dogs to spur geese into flight, once they realized a substantial amount of the E. coli in the water at the beach was caused by birds.

Ford, from Swim Drink Fish, has seen other solutions; municipalities like Kingston and Hamilton are trying out new technology that alerts citizens in real-time when sewers and sewer bypasses are overflowing and contaminating beach water. But, he said, this does not replace the need for monitoring.

“It is a far second in terms of a solution. The best solution is to be continuing and continuously monitoring these beaches,” Ford said. “Resources can be stretched thin at times. This is a public health interest, it is a tourism interest and it is an individual health and wellness interest as well. So, this should be a priority for public health units, and it’s disappointing to see some of these decisions that are being made.”

To help mitigate risk, North Bay’s health unit recommends swimmers wash or sanitize hands before eating after swimming, towel off well to help prevent swimmer’s itch, check for hazards before entering the water and avoid getting water in their mouths.

But North Bay resident Ashley Brooker, standing at the shore of Lake Nipissing, said she still doesn’t feel good about the testing changes. “I am a risk-taker, but that doesn’t mean that I want to risk getting sick or catching something,” she said. “Safety is a big thing, and if we’re putting our tax money into something then we should be getting the resources back.”

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Summary

• The amalgamation of Ontario’s 36 conservation authorities into nine regional bodies is expected to take effect in early 2027.
• A new directive from Environment Minister Todd McCarthy orders conservation authorities to halt any major decision-making processes, such as changing staffing structures or purchasing property, in the meantime.
• After a meeting between Environment Ministry officials and conservation authority staff on May 6, 2026, one public servant told The Narwhal, “The province has essentially handcuffed conservation authorities.”

On Friday, May 1, Ontario Environment Minister Todd McCarthy sent a letter to all conservation authority heads directing them to halt any “significant financial, asset or employment decisions” as the government begins consolidating the agencies tasked with protecting watersheds. 

The letter signals that the work to amalgamate authorities from 36 to nine, and shift oversight to a new government agency that takes direction from McCarthy’s office, has begun. 

Five days later, senior ministry officials told authority staff in an internal meeting that this reorganization will be complicated and still contains many unknowns. 

The directives “were not easy to write,” a senior official said at the meeting. “I’ll be frank to say that this required us to get into the [conservation authority] business in a way that we as a ministry aren’t typically.”

A recording of that meeting, which included discussion of the consolidation on drinking water protections, was shared with The Narwhal by one participant and independently verified by another. The Narwhal is not identifying the officials who led the meeting by name to respect their privacy as public sector workers with limited authority.

In it, a director in the ministry’s conservation and source protection branch notes the directive McCarthy sent out to authorities was not meant to affect the day-to-day business of conservation authorities, but to “put some guardrails in place that would sort of mitigate against any decision, like extraordinary decisions that would not be to the benefit of the regional [conservation authority].” 

Such guardrails are common in government-initiated mergers, the official said, to protect agencies and organizations from decisions that may harm their consolidated form. A staff member from McCarthy’s office, speaking unofficially, told The Narwhal this is “standard operating practice” for any amalgamation, designed to “essentially keep things stable.”  

Rhonda Bateman, chief administrative officer of Lower Trent Conservation, said in an email to The Narwhal, “It was not a surprise. We were expecting some direction.” 

“When businesses amalgamate or are merged, there needs to be a baseline of information available and I believe this is the intent behind the direction,” she said.

Along with the recording, The Narwhal was sent a copy of McCarthy’s letter, which was later publicly posted by the ministry. The Narwhal reached out to 10 conservation authority officials for comment, with most saying they were not allowed to comment, could not comment for fear of repercussions or were still trying to understand the implications of the directive. Five people agreed to speak to The Narwhal for this story, all on the condition of confidentiality. 

“The province has essentially handcuffed conservation authorities,” one public servant who attended the meeting told The Narwhal. “Conservation authorities are not in control now [of the consolidation], and it seems that they won’t be in control moving forward.” 

One conservation authority official in central Ontario said they were “surprised” by the “sweeping” nature of the directive, and felt that the consolidation was “out of our hands.”  

Conservation authorities are tasked with protecting Ontario watersheds by safeguarding local drinking water sources and reducing the risks from natural hazards like flooding, erosion and drought. The government’s move to amalgamate them from 36 agencies to nine is the biggest disruption since the agencies were created 80 years ago, and has created widespread concern about their continued ability to preserve access to fresh water for more than 80 per cent of Ontario residents.

The government’s 2026 budget officially greenlit the consolidation and gave the environment minister powers to issue directives as needed. It also created a new Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency, which will oversee the 36 conservation authorities during the transition, under the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks. This agency will work with Hassaan Basit, a longtime conservation authority official who is now the province’s chief conservation executive, and is staffed by a handful of bureaucrats, with a five-person board of directors made up of deputy ministers from other ministries. The agency’s goal is to see resources equally shared among the consolidated conservation authorities.

McCarthy’s first directive on the consolidation restricts conservation authorities’ actions to what has already been set out in their 2026 budgets. That includes making any changes to staff or governance structure, acquiring or disposing of any land, approving any new projects (like wells, for example) or making major purchases without explicit authorization from the government.

The official from McCarthy’s office told The Narwhal they expect conservation authorities to be able to do things that are beyond their budget. “We’ll likely approve it,” they said. “Conservation authorities remain independent.” They also noted that the restrictions don’t apply to land donations, as “they are not an expense.” 

The directive notes there will also be exceptions in responding to “an immediate danger to human life, health or property.” The official from McCarthy’s office said, for example, this could be “if the conservation authority has a dam and the dam is on the verge of breaking and they need to make emergency repairs.” 

These restrictions are in place until at least Feb. 1, 2027, when the consolidation is expected to take effect. They can be amended any time “at the sole discretion of the minister,” according to the letter.

Ontario’s drinking water is tied up in conservation authority changes but officials have few details

The details of how McCarthy’s directive will affect conservation authorities’ work protecting drinking water remain unclear. 

The authorities work closely with community-led source protection committees, which include directors from industries like agriculture, manufacturing and tourism to protect and properly manage drinking water. 

The province’s 19 source protection committees were created on the heels of the deadly water contamination crisis in Walkerton, Ont. They are supported by staff from conservation authorities, who provide data and carry out protective actions as the source protection authority.

The Narwhal reported in April on the impacts of consolidation on source protection committees, and the fact that 15 of the 19 committees had vacant chair positions. The government began seeking people to fill the chair positions soon after.

Many source protection staff were in attendance at the May 6 meeting hosted by Ministry of Environment officials after McCarthy’s directive was issued. 

In the recording of the meeting, ministry officials are heard assuring attendees that they were happy to keep working with conservation authority staff, and that the government remains committed to preserving drinking water protections. But the officials repeatedly said things are still being figured out, with “a range of scenarios” being considered. They acknowledged the lack of answers was “not terribly reassuring” and “anxiety producing, probably” for conservation authorities.  

During the two-hour meeting, ministry officials did not answer direct questions about whether the source protection regions would also be consolidated. 

“I think that is probably the first question that needs to be answered, and we can’t answer it,” the official responded. “Obviously, that has to come from the decisions from whoever is making them.”

McCarthy previously told The Narwhal the 19 source protection committees will remain as they are and work with the nine regional conservation authorities, but said their jurisdictions are “a work in progress.” The government has said changes to the Clean Water Act will be needed but hasn’t specified what those changes will be.  

“We’ve got eight months to sort out the details,” the official from McCarthy’s office told The Narwhal. “The point is not to rush this. We just started the process.”

During the meeting, ministry officials gave two explanations for their inability to answer attendees’ questions. First, they said they weren’t directly part of the decision-making process as the transition is being run by the new Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency, “not the ministry.” And second, they cited cabinet confidentiality, referring to private policy deliberations between Premier Doug Ford, his ministers and senior ministry officials. 

“Typically, sometimes the reason you have to, like, back away and stop engaging is because things become cabinet confidential at a certain point,” a senior official said in the meeting. “I’m not allowed, right? Because it’s become a cabinet process.”

They continued that staff in the ministry were working to ensure source protection plans, for example, weren’t being unnecessarily rewritten, though much of the consolidation process was still being sorted out.

“This isn’t a change many people were asking for and want necessarily, and I fully appreciate that I can’t necessarily know what all this means to you,” one official said in the meeting. They added that they hoped to help conservation authorities understand “what our thinking has been around the transition planning.”

“This is a government that is set to do this,” the official said. “This is happening.”

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Summary

• Under the Clean Water Act, community-led groups called source protection committees write plans and oversee the protection of drinking water sources in Ontario.
• The jurisdiction of the committees is aligned with the boundaries of conservation authorities, and experts say the recent amalgamation of authorities could also affect the committees.
• The province has not appointed 15 of the 19 source protection committee chairs, leaving some experts questioning whether change is afoot.

As the Doug Ford government moves to consolidate conservation authorities from 36 to nine, many are concerned about the impact on Ontario’s drinking water. 

Conservation authorities have long been tasked with protecting Ontario watersheds by safeguarding local drinking water sources and reducing the risks from natural hazards like flooding, erosion and drought. But the government’s legislation for their amalgamation — the biggest disruption to the agencies in 80 years — indicates there may be changes coming to the way they help preserve access to fresh water for more than 80 per cent of Ontario residents. 

Since 2006, municipal drinking water has been governed by 19 source protection committees, community-led groups with directors from industries like agriculture, manufacturing and tourism that hold conservation authorities and municipalities accountable for properly managing drinking water. Within each conservation authority, designated staff serve as liaisons to these committees, providing necessary data and carrying out any suggested protective actions.

“Source protection committees are purposefully local. They’re the people that drink the water they are protecting,” Katie Stammler, water quality scientist and project manager for the source water protection committee at the Essex Region Conservation Authority, told The Narwhal.

The committees were created on the heels of the water contamination crisis in Walkerton, Ont. In May 2000, seven people died and some 2,300 people became ill when manure from a nearby farm leached into a well due to a failure of safety checks in the local water treatment system. 

An inquiry into the crisis resulted in dozens of recommendations, including creating source protection committees. These groups were officially enacted by the passage of the Clean Water Act. Each one was designed with the boundaries of conservation authorities in mind and tasked with writing a plan to protect the sources of drinking water in that region from threats such as fuel, sewage, road salt and agricultural runoff.

In the years since they were formed, source protection committees seemed to be “untouchable,” Lynn Dollin, once long-time chair of the South Georgian Bay-Lake Simcoe Source Protection Committee, told The Narwhal. Successive Ontario governments didn’t want to change anything “because no one wants to risk another Walkerton.”But things might be changing now.

The Ontario government’s move to reduce the number of conservation authorities has meant that each authority now covers a much larger area. The Narwhal obtained a government slide deck presented to conservation authorities leaders earlier this month that shows drinking water source protection “remains a core mandated responsibility” for the nine proposed regional authorities, and that source protection plans “will continue to be carried out.” 

But in the same slide deck, the government also notes “changes may be needed under the Clean Water Act and associated regulations” to “clarify” how source protection committees would operate under the new structure. 

“We’re not making any fundamental changes [to source protection committees],” Ontario Environment Minister Todd McCarthy said in an interview with The Narwhal: the 19 committees will remain as they are and work with the nine newly proposed regional conservation authorities, though he said their jurisdictions are “a work in progress.”  

“Clean water is absolutely essential, and Ontario’s is best protected in the world. That’s going to continue,” he said. “The idea is to make sure it doesn’t change by better resourcing and better supporting [them] equally across Ontario.”

McCarthy added that there may be some legislative “housekeeping” in the fall to ensure “alignment” between the new regional conservation authorities and source protection committees. 

The absence of details raises red flags for experts. 

“They cut. Now they cut and tinker,” one central Ontario conservation authority official said. “They’re saying nothing is going to change, but in practice, that remains to be seen. … All the changes they’ve made so far have delayed work operations. They like to pretend otherwise.”

The Narwhal spoke to 12 people, including lawyers, members of three source protection committees and several conservation authority staff, many of whom spoke anonymously for fear of retribution. As conservation authorities get bigger, these experts worry about the loss of local input, knowledge and protections. 

Already, the chair positions at 15 of the 19 committees are vacant. To many, this quiet erosion of leadership and a loosening of water laws in the province are indicators that a system put in place to prevent another drinking water crisis is now in flux. 

Most source protection committees still don’t have government-appointed leaders

Nearly 20 years ago, Dollin, now mayor of Innisfill, Ont., was one of 19 source protection committee chairs appointed by the Ontario government to help take care of the province’s complex system of local drinking water sources.

Back then, her committee’s first task was “a little unnerving,” she said. “I was shocked how there was no good, complete list of where our municipal drinking water systems were.” So they created one, along with guidelines on how to protect them to ensure local drinking water sources don’t become contaminated or overused. 

Dollin’s term as head of South Georgian Bay-Lake Simcoe Source Protection Committee ended in August 2025; she was told by a ministry official she would not be reappointed, though she said no reason was given. Her position hasn’t been filled since. 

As of April 14, the government had not appointed several chairs — something it is legally required to do under the Clean Water Act — since summer 2025.

“The absence of appointed chairs over the past year has created some uncertainty at the committee level, particularly around governance, leadership continuity and decision-making authority,” John Mesman, managing director of property, conservation, lands and community outreach for South Nation Conservation, told The Narwhal. 

A lack of chair appointments, others say, may indicate source protection committees are a low priority amidst the amalgamation of Ontario’s conservation authorities. Many told The Narwhal communication between conservation authorities and ministry staff have been eroding since the government under former premier Mike Harris first cut funding in 1995.

“It seems the ministry doesn’t understand the source protection program, so it doesn’t bother to think about it,” the central Ontario conservation authority staff member said. “We started getting alarmed by ministry decisions a while ago on a number of issues. It’s been consistent, our comments are not being heard.”

That’s especially challenging as water supply gets more complicated. In recent weeks, the government has proposed permitting communal wells for private development. That would mean a new subdivision, for example, could draw from its own well instead of tapping into municipal water services. Sources who spoke to The Narwhal were concerned about this because communal wells aren’t currently overseen by source protection committees. 

“We need source protection leaders now more than ever to be present at the table,” a conservation authority official in western Ontario said. “As this government pushes approvals for development, we need to make sure water is not an afterthought.” 

A Ministry of Environment official told The Narwhal, “a competitive process will soon be underway” for source protection committee chair appointments. 

New boundaries of conservation authorities could affect source protection committees 

Not only do many source protection committees not have leaders right now, but they also don’t know what their jurisdictions will be post-conservation authority amalgamation.

“I don’t think [the government] contemplated a whole scale change like this,” Theresa McClenaghan, executive director of the Canadian Environmental Law Association, said. “A lot of people don’t realize that most local drinking water sources are protected by plans that were created by these committees over many years.” 

Per the requirements of the Clean Water Act, the government has two options, McLenaghan said: realign source protection boundaries and governance to reflect the new larger regional conservation authorities or maintain the current structure within the new regional authorities. 

Minister McCarthy told The Narwhal the boundaries “are not changing at this time,” but the exact boundaries will be finalized in the fall, informed by consultations with new local watershed councils the ministry is creating to facilitate the transition. 

“We’ll have to see how this works out,” he said. “Right now, the reality is nine watershed-based regional conservation authorities are what we proposed … and with those 19 [source protection committees], we’ll have to see how their boundaries match up or align.” 

McLenaghan said if the committees stay as they are, “that’s good news,” but “there will still be some potential disruptions” as several source protection regions combine under a single conservation authority.

Right now, some source protection areas, such as Essex County, stand alone, while others like the Thames-Sydenham Source Protection Region, combine several conservation authority jurisdictions. Per a preliminary analysis by the Canadian Environmental Law Association, the amalgamation would see the inverse of this, where one regional conservation authority has several source protection regions within it. For example, both the Lake Huron and Western Lake authorities would each incorporate three source protection agencies.

The new regional conservation authorities will be “very, very busy” managing so many source protection committees under the new system, the central Ontario conservation authority official said.

Under the amalgamation plan, Stammler’s Essex County Conservation Authority now falls under the Western Lake Erie regional authority, which has boundaries spanning from Niagara through Halton and Peel Region.

She, and others, said they’re concerned this will result in a reduction in the hyper-localized focus on water that conservation authorities provide.

“I think it’s going to undermine Ontario’s ability to protect drinking water,” Ontario Greens Leader Mike Schreiner said. “I think the amalgamation of [conservation authorities] is going to contravene the recommendations of the Walkerton inquiry around source water protection.”“I mean, how can you have 19 source water protection committees across the province and nine [conservation authorities]? And how is that going to work together, especially when you’re undermining local decision-making expertise?”

It’s something local industry representatives are similarly concerned with. 

Chris Snip, an independent agronomist and water protection advocate from Essex County, has built a career helping farmers grow better crops with less impact on the environment from fertilizer use. He joined the Essex region’s source water protection committee six years ago to support the group’s understanding of agriculture and the sector’s role in maintaining water quality.

As with many in Ontario’s farming community, the Walkerton tragedy casts a long shadow for Snip. With the Ford government’s changes to water protection, in favour of easing development, Snip wonders if the province is forgetting lessons of the past.

“People died, and the policies around source water protection were based on recommendations from those deaths and injuries, and this provincial government is basically, you know, turning its nose up to it, not caring about what happened then,” he said.

“History is bound to repeat itself, especially if we don’t remember.”

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Summary

• The Canada Water Agency will cut about 13 jobs to absorb a $5-million budget cut, as Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to reduce government spending.
• The agency leads ecosystem restoration and protection work in major freshwater ecosystems, such as the Great Lakes, Lake Winnipeg and the Mackenzie River.
• A spokesperson said the agency “remains fully committed to delivering on its mandate to improve freshwater management in Canada.”

Internal government emails show staff at the Canada Water Agency trying to make sense of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s budget cuts in response to questions from the media.

The Canada Water Agency launched in October 2024 to help protect Canada’s fresh water, including leading restoration work to clean up the Great Lakes, Lake Winnipeg and other important sources of drinking water. Canada is home to 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water, which is being threatened by climate-driven floods, droughts and algal blooms, as well as industrial contamination and other groundwater stressors.

Carney’s first federal budget proposed $3.8 million in lower spending by 2029-30 at the agency, and a further $1.2 million categorized as a separate “ongoing,” or permanent spending reduction, for a total of $5 million in cuts. They were part of Carney’s $60 billion in proposed cuts — split into $48 billion in spending reductions through 2029-30, and a further $12 billion in “ongoing” cuts with no given end date.

The Narwhal reported on the budget in November, summarizing the government’s proposal as cutting $5 million in total spending at the agency over a number of years. After that story was published, the agency emailed The Narwhal with a request for a “small correction,” asking that figure be changed to $3.8 million.

When The Narwhal asked the agency why it shouldn’t include the $1.2 million in ongoing spending cuts in the figure — which would make it $5 million — internal emails released under Access to Information law show staff reached out to Finance Canada, sharing a screenshot of the budget’s spending review page for the agency with the proposed “ongoing” cut circled in red. 

“Hello Finance Department colleagues, we are fact-checking an article in The Narwhal that mentions the [agency]’s budget cuts, and just want to make sure we are understanding the budget chart correctly,” the agency wrote. 

The water agency asked the Finance Department whether the $5-million figure, which it had already asked The Narwhal for a correction on, was in fact, correct.

After the Finance Department said it would look into the matter, the water agency asked for guidance on how to explain the permanent portion of the spending reductions to journalists.

“Do you have messaging you can share around communicating the ‘ongoing’ to the media?” the staff member asked.

The next day, an official at Finance Canada said the story did not need a correction after all.

Canada Water Agency to cut 13 jobs, but continue restoration and protection of fresh water

Last month, a Canada Water Agency planning document showed how it expected to absorb the first three fiscal years’ worth of cuts, amounting to $2.6 million by 2028-29. One result was the loss of roughly 13 jobs, or what’s known as full-time equivalent positions, from a workforce of 223.

It said it was also planning on “modernizing government operations” and “leveraging new technology” as well as making administrative and support functions more efficient.

At the same time, the agency plans to keep conducting water quality and ecosystem restoration, including in the Great Lakes, it said.

The federal budget says cuts are necessary to “rein in government spending” from pandemic highs. Carney has gone on to trumpet other multibillion-dollar investments in areas like the military, technology and infrastructure that could in turn pose new environmental challenges for water.

Last week, the Canada Water Agency took on a new task when the Carney government promised $3.8 billion to “protect nature” as part of a new environmental strategy. The agency will be working on the country’s first National Water Security Strategy meant to reflect Indigenous knowledge systems including water stewardship.

The Narwhal emailed the Canada Water Agency asking how its spending cuts will affect freshwater stewardship and restoration work.

A spokesperson said the government’s budget cuts would not impact the agency’s “planned activities, staffing and funding commitments for restoration and protection” of its eight freshwater ecosystem initiatives through Canada’s Freshwater Action Plan, a “signature” federal program.

The program includes the Great Lakes, lakes like Simcoe and Winnipeg and rivers like the St. Lawrence in Ontario and Quebec, and the Mackenzie in the Northwest Territories. Former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s 2023 federal budget allocated $650 million over 10 years to these freshwater initiatives.

“Like all federal organizations, the Canada Water Agency is contributing to the government’s plan to reduce spending, eliminate duplicative programs and focus resources on core priorities,” the spokesperson wrote.

“The agency remains fully committed to delivering on its mandate to improve freshwater management in Canada by providing leadership, effective collaboration federally and improved coordination and collaboration with provinces, territories and Indigenous Peoples to proactively address national and regional transboundary freshwater challenges and opportunities.”

The agency also told The Narwhal the reduction in jobs would be staggered, with four next fiscal year, followed by another four the year after and five more after that.

Asked how the agency was planning for the budget’s proposed $1.2 million in permanent cuts, the spokesperson reiterated the budget review was meant to ensure government spending was sustainable and funding cost-effective programs and activities.

Federal funds support water conservation in Ontario and the Great Lakes

The spending reductions come at a time when the Ontario government is amalgamating its watershed protection agencies, called conservation authorities, from 36 to nine, as well as moving to give itself the power to dictate more rules around drinking water. 

Federal funding has been important for conservation authorities because Ontario has not been investing as much in community science and ecosystem restoration, Catherine Febria, the Canada Research Chair in freshwater restoration ecology, said. 

An associate professor at the University of Windsor’s Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, Febria said that the federal “scale of investment is something that the province was never able to do.”

“That was really exciting, it was like a leapfrog in progress with this single initiative, and a number of large-scale projects were invested in [over] the first two years,” she said, naming the freshwater ecosystem initiatives in places like the Great Lakes as one example.

The federal government and Ontario have been working together “for over 50 years” through a series of agreements on protecting and conserving the Great Lakes, the spokesperson for the Canada Water Agency said. 

As one example, the Canada-Ontario Agreement on Great Lakes Water Quality and Ecosystem Health lays out how the two will coordinate protection efforts.

“This partnership has led to remarkable improvements, including dramatic reductions in harmful pollutants, and the return of pollution-sensitive species such as bald eagles,” the spokesperson wrote.

Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks did not respond to questions from The Narwhal about how much provincial funding was going towards efforts to restore freshwater ecosystems, and to what extent the ministry was working with the federal water agency.

Febria said given the federal water agency is still relatively new, it’s still not clear what its full mandate will be, not to mention if or how the proposed cuts will impact its work or what exactly may be lost.

She said another Carney initiative, directing $1.7 billion toward a series of scientific initiatives, including research awards attracting high-level talent from abroad, holds promise. Some of the research awards will focus on water security, environment and climate resilience. 

Still, it’s a “tricky balance,” she added, between investing in research and also carrying out on-the-ground work to improve local areas.

“I think we need both,” she said. “When the pendulum swings towards a whole bunch of researchers, that’s great, but at the end of the day, we still need people and organizations and communities on the ground.”

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The cold snap held its grip on southern Ontario for weeks. On the shores of Lake Erie, some speculated this could be the year the ice makes it all the way across — something that hasn’t happened in three decades.

Erie, the shallowest of the Great Lakes, typically sees the most ice cover. Still, the most recent full freeze-up was in 1996, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data.

On a Sunday in early February, as ice cover crept over 95 per cent, locals and visitors braved frigid temperatures to look out across the frozen surface. 

Among them was photographer Carlos Osorio, who captured the lake and the people who set out across it — on foot, studded-tire bicycle or all-terrain vehicle. Wind had sculpted blowing snow into rippling waves, as if the water, on a blustery summer day, suddenly stood still.

“When you think about water freezing, you think about smooth ice, and then you come here and the ice almost looks like frozen waves,” Frank said. “You can just imagine the water swelling up and down, but it’s not, it’s just frozen.”

“This is exceptional,” Gerald Meyering said, marveling at the amount of ice and snow on the lake, compared to recent mild winters.

— With files from Carlos Osorio

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This story is part of a series called Shockwave: Rising energy demand and the future of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes region is in the midst of a seismic energy shakeup, from skyrocketing data centre demand and a nuclear energy boom, to expanding renewables and electrification. In 2026, the Great Lakes News Collaborative will explore how shifting supply and demand affect the region and its waters.

As a study in troubled operation, the Palisades Nuclear Plant once was ranked by the United States federal government as one of the four worst-performing nuclear power stations in the country. The 51-year-old facility closed in 2022, joining Big Rock Point near Charlevoix and 11 other nuclear plants decommissioned outside Michigan in what appeared to represent the sunset of the era of splitting atoms to produce electricity.

Not so fast. Sometime in the next few months, a New Jersey-based company called Holtec International is expected to finish renovating Palisades, fire up the old reactor and add 800 megawatts of generating capacity to Michigan’s electricity supply. It would be the first time a decommissioned nuclear plant has ever restarted in the United States. 

And that’s not the only game-changing nuclear development occurring at the Palisades site along the Lake Michigan shoreline in the state’s southwest corner. Holtec is busy seeking permission from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the United States’ licensing and safety agency, to start construction for a new 680-megawatt nuclear generating station next door to the old reactor. The company wants to power the new plant with not one but two 340-megawatt advanced small modular reactors.

So-called “SMRs” are now viewed by the industry, government, utilities and big energy consumers as one of the go-to electrical generating technologies of the 21st century. Holtec’s planned Pioneer I and II small reactors, and its Palisades reactor restart, signal the opening of a new era of electrical supply and demand in the Great Lakes basin. 

Holtec’s commitment to nuclear power, like other developers in the U.S. nuclear sector, is motivated by several converging and unconfirmed projections that are prompting billions of dollars in investment. By far the most important are that the cost of building nuclear plants will fall, and that demand for electricity will significantly increase. Nuclear developers and utility executives have embraced both optimistic scenarios, especially that electrical demand could increase as much as 50 per cent by mid-century, driven by data centre construction, new manufacturing plants, growing cities and electrified transportation. Both of Holtec’s projects in Michigan, and several more developments by other companies in Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois and Ontario, are giving nuclear power new purchase in the region’s energy landscape.

One of the most influential supporters is Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who is positioning Michigan at the lead of the nuclear revival era. She declared in a statement that opening Palisades and adding the small modular reactor plant “will lower energy costs, reaffirm Michigan’s clean energy leadership and show the world that we are the best place to do business.” 

Whitmer signed legislation in 2023 mandating that 100 per cent of the state’s electricity come from “clean power” sources, among them nuclear energy. Michigan awarded Holtec US$300 million to restart Palisades, a portion of the public funding package that included US$1.52 billion in loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy. The Energy Department also awarded Holtec US$400 million more to develop the new SMR plant.

A study of small modular reactor development by the Department of Energy in 2023 found that construction costs for the first plants, like the one Holtec is planning, will be high because of limits on the supply chain providing parts, construction experience and unknown interest rates for financing. At current estimates of SMR construction costs of US$12 million to $15 million per megawatt, Holtec’s 680-megawatt plant could be put into operation at a cost of US$7 billion to $10 billion.

Michigan’s bid to stimulate new markets for nuclear energy, moreover, are still dogged by old concerns about safety, waste management and the cost of construction and operation. Three public interest groups filed a federal lawsuit in November asserting that opening the old Palisades reactor was illegal and unsafe. The case is pending in Federal District Court in Grand Rapids.

Safety, cost and waste addressed

By any measure, managing high-level radioactive waste from commercial reactors has not changed much in the last half century and persists as an issue because no permanent waste repository has been established in the U.S. But other considerations of the risks, benefits and cost of nuclear power are tilting in new directions, especially for SMR plants like the one Holtec is proposing in Michigan. 

Small modular reactor developers make a consistent case for proceeding with the new technology.

Water consumption looks to be an environmental advantage, particularly in water-abundant regions like the Great Lakes. Holtec’s environmental statement filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reports that the two reactors will draw 95,000 litres a minute for operation — as much as 135 million litres a day. At that rate the new plant, which is 15 per cent smaller than the existing Palisades plant, will withdraw 75 per cent less water. 

Because of its more compact 50-hectare footprint, the new Holtec plant would easily fit onto the 175-hectare site that already encompasses the existing reactor. It will transmit electricity with the existing powerlines and infrastructure. And like other commercial reactors, small modular reactors don’t discharge climate-warming gases, a big factor in why nuclear power has gained considerably more support in public polling in recent years.

When it comes to operational safety, Holtec and other SMR plant developers say their designs also answer that concern. The advanced modular reactors are smaller and contain less fuel, produce lower levels of radiation and can operate at a lower temperature and pressure than big conventional reactors. Those properties enable engineers to design a reactor that can be cooled with water or air, and can be shut down with gravity-fed systems that don’t rely on mechanical pumps. 

“When it comes to safety the question is, ‘How do I keep this cool?’ ” Brendan Kochunas, associate professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Michigan, said. “And that comes back to the amount of fuel that you have in the core. SMRs have smaller cores. There’s less heat being produced so you need to remove less heat.”

Industry executives assert that because the reactors are smaller than conventional 1,000-megawatt plants, they will require fewer construction materials, take fewer years to build and be less expensive to operate. Industry executives say their goal is to standardize designs so that parts can be manufactured and new reactors can be assembled and shipped on trucks or by rail. And because SMR plants have multiple reactors, one can be shut down for maintenance while the others continue operating. 

“In discussions we’ve had about small modular reactors, there may be lower upfront costs and potentially faster deployment because you don’t have quite as much concrete,” Scott Burnell, the spokesperson for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said in an interview. “And once you get into operation, the concept is you’ve got several small reactors running. If you bring one down for maintenance, you still have others running, generating profit.”

Race for orders

Holtec is competing with 30 other small modular reactor developers in the U.S. to be among the first to bring its reactor to market. Patrick O’Brien, the Holtec spokesperson, explained that the company has spent 15 years designing the SMR-300, preparing architectural plans for the generating station and keeping the regulatory commission informed of its activities. Though the SMR-300 has not received an operating licence, O’Brien said Holtec is confident it will be approved and the plant would be operating in 2032. “A lot of the work was done up front,” he said. “We’re anticipating two and a half more years’ worth of licensing work from the [Nuclear Regulatory Commission]. And two and a half years of construction.”

That’s an optimistic schedule for new nuclear plants. NuScale, an SMR designer based in Oregon, licensed its first 66-megawatt reactor with the regulatory commission in 2023. It has yet to build a new plant. NuScale’s first project to install seven small modular reactors at a 462-megawatt plant in Idaho collapsed after construction cost estimates increased from under US$4 billion to more than $9 billion. 

The NuScale experience reveals that uncontrolled costs are a primary impediment not just for big traditional reactors but also to SMR development. Small modular reactors don’t exist in North America or Europe, and just three operate in the world — two 35-megawatt reactors operating on a ship in Russia and a third 125-megawatt small modular reactor in China. “One always has to remember that these are experimental technologies,” Joseph Romm, a physicist and senior research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, said. “Both the Russian and Chinese reactors had huge cost overruns.”

According to an important study published last year by the University of Michigan, small modular reactors also may produce new environmental risks that could attract more review. Small reactors, for instance, have the potential to introduce new and unregulated byproducts and increased levels of radioactivity due to the demand for highly enriched uranium fuel, according to the report, The Reactor Around The Corner.

Another likely environmental risk is deploying small reactors to power big industrial projects in the world’s wild and undeveloped places. Small modular reactors pack a lot of energy into a small and portable power source, said the report’s authors, who projected that the small reactors will enable construction of big mines and industrial plants in terrain that has been too expensive to reach or entirely inaccessible. “SMRs will introduce and exacerbate direct and indirect environmental harms, especially on marginalized communities, that complicate the justification for using them to mitigate climate change,” they wrote.

Midwest familiarity with atomic technology

To date, elected leaders and residents in Michigan and the other Great Lakes states have responded to the opening of a new era of nuclear development with much more enthusiasm than alarm. That may be due principally to the region’s pioneering role in fostering atomic energy. The first nuclear chain reaction occurred at the University of Chicago in 1942. Argonne National Laboratory opened in Illinois in 1946 to serve as the centre of atomic research and technology development. The Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania opened in 1957 as the first commercial nuclear generating station.

Not since the height of commercial nuclear energy construction in the 1960s and 1970s have Great Lakes states seen such a concentration of new nuclear projects either underway or planned. The Palisades restart would push the number of operating nuclear reactors in the eight states to 24, second only to the more than 30 big reactors operating in the six southeast states.

More big reactors could be on the way. DTE Energy notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last year that it is actively studying the development of a new reactor at its Fermi Nuclear Generating Station south of Detroit along Lake Erie. 

Small modular reactor plants, too, are attracting attention in the Great Lakes basin. Ontario Power Generation is constructing a 1,200-megawatt plant, composed of four 300-megawatt SMRs, at its Darlington Nuclear Generating Station along the shore of Lake Ontario. It could be the first operating commercial SMR plant in North America. 

Utah-based EnergySolutions is proposing to build “new nuclear generation” along the Lake Michigan shoreline in Wisconsin at the Kewaunee Power Station, which closed operation in 2013. Oklo Inc., a California company, is proposing a small modular reactor in Portsmouth, Ohio, where a closed federal plant once enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. The University of Illinois notified the regulatory commission that it is developing a gas-cooled SMR research reactor at its campus in Champaign-Urbana. 

The surge of interest is the second time this century that utilities, government and investors have tried to revive nuclear power in the U.S., and is driven by many of the same factors. One is federal policy to promote nuclear projects. The second is a tide of government financing that can be traced back to 2021 when then-president Joe Biden signed the US$1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that directed US$8 billion to nuclear energy. Three years later, Biden signed the ADVANCE Act to make it easier and less expensive for nuclear plant developers to license their designs with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

President Donald Trump also supports nuclear energy. He signed four executive orders in 2025 to accelerate the deployment and integration of advanced nuclear reactor technologies, and directed federal agencies to take aggressive action to build a nuclear production industry to mine and enrich uranium and construct manufacturing plants to fabricate fuel, reactors and parts. Earlier this month, the Department of Energy exempted small modular reactors from National Environmental Policy Act review. 

Westinghouse late last year signed an agreement with the U.S. government to build ten 1,000-megawatt reactors in the U.S. That agreement is tied to the pact that Trump reached with Japan last October to finance US$332 billion “to support critical energy infrastructure in the United States,” including the construction of ten Westinghouse AP1000 reactors and small modular reactors. The president also wants to develop the capacity to recycle nuclear fuel to reduce highly radioactive waste. 

Trump’s goal is to quadruple electrical generation capacity from nuclear power from 97 gigawatts today, powered by 94 operating reactors, to 400 gigawatts by 2050.

In the last five years, Congress has enacted more than US$20 billion in direct appropriations for nuclear energy programs, along with tax credits and federal loan authority that add billions more in federal support for existing and advanced reactors. 

U.S. technology giants like Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft also are getting involved.

Company executives are establishing formal agreements with nuclear developers to build and buy power for their data centres. Meta, for instance, has an agreement with Oklo Inc. to build a proposed 1,200-megawatt small modular reactor plant in Ohio. The high-tech stalwarts also joined 14 major global banks and financial institutions, 140 nuclear industry companies and 31 countries in signing a pledge last year in Texas to support tripling global nuclear capacity by 2050.

Just marketing?

The big unknown is how much of this fervour is grounded in reality, and how much is hype and marketing. During the last attempt to revive nuclear energy in the U.S., from 2007 to 2010, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission counted over 20 nuclear plant proposals to review. But the heat of atomic hope quickly cooled as fracking started to produce ample supplies of natural gas, and much less expensive wind and solar power was gaining momentum. Just two new reactors that started construction during that period actually got built and began operating at Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle. It took the utility 15 years to finish the project in 2024 at a cost of more than US$30 billion. 

“Some vendors are overselling the vision,” Kochunas of the University of Michigan said. “I hope we do see some SMRs. They still have challenges in their economics. For it to succeed, one of these companies is going to need to establish a pretty substantial order book.” 

Could that be Holtec? 

“Yes,” Kochunas said. “I think they’ll get that built in Michigan. If they execute the project successfully, they will have opportunities to build more of them. Hopefully, you’ll see people lining up to get them. But if the execution of the project goes poorly and there’s significant delays and cost overruns and problems, it’s going to be hard to change that first impression.”

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