Gail Krantzberg spent decades working on Great Lakes policy and protection — years before this whirlwind year of politics on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border crept into the ways the lakes are protected. 

In Canada, U.S. President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade war has seen federal and provincial legislation introduced in the name of national sovereignty, with major implications for the land, water and air. Now, Trump has given Lake Ontario a new name — at least for the purposes of the U.S. federal government and a couple online mapping services — like Google — that (controversially) followed suit. 

But changing the name doesn’t change the international boundary running through the lake. Nor does the executive order change the agreements and institutions developed by Canada and the United States to manage their shared waters, Krantzberg said.

Krantzberg, now a McMaster University professor, previously served as director of the Great Lakes regional office under the International Joint Commission, an independent organization established by the two countries more than a century ago to resolve disputes over transboundary waters.

Lake Ontario’s name dates back to the 17th century and comes from the Wendat word Ontarïio’, which means the lake is beautiful and great. It’s a part of the Great Lakes system where pollution, invasive species and the effects of a changing climate don’t stop at an international boundary. Protecting the lakes has long depended on governments, scientists and communities on both sides of the border working together.

The framework for that co-operation dates back to the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty. The treaty set out how the U.S. and Canada would manage shared waters, including the Great Lakes.

That co-operation expanded in the 1970s as serious pollution problems emerged in Lake Erie. High levels of phosphorus contributed to major algae growth and fish deaths, prompting Canada and the United States to sign the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement in 1972. The agreement was updated in 1978, 1987 and again in 2012. It sets shared priorities for protecting the lakes, including controlling invasive species, reducing agricultural pollution or responding to the effects of climate change.

Amidst everything else going on, many people are questioning what, if anything, Lake Ontario’s name change actually means for the Great Lake and the many transboundary efforts to protect it. Here’s what Krantzberg had to say.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What are your biggest concerns about Lake Ontario right now, in light of the Trump administration changing its name — particularly when it comes to environmental protection and governance?

The name change is, in a way, a distraction from what’s actually happening to the lake. So we start worrying about the name change, and how he can do that and about hundreds of years of history of native naming of Ontario. There’s all this conversation, but it steers the conversation away from what Trump is actually doing for Ontario and all the Great Lakes. 

He’s pro-deregulation. Air emissions from coal-fired utilities, for example, continue to put out more mercury, and that mercury gets into the Great Lakes, the fish and the wildlife or humans that consume them. 

The pushback on banning and phasing out of very persistent chemicals like perfluorinated chemicals or PFASs — some people call them forever chemicals. These things will last in the Great Lakes for centuries, they basically do not break down. They have very detrimental effects on the health of humans as well as wildlife.

The cutting of monitoring — atmospheric monitoring, surveillance monitoring for weather forecasting and climate change modelling — puts not just our understanding of how the lakes are going to behave, but actually shipping at risk. We need to be able to forecast severe weather events so that cities can protect their drinking water for their people and shipping can be protected. 

The cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are really very, very serious. In fact, its Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory was cut by about 35 per cent. You lose the capacity to monitor and understand the lakes, and if you can’t understand the lakes, you can’t protect the lakes.

Beyond changing the name on U.S. maps and federal documents, does this have any practical effect on jurisdiction over Lake Ontario?

No. The only thing that that rename applies to is U.S. federal agencies and institutions. Of course, Trump has managed to get Google and Amazon and others to change their map online. If you go into the map online in the states, you’ll see Lake America. If you go to Canada, you’ll see Lake Ontario. If you go internationally, you’ll see both. 

But frankly, it’s the same body of water and it’s governed the same way. The states do not have to pay attention to it. In fact, we’ve heard the New York State governor say it’s Lake Ontario. Our prime minister and our premier said it’s Lake Ontario and it will always be Lake Ontario. 

In the states, certain federal administrations have to abide by the president’s order. It only applies to their name of Lake America. We don’t know yet, but it should not apply to how it’s managed or the nature of the challenges and threats to the lake.

Does either country have the legal ability to unilaterally assert greater control or jurisdiction over Lake Ontario? If so, what are the limits?

There is no way. Any control is only in terms of control of levels and flows of the lakes. So we can control the levels and flows just to protect commerce, people and ecosystems. For various reasons, we need to control levels and flows and that responsibility lies with the International Joint Commission. It is not driven by a desire by Canada or the United States to do one thing or another.

That said, nobody, no one really controls the lakes. That’s a massive piece of water — you can’t control that. What you can do is make it better or worse on your side of the border. And what we’re worried about right now is that it’s going to get worse on the U.S. side of the border, which means since the water goes all through the system, it will get worse on the Canadian side. One country cannot protect without the other country protecting.

Could a move like this affect the long-standing system of collaboration and shared management between Canada and the United States?

The name of the lake is only about how Trump and Ford don’t like each other, and so Trump said, ‘You know what, bully Mr. Ford. I’m not going to call it Ontario because I don’t like Ontario, so I’m going to call it America.’ That’s all that that is. 

This whole thing about American federal scientists in the United States having a censor happened well over a year ago. I remember getting invited to a conference where this particular invitation said, ‘If you are U.S. federal scientists, check with your administration whether you can attend because this is an international gathering.’ So that was a warning. It’s an international gathering. You may not be able to come and share your knowledge because you’ve been told you’re not supposed to share. 

Now, I don’t know what the rationale is behind that because we’ve always shared information. We’ve always shared science. In fact, when we monitor the Great Lakes, we coordinate surveillance and monitoring. A lot of that monitoring data is now not available to a lot of Canadian scientists who collaborated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on hydrological modelling to understand climate change in the Great Lakes.

I believe co-operation on both sides of the border will continue. And I’ll say this because we have the Conference of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Governors and Premiers. They are motivated to work together as a unit, regardless of country. The Great Lakes are a precious resource for their economy, for their social well-being, for their culture and for their people. They continually work on projects and programs to build, strengthen and protect the economy of the Great Lakes region, which is a multitrillion-dollar economy.

That co-operation and collaboration at the governor level is happening. At the mayor’s level, it’s happening. The Great Lakes St. Lawrence Cities Initiative has more than 400 mayors from both sides of the border. They’re passing resolutions on what they will do collectively to protect the waters of the Great Lakes for their shared benefits. 

The only collaboration that will be paused — and I think that’s the right word — is collaboration with U.S. federal scientists. But there are a lot of other scientists in the U.S. that collaborate with Canadian scientists, and that continues. 

But the overall collaboration, we’ve seen before. We saw when Trump came in and wanted to destroy, zero out funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which is a $300-million or so initiative to restore degraded areas around the Great Lakes. The governors said no way. The governor stopped them. It didn’t matter if they were Democrat or Republican. They said that’s jobs, that’s the environment, that creates wealth, that creates beauty in our waterfronts, that increases property values, that’s tax revenue. Like, hands off. This is not frivolous tree-hugging stuff. This is restoration of waters and of well being, and they stopped that.

Do you feel there has been a gap in coverage or public understanding of what this name change actually means for Lake Ontario?

There’s a lot of anger. There’s some people who laugh. You can call it what you want. It’s still Lake Ontario. 

But I would hope that the focus is on how we all work to ensure the lake stays protected. How do we ensure we do what we can, even as individuals, to do our part to be stewards for the lakes?

One of the messages that I’m hoping will come out of all of this is let’s not get distracted by a name change that will eventually be reversed anyway. Once Trump is gone, it’s not going to stick. That’s my prediction. I could be wrong. Let’s not get distracted by a political jockeying of position and power mongering. Let’s focus on what’s important, and that is the health of the Great Lakes.

Rajpreet Sahota is a community and policy reporting fellow. Her position is funded in part by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, the foundation has no editorial input.

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Aquatic global change ecologist Mary Jade (MJ) Farruggia found herself studying the impact of wildfires on lakes by accident. She was researching lakes in the mountains of California in the summer of 2020 when, in “a tragic turn of events,” wildfires swept through the area, smoke clouded the sky and her plans quickly changed.

“Wildfires are becoming more intense and more frequent, and so it just became a phenomenon that was getting harder and harder to ignore,” Farruggia, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder, told The Narwhal over the phone. “As lake scientists, we started wondering, ‘what’s the impact of this on the systems that we study?’ ”

Canada is home to two million lakes, more than any other country. And the last three wildfire seasons have been among the worst on record here, making research like Farruggia’s critical.

A record-breaking season in 2023 saw 15 million hectares of forest burned across Canada. The land hasn’t had much reprieve since. This year more than 4,700 fires burned more than four million hectares across the country by the end of August — many in Ontario.

“We as humans feel the impacts of [wildfire smoke],” Farruggia said. “If it’s affecting your own health, how is it also affecting your ecosystems and the nature around you and the systems that you rely on? Is your favourite lake going to be similarly impacted by smoke?”

‘Almost all’ North American lakes are exposed to wildfire smoke: researchers

Some of the direct impacts of wildfires on ecosystems are straightforward; as fires burn near lakes, they increase future flood risk, as plants that stabilize soil and filter runoff go up in smoke. Ash deposits contaminants and excess nutrients into the water, changing the makeup of watersheds.

For each lake and fire, the full impact depends on a slew of variables, including “the number of wildfires, their intensity, their location, the health of the ecosystem before the fire and even how much rain falls following a fire,” Terri-Lee Reid, a freshwater conservation researcher at the Canadian Wildlife Federation, said.

Less clear is how lake ecosystems far away from fires are being impacted as smoke travels, and Reid says there’s still more to learn. But, the science is much newer, and scientists like Farruggia and her colleagues spend their time designing and performing experiments to figure it out.

“Sometimes we get these summers where it feels like much of North America is covered in smoke,” said Steven Sadro, an associate professor of environmental science and policy at the University of California, Davis. He is also Farruggia’s co-author and former advisor. “This is smoke that’s affecting millions of lakes at continental scales.”

Sadro and Farruggia coined the term “lake-smoke day,” which provides a metric referring to the number of days a lake is exposed to smoke in a fire season. They found wildfire smoke can drift hundreds of miles away from its source, making its impact widespread.

“We found a pretty shocking response … that almost all lakes in North America experience some number of smoke exposure days,” Sadro said, adding that many of them were experiencing a full month or more over the course of a year.

“Smoke in the atmosphere can reduce the amount of sunlight that can reach the lake, and that can impact water temperature. It can impact the growth of algae and aquatic plants, and then that can have further consequences,” Reid said.

Their research suggests that smoke blocks sunlight from reaching lakes, lowering lake temperatures and reducing photosynthesis and respiration in the body of water. 

What happens next is harder to predict. A lake’s depth, clarity, size, location and nutrient levels all influence how it responds to smoke. Larger lakes can be more resilient while smaller, clearer lakes can experience more algae growth due to the new nutrient deposits.

“The jury is really out on the magnitude of the impact. I’m not trying to say that millions of lakes in North America are having very large impacts from wildfire smoke. Some of them certainly may be,” Sadro said. “We don’t know what those numbers are yet.”

‘When the land’s not healthy, the lakes aren’t healthy either’

While researchers work to untangle those relationships, Amy Cardinal Christianson, director of fire stewardship for the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, says Indigenous Knowledge has long recognized the interconnection between fire, water and land.

She pointed to historical examples along the west coast where Indigenous communities have been aware of the cooling effect of smoke on waterways that western science has also recently ventured into. For example in California, when it was too hot for salmon to spawn, Cardinal Christianson said cultural burns would be used to help create a layer of smoke over the water to cool it and help the fish.

But while fire can be used beneficially, it can also cause harm to waterways.

“People often think of [a] lake as its own ecosystem, which it is, but it’s really tied into everything that’s around it,” Cardinal Christianson said. “When the land’s not healthy, the lakes aren’t healthy either.”

She explained that, instead of having separate plans for forest management, watershed management and more, “we need to start looking at things much more holistically.”

“For Indigenous people, our teachings are that everything is interconnected and related. So when these fires are happening, one of the big concerns for us is the impacts on water,” Cardinal Christianson said. “It’s a constant worry in the back of my head, just like, what [are] going to be the long-term effects to the water that we rely on?”

The challenges of studying how wildfires affect lakes

Farruggia is part of a working group of 30 American and Canadian scientists looking for answers. The group includes Scott Higgins, senior research scientist with the International Institute for Sustainable Development Experimental Lakes Area — a natural freshwater laboratory spanning almost 60 lakes in Kenora in northwestern Ontario.

“We work in the field and we certainly notice, especially during those intensive fire years, the smog and the ash clouds that drift over our site,” Higgins said. The boreal forest that spans Canada, including around Kenora, is sometimes referred to as a “fire forest” because its ecosystems are both flammable, and reliant on fire to help remove insects, disease and aged trees, allowing for new life to emerge.

“This is a really lake-intensive part of Canada,” Higgins said. “When the boreal forest burns, undoubtedly lakes are directly impacted.”

But while interest in researching the impacts of wildfires on lakes has been increasing as fire seasons become longer and more intense, he said the science is still in its infancy.

One problem, he said, is that, “it’s tough to do experiments on actual wildfires.”

It is often difficult for researchers to get into an area quickly after a fire to study the immediate impacts. Even if they can, there often isn’t data from before the fire to compare it to. To try to counteract this and build a better understanding, Higgins said, his team is planning to use the extensive, long-term data collected at the Experimental Lakes Area to its benefit, including adding wildfire ash directly into a lake to study the outcome, and to work with Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources to use a prescribed burn for study. 

“We’ll be able to put some pretty good numbers on how important these fires are to nutrient cycles and to metal cycles and to what they mean for biota,” or the animals and plants living in that environment, Higgins said. “I think science is going to be able to provide in the next five to 10 years for sure.”

In the meantime, Farruggia said the early evidence offers reason to be hopeful — even in sensitive, smaller and more remote lakes. 

“Lakes are actually very resilient systems. Even though we see there’s lots of sensitivity, especially in smaller, lower nutrient lakes, we have seen that they recover pretty quickly so far,” Farruggia said. “Lake resilience is something that I think could be celebrated.”

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Yvonne Zawada leads us down a long hallway where pipes and electrical conduits snake their way along walls.

We’re deep in the guts of the Lemieux Island Water Purification Plant, on the eponymous island in the middle of the Ottawa River.

“It’s a little bit like a maze,” plant manager Zawada says as we emerge into a high-ceilinged room filled with industrial-sized pumps, generators and other equipment.

She crouches next to one of the screens used to remove debris like branches and leaves, and opens up a service panel. Inside, the raw river water smells musty.

“What we pull in is this tea-like coloured water,” she says. It’s an apt comparison: the colour comes from organic materials like decomposing plant matter, which release tannins into the water just like tea leaves.

But in drinking water, it’s one of the many components that need to be screened out, filtered and disinfected before it can be sent through roughly 3,000 kilometres of distribution pipes.

Along with the Britannia plant in the west end of the city, Lemieux Island treats most of the 275 million litres of drinking water that close to a million Ottawans consume each day. (For residents in outlying communities, the city also has six groundwater well systems that are treated separately.)

What comes out of most Ottawans’ taps originates in the Ottawa River’s drainage basin, a huge, mostly forested landscape that stretches across 146,300 square kilometres of Quebec and Ontario. It covers roughly as much area as the Atlantic provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

The river draws on a dense network of tributaries and many wetlands that act as natural filters.

Because the Lemieux Island and Britannia plants draw directly from the Ottawa River, their operations rely on governments safeguarding that source water — not only by continuing to carry out rigorous treatment and testing, but also by protecting the watershed.

Those protections could be threatened, critics say, by recent federal legislation that would shift the way environmental projects are assessed, along with a provincial government push to speed up development by overhauling the system for managing watersheds.

Access to clean water is not equal across Canada

If you live in a big Canadian city, it’s easy to take the clean drinking water that flows from your taps for granted.

But as of Sept. 10, the federal government is still tracking 38 active long-term drinking water advisories on First Nations reserves across the provinces, except for in British Columbia where figures are tracked separately. As of Aug. 31, there were a total of 30 long-term drinking water advisories in effect across B.C.

In 2015, then-prime minister Justin Trudeau promised to end drinking water advisories on First Nations reserves within five years (although he was excluding B.C. First Nations when he made that promise.)

The Trudeau government admitted in 2020 that, although it had lifted close to 100 advisories by then, it would still miss its target.

Under Prime Minister Mark Carney, the government has refused to commit to a new deadline for ending drinking water advisories, although it says it is still working towards lifting them. In December 2025, the Federal Court found Canada has a certain duty to First Nations to take reasonable measures to provide them with safe drinking water, and in June, the government unveiled new legislation it said would help “unlock” funding for communities to tackle their drinking water issues properly.

That bill is currently sitting at the beginning of the process for getting legislation passed in Canada, so the government will have to move it forward before it can become law.

Straight to the source of Ottawa’s drinking water

Even where there is purportedly clean drinking water, crises do occur. In 2000, in the southern Ontario town of Walkerton, seven people died and roughly 2,300 people became sick after farm manure contaminated a well. The fallout from the crisis led to the creation of committees that oversee the sources of drinking water in Ontario, called source protection committees.

Ottawa has its own history of ignoring waterborne health threats, to tragic results, and it’s one of the reasons the Lemieux Island plant exists.

For much of its existence in the 19th and 20th centuries the national capital region, which includes Ottawa on the south side of the river and Gatineau on the north side in Quebec, has dealt with successive public health concerns over sanitation.

There was pollution from sawmills during the timber trade, and even raw sewage dumped into the river as the local population began to climb, leading to waves of typhoid fever in the early 20th century.

For years, the poorer districts of the town dealt with typhoid-related deaths that were effectively ignored, even though health officials would have known by then that chlorine could be used as a disinfectant, according to a column by James Powell, a director of the Historical Society of Ottawa.

A typhoid epidemic between 1911 and 1912 killed 185 people in Ottawa, with thousands of other cases reported, Powell wrote.

Construction on the Lemieux Island Water Purification Plant began in 1928 and the plant opened in 1932. Standing in the marble-clad main hallway, Zawada said the city “built this plant in response to public health concerns.” It received a heritage designation in 2024.

The capital region continued to deal with contamination, from industrial activity as well as sewage. Ottawa opened a wastewater treatment plant in 1962 that continues to operate today as well as a sewage overflow tunnel in 2020.

While the water quality is much better than it was in the decades past, there are still issues and threats to that source water.

For one, there are the more simple challenges, like those brought on by Ottawa’s infamous winters, when slush and tiny ice particles called frazil ice can build up on the metal surfaces of the intake at Lemieux Island, Zawada said.

“If you go to Dairy Queen and get a slushie, that’s kind of what it is,” she said. “We call them slush puppies, or slush pods, because they float on the water and they can plug up our screens.”

Then there are the more complicated threats. In early 2026, for example, the federal government fined a Quebec company $1.35 million under the Fisheries Act for discharging sodium chlorite, which is harmful to fish, from its chemical manufacturing plant into the Lièvre River, which drains into the Ottawa River.

Ottawa Riverkeeper, a charitable organization, says other threats, spanning from municipal and agricultural runoff to the destruction of wetlands, alterations to the river from its many dams and other human impacts like boating, are also applying pressure on the watershed.

Another issue is climate change: more than 6,000 people reported flooded basements after intense summer rainstorms in July and August overwhelmed drainage systems. July was the rainiest month in Ottawa’s history.

Federal climate scientists have concluded that heavy rains and flash floods will become more frequent and more severe in Canada due to climate change.

City officials say that, while the drainage systems “could not move water away quickly enough,” drinking water services themselves remained operational.

Providing clean drinking water also doesn’t end at the plant. A recent Canadian Environmental Law Association report found a few schools in Ottawa have high levels of lead in their drinking water.

No matter how pure the water is coming out of a treatment plant, it can still pick up contaminants, for example if it runs through pipes in older buildings that aren’t flushed properly or tested regularly.

Aside from being treated, how is water protected in Canada?

Health Canada sets out thresholds for concentrations of certain substances in water, like lead or mercury, drinking water is ultimately regulated by the provinces.

In Ontario, that’s seen its share of changes.

For one, the Ford government is moving ahead with amalgamating the conservation authorities tasked with protecting watersheds, from 36 organizations into nine regional authorities.

That shift, which becomes official in February 2027, has raised concerns among staff at authorities and the source protection committees that work closely with them. The province has said it’s not making any “fundamental” changes to source protection committees.

The federal government is also proposing changes to environmental oversight through new legislation, Bill C-39.

Among many changes, the bill proposes to force all projects subject to federal reviews to be approved or rejected within one year. That would mean all environmental and other analyses would be carried out over a matter of months.

Standing in front of a map of the watershed, Zawada argues there’s limited development that affects the water quality of the Ottawa River. “It has very little impact because of the region that it covers being forested,” she said.

The environmental advocacy group Centre québécois du droit de l’environnement has warned this timeline won’t work for large-scale projects that can often involve complex risks to watersheds, as well as to other factors like wildlife.

These risks can require long-term studies, and their complexity demands meaningful consultations with First Nations and significant public input, they said.

After the federal government proposed a series of similar changes for environmental assessments in a discussion paper back in May, Ottawa Riverkeeper said it could “significantly weaken environmental protections.”

To keep drinking water safe, it takes environmental protections for watersheds, health and safety rules and diligent 24/7 testing and monitoring — like the more than 100,000 water quality tests each year done by the City of Ottawa.

“We have some of the best water around the globe, because of our source water and the process that we use,” Zawada says. “Our water is very safe.”

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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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A small town on northwestern Ontario’s border with the U.S. is quietly preparing for a worst-case scenario. It’s one that could mean a dramatic change for the community’s water supply.

Fort Frances, home to about 7,500 people, sits where Rainy Lake empties into the Rainy River and flows north into Lake of the Woods. Fort Frances’ drinking water comes from Rainy Lake, which is bisected by the Canada-U.S. border — and vulnerable to the whims of either country’s leadership. So is the town’s economy, which relies on fishing and tourism, as well as the rhythms of a border community built around the water.

Now, tensions between the U.S. and Canada threaten those rhythms. This spring, U.S. President Donald Trump took aim at a moratorium on mining in Rainy River’s watershed, and its waters that flow past Fort Frances and numerous First Nations communities around it. Last month, tensions ratcheted up, as Trump signed an order renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America” amid an escalating trade dispute.

The watershed that surrounds Fort Frances is called Rainy-Lake of the Woods, and it straddles both sides of the border west of Lake Superior. About 450,000 hectares of protected forest, rivers and interconnected lakes on the U.S. side is known as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, or colloquially, the Boundary Waters. In 2023, the Biden administration protected roughly 91,000 hectares of Superior National Forest just outside the Boundary Waters from mining for 20 years, citing the risk such development posed to the surrounding waters.

Mined copper-sulfide ore is processed to extract metals used in electrical wiring, electronics and rechargeable batteries. But when that ore is exposed to air and water, it can add sulfuric acid and heavy metals into nearby waters. When dissolved in water, that sulfuric acid breaks down into sulfate, which is toxic to wild rice, a plant central to Anishinaabe diet and culture — Minnesota has regulated sulfate in wild rice waters since 1973 for that reason. Sulfate also feeds the bacteria that convert otherwise harmless inorganic mercury into methylmercury, a neurotoxin that accumulates in fish and, through them, the people who eat them. 

But in April 2026, U.S. Congress reversed the protection for the stretch of Superior National Forest outside the Boundary Waters. The Senate voted 50 to 49 to lift the Biden administration’s moratorium that stood in the way of the Twin Metals mine, a project targeting copper, nickel and other metals, majority-owned by the Chilean mining conglomerate Antofagasta. 

President Trump signed the resolution into law in April.

In a statement to other media, Kathy Graul, director of public affairs and communications for Twin Metals Minnesota, said, “Any proposed project in this region, including Twin Metals, must undergo a yearslong, multi-agency regulatory review before earning permits to begin construction of a mine. The [Senate ruling] restores this process, and projects must prove they can meet the stringent environmental standards that have long been in place in Minnesota before moving forward.”

Back over the Canadian border, Fort Frances’ water treatment plant can handle natural fluctuations in the source water — but it wasn’t designed to handle the kind of contamination mining activity could potentially introduce, Travis Rob, the town’s manager of infrastructure and growth, told The Narwhal. Addressing that risk would mean either a costly overhaul of the plant’s treatment processes, or securing an entirely new water source, which would be “neither easy nor cheap,” Rob said. “This is what has me so concerned about the proposed mining activities.” 

He and his team have talked at length about what changes to watch for in the water that feeds the treatment plant and when the town would need to act, he said. But the stakes extend beyond Fort Frances itself. Couchiching First Nation and others also receive drinking water from the town’s treatment plant, Rob said. 

In August, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz issued a reprieve of sorts, signing an executive order directing state agencies to stop issuing leases or permits for copper, nickel and other non-iron ore mines on the U.S. side of the watershed, and to review all existing mineral leases in the area, including Twin Metals’. 

While this might hold up Twin Metals’ plans in part, the order is not immune to legal challenges from mining companies — or future actions of the Trump administration.

A smalltown mayor and First Nation’s chief seek support amid Trump’s mining push

The proposed Twin Metals mine sits at the headwaters of the Rainy-Lake of the Woods watershed.

The project has held leases in the area since the 1960s, under different owners proposing to mine copper, nickel, cobalt and platinum group metals from a deposit up to 1,300 metres below the surface, processing roughly 20,000 tons of ore a day for more than 25 years. 

According to the company, about half the waste rock, or tailings, would be stored underground; the rest would be dried out and kept above ground. Twin Metals says its processing “will remove most of the sulfide minerals,” meaning its tailings won’t result in acid drainage, and that the mine won’t discharge water used for that processing. Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, an advocacy groups opposed to the project, has argued the risk  of acid drainage from the project’s tailings remains based on other mines, and exploration work in the watershed.

That same watershed carries north past Fort Frances, through Treaty 3 territory, the traditional lands of 28 Anishinaabe First Nations in northwestern Ontario and southeastern Manitoba, and eventually to Hudson Bay.

Gakijiwanong Anishinaabe Nation — formerly Lac La Croix First Nation — condemned the reversal in an April statement, according to NWONewswatch, saying neither it nor affected U.S. tribes were given the chance to testify before Congress voted.

Chief Carrie Atatise-Norwegian of Gakijiwanong Anishinaabe Nation, whose territory borders both the Boundary Waters and Quetico Provincial Park, has framed the stakes even more starkly. “This decision threatens the lives of our people, water resources and our ancestral lands,” she told CBC in April, after the U.S. Congress lifted the moratorium. “As stewards of our lands, [we] will be asserting, exercising and protecting our rights, jurisdiction and sovereignty as a nation.”

By May, Atatise-Norwegian was in Washington, D.C. In Minnesota Senator Tina Smith’s office, she signed a memorandum of understanding with the chairs of three U.S. tribal nations: Red Lake, Grand Portage and Bois Forte. They agreed to present a unified cross-border position on protecting the Boundary Waters and treaty-protected homelands, according to Red Lake Nation News. Atatise-Norwegian did not respond to The Narwhal’s request for an interview. 

The concerns of Gakijiwanong Anishinaabe Nation are shared by many Treaty 3 nations in Ontario. “This is not just a local issue, it is a transboundary concern that directly affects our waters, our environment and our way of life,” Ogichidaa (Grand Chief) Francis Kavanaugh of Grand Council Treaty 3, which represents 28 First Nations across northwestern Ontario and southeastern Manitoba, said in an April statement.

The day after the U.S. Senate voted to lift the moratorium, Fort Frances Mayor Hallikas emailed the office of Marcus Powlowski, the Liberal MP for Thunder Bay-Rainy River, urging him to speak out, and to reach out to Minnesota politicians directly. Hallikas said he also raised the issue with provincial politicians a few weeks later at the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association’s conference in Thunder Bay, but was told it was a federal issue.

In May, the Rainy River District Municipal Association, of which Fort Frances is a member, wrote to Ontario Premier Doug Ford, aligning itself with Grand Council Treaty 3’s opposition to the mine. The letter states that sulfide-ore copper mining could cause “irreversible harm to water quality, wildlife, public health and a sustainable outdoor recreation-based economy.” It calls on “all levels of Canadian government” to engage with the U.S. and Minnesota on the issue.

“Any decision that could put [these waters] at risk is not solely a Minnesota matter,” Hallikas wrote in an email to The Narwhal. “It is an international and downstream concern that directly affects peoples in northwestern Ontario.”

He drew parallels to Grassy Narrows First Nation, where industrial mercury contamination, which can cause issues like tremors, cognitive effects and neuromuscular disorders, is one of the most consequential environmental health crises in Canadian history. 

“Northwestern Ontario understands the devastating consequences of mercury contamination,” he wrote. “That history demands vigilance, transparency and precaution.”

A binational board with no enforcement power, watching and waiting

In 1909, Canada and the U.S. signed the Boundary Waters Treaty, governing cross-border water disputes and creating the International Joint Commission to oversee exactly this kind of issue.

Merrell-Ann Phare, one of three Canadian commissioners, said the commission has no enforcement authority and no regulatory authority over water quality. Its role is to resolve disputes between nations, not enforce laws.

“We take great care to stay out of the domestic issues that are happening,” Phare said, so the commissions can preserve its neutrality for the moment a request to mediate comes in.

Only governments in Ottawa and Washington can jointly trigger that kind of review, known as a reference, under the treaty. Provinces, states and municipalities have no standing to request one directly, though Indigenous nations can be named partners.

The Ktunaxa Nation is a partner to a case in B.C.’s Elk Valley, where coal-mining pollution flows downstream into Montana and Idaho, causing unnaturally high selenium levels that have led to deformities in fish. It’s a problem the nation had raised for more than a decade before Ottawa and Washington formally asked the commission to step in, in March 2024.

That in itself is a point of concern for Johann Strube, an environmental sociologist who has studied water governance in northwestern Ontario, speaking in a personal capacity rather than as a spokesperson for Grand Council Treaty 3, where he is a natural resources policy analyst. The joint commission, he said, “was founded to advance the settler-colonial interests of Canada and the United States and explicitly excluded Indigenous nations from decision-making.”

The structure of the commission, Strube said, “still doesn’t involve Indigenous nations as nation-to-nation partners.”

Megan Garner is the Canadian co-chair of the International Rainy-Lake of the Woods Watershed Board, the regional organization that operates under the International Joint Commission.

She said the board is “aware of the termination of the mineral leasing moratorium … and is watching this issue closely.” The board is determining next steps, she said, and is committed to “balanced and representative input.” 

Garner later confirmed that, as of Aug. 19, the board “has not been in touch” with the Rainy River District Municipal Association or Gakijiwanong Anishinaabe Nation, and “has not requested input or information from any outside parties” on the mining issue, despite being aware, through its advisory groups, of a range of local perspectives.

A spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada, John Babcock, said, “Canada continues to work closely with the United States through existing bilateral mechanisms, including those established under the Boundary Waters Treaty, in support of our shared stewardship of transboundary waters.” He said they would continue to do this “as we take up the environmental challenges of the 21st century.”

Asked whether Canada had raised any new concerns with the U.S. administration specifically about the 2026 reversal, Babcock said in an emailed statement that the department continues “to monitor the ongoing developments in the region and to advocate that any increased mining activity be properly assessed and managed,” and that “the joint stewardship of the environment is a cornerstone of Canada-U.S. relations.”

Babcock did not respond to a follow-up question on whether or not Canada has requested the International Joint Commission review the issue of mine pollution leaching into the Rainy-Lake of the Woods watershed.

Canada’s caution here, Strube said, may have less to do with the technical question of jurisdiction than with the state of U.S.-Canada relations more broadly. Whether the Trump administration would feel bound by a 116-year-old water treaty, Strube said, is an open question.

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Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, which produces ten per cent of Ontario’s energy supply, will go fully offline next week.

Nicolle Butcher, president and CEO of Ontario Power Generation, told the gathering of investors, CEOs and politicians at Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Canada Investment Summit on Monday that the plant, which has operated for 50 years, “will come out of service next week and we’ll start its refurbishment.” Butcher said it would be off-grid for five to seven years. 

The shutdown was expected this fall, with plans to begin repairs early next year, pending regulatory approval. The refurbishment is expected to last until the mid-2030s, enabling the plant to provide enough energy to power more than two million homes for an additional 30 years. Ontario has had two other nuclear facilities undergoing similar repairs: the update at Darlington just wrapped up, while the one at Bruce Power is ongoing. 

In the interim, the province will maintain its electricity supply largely by relying on natural gas — a fossil fuel composed mainly of the greenhouse gas methane. This is not a surprise. In 2021, the Independent Electricity System Operator cited aging nuclear facilities coupled with increasing demand as driving an increase in gas generation in the province.

Not everyone thinks the Pickering project is worth it. “The real question that Ontarians should be asking is: does the refurbishment of this plant make any sense?” Keith Brooks, a program director with a focus on energy at the advocacy group Environmental Defence, told The Narwhal. “It’s going to be more expensive than the Darlington and Bruce refurbishments” — themselves years-long, multibillion-dollar projects already pushing rates higher — “and meanwhile, wind and solar and batteries have come of age and come so far down in cost that a cheap, clean energy future is within our grasp, if only we’d reach for it.”

The Narwhal sent questions to Ontario Power Generation, a Crown corporation of the province, and Energy Minister Stephen Lecce’s office. Neither provided answer by publication time. Lecce’s office has not answered emailed questions from The Narwhal or granted requests for interviews since he took on the role in June 2024.

Here’s what you need to know.

Why is Pickering Nuclear Generating Station shutting down?

Simply, because it’s very old. 

Located just east of Toronto, Pickering Nuclear Generating Station has already been operating for an extended lifetime. It was originally slated to close in the early 2020s. Instead, since taking office, the Doug Ford government has extended its life. The plant became increasingly vital in closing a tightening energy supply gap fuelled by a growing population, and more recently data centres and electric vehicles. 

In 2022, the Ford government announced it would push Pickering’s youngest four reactors — Units 5 through 8, known as Pickering B — to run through September 2026, while Units 1 through 4, known as Pickering A, were permanently shut down. 

In October 2024, following public hearings that drew submissions from Ontario Power Generation, experts from the the federal Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and 54 intervenors, the plant was granted a further extension until Dec. 31, 2026. Around the same time, the province instructed Ontario Power Generation to begin planning a full refurbishment of Pickering B, rather than let those four reactors retire.

How does the Pickering refurbishment fit into Ontario’s broader energy plans?

Pickering’s refurbishment isn’t happening in isolation — it’s one piece of a much larger provincial rebuild that touches all three of Ontario’s major nuclear sites. Darlington, outside Bowmanville, Ont., just wrapped up its own years-long refurbishment — “on time and under budget,” according to the government and Ontario Power Generation. At the investment conference panel, Butcher said such efficiency “is not usual for a nuclear project.”

Bruce Power, in Kincardine, Ont., is mid-refurbishment right now, with a timeline that overlaps Pickering.

Ontario is also pursuing new nuclear construction. The province is advancing Canada’s first small modular reactor project at Darlington, and is separately looking at building an entirely new nuclear site at Wesleyville. But the timelines on those projects fan out over the next two decades, with the first of four small modular reactors expected to come online in 2030.

Bruce Power has also proposed four large new reactors at its site, which would be Canada’s first large-scale nuclear build in more than 30 years. And the Ontario government has already agreed to share the costs of the impact assessment with the company.

How much will the Pickering refurbishment cost Ontario taxpayers?

The government has approved a $26.8-billion budget for the Pickering refurbishment — more than double the $12.8 billion spent rebuilding Darlington. The government and Ontario Power Generation attribute the higher cost to Pickering’s age, which demands a heavier rebuild, plus inflation.

For Ontarians, the cost will show up most directly on power bills. Last year, Ontario Power Generation filed an application with the provincial energy regulator, the Ontario Energy Board, to roughly double the cost of nuclear-generated electricity. If approved, the increase would add an average of $3.50 to monthly household bills each year for the next five years, according to the Crown corporation. 

These rising costs come with a tradeoff: nuclear’s size and dependability versus its cost. Brooks is right about renewables — the International Energy Agency says solar, especially, is growing faster than any other energy source globally, becoming cheaper and more effective. 

Yet while Ontario does have some renewable projects in the works, overall, the Independent Electricity System Operator projects renewables will make up roughly the same share of Ontario’s electricity mix 25 years from now as they do today. This reflects the province’s bet on nuclear, rather than renewables, as the backbone of its energy plan.

What will replace the power provided by the Pickering nuclear plant?

A combination of natural gas, battery storage and electricity imports.

There is no nuclear facility that can make up the shortfall from Pickering’s shutdown. Darlington already provides 20 per cent of Ontario’s energy supply and, according to figures from the Independent Electricity System Operator, it doesn’t have any additional capacity to make up for the loss of Pickering. Neither does Bruce during its refurbishment. 

So the province’s electricity operator has been putting callouts for more natural gas generation to maintain a reliable power grid.

Battery storage is also playing a growing role. The Oneida Energy Storage Project, a 250-megawatt facility near Six Nations of the Grand River that opened in 2025, doubled Ontario’s battery storage capacity to 475 megawatts on its own, and the province has procured close to 1,800 megawatts more storage across other projects, expected online by 2028. Battery projects are able to store excess power when demand is low and deploy it when demand is high, helping to balance out the grid and its power sources.

The operator has projected the Pickering retirement and refurbishment outages will make Ontario a net importer of power for the first time since 2005 — with imports largely coming from the United States, a complicated prospect amid a tariff war. The system operator expects that balance of trade to return to exports once the nuclear refurbishments wrap up in the 2030s.

What happens next?

Canada’s nuclear regulator told The Narwhal it will be holding the second half of a public hearing starting Oct. 6 to decide whether to renew Pickering’s operating licences — for both the power plant and its waste storage facility — for another 10 years, and whether to approve the planned refurbishment. The hearing will be in Ajax, Ont., and last a week. 

Once the hearing wraps up and the regulator has all the input it needs, it’ll issue a decision, typically within four months.

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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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When the heat becomes unbearable inside Nicole Darlaston’s Brampton apartment, her son would get into the shower — and stay there.

“He would spend hours in there just trying to be comfortable,” Darlaston says.

Darlaston has lived for about 14 years in a high-rise near Bramalea City Centre. The building has central cooling, she says, but it is often turned on late in the season and does little to make her apartment comfortable. On a good day, her unit might stay around 23 C. More often, she says, it reaches 28 C. She has recorded temperatures as high as 35 C, with high humidity.

Darlaston and her son both have asthma. She says the heat has aggravated their symptoms and reshaped their summers. She saves vacation time so she can leave the apartment during the hottest weeks, sometimes staying with family in northern Ontario.

Cooking adds more heat. Cleaning becomes exhausting. Even opening a window offers little relief when the building has been warming for days, she says.

“It just continues to build and build and build.”

Her son is 20 now, but Darlaston says he has been dealing with the heat since he was about six. And it didn’t always end when he left home.

“He had that problem in his schools as well,” she says.

For children who live and learn in hot buildings, there can be little opportunity for their bodies to cool down. Researchers have warned the effects can accumulate when children spend a hot day at school only to return to a home without adequate cooling.

As students return to classrooms across Peel Region this month and summer weather remains longer than it has in previous years, that raises a basic question: where does a child go when neither school nor home offers reliable relief from the heat?

Inside Peel’s overheated classrooms

Jill Promoli has seen that problem as both a parent and a Peel District School Board trustee representing wards six and 11 in Mississauga, which includes Mavis-Erindale, Creditview, Erindale, Meadowvale Village and Streetsville.

On hot days, she says, some of the classrooms she visits become unbearable, including her son’s.

One of those visits was to her son’s elementary-school portable classroom in Mississauga, which became too hot to use in May 2025, she says. Students from two portables were moved into the school library, the same room meant to serve as a cooling station for everyone else.

“When you are using the cooling station for two classrooms, then that cooling station becomes unavailable for the rest of the school. But if the rest of the school is also hot, then there’s no more space available to give kids that break either,” Promoli says.

Then came two days of extreme heat in June 2025. Promoli says she brought a thermometer with her as she visited the schools she represents, asking principals to show her their hottest classrooms.

“Some of the classrooms were getting up to 39 C, and that’s not manageable,” she says.

Her son still had to attend school for his Grade 5 graduation practice. When Promoli arrived to pick him up, the blinds were closed and the lights were off.

“It was still so hot in the cooling centre that the kids were literally lying on the floor with the lights off, and they were just doing nothing because it was so hot in there. This is not functional,” she says.

Promoli says she heard from other families whose children left school early, stayed home the following day or sought medical care after feeling sick during the heat.

Peel District School Board did not provide the requested breakdown of how many schools or classrooms are air conditioned, or respond to detailed questions from The Narwhal. On its website, the board says every school has a designated cooling station, while some older buildings do not have air conditioning at all. Hot weather measures can include opening windows and doors, using fans, closing blinds, turning off lights and other heat-producing equipment, rotating students and staff through cooler areas and reducing strenuous or outdoor activities.

Heat isn’t only uncomfortable

Children are among the people Peel Public Health considers particularly vulnerable to extreme heat.

Alexa Caturay, the region’s medical officer of health, says young bodies do not regulate temperature in the same way adult bodies do. Chronic respiratory and heart conditions can make it harder to cope with heat as well.

As exposure increases, what begins as discomfort and thirst can progress to dehydration, faintness, a rapid heartbeat and difficulty breathing. In more serious cases, people can become dehydrated enough to require hospital treatment, Caturay says.

Health Canada similarly warns that children with asthma, heart or kidney problems, disabilities, developmental disorders or who take certain medications can face greater risks in extreme heat. Warning signs can include dizziness, nausea, headache, changes in behaviour, rapid breathing or heartbeat and extreme thirst. Confusion, unconsciousness or a high body temperature accompanied by a loss of sweating can signal heat stroke — a medical emergency.

The effect can show up in the classroom in many ways.

A recent U.S. report from a network of school-climate researchers convened with the American Psychological Association found younger children acclimatize to heat more slowly and may be less able to recognize when they need water or should reduce physical activity. It also points to evidence connecting poorly cooled and ventilated schools with increased absences and poorer learning outcomes.

Studies cited in that report found classroom temperatures around 20 C to 23 C were associated with better cognitive performance, while hotter conditions reduced the speed and accuracy of cognitive tasks. Other research found students performed worse on standardized tests on hotter days, with air conditioning reducing some of that effect.

The Peel school board’s plan for heat is tied up in Ontario’s Education Ministry

What Promoli saw that June in her son’s classroom eventually pushed her to take the issue to the Peel District School Board.

Her original motion asked the board to work with Peel Public Health to establish an upper temperature threshold for extreme heat days. It pointed to the board’s existing response to extreme cold and noted that many classrooms in the Peel region lacked air conditioning or other ways to substantially lower the temperature.

Promoli says the goal was to know when a hot classroom crossed from uncomfortable to unsafe.

“If we are hitting a point where it’s no longer safe to be operating, we have to know what those numbers look like and what we should be doing to properly meet the needs of our staff and students,” she says.

In August 2025, they passed an amended motion directing the Peel District School Board to work with Peel Public Health on a plan for extreme heat days, but without the proposed temperature threshold. In general, the health unit’s role is to issue heat alerts to municipalities, hospitals, schools and school boards, which can then activate their own response plans.

Promoli says she has not been aware of updates on that work since the Ministry of Education took control of the board earlier this year. The Ontario ministries of Education and Health did not respond to requests for comment.

Trying to stay cool at home

Tanya Burkart hears the same dilemma repeatedly from renters.

Burkart, chair of the Brampton Centre chapter of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), says members report hot apartments, older inefficient buildings and landlords charging additional fees for air conditioning.

She pointed, in particular, to older rental buildings and says tenants can face another problem when upgrades finally happen: landlords may seek above-guideline rent increases to recover the cost of major work.

The association’s “beat the heat” campaign is pushing municipalities to require landlords to keep rental buildings at no more than 26 C and to help low-income tenants obtain air conditioners. It has also called for cooling rooms inside buildings, free transit to cooling locations on extreme heat days and more transparent tracking of heat-related illness.

At the provincial level, the group wants greater support for electricity costs and broader access to air conditioning.

Without those supports, Burkart says some renters are “being forced to either choose between air conditioning or paying the rent or putting food on the table.”

Yet, heat is already considered one of the top five climate-related health hazards affecting Peel residents, according to the region. The Public Health Agency of Canada says the largely urban region is particularly vulnerable to the urban heat island effect, with that risk shaped by factors such as income, housing, age and outdoor work.

Income can shape how much choice a family has when temperatures climb.

The U.S. schools report specifically notes lower-income families face extra hurdles including lacking air conditioning, nearby cooling spaces or flexible schedules that allow children to avoid the hottest parts of the day.

In Peel, the help available depends partly on where someone lives and what kind of housing they are in.

Unlike Toronto, which provides portable air conditioners to low-income pregnant residents and families with infants, the Peel Region does not provide direct financial assistance to buy air conditioners.

Peel Housing Corporation, which has 75 sites, operates cooling rooms during extreme heat in buildings that do not have central air conditioning and provides tenants with heat-safety information.

The City of Brampton says it has no current plan to provide free air conditioners to low-income residents either. During heat events, it directs residents toward public facilities such as its nine library branches and 27 community centres as well as its pools and splash pads.

In Mississauga, about 57 per cent of low-income children live in areas where additional investment in green space would improve equity, according to Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium data cited in a 2025 Canadian Environmental Law Association report.

At the July 29 council meeting, Mississauga council approved a motion brought forward by Ward 7 Coun. Dipika Damerla, which asked staff to look at more ways to protect residents of purpose-built rental apartments during hot weather. 

Mississauga council has directed staff to review its current adequate temperature by-law and consider stronger cooling protections for renters, including access to cooling devices, building retrofits and other heat-mitigation measures. Staff are also looking at requiring apartment buildings to provide accessible common cooling spaces kept at or below 26 C, with recommendations expected before next summer.

Currently, the city’s by-law requires landlords who provide air conditioning to maintain indoor temperatures at or below 26 C but buildings without air conditioning are not subject to a maximum indoor temperature requirement.

“We have to recognize that climate patterns have changed in southern GTA at least, and our summers are hotter than ever before. Traditionally, we’ve built our homes and our condos and our apartment buildings around cold weather, because hot weather was rare and that was reasonable,” Damerla says. 

“But I think it’s changed now, and so it’s time for us to look at what are the other cooling options that we can provide for in purpose-built rentals.”

When does hot become too hot in schools?

Ontario does not currently set a maximum indoor temperature for schools.

The Education Act does require principals to pay attention to the “health and comfort” of students, including school temperature and ventilation. But without a maximum standard or equipment capable of cooling a building, advocates argue there is little clarity about when a classroom has become too hot to safely use.

The shortage of broader cooling infrastructure is not small. Ontario’s school repair backlog was estimated at $16.8 billion in 2022, even as the province committed billions toward school construction, repair and renewal.

The Canadian Environmental Law Association has recommended a 26 C maximum temperature for schools, more mechanical cooling and changes to the building code so new schools and major retrofits are designed with hotter conditions in mind. The group says 26 C should be treated as a starting point and revisited as more research emerges, specifically about children’s heat exposure.

There may be relief on the horizon. Ontario’s NDP put forward Bill 123, the Fighting Extreme Heat in Schools Act, which received first reading on May 26, 2026, and was ordered for second reading. If passed, it would require school buildings and school buses to remain at or below 26 C while students and workers are present.

School boards would also have to create annual heat-mitigation strategies and extreme-temperature emergency plans. The education minister would review those plans for gaps and inequities at least once every three years. Ontario’s legislature will return in late October and will likely continue debating this bill.

Rajpreet Sahota is a community and policy reporting fellow. Her position is funded in part by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, the foundation has no editorial input.

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.

Five days before Ontario’s new, weaker species-at-risk law took effect in March, members of the Environment Ministry team tasked with enforcing it were thinking about bats. In particular, a delayed permit that was keeping a developer from clearing trees before at-risk bats returned to them for the season. 

The permit had been delayed because staff were waiting to learn what the government’s new rules for endangered species protections were going to look like. By the time they did, officials feared it was too late. 

“I know those bats are in those trees,” one government biologist said during a March 25 meeting of the species at risk branch. “I just know those bats won’t survive.”

“We’ve lost our impact on the process,” a senior official replied.

The meeting was one of the last chances for staff in Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks, to express concerns about the Species Conservation Act, which replaced the province’s Endangered Species Act — once considered a gold standard for at-risk species laws. 

The change, introduced under Bill 5 in June 2025, stripped provincial protection from several species and narrowed habitat protection for others — 106 species lost protections, a July 2026 report by Ontario Nature found. It also introduced a new model for environmental assessments that is “proponent-led,” leaving developers largely responsible for assessing their own environmental impact and cutting government biologists out of the process almost entirely.

A recording of the meeting, which involved about 25 staff members in the species at risk branch of the Ministry of Environment, was shared with The Narwhal by one participant and independently verified by two others. The Narwhal is not naming the officials who led the meeting or participated in it, to protect their privacy as public sector workers with limited authority.

At the meeting, staff voiced concerns about fielding calls from “angry clients” — developers who had spent weeks working through permits and mitigation measures, only to have that process nullified overnight, with no new guidelines in place. Senior officials leading the meeting told staff Environment Minister Todd McCarthy’s office had provided “questions and answers” they could use to address developers’ concerns. 

“Our jobs were changing quickly from being biologists and scientific experts to being administrative staff,” one former staffer told The Narwhal, speaking under the condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions. “We were no longer allowed to give our recommendations.”

The Narwhal spoke with and verified five current or former ministry employees, who agreed to speak confidentially as they feared repercussions. Three spoke on background, while two agreed to be quoted without their names being used, as did one outside expert who has worked closely with government biologists on permit applications. The Narwhal also tracked staffing changes through LinkedIn and the government’s public directory, INFO-GO, as well as WayBack Machine, a digital archive that allowed us to access past versions of government websites. 

A note on trust, integrity and unnamed sources+

This story uses information from sources The Narwhal has agreed not to name. The Narwhal only agrees to keep names confidential when we believe two things. First, that the person we’re speaking with is putting themselves at genuine risk, either personal or professional, by sharing this information with us. Second, that the information they’re sharing is in the public interest. Our decision to do so is never made lightly. 

There are two types of unnamed sources. A confidential source is someone whose name we know, but aren’t sharing. We make multiple attempts to verify their identity and information with other sources. If we aren’t able to get a second source, we say so. 

An anonymous source is someone whose name we don’t know. It is incredibly rare for The Narwhal to publish a story with a completely anonymous source. In these instances, we don’t publish until we have verified the information shared with us with at least one other source. 

And again, these stories must be in the public interest. 

As Canadian governments become increasingly secretive, the courage of whistleblowers is to be admired. We value them greatly. At the same time, our promise to readers is The Narwhal will always make sure the facts are airtight. 

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Together, these sources reveal the new act has had a significant impact on the people tasked with protecting Ontario’s most vulnerable species — reducing them from experts to rubber stamps, if anything at all, for the industries they once held to account.

They also show that, more than a year after the Species Conservation Act was proposed, a wave of departures has hit the ministry’s species at risk branch, as biologists leave for the private sector or other government roles. The Narwhal counted more than a dozen people who have moved on since February 2025, though some may have retired or wrapped up short-term contracts. The Narwhal could not confirm the exact number of positions that have been vacated since the Species Conservation Act passed, but sources suggest it has been a notable amount, and that the loss of people and expertise is palpable within the ministry.

“There were lots of opportunities to improve the Endangered Species Act,” a former official said, “but this rollback is way too far, and it just diminishes protection that is promised to Ontarians.”

Sources say the policy changes and departures weakened the scientific expertise Ontario’s Ministry of Environment once valued, reducing the ministry’s ability to protect the environment in an evidence-backed way.

“Yes, it hurts the species,” the first former ministry staffer said. “But it hurt all of us too.” 

“We were essentially silenced,” they said. “And it’s not fair.” 

The Narwhal sent an extensive list of questions to Environment Minister McCarthy’s office, the ministry’s communications department and the species at risk branch, which redirected our questions to the communications department. None responded by publication time.

‘Our jobs stopped feeling meaningful’: government biologists were kept out of the creation of the Species Conservation Act

Under the previous Endangered Species Act, ministry experts helped project proponents, such as developers, homeowners and industry, figure out a plan to avoid impacts to at-risk species and their habitat. If harm couldn’t be avoided, biologists and ministry staff helped to minimize that impact or offset it — for example, by requiring proponents to establish new habitat elsewhere. This process required a lot of government review and back and forth. 

The Species Conservation Act changed all of this. The new act only asks the proponent to submit a conservation plan that “should” include how it will minimize or offset harm to at-risk species. That plan is to be written by an expert — hired by the proponent, and very loosely defined — but the regulations don’t specify what exactly it needs to include. Once submitted, these plans are automatically accepted and greenlit. 

In the recording of the meeting before the act was finalized, staff are told clearly that they “can’t review” proponent-led plans. They can’t ask questions or ask for more information. 

“Once they’re in the system, we don’t check them unless there’s a complaint,” the former official told The Narwhal in an interview. “We had to accept what clients were proposing.” 

Former and current ministry officials told The Narwhal they were shut out of the process to create the Species Conservation Act. They say it was announced in a hybrid meeting, with staff both in the ministry’s various offices and online. “It was so quiet,” a second former official said. “Morale dropped right away.” 

According to the ministry sources, all of the new regulations were decided in the environment minister’s office with a few senior officials. Three people told The Narwhal that staff were not given a timeline for when the new act would come into force, what to tell proponents or how to update online guidelines.

One internal communication, reviewed by The Narwhal, outlines how branch staff were not shown the final draft regulations before they were finalized. When staff tried to push back and make recommendations, they were told “there’s no appetite for that,” the first source said. 

“It was a very heavy-hearted time,” the second former official said. “On one hand, there could have been so many improvements but, as we learned in hindsight, there were very few ways to do any good.”“Our jobs stopped feeling meaningful.” 

Laura Bowman, an environmental and Indigenous Rights lawyer with Macpherson Law, told The Narwhal that, for ministry experts, “there’s nothing to be done under an automatic registration scheme.”

“Once the proponent has filed the paperwork, however flawed, the registration is approved,” Bowman said. “I can definitely understand why people with deep technical expertise would want to use it somewhere else.”

“If technical staff are leaving the ministry, that’s extremely concerning,” Bowman said. “What you’re left with is a hollow shell when that happens.”

With “nobody watching,” she said, the quality of the work being done to protect and mitigate harm to at-risk species is likely to decline.

‘They didn’t want to do anything wrong’: project proponents valued ministry expertise

As questions started trickling in about how to get a permit under the new law, ministry sources who spoke to The Narwhal said they were given language to copy and paste. 

“A lot of the language was very ambiguous, non-committal and unhelpful to our clients,” the first official said. “To be fair, clients wanted our recommendations. They didn’t want to do anything wrong and many were frustrated that we couldn’t tell them anything.”

The Narwhal spoke with one biologist who has long worked with private industry to make sure projects are compliant with species at risk law, creating plans for species management and harm mitigation. She also raised concerns about the lack of input from ministry staff. “I’ve had no correspondence with [the ministry] on any of my files,” she said about the months since the new act passed. “I’m just kind of doing it on my own now, and hoping that I’m doing it right.” 

She said when replies do come, they are weeks later and often “stock text” that does not answer site-specific, nuanced questions.

As the ministry continues to shed technical expertise, there appear to be fewer people left to answer those questions — if they were even allowed.

“I think that staff are very bound in what they can and cannot share,” the source told The Narwhal.

And, given the lack of feedback from the ministry and guardrails of enforcement, she said some of her own clients have been increasingly aggressive about removing species at risk protections.

“We always will have clients that want to push that envelope as far as they can, and we used to have [the Ministry of Environment] come in and say, ‘Nope, this is the way it’s got to be,’ and then that was the end of the story.”

“But now that that doesn’t happen, we get a lot more pushback. Like, ‘What is stopping us from doing it this way?’ ”  

This source expressed concern that the current lack of oversight creates an incentive to do the bare minimum to remain competitive. 

The effects of these changes will reverberate for generations, former government staffers told The Narwhal. 

“Across the government around the environment, the first approach is to avoid harm, and then mitigate and find ways to work around. The very last resort is to fix harms,” the second former official said. “Now, due diligence has changed. They’re going to have a lot of long-term consequences to deal with.”

One of those will be the loss of decades of expertise. “You will just not have the quality of staff you need at the ministry to deliver oversight and protection,” the first official said. “The sense we get is they don’t want us anyways.”

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

When the temperature climbs in Toronto’s Oakwood Village neighbourhood, the bottom floor of a former school-turned-community-centre becomes a hive of activity.

Split between a child care centre and community space, it’s where people gather to play music, garden, eat together or simply sit and talk. That includes members of the Oakwood Vaughan Community Organization, which is made up of residents who live in the area, many of whom are seniors, who invited The Narwhal to sit down with them for a gathering in late August.

The seniors describe building their days around the temperature. Some avoid cooking full meals and use toaster ovens instead. They wear cotton and linen, even switching their bedsheets to lighter fabrics. They seek out areas with more trees, stay indoors on particularly hot days and sometimes get on the subway simply because it is air conditioned.

Sharon Wyatt doesn’t have air conditioning in her two-storey house. During extended stretches of heat, the upper floor can become almost unusable.

“It’s like an Easy Bake Oven in very, very hot extended periods,” she says.

Instead, Wyatt moves downstairs and uses fans. 

Barbara Geiger has developed an even more precise routine: “I look at my weather app at least 20 times a day in the summer,” she says.

She checks a digital thermometer inside her bungalow nearly as often, deciding when to open the windows and when to close them before the outdoor temperature rises. When several hot days pile up and the house stops cooling overnight, she heads to the basement, where she has a guest bedroom and craft room. The temperature dictates where she sleeps, where she works and where she spends her day.

But not everyone has another floor to retreat to.

Angelo, another member of the group who asked to be identified only by his first name, says many people in the area live in apartments. The City of Toronto is working on a bylaw to limit maximum indoor temperatures in rentals, but it’s still a ways away from being enacted. 

And the scale of the problem goes well beyond a handful of buildings. City staff estimate about 54 per cent of private-market rental units and 67 per cent of non-market rental units in Toronto do not have landlord-provided air conditioning.

Angelo recalled one member whose building posted a notice saying residents who wanted air conditioning would have to pay an additional $400 a year. After residents contacted their local councillor, he says, the amount dropped to $200.

The tenant still didn’t install one. Angelo says they feared doing anything that could affect their original lease. “It’s not just the cost of the air conditioning, it’s the fear about being unhoused,” he says.

For older adults without a cool place to retreat to, the consequences can go far beyond discomfort — with extreme weather events across the country showing us just how far.

A deadly warning from B.C.

In June 2021, British Columbia showed how deadly the combination of age, health, isolation and inadequate cooling can become. Over one week, a heat dome settled over the Pacific Northwest, pushing temperatures above 40 C in many parts of the province.

B.C.’s chief coroner later identified 619 heat-related deaths. Ninety-eight per cent occurred indoors. Sixty-seven per cent of those who died were 70 or older, while more than half lived alone.

The deaths demonstrated something experts and advocates in Toronto are now trying to prepare for: the danger isn’t determined by the temperature outside alone, but by what happens when someone closes their front door.

And Toronto is expected to face more dangerously hot days.

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

Kimber-lee Wargalla, the centre’s community outreach coordinator, says another problem in Ontario is knowing the full toll extreme heat is currently taking. The Advocacy Centre for the Elderly has pushed for better tracking of heat-related deaths.

“Without those numbers, how do you prove how big the issue is, other than the anecdotal conversations with the people who are suffering,” Wargalla says. 

Extreme heat can quickly move from uncomfortable to dangerous for an older adult, Stephanie Hatzifilalithis, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, says. Part of the reason is physiological.

As people age, the body’s ability to regulate its internal temperature can decline, Hatzifilalithis, whose work focuses on extreme heat’s impact on older adults, says. People may not sweat as effectively, blood flow to the skin can change and the body’s ability to recognize thirst and respond to heat may become weaker, she explains.

That means the same temperature can put greater strain on an older body than a younger one, causing dehydration, dizziness, fainting and heat stroke, Hatzifilalithis says. It can also worsen existing cardiovascular, respiratory and kidney problems.

A Toronto community thinking about heat

Oakwood Village sits just south of Eglinton Avenue West in midtown Toronto, next to Little Jamaica. It is a culturally diverse neighbourhood anchored by residential streets, independent businesses and community organizations that have long helped shape daily life in the area.

The city is now studying how the broader Little Jamaica and Oakwood-Vaughan area should grow. Residents consulted as part of the city’s draft planning framework have asked for more trees, public benches and seating, additional green space, greener schoolyards and better community access to school buildings outside school hours.

Eglinton Avenue West, a busy commercial corridor, runs through the Oakwood-Vaughan and Little Jamaica area. The street is lined with shops, restaurants and services, where long stretches of pavement and relatively sparse tree cover leave little relief from the heat. The Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium’s data shows trees cover less than one-fifth of the total area.

This creates what is known as the urban heat island effect.

For the seniors at Vaughan Road Academy, an air-conditioned school building, a patch of shade or a tree-lined street aren’t simply neighbourhood amenities. They can become part of an improved cooling network.

‘They’re stuck in these small boxes cooking’

For the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly, a legal clinic working with seniors in particular, those stories point to a much larger problem.

Wargalla says the people most likely to fall through the cracks include low-income seniors, newcomers living alone, renters, people in subsidized or seniors housing and those without family or community members checking in on them.

The Advocacy Centre for the Elderly was one of the groups pushing for a maximum indoor temperature standard that would require landlords to provide cooling when temperatures reach 26 C or higher. 

While the City of Toronto’s bylaw is at least a year away, the Ontario government hasn’t committed to introducing one at all. The Ontario Ministry for Seniors and Accessibility did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.

Wargalla says people with mobility limitations or chronic health conditions may not be able to walk to a cooling space in extreme temperatures. “It makes people suffer in silence, and unfortunately, with extreme heat, the suffering in silence can mean death,” Wargalla says. “They’re stuck in these small boxes, cooking.”

Even someone who can access a cooling space eventually has to leave because they aren’t open 24 hours a day.

“Cooling rooms are not a substitute for safe housing,” Wargalla says. “People need cooling in their own homes, and vulnerable seniors cannot spend entire heat waves sitting in common areas or on public transit or at the library.”

Zamani Ra, executive director of CEED Canada, works on climate issues in social housing communities and sees some of those challenges where she works. For residents on higher floors, coming downstairs can itself be cumbersome. And when they arrive, she says, there may be little to do other than sit in the room. Often, the coolest area is the lobby, she says, but there is limited space for people to gather. So residents improvise.

“Some people actually get on the bus and go to the mall,” Ra says. Others go grocery shopping or visit family members with air conditioning. “But for the most part, people stay in place,” she says.

Ra says programs also need to recognize that receiving an air conditioner may not be enough. Some older adults may not be comfortable navigating online applications. Some don’t have family members who can help install or replace a unit. Even the size and type of windows in an apartment can determine what cooling equipment is usable. She says governments should consider providing quality air conditioners, professional installation and potentially vouchers that allow seniors or their families to choose a unit appropriate for their home.

The consequences of failing to address extreme heat have already been seen elsewhere in Canada.

“This is not a marginal problem,” Wargalla says. “This is a housing system problem.”

When heat becomes an emergency — financial and otherwise

Sarah Sanford, a researcher at the Wellesley Institute, recently led a study examining provincial emergency benefits in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec.

Residents eligible for the Ontario Works or Ontario Disability Support Program can receive up to $400 every four years to purchase a cooling device. Other programs in the province can provide electricity credits, emergency help with utility arrears or energy-saving upgrades for qualifying households.

But the study found emergency benefit programs were often fragmented, narrowly targeted or difficult to access. 

“Staying safe can mean paying for air conditioning. It can mean paying for higher electricity bills, transportation to a cool place, food, medical expenses and then any other costs that might be associated with an unanticipated climate-related emergency,” Sanford says. “A senior who’s living on a low income might have to make really difficult choices about whether or not they cool their space or if they’re able to afford to purchase other necessities.”

The City of Toronto has started expanding its response, piloting an Air Conditioner Assistance Program in 2025. The city distributed close to 500 free portable units to low-income seniors with health-related cooling needs living in multi-unit residential buildings.

In 2026, the program expanded to approximately 1,500 portable air conditioners and broadened eligibility to include pregnant people and families with infants, while continuing to serve eligible seniors.

Council voted in May this year to make the program permanent, increasing funding from $200,000 in 2025 to $1 million to expand the program as part of the 2026 budget. This funding covers all costs for the program including program administration, delivery and installation.

Another new effort in west Toronto is trying to identify vulnerable residents before a heat emergency happens.

The West Toronto Ontario Health Team, a network of 44 health and social service agencies, launched a voluntary heat wave registry this summer. Health team director Kashtin Fitzsimons says the idea traces back to the wildfire season of 2023. 

“We realized that we didn’t have a coordinated response as a health system for how to respond to wildfire smoke,” Fitzsimons says. “The more we thought about it, we didn’t have much of one on the topic of extreme heat either.”

That fall, the health team began asking people across west Toronto what the health system could do to help communities respond to climate change. Fitzsimons says Paris, France, helped inspire the registry through a similar, voluntary system that contacts residents during periods of extreme heat and other dangerous weather. 

In west Toronto, people who register by themselves, or through a community group or primary care provider, receive a call from a volunteer when the city issues an extreme heat or air quality warning. Volunteers ask how they are doing, provide information about nearby cooling locations, answer heat safety questions and can connect people with health services. There are no restrictions on who can register, though organizations serving older adults, people living with chronic illness and others more vulnerable to extreme heat are encouraged to share the service.

Because the registry launched in 2026, full data on its impact has not yet been analyzed, but Fitzsimons says the calls are having a great impact and would like to see the approach grow beyond individual neighbourhood programs.

“The dream is to see a coordinated city response where no matter where you live in the city, you know what you can do,” he says. 

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.

The smell of decomposing garbage hits before the building comes into view — a sour, earthy odour that stings your teeth. Hidden by a curving driveway, large bright green trees and a set of lawn chairs, the entrance almost makes you forget that beyond it lies a waste-burning facility that is set to become one of North America’s largest incinerators.

The Emerald Energy from Waste incinerator sits on roughly six hectares of industrial land, tucked between Bramalea Road and Highway 407 in Brampton, Ont. Behind its rusting metal walls and towering smokestacks, transport trucks arrive throughout the day carrying loads of non-hazardous waste from across Ontario. Inside, garbage is unloaded, sorted and fed into combustion units, where the waste is burned to generate electricity for neighbouring businesses and homes.

The facility began operating in spring 1992, on former agricultural land that had become home to a rapidly developing industrial sector. Today, warehouses, manufacturing plants and trucking dominate the area immediately around the incinerator. But beyond this industrial zone are neighbourhoods that have expanded alongside one of Canada’s fastest-growing cities. Just a few kilometres southwest of the plant, cricket and soccer matches fill Emancipation Park on summer evenings. Minutes away, homes, recreation centres and places of worship serve a population transformed by decades of immigration, particularly from South Asia. What was once a facility close to the edge of Brampton now sits near communities where tens of thousands of people live, work and raise families.

Last year, the province approved the Environmental Assessment Screening Report which clears the path to a major expansion of the Emerald incinerator. The facility would process up to 900,000 tonnes of waste annually — roughly six-fold what it’s processing today, bringing even more garbage from various Ontario municipalities to Brampton. The Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks has not responded to The Local’s request for comment.

Emerald Energy from Waste argues that the expansion is needed to address Ontario’s looming landfill capacity crisis. According to Waste to Resource Ontario, an environmental services association, Ontario generated approximately 16.88 million tonnes of waste in 2024, with 12.75 million tonnes disposed in landfills; the province is projected to run out of landfill space by 2037.

“Ontario has a crisis in that we don’t have enough waste management capacity infrastructure in the province,” Joe Lyng, president of Emerald Energy from Waste, says. An expansion in Brampton, he argues, is the answer to multiple problems — diverting more garbage from landfills while also increasing the incinerator’s energy recovery rate, creating more power for an energy-starved province.

While that argument may be convincing for the province, locals feel differently. The incinerator expansion — which Emerald anticipates will begin in 2027 — has become one of Brampton’s most contentious environmental issues. Many residents question the province’s approval process. They worry about the potential health effects on nearby communities. And they wonder if anyone is looking out for the good of the people of Brampton, a city of racialized immigrants at the edge of Canada’s biggest metropolis.

“It’s a sacrifice zone,” Linda Gasser, co-founder of the advocacy group Zero Waste 4 Zero Burning, says. That’s the term for an area in which low-income and minority groups shoulder the environmental harms of clustered polluting industrial sites. For locals, the placement of the largest incinerator in Canada right in their community sends a message: that somewhere like Brampton won’t, or can’t, object to housing the region’s industry and waste. “One more polluting facility, what’s the big deal, right?” Gasser says. It’s a mindset that some residents are committed to fighting.

Incinerator’s English-only consultations create barriers in largely Punjabi-speaking neighbourhoods

There’s a misconception that Bramptonians don’t care about the environment. Once proudly known as The Flower City, Brampton is now grappling with a new online reputation as a “garbage city.” It’s a stereotype that has frustrated many residents — including those working to prove the opposite.

Born and raised in Brampton, Rajbalinder Ghatoura is an environmental activist dedicated to improving life in his community. When he was 12 years old, Ghatoura won an international environmental photography competition for a photo of a Tim Horton’s cup seemingly dissolving into its surroundings. It sparked a lifelong commitment to protecting the environment. Today, at 25, that commitment still shapes his activism. Environmental problems, Ghatoura says, often become hardest to confront when people can’t see them, which he believes goes beyond roadside litter.

In 2023, Ghatoura co-founded Kudrat Di Rakhia, a community organization based in Brampton. They’re members of the Brampton Environmental Alliance, and focus on advocacy and education.

To reach the South Asian population in Brampton, Ghatoura works with local gurdwaras. Raising awareness about environmental sustainability, starting with places of worship, Kudrat Di Rakhia has engaged with the Sikh community to participate in initiatives like tree planting and city cleanups.

Communicating directly with Punjabi-speaking residents is one of Kudrat Di Rakhia’s greatest strengths. By bridging the language barrier, the organization is able to connect with a broader diaspora of Brampton’s South Asian community that can be overlooked in environmental advocacy efforts. According to the 2021 census, Punjabi is the second most spoken language after English in Brampton. “It’s important for this information to be shared with the population, the demographics, and to be shared in a language that they understand,” says Ghatoura.

He says this wasn’t the case with the incinerator expansion. In 2022, the company took out a half-page ad in the Brampton Guardian, an English–only newspaper, to inform the public of their proposed expansion project. Informing the public of an undertaking like the proposed expansion is required under the Environmental Assessment Act. But despite the surrounding area being home to many immigrants and residents whose first language is not English, no information was provided in Punjabi or any other language.

Lyng says he looked into the demographics in Brampton and found that approximately 95 to 97 per cent were English-speaking residents. (While census data shows that approximately 95 per cent of Brampton residents have “knowledge” of English, it’s the mother tongue for roughly 42 per cent of the population.)

“We’re not going to reach out to, you know, the two or three per cent. It’s at our discretion and we didn’t see that as something that was necessary,” Lyng says.

Ghatoura himself only came to know of the proposed expansion a year ago, reading about it online, after much of the screening process had already been completed.

What he learned alarmed him.

Company president says incinerator expansion is safe, but won’t commit to publicly sharing real-time emission data

Energy-from-waste facilities, like the one in Brampton, are incinerators that recover energy during combustion. Heat is used to generate steam, powering a turbine to produce electricity. Although incinerators reduce the volume of garbage, they don’t completely eliminate it. After the waste is burned, the ash that remains in the stacks is typically disposed of in a landfill.

Expansion at the proposed scale would typically require a full environmental assessment. Because Emerald Energy from Waste has been a long-term operation, however, the project went through a streamlined environmental screening process. Lyng says that the process they conducted included technical studies as well as public consultations such as open houses and public liaison meetings. “We went above and beyond,” Lyng says.

For many — including anti-incineration activists, health officials, the region of Peel and concerned residents like Ghatoura — these assurances aren’t nearly enough. They insist that the incinerator do an individual environmental assessment, which would enable a public review of emission data and determine risks to the environment and public health.

Brampton resident Stacey Wilson has noticed an unsettling odour in the air for more than two decades. “When it’s a nice day, and I step out the door to go for a walk, and the first thing I notice is the smell of burning tires or burning plastic, that’s really upsetting to me,” she says. She’s filed multiple reports with the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks.

Wilson’s worried about the increased traffic that will come with the expansion. According to the incinerator’s website, the facility is currently licensed to process 500 metric tonnes of garbage per day, which Lyng says is unloaded by 30 to 35 trucks. The expanded incinerator, the website says, will process 2,500 tonnes a day, roughly five times the current amount. This could mean many more vehicles. But Wilson’s biggest concern is the uncertainty about what pollutants are being released: “How do we know what we’re breathing in now?” If there are any damaging health effects, she says, they won’t become apparent until years from now.

Lyng says that the incinerator’s emissions are carefully monitored. The facility’s annual stack tests, which measure air quality directly from the its exhaust stacks, show that every pollutant tested by the company remained within Ontario’s regulatory limits between 2020 to 2025. However, known pollutants, such as nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide and hydrogen chloride, have at times spiked to the edge of allowable limits.

“We have real-time emission monitoring,” Lyng says, referring to the meters that continuously monitor certain pollutants. If there are any issues with operations or emissions, they report it to the ministry and follow up with an action report.

Linda Gasser, of Zero Waste 4 Zero Burning, and Wendy Bracken, of the Durham Environment Watch, say that these monitoring efforts aren’t enough. Bracken says that while incinerator operators emphasize their continuous monitoring — with the implication being that if something is wrong they can shut things down — many pollutants are in fact only tested once a year.

Lyng confirms that the Emerald incinerator does not have a meter to continuously monitor all pollutants; instead, the facility conducts annual testing to measure their levels. He says the expansion will include a meter to conduct continuous monitoring for sulphur dioxide, unlike the current facility.

Since the emissions are self-monitored, the results cannot be viewed by residents remotely. Opponents of the incinerator contrast that with the monitoring done at the Durham York Energy Centre, an incinerator on the other side of the GTA owned by the Regions of Durham and York. There, emissions data is made public, through a real-time portal on their website. In addition to their continuous monitoring, the Durham York Energy Centre undergoes stack testing twice a year.

Lyng says that Emerald will not be publishing its emissions data online. “The public can come in and see the data at the plant,” Lyng says. “We can come and bring you up to the control room, show you this is what we do. It’s not some mystical process.”

It’s difficult to imagine members of the public taking Lyng up on his offer. The control room sits on the second floor of the facility, accessible by a narrow metal staircase. Operating data is displayed across multiple monitors running the facility’s original 1992 control system. During a recent tour, the room’s temperature exceeded 40 C.

Incinerator’s neighbourhood is populated by vulnerable communities, health unit says

Beyond data from the incinerator’s stacks, opponents of the expansion have another concern: how burning five times the waste it does today will affect a community that already grapples with pollution.

Last spring, Peel Public Health officials submitted a report to the regional council outlining their concerns about the incinerator project. Additional emissions from the expansion, they wrote, “results in an overall increase in cumulative exposure to air pollutants and can result in an increased risk of negative health effects to the surrounding community.”

The health unit found that some pollutants already exceed provincial and federal air quality limits, even before the expansion. In an email to The Local, Peel Public Health said they’d found that local background levels of benzo(a)pyrene — a toxic chemical that’s often the result of incomplete combustion of organic material — currently exceeds the air quality limits for both short and long-term exposures. Modeling under worst-case emission conditions, the health unit found that with the expansion, benzo(a)pyrene and nitrogen dioxide are estimated to exceed the short-term exposure limits set by the province by 115 per cent.

The proposed expansion is also predicated on collecting enough waste to generate profitable energy from incineration. That’s an approach that Peel Public Health’s report says is “counter to the promotion and sustainability of robust circular economy markets, which are crucial for minimizing waste, pollution and resource consumption.”

To fully understand the emissions and their impact on air quality in the surrounding community, Peel Public Health told The Local they need to know more about the pollution control technology at the expanded facility — information that will come in the next step of the approval process. Emerald Energy from Waste is required to include this information in their Environmental Compliance Approval application to the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks.

What’s clear is that the expanded incinerator will be surrounded by existing vulnerable communities. Peel Region health status data shows that roughly 70 per cent of the people in the data zone containing the incinerator are racialized individuals. According to the Peel Public Health report, compared to Peel as a whole, residents in the communities living closest to the facility have more one-parent families, and a higher percentage of residents who didn’t complete high-school and are unemployed. They also have “higher rates of certain health conditions … that may be worsened by exposure to increased air pollution.”

Peel Public Health noted in its report that it hasn’t heard directly from residents about the proposed expansion. But the lack of inquiry doesn’t necessarily mean a lack of concern. The socio-economic realities flagged in the report are the very same ones that make it unlikely for community members to step forward. In order to oppose the expansion, residents first need to know about it.

Municipal councillors call for more scrutiny of incinerator proposal

For long-time Brampton resident Susan Colbert Wright, the fight over the incinerator is about more than the impact of a single industrial project. She raises larger questions about who gets to shape the future of Brampton and who bears the costs of development decisions. As plans move ahead to create Canada’s largest waste incinerator, Wright keeps returning to the most basic question: “How is more pollution okay?”

Wright has lived in Brampton since the 1960s. She’s witnessed Brampton become Canada’s fastest growing, multicultural municipality — one she and her family call home. She’s also watched Brampton become home to a disproportionate share of the region’s industrial footprint, with power plants, warehouses and trucking hubs, among other facilities that are reshaping the city’s environmental future.

One of the major barriers to public engagement, as Wright sees it, is a lack of easily accessible information, with reports and correspondence scattered across government websites. To address this gap, she’s building a website that will consolidate all records and resources. “It’s the one place where you can go to get the history, the information, rather than having to search all over the place,” Wright says.

Her primary goal is for the website to act as a conduit between residents and elected officials, making it easier for concerned residents to directly email MPs, submit public feedback and participate in opposition action.

Although Emerald aimed to start construction this fall, Lyng told The Local that because they haven’t finalized the design of the project, they won’t be able to begin until spring or summer of 2027. In the meantime, the planned expansion has become a political issue for local councillors.

Wards nine and 10 councillor Gurpartap Singh Toor, who sits on Brampton’s Environment Advisory Committee, says he received an influx of calls after provincial approval was announced.

Those calls, Toor says, are almost entirely from people strongly opposing the incinerator expansion and voicing their concerns for public health. “Our communities here in the City of Brampton are heavily racialized communities that are typically more prone to heart and lung diseases,” Toor says. “A lot of them live in very close proximity to where this project is getting built, and those are the communities that will face the more immediate effect.”

In a recent regional council meeting, wards seven and eight councillor Pat Fortini and councillor Toor passed a motion to submit new technological research presented by a local resident to MPs, to emphasize that there needs to be further environmental compliance ahead of the construction of the expansion.

“I definitely don’t want the Region of Peel or the City of Brampton to be the garbage burning capital of Canada,” Toor said during that meeting. He requested the region submit the motion to both the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks and Health in order to push them to review the expansion proposal once again.

‘This is our home’: Bamptonians love their city, and say they’ll fight to keep it clean and healthy

As the incinerator expansion moves forward, Ghatoura is still dedicating himself to making sure his community isn’t seen as a “sacrifice zone.”

This April, he says his organization brought their message directly to residents, setting up booths at Earth Month and Sikh Heritage Month events across the city, to lead discussions about various environmental issues, including the proposed expansion of the incinerator. “It’s surprising that when we talk to people, they have no idea that a waste incinerator exists there, and that they have plans for expansion,” says Ghatoura. “That is very concerning, because this is going to impact them every single day.”

As Ghatoura and other organizers spark those conversations in Brampton, he’s been heartened to see different age groups advocating for their communities. “Especially this issue with the waste incinerator, we’re getting a lot more youth involvement, which is amazing, we haven’t really seen that before,” he says.

On a summer evening this July, Ghatoura led a group of senior citizens — all South Asian men over 70 — to participate in a community cleanup, picking up empty coffee cups, plastic wrappers and old weathered flyers. They met at Luongo Park in western Brampton, and walked through the neighbourhood with trash picks, garbage bags and latex gloves, picking up garbage from people’s driveways, lawns and the street.

“This is our home,” says Sri Bansilal Singh, a 70-year-old man who rode his bicycle for two kilometres to join his friends for the cleanup. “Brampton is very beautiful, and because we’re grateful to live here, we’re happy to contribute to the community and want to help maintain its beauty.”

As they went about the cleanup, residents came out to pay their respects to the seniors. “People really love these guys, and have great respect for what they’re doing,” Ghatoura says. It’s one of the many reasons he questions why the incinerator is being built in Brampton. Historically, he says, environmental racism has meant that the burden of development often falls on the shoulders of the marginalized. But this only motivates him more — to educate and mobilize his community, to prove that Brampton deserves better.

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